The major party Senate candidates debated one another Tuesday night. While the reviews I’ve read declared it an exercise in talking points, with neither man making a fatal gaffe, Chuck Todd did ask Sen. Warner what it means to be a Senator from Virginia. Here was his response:
To solve problems. To be bipartisan. And, in one’s spare time, to entertain notions of running for president.
The immediate question is whether, by Warner’s measure, he has fulfilled the job requirements. Partisans will shout the predictable answer. A different way to look at it is why Warner decided he wanted to run for a second term anyway:
“Are you glad you’re staying the Senate?”
The senator’s jocular reply: He can’t come up with a good explanation for leaving.
Some departing senators have said that their wives want them to quit. His wife, he said, “would much rather have me do this than be governor,” his last job.
Others have said they can’t take the schlep from Washington to their home states. That’s out. “I can see the Hill from the third floor of my house [in Virginia],” he said.
Then there are those who say they’ve been doing this for 20 years, and it’s time to go. “No, I can’t have that,” said Sen. Warner, who has been in the Senate only since 2009.
“Or the basic one is, you know, I’ve been doing this public service forever and I really need to go out and make some dough,” he joked. Sen. Warner got rich in the mobile-phone business before going into politics.
In other words…
Minus the tears, of course.
There are worse places for wealthy dilettantes to find themselves than the U.S. Senate…say, on the wrong end of a nasty rumor.
But Mr. Warner has set the bar. He is a problem solver. Never mind that he has made some of them worse.
