A Post About Buildings and Stamps (And Senators)

Former U.S. Senator Robert Dole, commenting recently about the failure of the Republican Party to produce a constructive agenda in Congress and do any more than merely obstruct President Obama in Congress little, said that the Republicans ought to put a sign in front of its national committee headquarters in Washington saying "Closed For Repairs."  While the former Senate Republican leader from Kansas did say that President Obama was partly to blame for the dysfunction in Washington for not reaching out to the GOP often enough (despite insistences that Obama has done so, he's not much of a schmoozer or a glad-handler like Bill Clinton was, so Dole's critique of the President has some merit), he rested a good deal of the blame on the Republicans, saying that the moderate-conservative establishment he was a part of could never make it into today's GOP.  

Bob Dole is right.  I did not vote for him for President in 1996, but I've always respected the man, largely because he's one of those legendary figures on Capitol Hill in the tradition of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster in the nineteenth century and Arthur Vandenberg and Lyndon Johnson in the twentieth.  Dole has gravitasse.  He got things done.  Chris Matthews, in discussing Dole's comments, noted that today's Republican U.S. Senators are not the type of folks that would get buildings named for them, though I would agree that Dole certainly is such a legislator.  So was Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, who grew up in the same small Kansas town Dole hails from.  Here, Matthews cut to the crux of the onion ring.  The GOP simply doesn't produce senators of that caliber any more.  Democrats are more deserving of such an honor.  We already have a train station in New Jersey named for Frank Lautenberg, who just died.  Naming a train station for a senator in the Republican Party, known for its anti-Amtrak posture, is like naming an environmental center after the Koch brothers.

Nor do they produce senators worthy of commemoration on postage stamps.  Once upon a time, before it began issuing "fun" stamps depicting Looney Tunes and Disney/Pixar cartoon characters, the U.S. Post Office issued stamps honoring U.S. Senators.  Here are some of the senators, Democratic and Republican,  who appeared on stamps in the past: Robert Taft (the esteemed Senate Republican leader from Ohio), Walter F. George (from Georgia; he also served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO), George Norris (from Nebraska; he co-sponsored the legislation creating the Tennessee Valley Authority), Brien McMahon (from Connecticut; he supported the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes), Robert F. Kennedy (you know all about him), and Everett Dirksen (from Illinois; he helped President Johnson push civil rights legislation through Congress).  Serious guys, them. Can I imagine any of today's Republican senators being honored on stamps one day, assuming the Postal Service isn't done away with in the near future?  No more than I can imagine the Ronald Johnson Federal Building in Milwaukee, the Ted Cruz Federal Office Annex in Dallas, or even the Kelly Ayotte Courthouse in Manchester, New Hampshire.  (John McCain might get a military recruiting station in Phoenix named for him, but that's about it.) 

And don't count on seeing Mitch McConnell, David Vitter, or John Cornyn on stamps one day.  Any future stamps honoring U.S. Senators would likely be limited to Democrats, because they're the only ones with any distinction these days  and the post office doesn't want to be accused of undue favoritism.  Conclusion: Expect more stamps with cartoon characters.  They're a more serious bunch.

(I hope Dole doesn't appear on a stamp any time soon, but only because you have to be dead to be so honored.  He turns ninety in July, a long life to him.)