“OMG Sen. Roland Burris! Ehh, do we really want this guy coming to bat for us? Maybe!”
That was DCist Sommer’s response to seeing Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL) take up the cause of District voting rights on Wednesday. It’s weird to have a guy no one likes taking up your cause. And man, do people really not like him.
In his Washington Sketch column, Dana Milbank paints a scene that might have been lifted from The Office:
[Sen. Burris’s] colleagues are making little effort to hide their disdain. “I told him that under the circumstances, I would resign,” fellow Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, told reporters after meeting with Burris on Tuesday. “He said, ‘I’m not going to resign.’ ”
Burris called the session with Durbin “a great discussion,” then, to evade further questions, climbed over a dolly carrying trash and onto an elevator.
Milbank describes Sen. Burris as fidgety: “The chamber went into a lengthy quorum call, and Burris spent the better part of an hour yawning, consulting his watch, gazing out at the empty chamber, scratching his temple and running his finger up and down the columns of a Senate membership list.”
What’s remarkable is that Sen. Burris and former Governor Rod Blagojevich are so dweeby. Not exactly the picture of sexy Chicago machine politics. And in the case of Sen. Burris, it gets so, so much worse:
Burris entered the chamber for a vote yesterday with a jaunty step and a red silk handkerchief tucked nattily into his breast pocket. Nobody greeted him, so he struck up a conversation with a clerk, then cast his vote. He tried to talk to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who inched away and busied himself in a chat with Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). After Burris injected himself into that discussion, the two other men broke away, leaving him alone. A couple of others smiled and passed by him quickly. Burris, alone, picked up some papers and began to walk from the chamber. He patted Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who looked but said nothing.
In the Capitol subway going back to his office, he tried to make small talk with Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). “Great speech yesterday,” Burris offered. Lautenberg agreed. “The market’s up?” Burris inquired. Lautenberg wasn’t sure.
OMFG. This is the kid in junior high who would give just about anything to tell you about his combined blue-and-white Magic: The Gathering deck. This is a guy who loves ST:DS9 so much, he applied the Rules of Acquisition to his everyday life. Not even Sen. Lieberman will talk to him—do you know how sad that is? Congressmen will even hang out with Rev. Sun Myung Moon! Sen. Burris would be sympathetic—bumbling, inadvertently emo, hopelessly outgoing—if he weren’t so very, very corrupt.
Know the only thing more pathetic than Sen. Roland Burris? The District of Columbia, without voting rights:
But Burris is not one to be set back by shunning. “I’m giving a speech,” he announced after parting company with Lautenberg. His office called the Senate press gallery to alert reporters.
Burris was soon on the floor making his plea for D.C. voting rights. “The residents of our capital city pay one of the highest tax rates in the nation but they do not have a single voting representative in either house of Congress,” he said. Actually, the high tax rates are the District’s, not the feds’, but Burris was on a roll. “The foundation of our system of government is that all citizens — all citizens — are represented in the federal government,” he said.
That’s right. If a disgraced governor on his way to impeachment can send somebody to Congress, the District of Columbia should be able to do the same.
If Sen. Burris is standing on your shoulders, pick yourself up!, for you are in a very low place indeed.
Photo used with permission under a Creative Commons license with Flickr user FotoRita [Allstar maniac]
