Who Has Declined to Run Again for Senate
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. on Feb. three, 2016, after announcing he is dropping his campaign for president. He is at present expected to turn his total attention to his Senate re-ballot campaign. (AP Photograph/J. Scott Applewhite) (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
A few days after withdrawing from the presidential campaign, Sen. Rand Paul picked upward the phone and chosen Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) at domicile on a weekend, request for the senior senator's help on legislation to fight opioid addiction.
After an embarrassing finish in the Iowa caucuses, the Kentucky Republican is at present engaged in a ritual that dozens upon dozens of senators have adopted before, and which await a couple more after this year. Rather than sulking, Paul is throwing himself back into his work as a way to overcome the disappointment of defeat.
For nearly as long as the democracy has stood, members of the Senate have tried — and almost always failed — to win the presidency. According to one written report, fifty presidential candidacies emerged from the Senate between 1972 and 2012, making the reentry process into the chamber'southward daily rhythm a familiar tale that produces very different results. Five more have tried this fourth dimension.
In 2009, President Obama became just the 3rd person to go from the Senate to the Oval Office. Veterans of the chamber say some colleagues sink into despair over the defeat, leading to a quick retirement, while others take a while to reengage only then become much better legislators.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the nearly senior senator, said those who view the Senate generally as a steppingstone to the presidency take the most problem. He summed up their experience this way: "Okay, I tried that and now I'grand going to go off to private practise or a consultant or whatever."
Those senators who have gone downward this road take a like mantra. "Get decorated, become decorated," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who lost two presidential campaigns. "Get back into the legislative process and go deeply immersed. And move on."
In the aftermath of defeat, Paul has impressed his senior colleagues: He's showing up for votes, attending commission hearings, raising money for his reelection. "It didn't take him long to become back into the swing of things," said Alexander, who lost presidential bids in 1996 and 2000.
Paul'south deportment the by 2 weeks take no doubt been designed to reassure his Kentucky voters, since his popularity slipped at dwelling during his national campaign. McCain faced a similar state of affairs afterwards losing in the 2008 full general ballot. He was up for reelection in 2010 and faced a tea party challenge in the Arizona main.
He routed his opponent, won some other term and resumed his role of elder-statesman dealmaker. "The cure was, become back here and get to work because you likewise have to show your constituents that you are serious about them," he said.
["Rand Paul doubling downwards on Senate, presidential bids"]
On Thursday Paul was among the showtime to go far for a curlicue call on a trade bill.
He joined Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for a private 10-minute huddle in the well of the chamber. McConnell, the ultimate fauna of the Senate with no ambitions across that bedchamber, had non been shy about encouraging his junior colleague to abandon his flagging presidential race and come habitation to lock down his Senate seat ahead of the 2016 elections.
McConnell did nearly of the talking Th, as Paul listened intensely. Sen. Orrin Yard. Hatch (Utah), the well-nigh senior Republican, walked past and patted Paul on the shoulder, offering kind words that made all three laugh.
"I was just complimenting him," Hatch said in an interview later. "It's tough."
Hatch knows the feeling.
He ran a long-shot bid for the 2000 Republican nomination. Then the sitting chairman of the Judiciary Committee, with deep experience on health-care issues, Hatch still recalls verbatim what the late NBC newsman Tim Russert told him: "Y'all're the all-time person running this year, but you lot don't have a chance."
He still has trouble agreement how poorly he did: dead last place with 1 percent of Iowa's vote, no delegates and an immediate withdrawal.
"There wasn't a feeling of rejection for me," he said. "I just felt like — well, maybe there was a little bit, considering I didn't do very well at all. Then, you know, in honesty, I probably did have a piffling biting feeling."
What has changed in recent years is that longtime senators are increasingly rare as candidates; both parties have embraced an anti-Washington ethos that makes a distinguished Senate full-blooded something of a liability.
Dorsum in 2008, Obama and Hillary Clinton, with barely 10 combined years of feel, leapt well ahead of a Autonomous field that included venerable Senate chairmen such as Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Joe Biden (D-Del.).
In this year's Republican contest, freshman Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) take emerged in the top tier of the contest. Despite his 25 years in Washington, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has done well in the Democratic race confronting Clinton because he rails against his party leaders and so oftentimes.
GOP voters so discounted Sen. Lindsey O. Graham's 21 years of congressional feel that he withdrew in Dec to ensure his name would not be on his dwelling land ballot in South Carolina. A poor showing at that place would have been hugely embarrassing.
Over the last four decades the paradigm for handling presidential defeat has been the belatedly Edward Chiliad. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who lost his challenge to President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Autonomous chief. Subsequently giving up his White House ambition, Kennedy turned into what many consider the virtually effective legislator of his era.
His concluding known interview in the Capitol came in May 2008, when he was asked what and then-Sen. Clinton should exercise later losing to Obama.
[Read 2008's "No Articulate Map for Clinton'southward Political Futurity"]
"I loved the Senate before I ran for the president," Kennedy explained days before a cancer diagnosis that took his life fifteen months afterwards. He said the loss gave him a greater appreciation for Congress. "I think I became a better senator, with greater focus and attending. . . . Information technology all depends on the mental attitude, what's in the heed of the person."
Clinton did not embrace that path. After the final 2008 master votes were bandage, she took several weeks off before returning to the Senate. She played no real role in big legislation in the months ahead and, when offered the secretarial assistant of state post, quickly left the Senate.
Rubio has already decided to leave, declining to run for reelection even if he comes up short of the presidency. Unlike Paul, who has developed some relationships, Cruz has burnt many Senate bridges past promoting a government shutdown in 2013 and repeatedly calling McConnell a liar.
Leahy declined to say how Cruz would handle a return, just noted that plenty of Democrats and Republicans "who cared about the Senate" became meliorate senators afterward failed presidential bids.
"They demonstrated that their number ane reason to be in the Senate was not to run for president, simply to be good senators," Leahy said.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-senators-do-after-they-run-for-president-and-lose/2016/02/12/552bfd4a-d0d4-11e5-88cd-753e80cd29ad_story.html
0 Response to "Who Has Declined to Run Again for Senate"
Post a Comment