Congress Watch: A heartland consensus picker
Before there was a Gang of 14, there was Ben Nelson, the junior, Democratic, less kinetic senator from Nebraska, listening to Trent Lott, the conservative Mississippi Republican, talk about how the nuclear option was necessary to end Democratic filibusters on judicial nominations, and listening to West Virginia Democrat and newly minted liberal icon, Robert Byrd, talk about why the institution had to be rescued from thinking like Lott's.
From those early conversations grew the Gang of 14, including Byrd but not Lott, which devised a deal in early June that allowed three filibustered Bush nominees to assume seats on appeals courts and ended, at least temporarily, the threat against the right to filibuster judicial nominations. And in some ways saved the Senate from itself. But with a new nominee to the Supreme Court in the wings, the durability of the deal may be quickly tested, and before long there might be an urgent need to put the band back together again.
"This is a town where nothing is permanent," Nelson says, and adds that, in his mind, the perfect scenario would be if the Gang of 14 had no role in the confirmation process. "The optimum case for the Gang of 14 is that we never have to meet again," he says. But his aspiration assumes a level of cooperation and comity that seems almost extinct and difficult to conjure up in today's Washington.
"Things can change, and that means they can change for the better," says Nelson, all hope and sunshine.
Whether he becomes the man in the middle of the Supreme fight or not, Nelson already finds himself in a very interesting place as he begins his 2006 re-election campaign. He is a first-term Democrat from a state where George W. Bush won 62 percent of the vote in 2000 and 66 percent in 2004. It is the kind of situation where, in the past, the White House has seen a take and gone after it. Nelson, though, has drawn praise from Bush as the kind of senator he can work with, and Nelson may have a better working relationship with the White House than the other, more irascible, senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, a Republican who has sharply criticized the White House for its handling of the war in Iraq,
That will be little consolation next year when Republicans go looking for any Democratic seat they can get. "Well, I say that the [White House] policy people work with me and the political people work on me," Nelson laughs. "Some consistency would be nice."
Though a Democrat, Nelson has worked to inoculate himself from conservative attacks that might otherwise play well with his electorate. "Democrats too often allow Republicans to define them," Nelson says. "People in Nebraska know I don't want to ban the Bible and I don't want to burn the flag," Nelson says. "I don't want to take away their guns and I don't want to rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance."
Nelson won running against a GOP ticket headed by a popular presidential candidate, and 2006 is a presidential off year. So even with a registration disadvantage of 15 percentage points, there is hope for him.
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