Profiles In Politics

If you want a souvenir of this Congress, I suggest saving the front pages of FridayÂ's New York Times and Washington Post.

Both headline the good news for taxpayers, the huge tax cut passed by the House of Representatives. The bad news is down in the smaller type. Paragraph three of the Post story explains the bill has no chance of being enacted. Paragraph nine in the Times story reports the same thing.

To me, those sentences sum up this Congress and Washington. Whether it was passing legislation to post the Ten Commandments in schools, or holding its annual debate on banning desecration of the flag, this Congress has specialized in issues that make headlines, but have no chance of being written into law.

Two weeks ago, it was Senate Democrats forcing a vote on an unrealistic HMO reform bill that had no chance of passage because they wanted to get Republicans on record against HMO reform.

Then last week, it was House Republicans ramming through a tax bill so laden with goodies, and given so little chance of passage, that it embarrassed even a lot of Republicans.

In both cases, neither side showed even the mildest interest in compromise because they have come to believe voters give them no credit and, more importantly, no campaign contributions, for bipartisan achievement.

John Kennedy once wrote a book about political leadership called Profiles in Courage. Nothing in it should be confused with this Congress, which is compiling a long list of profiles in politics.