“Congress has no intention of reforming anything.”
– Week in Revue, Aug. 24, 2009

Sen. Evan Bayh, Indiana’s former governor, shocked fellow Hoosiers and Democrats Feb. 15 by announcing his voluntary retirement from the Senate at 54 and with a $13 million war chest.

The centrist has had enough of short-term political gain trumping national interest.

“There are better ways to serve my fellow citizens,” Bayh said. “I love working for the people of Indiana. I love helping our citizens make the most of their lives, but I do not love Congress,” so he passed on seeking a third term.

Eleven incumbents have turned their back on the Senate to flee a town oozing partisan poison.

Three others are, like Bayh, former governors: Republicans Christopher “Kit” Bond of Missouri, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and George Voinovich of Ohio.

A fifth retiree, Sam Brownback of Kansas, is leaving to run for governor.

Former governors have in common a job where they were judged by achievements rather than rhetoric.

One of the straws which broke Bayh’s back was the Senate a couple of weeks ago voting down a bipartisan commission to deal with the federal government’s mushrooming debt and budget deficits.

Seven senators endorsed the idea, then voted against it for short-term political reasons.
“I have often been a lonely voice for balancing the budget and restraining spending,” said Bayh, whose favorable rating exceeds 60 percent.

Bayh is a golden boy in Indiana, what with his esteemed political pedigree and victories in all five statewide races he’s run.

Elected secretary of state in 1986, he followed that with two terms as governor, breaking a 20-year Republican hold on the office, and two terms in the U.S. Senate, where his father, Birch Bayh, served from 1963 to 1981.

Bayh was reported to be on the short list of President Barack Obama’s candidates for vice president in 2008.

Becoming a national political figure from Indiana is no small feat, but then politicians who strike a moderate tone are in short supply.

Dan Coats, one of five Republican Senate candidates, served in the U.S. House from 1981 to 1988 and in the U.S. Senate from 1989 to 1999, when Bayh assumed the seat.
Since then, Coats worked as a Washington lobbyist, which ought to endear him to voters sick of D.C. insiders.

In 2008, 94 percent of House incumbents and 83 percent of Senate incumbents seeking re-election won.

“Few things in life are more predictable than the chances of an incumbent member of the U.S. House of Representatives winning re-election,” reports The Center for Responsive Politics, yet 31 percent of voters don’t even want to see their own representative re-elected.

A CBS News/New York Times poll in early February found 81 percent saying it’s time to elect new people to Congress.

Just 8 percent say most members deserve re-election.

Is it any wonder the Tea Party movement advocating smaller government and lower taxes is gaining in popularity?

Americans of both parties overwhelmingly oppose a Supreme Court ruling letting corporations and unions spend as much as they want on political campaigns.

Most favor new limits on such spending, a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.
Eight in 10 poll respondents oppose the high court’s Jan. 21 decision to allow unfettered corporate political spending, with 65 percent “strongly” opposed.

Dylan plays for Obama at White House: On Feb. 9, the 46th anniversary of The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, there was Bob Dylan strumming an acoustic version of his 1963 protest song “The Times they are A-Changin’ ” at a White House concert honoring the civil rights movement.

That’s a perfect place to sing, “Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call/Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall.”

The fact that he and Joan Baez performed before Martin Luther King Jr. has pretty much been overshadowed by the famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Hard to believe it was Dylan’s first time at the White House.

Quips, quotes and qulunkers: “The most generous Americans today – the group that gives the most to charity as a proportion of their income – are the working poor.”
— Adam Meyerson, president, The Philanthropy Roundtable

•••
Obits: Doug Fieger, vocalist-guitarist of the Knack, died Feb. 14 at home in Woodland Hills, Calif., after a six-year battle with cancer. “My Sharona” spent six weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100.

Fieger was a Detroit rocker with a British heart driven by his lifelong love of English bands such as The Beatles and The Who.

I met his older brother, Geoffrey, when the attorney came to Vandalia in September 1998 while running for Michigan governor.

Fred Morrison, a pilot and carpenter most often credited with inventing the Wham-O Frisbee, died Feb. 9 at his home in Monroe, Utah. The name came from the Frisbie Pie Co., in Bridgeport, Conn., a bakery whose pie tins had long been popular for tossing on New England college campuses.

Damage from Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake may be twice the value of the country’s annual economy, Latin America’s main development bank said Feb. 16.

A report by three Inter-American Bank economists found the earthquake to be more devastating than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was for Indonesia and five times deadlier than the 1972 earthquake that leveled Nicaragua’s capital.

John Eby is the Dowagiac Daily News managing editor. E-mail him at john.eby@leader pub.com.