Back to Work, Sen. Brownback
Saturday, October 20, 2007
FOR KANSANS, the announcement that Sen. Sam Brownback is dropping out of the presidential race is unalloyed good news. Now, perhaps, he will get back to doing the job the voters hired him to do.
According to the Washington Post, Brownback has missed 132 votes in the Senate while chasing his presidential dream. That is more than 33 percent of the votes taken in the current session.
To put that in perspective, how happy would the people of Emporia be if the city manager decided he wanted to try for a better job and spent a third of his working hours out of town, interviewing? Don’t get excited. Matt Zimmerman has been working hard for Emporia. But what if he had not been? How many months would it be before the city found itself a new manager and the old one would be free to go job-hunting full time?
Brownback is not unique and he is not the worst example in the Senate of a politician shirking responsibility to chase the presidential dream. Sen. John McCain has missed 51 percent of the votes this session, which makes him, officially, a half-time senator.
In a recent chat on the Lawrence Journal-World Web site, Brownback defended his voting record for the session, saying that he was doing the best he could to balance the demands of the campaign and the responsibilities of his office. That may be so, but others have done better.
Sen. Hillary Clinton is currently the candidate presumptive for the Democratic Party. She has been campaigning relentlessly for months. In that time, she has been absent from the Senate for only 9 percent of the votes. Either Brownback has been doing a lot more campaigning than Clinton (which does not seem possible) or Clinton is much better than Brownback at managing time and scheduling travel.
Barring scandal or resignation, Brownback is in no danger of losing his Senate job anytime soon. He was re-elected in 2004 and his current term will not expire until 2011. Assuming he wants to run for re-election, that gives him four years to apply himself in the Senate and convince his employers — the voters of Kansas — that he is not using the Senate as just a cozy spot to rest while he plans his next career move.
There is no law that prevents members of the Senate from running for president or that requires them to show up on a regular basis to represent the people of their states.
But neither is there a law that says voters have to put up with absentee politicians.
Kansas elected a senator, not a presidential wannabe.
It is time for Sam Brownback to get back to work.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor