Independents’ Day

Gail Collins: David, you’ve been enthusiastic about the Senate race in Kansas, where an independent, Greg Orman, became a surprise front-runner. Now the same kind of thing seems to be happening in South Dakota. Are you excited?

David Brooks: Have you ever heard of negative panic? In times of chaos or extreme excitement, before a fire or an oncoming tornado, some people act with extreme calm, as if everything is normal. Their brains just don’t know how to handle the extreme circumstances so they pretend those circumstances don’t exist. Many people die because they don’t take the simple evasive action that would save their lives.

I am so excited by the prospect of an independent candidate in South Dakota that I am behaving as if everything is normal. I give off the appearance of extreme calm. But deep down I’m rippling with excitement. Next to me John Thune and Tom Daschle seem manic.

Gail: I may have gotten carried away. I remember now that I recently humiliated myself by announcing how thrilled I was by a Senate candidate debate in Iowa.

But we’ve only got three more weeks of this election season, so you have to humor me. In South Dakota, Mike Rounds, the Republican Senate candidate, was supposed to win. Then he got mired in a scandal. It’s one of those extremely complicated matters that we in the media try to summarize with a phrase like “allegations of corruption.”

David: Do you know that South Dakota was the last state among the 48 that I have visited? Now I’ve been there a few times. What impresses me about the place is that the eastern and western sides of the state are rivals with each other. You’d think that there would be so much resentment north/south in the Dakotas that they wouldn’t have time for east/west. I guess the winters are long.

I don’t know why I mention this except that I think people would be more forgiving toward Mike Rounds if there was more of a love-thy-neighbor mentality.

Gail: Well, Rounds hasn’t run any attack ads because he feels South Dakotans don’t like that tone. Although to be fair, until recently he didn’t think he had any competition. People who are basically running unopposed love the high road.

The Democrat, Rick Weiland, has been running as a populist-liberal, and until recently the national party rewarded him for his principled candidacy by ignoring his race entirely. Then Larry Pressler, a former Republican senator now turned independent, began to get traction. Now anything seems possible.

David: I love the fact that Pressler is back, once again disproving the most untrue truism in American literature, that there are no second acts in American life.

Gail: Oh my gosh, I totally agree with you. Bill Clinton alone has had about fifteen second acts.

David: Pressler is on his seventh or eighth act. The guy was a Rhodes Scholar, a Vietnam vet. He first entered Congress before Jimmy Carter was president. That’s a long time ago. He was also the senator who came off looking good during the Abscam scandal. Here’s a passage from a 1980 Washington Post story:

“Thanks to the F.B.I.’s undercover ‘sting’ operation, there now exists incontrovertible evidence that one senator would not be bought. Preserved among the videotape footage that may be used as bribery evidence against a number of members of Congress, there is a special moment in which Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD) tells the undercover agents, in effect, to take their sting and stick it. Pressler, according to law enforcement sources, was the one approached member of Congress who flatly refused to consider financial favors in exchange for legislative favors, as suggested by undercover agents posing as Arabs. At the time he said he was not aware that he was doing anything quite so heroic.”

Gail: I do love listening to you read the news. And you brought back Abscam! It’s comforting, at minimum, to know there was at least one senator who didn’t immediately buy the phony-sheikh hustle.

David: So yes, I guess I have a soft spot for a guy like that who wants to re-enter the Senate. That said, I think it will be hard to stay up in the polls once the other guys set their sights on him.

Gail: So we agree South Dakota is – yes! – exciting. And I know you like the idea of electing bipartisan independents.

Here’s what worries me about that. There are already two official independents in the Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine. Suppose we wound up with a Senate that was 48-48-4? If the independents formed their own little caucus, they’d have the deciding votes on everything. The fate of every bill and nomination would depend on four guys from Kansas, South Dakota, Vermont and Maine. Four people whose states represent less than 2 percent of the American population.

David: Are you worried about this because the United States Senate is not a model of legislative excellence? I of course think the Senate is way more polarized than the country so it would be a good thing to have a little ballast in the center. Even if that ballast does come from extremely even-tempered states.

Gail: Do you think South Dakotans will be troubled by the fact that the independent Senate candidate Larry Pressler seems to actually live in Washington, D.C? At least he rents an apartment in Sioux Falls, which is more than Pat Roberts, the endangered Kansas senator, bothered to do.

David: I wished all senators lived in D.C. Congress worked better when its members couldn’t fly home every week. I don’t think it’s the time at home that ruins them; it’s the airport food.

I know people like me are always saying this, but I do think if members of the Senate were here for more than three days at a stretch they would actually learn to like each other a little more. Plus, members of Congress are not primarily in office to directly represent their constituents; they are in Congress to offer their best judgments on the issues of the day.

Gail: Well, sort of. Until the budget or the farm bill comes out, and everybody’s trying to figure out what it means to the folks in East Cupcake.

We do have a lot of close races that are roiled by residency issues this year. Besides South Dakota and Kansas, there’s Louisiana, where Senator Mary Landrieu’s official state residence is in her parents’ house. And in Alaska, the Republican Senate candidate is getting criticized for having what might be called shallow Alaskan roots.

David: We’ve got to start paying these people more. With Washington real estate prices shooting toward N.Y.C. levels, it’s expensive to maintain a home there and a house back in the home state. I really think this residency business is a crazy issue.

Gail: Maybe we could put up dorms. Nice big ones like colleges have for married graduate students.

This is the point at which I get nostalgic and recall that in one of the first elections I ever covered, one of the big issues was whether the voting address of the incumbent was actually a North Haven, Connecticut, Burger King outlet.

David: I didn’t know Chris Christie began his career in Connecticut.

Gail: Ach, low blow.

But it still seems to me that people are better off choosing between two parties that have reasonably clear, competing agendas — plus the ability, at least in theory, to deliver on some of their promises.

David: If one party or another had a total grip on the truth I’d agree with you. Hard issues usually require a balancing between competing values and competing legitimate interests. Independents, if they know their job, can help find this balance. If they don’t know their job they just waffle in the middle.

Gail: Well, I do admit that the last several seasons in Washington have not done a whole lot for my let-the-parties-deliver theory.

David: So true.

Gail: Maybe the good news from this election season is that Obamacare is fading as an issue. Can you foresee a time when the House will give up voting several dozen times a season to repeal it and actually start working with the other party to fix its weak spots?

I don’t want to force your opinion, but maybe I should point out that there are a lot of us who would grab onto a positive response as a tiny glimmer of hope in an otherwise hopeless election season.

David: Sorry. I do think health care inflation is declining, which is fabulous news, either because of Obamacare or some other reason. But I’m afraid this issue will be with us forever. When Larry Pressler stages his next comeback in 2056, we’ll still be talking about it.