AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

R.I.P. (at least, politically), Richard Lugar, former Mayor of Indianapolis and six-time Senator from Indiana. The eighty-year old Lugar stayed around one term too long, perhaps, but he was one of the wise voices of moderation and a real whiz on foreign policy---and we ain't got too many of those left. It sounds like he has been replaced by another candidate favored heavily by the Tea Party, so that means no more of that filthy word, taxes.

Back in the seventies Lugar was even considered a possible Presidential candidate because of his brains, savvy and foreign affairs acumen. But he had one drawback: he was boring, boring, boring as a speaker. He reminded me of another Presidential candidate in the eighties and nineties that I loved with the same problem, a sleep-inducing speaking manner: Bill Bradley,the Senator from N.J., former Rhodes Scholar, Princeton All-American and part of that dynastic Knicks team of the early seventies. Sometimes it is hard to get the complete package all wrapped up in one man. Brains and integrity aren't always a sure thing in politics---but it's a helluva good start!

In any case, another measured voice of reason with the brains to go with it is lost to the senate. They are dropping like flies, these moderates: if they don't get beaten, they retire, having lost the stomach for the protracted ugliness going on in that hallowed chamber.

It's a bloody shame.