A. Specter

All in all, it's been impossible to feel the least little bit of excitement about the so-called "defection" of Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Arlen Specter from the Republican ranks.

You would think that, regardless of what I may have thought of him in the past, at least I would be happy, considering how much I believe that the fewer Republicans in power the better. But I'm having a hard time seeing how he can contribute much to what is supposed to be the Democratic way of thinking -- which I take to be, in the simplest of terms, in favor of improving the situation for the Have-Nots of the country and the world, as opposed to the greed and the monopolies of the Haves.

You would also think that I'm being inconsistent in my mistivings abot Specter because I am a weirdo who usually goes against the grain of things, and so I should be all for mavericks, a term that is so often applied with great respect to Specter and to two of his fellow Senators, J. McCain and the especially disreputable J. Lieberman.

But I don't think any of those three gentlemen live up to the best qualities of the genre, and that's because all three are so controlled by their own self-interest and that only.   I suppose that's okay, if they would be honest in admitting it enough times.  But that's totally beyond two of them, McCain and Lieberman, and so neither can ever be trusted.  But Specter at least has not hesitated to say that his main purpose in switching parties was to keep himself in office, though that seems a little vain for a guy who is, what?  79? -- as it was and is for that other septuagenarian (as I am myself), J. McCain.

Specter can have no love for the Democratic way of thinking, else how could he have remained being a Republican senator for so many years?  Always with his eyes solely on the prize,  did he like the reelection money?

He is giving as his other big reason for switching  the fact that the Republicans have swung too far to the right.  He must be saying this mainly to reassure the Democrats whose votes he intends to get.  Actually the Republicans made that disastrous shift decades ago, and it was  already evident at the beginning of the 1980's when Specter first became a senator.

  But mainly he and the media have focused on  his statement that he picked this moment to swoop because he didn't like his chances of being re-elected as things had begun to stand, and he recently told a group of students that if his prospects had looked better, he would have stayed in the Republican fold.   But in the wisdom of these lean times which it is so heartwarming to see them enduring, his conservative GOP colleagues had decided that it was time for him to go.

So what have the Democrats gained? Little that I can see, and attaining the filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes that President Obama is supposed to need to advance his agenda more easily is, in the case of Specter, a mirage.

Instead I'm thinking that, intentionally or unintentionally, A. Specter could turn out to be a Trojan horse, as far as the Democrats are concerned, and I am wondering if, behind their professed exclamations of dismay and disgust at his alleged departure, the Republicans aren't actually chortling and cackling with glee. Because being so high profile and with so much seniority that he is openly advertising himself as being able to "return" larger quantities of Federal funds to Pennsylvania than his opponents (though now, and maybe only temporarily, that is in doubt), Specter seems to have assumed that he will automatically be nominated by the Democrats  in the upcoming cycle. And in so doing and with no commitment to side with the Democrats on important votes, he will displace a true Democrat who might have had a good chance to replace Specter if he had remained a Republican. So instead of having to face another "true" Democrat in the Senate, the Republicans will have gained, in the person of Specter, a true spoiler.

But I should worry, as I think that Congress is a very ineffectual place to begin and to end with, and when it comes to leadership people don't ordinarily look first to the U.S. Capitol.  Instead it is tradionally mainly a storehouse and dispenser of the bacon, as the Specter story seems to be saying.

And so maybe A. Specter has more integrity than might seem obvious to the naked eye, even if you can seldom get a good handle on which way he will swing, or on the value and the depth of his convictions.  He just wants to keep handing out the goodies and to be approached with the fear that otherwise such a Great Equivovator would never elicit.