The message is a half-century old, but it should be must-reading for Sen. Johnson
and his equally contemptible GOP partners in self-serving impeachment trial dereliction of duty.
I found the message in a very readable new book which Ohio Democratic US Senator Sherrod Brown has published about American history, progressive legislation and the US Senate.
The book is cleverly organized around biographies of eight Senators who had occupied the Senate chamber desk at which Brown now sits:
(Disclosure: Sen. McGovern was my father-in-law)
(Separate side Note: the chapter on Bill Proxmire is stand-alone must reading for students of Wisconsin political history, as Proxmire's career touched, or overlapped with the Madison Capital Times, Joe McCarthy and plenty of other Wisconsin political figures whom Brown includes.)
Brown appends after each chapter personal interactions, where available. which he'd had with his subject, and adds evaluations and criticisms which give his book an even-handed credibility.
And now for the message in Brown's book which at least 51 Republican Senators should read to their shame (I am giving Maine's Susan Collins and Utah's Mitt Romney a pass, for now).
The same day last week when the GOP-run Senate - - including Wisconsin's Ron Johnson - - gave Trump a pass at the expense of the mission of the Senate, I read these concluding lines about the Senate career of Democratic Sen. Albert Gore in 1970.
The Tennesseean had lost his bid for a fourth term as the south was turning deeply rightwing, reactionary and Republican, but left behind an admonition for today, which Brown has passed on:
and his equally contemptible GOP partners in self-serving impeachment trial dereliction of duty.
I found the message in a very readable new book which Ohio Democratic US Senator Sherrod Brown has published about American history, progressive legislation and the US Senate.
The book is cleverly organized around biographies of eight Senators who had occupied the Senate chamber desk at which Brown now sits:
Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed AmericaSenators inscribe their names in their desks' drawers; Brown picked Desk 88 because some of his heroes - - among them Hugo Black, Robert Kennedy, Wisconsin's Bill Proxmire, and George McGovern - - had previously occupied it.
(Disclosure: Sen. McGovern was my father-in-law)
(Separate side Note: the chapter on Bill Proxmire is stand-alone must reading for students of Wisconsin political history, as Proxmire's career touched, or overlapped with the Madison Capital Times, Joe McCarthy and plenty of other Wisconsin political figures whom Brown includes.)
Brown appends after each chapter personal interactions, where available. which he'd had with his subject, and adds evaluations and criticisms which give his book an even-handed credibility.
And now for the message in Brown's book which at least 51 Republican Senators should read to their shame (I am giving Maine's Susan Collins and Utah's Mitt Romney a pass, for now).
The same day last week when the GOP-run Senate - - including Wisconsin's Ron Johnson - - gave Trump a pass at the expense of the mission of the Senate, I read these concluding lines about the Senate career of Democratic Sen. Albert Gore in 1970.
The Tennesseean had lost his bid for a fourth term as the south was turning deeply rightwing, reactionary and Republican, but left behind an admonition for today, which Brown has passed on:
After his defeat, Gore wrote: "A senator can ill afford to forget he is a politician, but, above all else, he must always remember that he is a senator. Unless he can meet this test he should never have been elected in the first place."As I said, Brown acknowledges his subjects' shortcomings, and finds fault with Gore's civil rights and labor records, but moralizing Gore's directive is an historian's gift.