Still Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN)
So, Evan Bayh reached out to Uncle Howard Fineman (in Argentina!) to correct several media myths about his retirement, and Uncle Howard obliged:
Here’s the gist of his media beef: He thinks the big, mean, lefty blogosphere is unfairly painting him as a bad guy.
First of all, Democratic party leadership — in the White House and the Senate — shouldn’t have been surprised by Evan’s retirement from his relatively safe Indiana Senate seat, formerly occupied by his dad. Apparently, he’s been whining about his unhappiness to Harry Reid and Barack Obama for a while. And it’s not his fault they didn’t listen:
He insisted that, for some time, he had been expressing doubts behind very closed doors to the president and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
“I shared my doubts and concerns with Harry a year ago,” Bayh told me. “And the president and I have been talking about this for months,” he added.
“I might have made the decision earlier had the president not asked me to reconsider. Which I did. As for the exact timing — well, it’s hard to make a decision until there’s a deadline, and I didn’t face one until just the other day.”
Anyone who’s listened to Evan Bayh drone on, though, will instantly sympathize with both Reid and Obama — imagine having to hear these complaints endlessly while the speaker simultaneously does all he can to block the President’s agenda. My reaction would be: “So, go already!”
Further inflating the role of lefty bloggers’ opinions in his decision to leave his likely-safe Senate seat, Evan wants Uncle Howard to know he doesn’t hate:
In particular, he’s got a problem with two of the tales being told. First, that he was out to get the party and the president. And second, that according to an anonymous quote making the rounds, he “hates” the netroots sites that crusaded against the war in Iraq and for Obama.
“I didn’t say that and I don’t hate them. I’m not a guy who hates,” contended Bayh.
The bloggers, he said, will like his blistering criticism of filibuster abuses — and they will like more of what he says in coming months about ways to reform a broken political system.
Evan also says something that sounds more like a threat than a promise, though. It must have pleased Bayh Official Stenographer Fineman to know this:
“You should assume that this is not the last chapter in my career in public service,” he said.
Finally, we learn that Wellpoint Board Member and health-insurance-money-grubber Susan Bayh is very worried about where her hubby will end up, doubtless because his public service has had a pretty direct impact on her attractiveness for these positions:
“It’s just that, right now, I have no idea what I am going to do. My wife told me she’d really like to know.”
I wouldn’t want Evan moping around the house, either. And goodness only knows, Susan’s worth to Wellpoint may go way down when Evan leaves office, so better keep him somewhere in the public eye. A desire Susan may share, incidentally, with the family stenographer, Uncle Howard.
