Given Sen. Arlen Specter’s performance in office, “Duh” is all I can say about Pennsylvania Democrats’ decision to give him the boot in their Senate primary. They overwhelmingly picked Rep. Joe Sestak instead.
But if Barack Obama had had his way, voters never would have had that choice; they would have been stuck with candidate Specter no matter how much they wanted to send him back to the private sector, where he could do less harm.
The administration offered Rep. Sestak a supposedly unpaid job as an adviser if he would drop out of the race and clear Sen. Specter’s path to the nomination. It used Bill Clinton as the go-between, possibly to create a loophole by which to claim the offer technically did not come from the administration but from an outsider. (Mr. Clinton, who encourages hearty debate on the meaning of the word “is,” is well suited to this latest bit of parsing.)
The cynical maneuvering in Pennsylvania is being dismissed as garden variety politics. Actually, it was a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise voters – a fact lost on the Obama administration, which seems hurt that anyone would question the deal and is offering assurances that it was legal.
That’s debatable, and the notion that the proposed job was an unpaid advisory post is just plain side-splitting. The administration wants us to believe it urged a popular, viable candidate to drop out in exchange for nothing more than the privilege of working for free on some panel buried deep in the bureaucratic blubber of the federal government. Up next on “Dr. Phil,” parents who persuaded their 9-year-old to settle for an all-expenses-paid visit to the library instead of that yucky trip to Disney World.
Whatever Rep. Sestak may have been promised (and to his credit he turned it down), we know this with chilling certainty: A sitting president and a former president tried to deny the voters of Pennsylvania the candidate of their choice.
Legal or not, that stinks.
Focus
Stop me if you’ve been here, done this:
You’re sitting at a table playing a board game. One of your party is under 25. Every few minutes, his cell phone beeps, buzzes, chirps or warbles, so he pauses to read his latest text message and send one in reply. He loses track of whose turn it is to play and is irritated to learn that everyone is waiting for him.
This pattern continues for a while, with both the texter and the others at the table growing more agitated. He grumpily insists – after asking once again whose turn it is – that he is in the game, and he bristles at the unanimous annoyance against him.
Soon, the other players – weary of being snapped at and no longer interested in playing – forfeit and declare him the winner.
Their attitude bewilders him.
This scenario came to mind when I read the comments of a young man interviewed for a recent Times Free Press article on the prevalence of youths who communicate mainly by texting, rather than by phone call or face-to-face conversation.
“I can be sitting here talking to you and still text …,” the enthusiastic 17-year-old told our reporter. “I can still pay attention.”
Ba. Lo. Ney.
It is possible to muddle through two conversations simultaneously – by fits and starts. But it is not possible to participate in two conversations simultaneously and attentively. What you’re really doing is telling two people they aren’t interesting enough to deserve your full attention. It would be more honest to say that up front, so they could order their lives in such a way as to have no need to talk to you at all.
Barring that, try this rule of thumb: If you think you’re paying attention and everyone around you thinks you’re not, you’re not.
Now hang up.
To reach Steve Barrett, call 423-757-6329 or e-mail sbarrett@timesfreepress.com.