'Potomac Fever' still infects the Senate
The past week or two, I've been thinking about two senators in particular - the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein from California and current senator from New Jersey Robert Menendez. She needed to resign and wouldn't. He needs to resign and won't.
Don't get me wrong. Sen. Feinstein, who died on Sept. 29 at age 90, is a hero of mine. She spearheaded a ban on assault weapons - unfortunately now expired - that saved hundreds if not thousands of American lives. As head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she took on the CIA and revealed the interrogation techniques it used against suspected terrorists were both brutal and ineffective. But she wouldn't leave when it was time to go.
Almost seven decades ago, John F. Kennedy, who served eight years as a senator from Massachusetts, noted in his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Profiles in Courage," "The virus of Potomac Fever, which rages everywhere in Washington, breeds nowhere in more virulent form than on the Senate Floor." And what is that fever? Urban Dictionary defines it as, "A disease peculiar to the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area that presents chiefly as an intense desire in the infected to be associated with the power and prestige of the United States Federal Government."
Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey is alive and breathing even if his political career is in mortal danger. He has been indicted on a charge of taking bribes to bolster aid to Egypt and to disrupt both state and federal criminal cases. And yet, Menendez refuses to resign. He says that after any trial, "Not only will I be exonerated, but I will still be New Jersey's senior senator." That's fine for him, but does the prolonged period between indictment and verdict benefit his New Jersey constituents and the people of the United States? How effective a senator can he be with this sword hanging over his head? He doesn't need a seat in the Senate to fight the charges.
Menendez called the indictments the product of an "active smear campaign." This feeds into Republican accusations that the Justice Department has been weaponized against the Biden administration's enemies - especially former President Donald Trump. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton has said Menendez should not be forced from office "by Democratic politicians who now view him as inconvenient to their hold on power." Tell me why Democrats would want to chase Menendez from office if he were innocent. He has voted 100% of the time with President Joe Biden in this congressional session.
It must be tempting, too, for Republicans to want Menendez in office where he would be vulnerable in his 2024 reelection bid. Sorry, Senator, you are not the indispensable man. Staying in office is not what's best for your constituents or the country.
In "Profiles in Courage," Kennedy also asks, "Where else, but in the political profession is the individual expected to sacrifice all - including his own career - for the national good?" Yet isn't that what we should expect of those we elect to high office? It may be only a naive dream, but the goal of all hundred senators ought not be reelection but doing what's right for their constituents and country.
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