In a year of well-warranted anti-incumbent fever, I figured a perennial politician such as Democrat Rep. Lincoln Davis might be in trouble. But Tennessee's 4th District congressman removed all doubt when his campaign started fretting oh so publicly about allegations in his opponent's decade-old divorce papers.
Discredited claims that GOP challenger Scott DesJarlais abused his wife "are very serious and disturbing," said Davis' very serious and concerned campaign manager in the Washington newspaper Roll Call.
Not to muss about with petty facts, but the claims are malarkey. It was Dr. DesJarlais' ex-wife who was later found in contempt for verbally abusing DesJarlais while their child was present, and the divorce decree did not fault DesJarlais.
But why bother with the truth when sensational allegations against the challenger conveniently let Davis downplay his record in Congress?
He voted, for instance, for President Obama's $862 billion stimulus. How did that work out? Well, earlier this year, The Associated Press looked at stimulus spending in counties around the nation, including Marshall County, Tenn., which borders Davis' district. On a per-capita basis, Marshall got more road-project cash from the stimulus than just about any other county in the nation.
Yet unemployment there remained stratospheric (it was 16 percent in August), and the AP found "no difference in unemployment trends between the group of counties that received the most stimulus money and the group that received none ... ." Nationwide, "[T]here was nearly no connection between stimulus money and the number of construction workers hired or fired ... ."
That swaddles in fresh irony Davis' remarks in the Kingsport Times News just after the stimulus vote. He said "right-wingers" questioning the massive bill's wonderfulness were purveyors of mere "ideological talking points."
Now that the talking points have come true and most Americans agree with the "right-wingers" that the stimulus was the boondoggle to end all boondoggles, I leave it to Davis' constituents to decide whether he was right in backing it.
To his faint credit, Davis did vote against ObamaCare with a group of less-liberal-than-average Democrats - a group that by what undoubtedly was pure, wild chance happened to be just a bit too small to defeat that disgraceful bill. Yet even though most Americans want ObamaCare dismantled, Davis told Knoxville TV station WATE that he would vote to repeal only "certain parts" of the law.
I doubt his 4th District constituents - who he acknowledged in the same interview were "violently, vehemently, strongly opposed" to ObamaCare - subscribe to his pick-and-pay approach. I'm guessing they sensibly want the whole ugly "reform" drop-kicked, whacked into unconsciousness with a crowbar and shipped to Death Valley for burial in a Delaware-size crate marked "Really damaged goods."
But not Davis. There's too much he likes in ObamaCare for him to want to put it out of our misery entirely.
I see why his campaign thinks false allegations against his opponent are the real issue in the election.
A modest man
Let us give a bit of credit to the president. In the weeks since he declared U.S. combat finished in Iraq, he has gone out of his way not to claim victory there.
That is appropriate, given that as a U.S. senator he noisily opposed the 2007 troop surge that radically improved the situation in Iraq. His friend Harry Reid had declared the war lost, after all, so we can forgive Obama for mistakenly assuming that settled the matter.
Of course, the president's refusal to take personal credit in Iraq doesn't mean our troops should be shy about proclaiming the progress they made, despite the commander in chief's lack of support for their mission. So, troops, enjoy a well-deserved victory lap even if he declines to join in.
He is, as Churchill once said of another leader, "a modest man, who has much to be modest about."