Post-Bush Syndrome

Tuesday afternoon, the Senate gallery. I forgot to wear a tie this morning, so no press box for me; I'm stuck with the cattle in the visitors' gallery. Down on the floor, John Kerry is standing up to mourn the loss of the so-called Warner resolution on the Iraq War — a nonbinding, limp-noodle piece of triple-compromised political hot air that carried about as much weight as a springtime engagement to J. Lo. But Kerry is making it sound like the Civil Rights Act had just been vetoed by Satan himself.

"The last twenty-four hours in the Senate have not been a profile in courage," he drones. "They have been a profile in politics."

Well, no shit, I think. Then I realize that Kerry isn't talking about the Democrats:

"Rather than protect the troops," he goes on, "our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have decided . . . to protect the president."

I sink in my chair. Protect the president? From what? From a fucking nonbinding resolution? Are these people insane? What's next, a "sense of the Senate" vote calling Bush a "meanie"?

Probably — and if the Republicans filibuster that, then the Democrats will get really mad. Maybe they'll hold their breath, or go sit in a corner during recess.

I had gone down the rabbit hole — into the weird purgatory of post-Bush Washington. The nation's capital is a strange new world these days, a place where horrible crises abound, but nothing much gets done and no one seems to mind. Forget about Iraq — who do you like in '08?

One thing that's obvious is that the Bush era is not only dead, it's buried. You could see that easily enough watching the plight of poor Mitch McConnell, the gray-faced Senate minority leader put in charge of rebuffing the Democrats' half-assed anti-war effort.

The mumbling Kentucky senator has the tired, semicompetent look of a post-Rommel German field marshal — a middling, potbellied bureaucrat who happened to be the only guy left to throw at the front after Patton broke through Bastogne. While the early-model Republican leaders of the DeLay-Frist-Hastert genus were all smug, toothy jerks who grinned for the cameras like they'd just written America a big fat ticket for a broken taillight, McConnell carries himself in public like a dour old lady; throw a habit on him and he could easily be the lead in Nunsense. The mere fact that he's the guy rallying the Republican troops these days proves that it's time to stick a fork in the once-terrible Bush machine.

In fact, the Republicans may have breathed their last gasp in the Senate, in an overplayed procedural gambit designed to prevent the Democrats from making their empty gesture against the Iraq War. The gambit in question was Mother Superior McConnell's filibuster of the pathetic nonbinding Warner resolution.

On the surface, the filibuster was a brilliant idea, a diabolical ploy designed to expose the Democrats as pretenders in the anti-war effort. What McConnell was really doing was tying debate over the meaningless Warner amendment to a resolution with real teeth: the so-called Gregg amendment, sponsored by New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, which would have asked senators to cast a vote promising that they would never defund the troops in Iraq.