House of Eratosthenes

This weekend I was in a pissy mood about California politics and, I think, justifiably so. I’ve spent fourteen years, my entire residence in this state, and her entire tenure in the Senate, writing to Dianne Feinstein. When she’s announces her position on something, I send a very tactfully-worded “Are You Out Of Your Freakin’ Gourd?” letter. And what I get back is a boilerplate letter thanking me for my inquiry, and proceeding to inform me of what her position is, as if I didn’t already know, and as if she was the constituent and I was the Senator.

It doesn’t cheese me off because it’s boilerplate; it doesn’t cheese me off because she won’t do what I tell her to do. I understand there are thirty million people in this state. What cheeses me off, is that the process of representation has been nibbled away, and nibbled away, to the point where it no longer exists anymore. Nobody ever seems to question this process. There is Feinstein; there are her advisors; there are who-knows-what: lobbyists, trusted advisors, confidants, cronies; they all get together and decide how things are going to be. And oh lookee lookee, she’s nice enough to tell me in case someone asks for my opinion, and I want it to be just like hers.

Occasionally an issue will surface and I will take the time to let her know how I, as a constituent, would like to see her vote, before she’s had time to form a position for herself. This was the case when Samuel A. Alito was nominated to fill the Supreme Court seat of Sandra Day O’Connor. Things get much worse then. In that case, as I recall, Feinstein was kind enough to send me a blurb letting me know that she hadn’t quite decided how she would vote, but she’d get it all figured out soon and be sure and let me know. Feinstein sits on the Senate Judicial Committee, so I was happy to see she’d have it figured out soon.

Well, it took about a month, give or take, and sure enough she decided to do everything she could to defeat Alito. Now, I suppose reasonable minds could disagree as to whether her reasons were logically sustainable. Were her opinions formed with a decent respect to the desires of her constituents, the rule of law, and a desire for civility, decorum, restraint, and a solid interpretation of law taking place on our nation’s highest bench? Suffice to say I have my doubts.

So I was pretty cynical when, coming off fourteen years of failing to have any influence at all, whatsoever, participating in the electoral representation process or seeing a decent opportunity accorded to my viewpoint for representation in the upper house of Congress, I come to learn a shocking thing: You can change Dianne Feinstein’s mind on something by blowing seven things up in a day when you’re not even a California resident. That came as a bit of a shock. I’m not about to blow up one thing, let alone seven, so I guess all you out-of-state people can keep your two senators and I’ll just make do with none.

Well, Gov. Scwarzenegger thinks she’s just doing a peachy job, and took the time to say so, or at least his spokesman did. They’re both up this year, you know. Maybe they sat down and figured out that like the Founding Fathers, if they don’t hang together, they’ll surely hang separately.

I’d just like to know what kind of peachy job she’s doing. Listening to her constituents?

While the governor didn’t name any names, Steve Schmidt, his campaign manager, wasn’t quite so circumspect.

“Like most Californians, (Schwarzenegger) thinks Dianne Feinstein is a great senator,” Schmidt said.

While Schwarzenegger has made a blanket endorsement of the other Republicans on the statewide ticket, he has pointedly left the Senate seat out of the mix.

The governor “has not made an endorsement in the Senate race,” Julie Soderlund, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger’s campaign, said Friday. “We have nothing to announce at this time.”

The governor’s reluctance to back Mountjoy has made a tough campaign even more of a longshot. The 74-year-old Monrovia (Los Angeles County) resident only jumped into the race after Republicans failed to recruit a better-known candidate and finds himself running far behind Feinstein in the polls and the quest for campaign cash.

“I realized this was an uphill battle from the start,” Mountjoy said in an interview.

Another thing I’d like to know, and it regards this facade of camaraderie between Republicans and Democrats. From whence does this dictate come? Who are all these voters who want to see Republicans and Democrats stop fighting and get along? And wherever this surfaces as a paramount issue, does any agenda ever win in the long haul, save for the most extreme left-wing liberal ones?

What has Feinstein done, exactly, to reach across the aisle, as conservatives are now prevailed to do so often that it’s become a routine expectation? She’s had fourteen years, remember. How long is the list of compromises she has actually made?

You know, to the extent I can recall the topic at hand, I think I made this point in the letter about Alito. I wanted to see if a Democrat could support a Bush nominee now that the nominee was extremely well-qualified, and the circumstances were ideal. If this thing is a two-way street and there’s some expectation on Feinstein to show some bipartisanship, that would have been a good time — she could have voted for Alito. There really wasn’t any sound reason not to. Well, she didn’t. And come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time a liberal Democrat did any compromising here, anywhere. Wherever Republicans and Democrats suddenly find ways to play nice together, it seems an off-the-charts liberal left-wing victory is about to be given life, or a renewed lease on it.

So as far as I’m concerned, it’s too late for this kind of go-along-to-get-along. Democrats and Republicans are far too incompatible to ever reconcile their differences. And that’s not my decision, it’s Dianne Feinstein’s.

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One Big Happy FamilyWednesday, June 21st, 2006

One Big Happy Family
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006