Crying Democrats and the cryogenic candidate

The Commander in Chief of our awesome military forces, having enunciated a policy of defensive preemption, is threatening to attack Iraq. This seems to me a pretty bad idea. But as I did not vote for Mr. Bush my disagreement is not embittered by a sense of betrayal, and I must note at least that the President is doing his job. The defense of the nation is part of his job description, as is his role of top warrior. Textual pedants may carp that only the Congress has the power to declare war. That is true but irrelevant, since thanks to many decades of congressional abdications and pusillanimity we no longer have declarations of war, only the wars themselves. That's one of the efficiencies of the streamlined American century.

So what is Congress doing — especially what is the Senate, "the world's greatest deliberative body," doing, and most especially what are my senators doing? I have two of them, both Democrats, both the runaway favorites of the Princeton faculty in "Prince" election polls. The junior senator is notable chiefly for breathing new life into the tired phrase "filthy rich" and for forensic skills so primitive as to make President Bush seem the Demosthenes of our age. Though he handily financed his own seat, he would never have gotten the nomination without the fixing of our senior senator, who is the one who has been so much in the news. Yet our senior senator is notable less for what he did than for what he avoided: Criminal indictment. This is not a case of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee — more like Tweedle Dum and Boss Tweedle.

What of the "good" Democrats? President Bush incensed the majority leader of the Senate by saying that the Democrats were more interested in politics than in national security. Senator Daschle vindicated his impugned patriotism not by initiating a vigorous critique of the President's inchoate policies on national security but by standing up in the Senate, his lower lip extended, tears welling in his eyes, sputtering and stamping his little feet. Next he got on a Metroliner to Trenton, where he told me and other registered New Jersey voters that at this crucial moment in our history "nothing" was more important — get ready — than the reelection of Robert Torricelli! But even as Daschle spoke Torricelli's pollsters were sifting through the lugubrious numbers, and a few days later my tribune became the second Democratic senator within a week to weep in public. In a lachrymose last harrumph he explained that high moral principle demanded painful self-abnegation. He must abandon the contest for which he had been nominated, on which millions had already been spent. He would not be responsible for — get ready again — for losing the Democratic majority in the Senate!

I read recently that the state Society for Historical Preservation was trying to save some Jersey antiques from the rapacity of shopping-mall developers. These included Jersey's last remaining drug store with a real marble-topped soda fountain and a genuine railroad-car diner, complete with the thirty yards of tracks on which it is mounted, forgotten in a time warp somewhere south on Route 130. Perhaps we can interest these folks in the Democratic Party of New Jersey, which operates, in defiance of current environmental fashion, what must be the last of the classic smoke-filled rooms in American politics.

When Mr. Torricelli tearfully declined, the stogie-puffers went into action. Some shoes are too big to fill. Lightning seldom strikes twice. They must have known from the start that they had no chance of cloning such a unique combination of bullyboy arrogance and silk-suited sleaze. The task they faced — finding among their cronies a willing candidate who met the triple standard of being rich, ambulatory and at least in remission from active Federal investigation — was already sufficiently daunting. Thus was born the cryogenic candidacy of ex-senator Frank Lautenberg. As a senator, Mr. Lautenberg's performance was as deeply unmemorable as that of most of the machine politicians who haunt the halls of Congress; but so far as I know he is a decent man, and his impromptu spoken sentences sometimes have both subjects and predicates. Perhaps our state can afford the eccentricity of statesmanship of a Clifford Case or a Bill Bradley only once every other generation. Like Mr. Daschle and Mr. Torricelli, Mr. Lautenberg may have zilch to say about the wisdom of attacking Iraq, but he approaches eloquence in enunciating his first priority: The preservation of the Democratic majority. And he is very indignant that the Republican candidate, Doug Forrester, has tried to subvert democracy by invoking the election laws of the State of New Jersey. According to him "the people" demand a choice. In the meantime other prominent Democrats continue to paint their pale profiles in courage. The "Times" recently paraphrased Senator Bayh thus: "In acquiescing the Democrats are recognizing the political realities as presented in public opinion polls." There is too much talk of Iraq already. After all, nothing is more important than preserving the majority. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu.