Wild About Harry

It seems like just about everyone these days likes to beat heck out of Harry Reid. Since his approval ratings stand at about one half of the level of Dick Cheney, he's suddenly a popular whipping post. (On the other hand, he's always been a popular object of ridicule around here, because, regardless of poll numbers, he is inept.) So today, George Will applies a healthy clubbing to the Senate Majority Leader. Subject: immigration reform posturing.

Harry Reid, the Senate's majority leader and resident Uriah Heep, affected 'umble and syrupy sadness about the Senate's inability to pass the immigration bill that he pulled from the floor last Thursday evening for a transparently meretricious reason. Saying the Senate's time was too precious to expend on what would have been limited debate on a limited number of Republican amendments to the bill, Reid vowed: "Everyone that's been home, there are two issues that are foremost in their minds: Number one is the Iraq war and number two are gas prices. We're going to deal with that as soon as we finish with this immigration legislation."

So the Senate took Friday off, wasted Monday in the predictable futility of failing to pass a nonbinding nullity, a resolution expressing constitutionally irrelevant lack of confidence in the attorney general, then debated lowering gasoline prices — or cooling the planet, or something — by spending taxpayers' money to raise food prices. It took up legislation to quintuple the mandated use of mostly corn-based ethanol, which already has increased Americans' food bills $14 billion in the past 12 months. For such silliness, Reid scuttled the bipartisan attempt to improve the eminently improvable immigration status quo.

Harry is, at best, a one-trick pony. The vast majority of people in this country want the border secured first. This is not rocket surgery and it can be accomplished. If that is done, everything else can be worked out. But Reid is more interested in striking a pose and playing to the fringe of the party. All of which will surely get him a place in the history books, mind you.

As the most loathed member of his own party.