Senator Ron Wyden

 "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you"

     Paul Simon, "Mrs. Robinson," 1968

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden still has his fastball.

A player "still having his fastball" is an expression about aging and effectiveness. Senator Wyden is old enough to have slowed down. Instead, he is more active and effective than ever. In an era of frustrating political news, that makes me very happy.

Wyden has been in the news this week because he taped a long interview with Sharyn Alfonsi for the CBS News show 60 Minutes. In it, Wyden described the results of the investigation by the Senate Finance Committee of the banking records of Jeffrey Epstein. It revealed that Wall Street banks knowingly broke laws to continue banking services to Epstein notwithstanding "red flags" of both money laundering and sexual exploitation.

CBS, under the new ownership control of the Trump-allied family of mega-billionaire Larry Ellison, hired a Trump-friendly executive editor, Bari Weiss. She has been firing CBS News people to create a Trump-friendly news department. Weiss fired Alfonsi, and did not broadcast the planned news show on how Epstein's banks enabled him. Wyden protested, calling it self-censorship.

Senator Wyden posted a report on that investigation on August 4. I will comment on it in a future post.

For today, I have a different point. I have written often about the aging of politicians. I was early to warn that Biden needed the crutch of a teleprompter, even in 2019 campaign speeches. I have been critical of both parties for rewarding seniority so much that politicians hang on too long. Too many federal legislators spend their last months in office absent from the job, and sometimes in hospice or memory care. Yesterday I wrote that the rise of young, activist politicians was less a lurch to the left than one toward the energetic vibe of generational change. I suspect median Democratic voters want new and results more than they want left.

Locally in Medford, I am happy that Jeff Golden, a state senator, (and as chance would have it, like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a college classmate) after a period of back-and-forth indecision, decided not to run for re-election. Good. I am a fan of Jeff, but I think he had gotten curmudgeonly in his frustration with Oregon politics. People who embraced change in policy and personnel in their 20s and 30s have been part of the process that shaped the intervening 50 years. There is an implied insult from priorities voiced by new people and in the emergence of new people they themselves did not select. Jeff did the right thing by letting go. I hope Chuck Schumer does the same. Schumer, from his very being and position, cannot help but represent rigidity and the status quo. People age 76 have a hard time coming across as agents of change and reform. 

Senator Wyden is an odd case, and he represents for me the flaw in overgeneralizing about age. He is the exception. He is a dynamo. He isn't the image of change, protest, reform, and activism, but he is an example of it. Here is the output from Wyden's Senate Finance Committee in the first four workdays of August:

Day after day, Wyden is setting up roadblocks to the worst parts of the Trump presidency. He is doing what Congress is supposed to do: be an equal branch of government. Wyden is raising issues that have widespread bipartisan popular support. 

August 3: Working Americans are losing health insurance, putting them at risk of medical bankruptcy and closing rural hospitals.

August 4: Wyden exposes the tie between big money elites and Epstein, another issue with bipartisan popular support

August 5: Wyden exposes a cosy deal: Immediately after a $5 million dollar campaign contribution to the MAGA campaign fund, Trump made three phone calls, and the FDA promptly switched positions to allow the sale of candy-flavored nicotine vapes. I would like to think that even Republican supporters of Trump are uncomfortable with that kind of quid pro quo money in politics, as well as the risk of candy vapes as a gateway to nicotine addiction.

August 6: Wyden presents a way to finance Social Security into the future -- a giant issue where Congress had dithered.

And so on, day after day:  Click here to read the details. It is exhausting to try to keep up.

Wyden isn't part of the schism between liberals and progressives, or "regulars" and Democratic Socialists. He is both a Democrat of long standing, and a change agent. I was ready to assume he had slowed down. He hasn't.  See his day-after-day output. Click the link. See for yourself. 

Ron Wyden has his fastball and is pitching every day. 

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