Power or the Porch?
By TIMOTHY EGAN, NYT
Just now, the sweet Lambert cherries of the Flathead Valley in Montana are ripe with a midsummer blush, and trout rise to snap fresh-hatched bugs from the surface of the Blackfoot River. At night, a mountain breeze, the natural air-conditioning of the West, cools things down just enough to make for a deep sleep. There are pockets of snow, still, in the high, north-facing draws of the Rockies.
Why anyone in his right mind would leave the Big Sky of Montana for the festering swamp of Washington, D.C., is a question Brian Schweitzer thought about as the nation’s political class turned to him to prevent the United States Senate from falling under Republican control. A popular two-term governor known for his bolo ties and ever-present Border collie, a politician whose folksiness could be as annoying as it was charming, Schweitzer was the great Democratic hope to replace outgoing Senator Max Baucus.
The balance of power in the Senate — the chance that all those key committees would fall into the hands of extremists, or that any Supreme Court nominee with a sense of fairness would be destroyed — was at stake.
At age 57, Schweitzer considered how many good years he had left, and where he wanted to spend them. It was no contest. Even his dog, Jag, rolled his eyes, said the ex-governor. “I don’t like the kind of clothes they have to wear and I don’t like the weather,” he said of the capital, in an interview with Montana Public Radio. Besides, “that sinkhole,” he said, is “dysfunctional.” And earlier, when Roll Call asked him about becoming part of the nation’s most elite political club, Schweitzer mentioned the awful weather, and was typically blunt about suits with power.
(More here.)
Just now, the sweet Lambert cherries of the Flathead Valley in Montana are ripe with a midsummer blush, and trout rise to snap fresh-hatched bugs from the surface of the Blackfoot River. At night, a mountain breeze, the natural air-conditioning of the West, cools things down just enough to make for a deep sleep. There are pockets of snow, still, in the high, north-facing draws of the Rockies.
Why anyone in his right mind would leave the Big Sky of Montana for the festering swamp of Washington, D.C., is a question Brian Schweitzer thought about as the nation’s political class turned to him to prevent the United States Senate from falling under Republican control. A popular two-term governor known for his bolo ties and ever-present Border collie, a politician whose folksiness could be as annoying as it was charming, Schweitzer was the great Democratic hope to replace outgoing Senator Max Baucus.
The balance of power in the Senate — the chance that all those key committees would fall into the hands of extremists, or that any Supreme Court nominee with a sense of fairness would be destroyed — was at stake.
At age 57, Schweitzer considered how many good years he had left, and where he wanted to spend them. It was no contest. Even his dog, Jag, rolled his eyes, said the ex-governor. “I don’t like the kind of clothes they have to wear and I don’t like the weather,” he said of the capital, in an interview with Montana Public Radio. Besides, “that sinkhole,” he said, is “dysfunctional.” And earlier, when Roll Call asked him about becoming part of the nation’s most elite political club, Schweitzer mentioned the awful weather, and was typically blunt about suits with power.
(More here.)
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