Third Way Dispatch

I have to admit, I was dumfounded – at first – by the Roger Clemens hearing. It wasn’t the nanny issue and the Jose Canseco party. It wasn’t the HGH injection for Madame Clemens for the SI swimsuit edition (note to self: get HGH for 20 year grad school reunion in May.). No, it was the unexpected partisan breakdown. I mean, this looked like the Alito hearings. The Republicans were with the Rocket; Democrats were against him. The Republicans thought Roger was telling the truth; Democrats thought he was lying.

But more than that – Republicans were like groupies trying to get an autographed ball. They were holding up pictures, asking him what insignia he would wear on his Hall of Fame plaque (how about $$$?), hell – they were fawning over him. It didn’t matter that everyone else McNamee fingered in the Mitchell report fessed up. Never mind that Mrs. Rocket admitted to using HGH. Never mind that Andy Pettitte said Clemens spoke to him about juicing. The Republicans circled the wagons around Roger like he was Alberto Gonzalez.

Though hundreds of thousands now say they were there, it was 10,454 fans who really showed up to Boston’s Fenway Park to witness Ted Williams’ last game as a major league baseball player. Yesterday, as I was rattling around the Capitol after a meeting, I had my own Ted Williams moment. I ran into Ed Greelegs in his last hour of his last day as an employee on Capitol Hill.

The end of the Republican revolution came not with a bang, but with a whimper. Actually a couple of whimpers. As Conrad Burns went off to hunt, and George Allen went off to well, watch football or something, the great sorting out of 2006 was complete. Moderates had moved back into the Democratic fold and restored them to power in Congress.

We will have much more to say later about the impact of moderates on the rout of Nov. 7 – this historic election deserves careful analysis and thought. For now, we are content to offer our hearty congratulations to newly elected Members, to the new Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to the extraordinary leaders of the party committees Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, and to everyone who has labored in the vineyards of progressive politics during the long years of difficulty and frustration.

In particular, we proudly point to all of the candidates that used our materials on national security. We are honored that we had the opportunity to share our work with so many of the victors, including Senators-elect Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester, and Sheldon Whitehouse. Congratulations as well to all of those who participated in the Third Way-SecureUS PAC trainings, including Representatives-elect Chris Carney (PA-10), Joe Courtney (CT-2), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20), Steve Kagen (WI-8), Tim Mahoney (FL-16), Jay McNerney (CA-11), Patrick Murphy (PA-8), Chris Murphy (CT-5), Joe Sestak (PA-7), and Zack Space (OH-18). And a shout out as well to the many others, like Heath Schuler (NC-11) who used some or all of our middle-class tax cut ideas.

We are excited about the future, for Congress and for America. We salute the victors, offer condolences to the losers, and look forward to our work with the next Congress.

This week brought the sad news of the untimely passing of retired Major General Kathy Frost, who was the Army’s highest-ranking woman when she retired last year and the wife of former Representative Martin Frost. Kathy Frost died after a four-year battle with breast cancer. She was 57.

We at Third Way did not have the privilege of knowing General Frost very well, but we were fortunate enough to have had her participate (along with her husband and 60 other senior military, political, academic, journalism and business leaders) in a weekend-long national security retreat that we co-hosted last fall with The New Republic. Her varied 31-year career in the military provided a unique perspective on the subject that we were grappling with that weekend – restoring progressive credibility on national security – and we all learned much from her insights.

Her contribution to the event truly culminated in its closing hour, when the group was role-playing in scenarios that tested how progressive leaders should handle various aspects of national security. Kathy’s group was dealing with a fictionalized humanitarian crisis in Africa, designed to look much like Rwanda or Darfur. After much dispassionate, analytical discussion among her colleagues about American interests and the use of power, Kathy broke character to give an impassioned speech about the need for American intervention to prevent humanitarian catastrophe: “When I was in the military, I accompanied US officials touring Rwandan refugee camps in Congo and Tanzania” she said. “And we watched as they bulldozed the bodies of children – dozens and dozens of children – into mass graves.” Her eyes welled with tears as she said: “I vowed then that I would do everything I could to make sure this country never again stands by in the face of such savagery.”

This country needs leaders like Kathy Frost – with the courage to rise through the ranks of the military as a path-blazing woman in the Army and with the moral conviction to press America to live up to its potential. We mourn her passing, and we send our heartfelt condolences to Martin and the rest of her family.

Andrei Cherny burst onto the political scene when Bill Clinton cribbed some lines of his prose for use in his inaugural address. Heady stuff for any writer – headier still when the work the President draws upon was written while still in college. At 21, he was a White House speechwriter. Thereafter, he wrote speeches for nearly every major Democrat, served as founding Editor of the DLC’s magazine Blueprint, wrote a book and ran for office in California.

Ken Baer took a similar path. Hired as a White House speechwriter at an appallingly young age, he went on to write a book about the DLC and run his own communications firm.

They are, as my grandmother would say, impressive young men.

As Noam Scheiber reports this week in The New Republic, George Bush has nominated yet another appointee to high office without credentials. And while this one lacks experience as an Arabian Horse Show director, he qualifies as a “Brownie” level of disconnect between job requirements and experience. Apparently, this President ranks cronyism not only above disaster response, but also above monetary policy, global economics, and interest rates. With the appointment of Kevin Warsh to the Federal Reserve Board, President Bush has added to a long and growing list of under-qualified officials who will have a long and lasting impact on the nation and, in this case, the world.