Selling Shoes
Mark Laswell, writing in the Opinion Journal, rather humorously takes on Chucky "Janus" Hagel's pontifical posturing from last week. That sound bite of Hagel's was the, "If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes," that quickly made the rounds. Laswell is having none of it.
Washington is a city of many diversions, but very little surpasses the pure entertainment value of watching a senator–media chatter about his potential attractiveness as a presidential prospect ringing in his ears–commandeer the microphone during a committee meeting and then posture in a most forceful and statesmanlike way for the television cameras. Sen. Hagel did not disappoint last week. As the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations prepared to vote on the resolution expressing outright opposition to the increase in troops, Sen. Hagel, a longstanding critic of the war, was in ultra-dudgeon about what he apparently regards as an insufficient amount of Capitol Hill kibitzing on the president's conduct of the war.
"I think all 100 senators ought to be on the line" by having to make a "tough vote" on the troop increase, Sen. Hagel said. In a bit of bullying that instantly became the TV quote of the day, he then appeared to call out an unspecified number of his honorable colleagues as cowards: "If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes."
Now, this seemed like a low blow–against shoe-store employees. Surely Sen. Hagel was not suggesting that selling shoes is physically safer than serving in the Senate. In the past two months alone, according to police reports, robbers have struck several shoe stores across the country. A Payless ShoeSource store in Philadelphia was held up on Jan. 16. At another Payless, in Palm Bay, Fla., near Melbourne, a man with a knife robbed the store on Dec. 26 and then demanded a kiss from a female clerk, police said. (Reader, she kissed him.) At the Boynton Beach Mall in Florida on Christmas Eve, according to police, a gang confrontation in a shoe store turned violent, leaving one victim dead from a gunshot wound. On Dec. 10 at the Shoe Biz store in South Bend, Ind., a man posing as a customer asked about children's shoes and then threatened to "get violent" unless he was given money. An employee handed over the store's cash; the man also stole her cellphone. On and on the police blotter goes.
Well, Chucky is selling something, alright. At the moment he is wallowing in all the media love being heaped on him by the press. That doesn't excuse his fecklessness of course, and it will be very interesting to watch what happens in his next campaign for reelection. I know at least one Nebraskan who wouldn't vote for Hagel again under any circumstances. (And despite all that media praise ringing in his ears, Chucky has a less than zero chance of attaining the presidency). But read the whole thing, Laswell does a really nice job tearing into Chucky. The close is perfect:
But then as now, senators will find a way to make their views known. One of Sen. Hagel's neighbors from out West, for instance, Sen. Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, voted for the resolution on Iraq in 2002 and doesn't need to be dared to express his support for the president's war policy in 2007. The senator simply posts it on his Web site: "President Bush is making strategy adjustments in order to improve stability. We're not talking about just Iraq here. We are trying to prevent a catastrophic blowup that would not only be traumatic for the Middle East, but would send reverberations throughout the world." As it happens, before Sen. Enzi got started in politics, he was a small-business owner with stores in Wyoming and eventually one over in Sen. Hagel's home state. What sort of business? Selling shoes.
So Enzi has done both jobs and has the courage to stand by his convictions.
By old_dawg, Thursday, 1 February , 2007 @ 8:09 am
Well, there is almost no job safer than being in the US Congress. Not only do you get LOTS of money for very little work, you get a huge staff, luxurious offices, and a retirement plan to beat the Fortune 500. And, in case your constituents want to talk to you personally, you have the Capital Police to protect you from the. On a Senator’s salary, you won’t have to worry about shopping for shooes at Payless. Sak Fifth Avenue is the poorest shoe store you’ll ever see.
By Uncle Pinky, Thursday, 1 February , 2007 @ 10:41 am
What I found most fascinating about this was Brit Hume’s power as bellweather. Just as the talking heads were revving up the “Praise the maverick who speaks truth to power” engines Hume went on Fox News Sunday and said something like: “… and now you’ve got Chuck Hagel getting impassioned and dramatic about an empty and meaningless resolution and calling it courage. And it makes you just a little sad.” Bam. Fwappo. Pow. Suddenly the punditocracy reversed course. Most damaging was Hume’s aspect, that of a kindly, indulgent but tremendously disappointed old uncle. I’ll poke around for the video. It is a perfect example of a .308 to the heart of an exploratory comittee.