Correction: On Oct. 27, I wrote, "I continue to think [Joe] Manchin has more sense than anybody in Washington."
Actually, that was correct. I continued, at that time, to think that.
I now have discontinued thinking that.
Manchin, the old-style center-right Democrat from way-red (like Arkansas) West Virginia, has slipped in my assessment. First place has been taken over by U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, old-style centrist Democrat from way-red (like Arkansas) Montana.
Obviously, I have a soft spot for centrist or center-leaning Democratic politicians holding offices from unlikely Trump-diseased places (like West Virginia, Montana and Arkansas, not that there any left in Arkansas.)
Manchin. Tester. Mike Beebe. That's what I'm talking about.
Remember Beebe? Fiscal conservative? Social moderate? Said "under-promise and over-deliver"? Carried all 75 counties in 2010, even amid the emerging Tea Party insurgency. He was all broken out with pragmatic competence.
Democrats crowing about their majority need to understand it exists by the skin of the skin of its teeth and can function only if Manchin and Bernie Sanders end up grumbling that they're not happy but not opposed either.
Manchin assigned himself a news conference Monday to announce that he still is hesitant on the big social spending proposal that most Democrats have rallied around pursuant to President Biden's hurried announcement of a compromise in principle, but which is still being written. Manchin said he can't commit to support it until he learns more details about cost and the effect on inflation.
Then he lambasted, as I have, with fervor if not glee though it's turning to glee, the safely redistricted Democratic "progressives" in the House who tabled the perfectly fine bipartisan infrastructure bill that had passed the Senate with 19 Republican votes. They took hostage a good sure-to-pass bill to leverage passage of the big still-negotiated social spending bill, risking the failure of both.
Then Manchin walked away, taking no questions.
Biden is complicit for failing to lead boldly or at all. House "progressives" are to blame for obstructing a perfectly fine infrastructure bill that would have given Biden a victory with a major program that might already be breaking ground on bridges and a national network of electric-car charging stations.
Let me repeat: Climate-control advocates blocked a bill to facilitate universal electric-car charging because they wanted ... free community college, or something.
And they wonder what happened in Virginia and New Jersey. They're explaining that it was messaging. But it was tactical ineptitude and political malpractice. Policies you can't sell or pass are no policies at all.
Now, with every senator having the winning vote in a 50-50 Senate, Manchin is to blame for appearing rather full of himself, being obstructionist his own self and showing less practical sense than I'd thought.
Now emerges Tester, who has kept a usual low profile while seeking to support his party and president as he quietly joins Manchin and others in pushing centrist-inclined compromises. After Manchin's appearance, the Montanan said, as quoted by The Hill, that it was a mistake for the House not to pass the infrastructure bill, but that Manchin also made a mistake "by going out and making this news conference."
There. What he said.
It wasn't even a news conference. Those have questions and answers. This was an on-high pronouncement from King Joe of Coal-venia.
Manchin needs to tell the kind of truth he told Monday, but in a different venue, form, style and tone.
How about a simple written statement in a news release along this line: "As I have told my friend President Biden and said publicly all along, I want to find acceptable compromise to advance an important social-spending agenda. I have worked hard with the White House and with colleagues to get to that point. We are in some ways very close, but, as long as the bill remains unwritten, and as long as no clear objective assessment of budget cost and inflation risk is available, I simply cannot firmly commit. I commit only not to obstruct, but to work.
"In that spirit, I again call on the House to pass that strong and popular bipartisan infrastructure bill that we sent over from the Senate months ago. It doesn't enhance our negotiations on the social spending bill to refuse to pass an outstanding, much-needed and unrelated bill.
"Anyone with further questions should see me in the hallways, where you've always found me and where I've endeavored to answer all your questions."
Yet Manchin declined to speak when a CNN reporter asked him as he left the Capitol later Monday why he resisted the social-spending bill on account of uncovered costs when the infrastructure bill had uncovered costs according to the Congressional Budget Office. He could have said, "At least we had an objective analysis of the infrastructure bill."
Refusal to answer is a bad look on a royal West Virginian.
He needs only a little more commitment to the goal and a little more Tester.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.