Fuggidaboudit: Chuck Schumer’s Comedy of Errors

"Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a future president," is a witticism nearly as old as Washington itself. Except for Chuck Schumer, of course, because I have to believe even he isn't quite that clueless.

But as a Senate leader? Fuggidaboudit.

There is so much breaking news about the Schumer Shutdown — including here (and here, too) at PJ Media — that I thought it might be nice to take a break from the action, kick our metaphorical shoes off, and ponder for a moment how the Democrat caucus of The World's Greatest Deliberative Body™ — as those 100 blowhards like to imagine themselves, when they aren't cosplaying POTUS — came to be led by such a conspicuous incompetent.

Leading a Senate caucus is no easy job, granted, whether as majority or minority leader. But it's got to be easier to head up the minority caucus, as Schumer now does, if only because there are fewer cats to herd.

The Majority Leader wrangles 99 massive egos, and unless they're able to rule with Lyndon Johnson's iron fist, there are probably few members of his own caucus who don't think they could do a better job. I mean, the joke wasn't that Ted Kennedy was the "Lion of the Senate." The joke was "because he mates and kills at will."

How do you keep in line a guy famous for making "waitress sandwiches" with his pal, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)?

Let's discuss for a moment how LBJ performed as majority leader, because he's basically the model everyone since him aspires to — including Schumer’s brief stint leading the Senate during the Biden Cabal's first two years.

And Another Thing: Some readers might be tempted to argue that Schumer had an effective run as Majority Leader from 2021 to 2023. He did, after all, get all of Biden's major legislation passed. But I'd argue that there wasn't much leadership required when the only real question was how many trillions of Other People's Money the Democrats could get away with borrowing. Schumer didn’t lead so much as rubber-stamp whatever had the right number of zeroes to guarantee passage.

Like Mitch McConnell (leading the majority and the minority) in more recent years, Johnson was a master of the Senate's arcane rules and processes. But he was also a people person — though in a way that bordered on the sociopathic. LBJ kept a detailed mental map of every senator’s preferences, weaknesses, debts, ambitions, and alliances. He often knew which votes were uncertain and how many votes he needed on any issue.

And he knew how to establish and maintain his authority. Johnson biographer Robert Caro shared this story with Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library:

Every morning, Lyndon Johnson has breakfast in the Senate cafeteria, which is on the second floor of the Old Senate Building, and Senator McCarthy has a big table near the cashier's desk that he sits at with four or five of his staffers every morning. So this morning Johnson walks in and there's a new staffer there, Robert Kennedy. Senator McCarthy jumps up, as everybody did on Capitol Hill, to pay deference to Johnson. He says, "Good morning, Mr. Leader. Great job yesterday, Mr. Leader. Anything I can do for you, Mr. Leader?" And all of his staff jumps up so Johnson can shake their hands.
One person doesn't get up at that table, and it's Robert Kennedy. Well, Johnson knows what to do in every encounter of that type. He walks around the table shaking hands and stops in front of Robert Kennedy and sort of puts his hand partway out like this, so Robert Kennedy has to get up and take it.

It almost certainly added to the indignity that LBJ (6'3-½") towered over Kennedy (5'9").

By means fair and foul, LBJ got what he wanted out of the Senate.

And Another Thing: My personal preference is for an ineffectual Schumer-type over a hyper-effective (and ambitious) LBJ-type. The Senate is supposed to be where bad ideas from the hot-headed House go to die.

But today's Senate is not the same as it was in the '50s. For one thing, just like the House, the Senate has largely abandoned traditional lawmaking and budgeting. The result is one showdown after another over yet another continuing resolution to kinda-sorta keep the listing Titanic afloat for a few more weeks or months.

That's how we got where we are today with the Schumer Shutdown.

I'm sure you already know the details of how Schumer walked eyes wide open into the CR trap set for him by Republican Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota. The quick and dirty version is that Schumer could either go along with expiring Obamacare subsidies for illegal aliens and other Democrat-favored goodies or force a shutdown.

But it's widely believed that Schumer faces a potential primary threat from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2028, and so he has to guard his left flank from the radical Young Turk brigade who want everything from open borders to voting rights for dogs who think they're people.

Whatever else you want to say about Schumer, he was never the man to let doing the right thing for the country get in the way of his personal ambitions.

Maybe it's unfair of me to accuse Schumer of incompetence. He's basically the guy whom happenstance (and not a little ego) placed in charge of a Rube Goldberg device of ever-increasing absurdity that he neither built nor seems to fully understand. All that and having to deal with a potential primary threat?

Fuggidaboudit, indeed.

The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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