We have a suggestion for some background music for the goings-on in Washington, D.C., these days. Instead of a score by Randy Newman or some swampy slide guitar by Ry Cooder, how about that zany and zippy theme music that Benny Hill used to have? And we could speed up the nightly news reports so the characters bounce around on the screen Benny Hill-like.
It's not always the president who looks clownish. For the latest example, and only the latest because you never know what's going to happen in the next five minutes, Democrats in the Senate decided they didn't need to advise and consent on presidential nominations after all, and boycotted a committee vote on the next EPA chief.
Scott Pruitt has been a critic of the Environmental Protection Agency over the years, but that doesn't disqualify him from leading the outfit. In fact, some of us think the attorney general of Oklahoma knows enough about the EPA from his fights with it over the years to guide the agency well enough. Did the Democrats expect this new president to select a big government type? To quote a recently retired president, elections have consequences.
Democrats complained that Mr. Pruitt didn't provide enough information during his confirmation hearings to encourage them to vote in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee the other day, so they sat it out. The Republicans, for their part, suspended the rules to allow them to vote without anybody from the minority party in attendance. Which can happen if the minority party doesn't show.
(These things happen in modern Washington, where everything is a show and a PR move. The last time a Democrat appointee went before this committee, in 2013, the Republicans boycotted.)
As for the complaints that Mr. Pruitt didn't give the sages of the Senate enough information, they may be right. He only provided written answers to more than 1,070 questions sent to him by the committee's minority leaders, and answered with a 252-page file. The chairman of the committee, for his part, claims Mr. Pruitt has provided more information than any recent nominee to the EPA.
Gentle Reader might suspect that the complaints about the dearth of information might be less than sincere. It may be that Democrats oppose Scott Pruitt's nomination because he has been a part of at least 14 lawsuits against the EPA, mostly aimed at blocking regulations that this president has promised to limit. Which makes it sound more like a new president keeping a campaign promise, and less like the End of Times or at least the ruination of the environment.
Or as a United State senator named John Boozman put it: Scott Pruitt is "a person that I think is well thought of and will do a good job working with Congress." The senior senator from Arkansas also said Mr. Pruitt would protect the environment while making sure EPA officials don't do "things that they simply don't have the authority to do."
But you know how alt-right and extreme John Boozman is.
Across the way, in another committee room, one Betsy DeVos is clinging to her nomination for Education secretary. And her opposition may be even more foaming than the critics of Mr. Pruitt.
For best example, take one rare Republican senator who plans to vote against Ms. DeVos. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska summed up her opposition to Betsy DeVos this way: "I have serious concerns about a nominee to be secretary of Education who has been so involved on one side of the equation, so immersed in the push for vouchers that she may be unaware of what actually is successful within the public schools and also what is broken and how to fix them."
Somebody break out the Benny Hill music.
What can Sen. Murkowski be thinking? Or is she?
What defines Betsy DeVos is that she is completely aware of what is and is not successful within the public schools. So much so that she has put her considerable resources behind ideas that have worked over the years. Such as charter schools. Betsy DeVos may have forgotten more about the inner workings of public education than the good senator from Alaska will ever learn.
And here some of us thought that the circuses were a thing of the past. When, in fact, instead of touring, the circus might have found a permanent home in our nation's capital.
Editorial on 02/06/2017