The confirmation hearing of Sonia Sotomayor will take place without Sen. Sam Brownback, who stepped down from the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year. Brownback took one for the team, as the 2008 election forced the Republicans to yield committee seats to the Democrats.
It made sense for Brownback to step aside. He has less seniority (he joined the committee in 2004) and is running for Kansas governor in 2010. But his absence on the Judiciary Committee shows the weakness of a cause he has staunchly supported.
Brownback is pro term limits. When he ran for the Senate 12 years ago, he said he would leave after two terms. Brownback is adhering to that promise. But he's not staying true to the principle. The group U.S. Term Limits promotes "citizen legislators, not career politicians."
Brownback is very much a career politician.
Brownback craves public affirmation. He was the student body president at Kansas State University and ran for Kansas secretary of agriculture at age 29. He moved up to the Senate after being elected to the U.S. House in 1994. He wanted to become president. Clearly, he looks at a dais and a TV camera the way the rest of us see a hot-fudge sundae or a martini.
At its best, U.S. Term Limits aspires to weed out the Tracy Flicks of the world, the "career politicians who are more concerned with their own gain than the interests of the American people." This may or may not sound like Brownback to you. But the terms-limits movement is supposedly nonpartisan; by sheer virtue of his unwillingness to return to private life, Brownback is part of the problem. Term limits do not differentiate between the sociopaths and the authentic.
In a way, Brownback represents the worst of all worlds. After all these years, he's still hustling for votes and the accoutrements of public office. But Kansans are losing the benefit of having an influential member of Congress. After stepping away from the powerful Judiciary Committee, Brownback received an assignment on the Special Committee on Aging.
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