| Paul Krugman's got it right again, with a post mocking David Broder, taking him to task on the subject of Al Franken, whom Broder calls "the loud-mouthed former comedian".
That doesn't sit well with Krugman, who points out "Al Franken's dirty secret is that ... he's a big policy wonk."
I used to go on Franken's radio show, all ready to be jocular - and what he wanted to talk about was the arithmetic of Social Security, or the structure of Medicare Part D.
In fact, the only elected official I know who's wonkier than Al Franken is Rush Holt, my congressman - and he used to be the assistant director of Princeton's plasma physics lab. (The campaign's bumper stickers read, "My Congressman IS a rocket scientist.")
So what will Franken do to the level of Senate discourse? He'll raise it.
Krugman's slam-dunk right about Franken. As huntsu mentioned to me this morning, you have to understand politics be able to satirize it. Franken always did that well.
During the 2005 Governor's race, my boyfriend and I helped put together an event at the Stress Factory Comedy Club for Corzine. A kind of fusion event - part fundraiser, part message. We had Franken on stage riffing on the piped-in live audio of the last Corzine/Doug Forrester debate. Corzine creamed Forrester; in the club we heard it punctuated by Franken's rat-a-tat-tat off-the-cuff reactions. He was pretty specific, and it was a lot of fun listending to him stick pointy knives into Forrester.
It was worth waiting 20 years for the Al Franken Decade. Particularly since Franken will hold his friend Paul Wellstone's seat in the Senate.
The name of Krugman's New York Times blog - The Conscience of a Liberal - is, of course, also the title of his well known book. But before then, it was the name of Paul Wellstone's autobiography.
I like the symmetry of that. |
