Politics far from sublime

Contemporary American politics is ridiculous. Democrats are complicit. Republicans are way worse. Tommy Tuberville takes the cake.

To make that case, I’ll tell the story of the infrastructure bill, up through the new chapter last week.

To begin, projects improving national public infrastructure are popular. You can see them and their benefit.

In simpler times, infrastructure meant roads and bridges. Now politicians can’t agree. Republicans are stuck on roads and bridges. Democrats want to leverage the popularity of brick and mortar for social spending creating the better lives for changing times they envision.

So, in 2021, a few U.S. senators representing both parties took it on themselves to negotiate a bill defining infrastructure in a collaborative or compromising way that might actually become law.

In part, they defined it more expansively, to include broadband, electricity-driven transportation and flood control for rising water levels. But they eschewed expanding it to include a $1.9 trillion “Build Back Better” Democratic wish list of liberal spending.

U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was the lead negotiator for the Democrats. She’s now an independent, very likely to get beat for re-election next year because she lacks political-party affiliation.

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio was a lead Republican negotiator. Now he’s retired and replaced by a Trumper named J.D. Vance. Other Democrats were Joe Manchin, Mark Warner, Jean Shaheen and Jon Tester. Other Republicans were Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Bill Cassidy.

The group brought a hard-won agreement to President Joe Biden, who wanted to claim infrastructure as an accomplishment but was hampered by “progressive” Democratic resistance. Biden hailed the bipartisan work for delivering something great for America, as he’d promised.

Later that day, though, Biden told reporters he wouldn’t sign the bill unless it came to him in a package with the $1.9 trillion “Build Back Better” social-spending package that the liberal flank wanted.

The next day the bipartisan group started to splinter because of Biden’s betrayal. But, later that day, the White House said Biden didn’t mean he wouldn’t sign the bill without the other when he said he wouldn’t sign the bill without the other.

Infrastructure remained stymied—held hostage, more precisely—for weeks.

Then, late in the year, a few days after Democrats lost a big election in Virginia and pondered why, congressional Democrats passed the infrastructure bill without the other.

Biden claimed a great victory for himself, though others had produced it and he had merely patted backs and gummed the works.

Dozens of congressional Republicans voted against the compromise designed by a coalition including some of their own.

All six of the Arkansas delegates in Washington voted against it.

Biden quipped he’d welcome “no” voters at groundbreaking ceremonies.

So, over the last few days, money has begun to be authorized under the bill. Arkansas will get a little more than a billion dollars for rural Internet.

Alabama will get similar manna. That led U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville—a football coach who didn’t know the three branches of government and who has put a hold on military promotions because he thinks it’s cool a senator can do that—to issue a statement celebrating the great news of “crucial” funding for Alabamians … that he voted against.

In Arkansas, U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman proudly announced projects being funded under this bill they voted against.

In South Carolina, Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace joined an announcement of the receipt of infrastructure money that would convert Charleston’s public transportation fleet to all-electric. Not only had she voted against the infrastructure bill, but she had specifically ridiculed the “green” initiatives in it as elements of a “socialist wish list.”

She revealed—as had Tuberville’s handlers, who spoke of him as “Coach,” not senator—that the GOP talking point will be as follows, essentially: If Congress is going to make the blunder of sending dumb money to the states, then they will reserve the right to be happy when their states get their shares.

So, to conclude: Biden claims as his own an infrastructure bill others produced from the center in defiance of the two parties. Some of those who hammered it out are gone or in political trouble—Sinema in Arizona, Joe Manchin in West Virginia and perhaps others.

Republicans are making announcements as if to credit themselves for programs they opposed.

And for the record: Indictee Donald Trump urged Republicans at the time to defeat the infrastructure bill, apparently because Biden would take credit and it would be better for Trump if Biden instead languished in ineptitude.

Somehow through all that bad politics, it is good that broadband is coming to the backwoods; that electric buses are rolling toward Charleston; that fortification against Louisiana flooding is in the works, and that highways, bridges and trails are soon to improve in Arkansas.