Three tasty flavors

Now that the presidential campaign season is finally over (and ignoring the fact that the 2012 Republican race has already begun), there is a great temptation to simply go out and get a life. Really, the opportunities for a more balanced existence are endless.

One can choose to sober up by pondering the status of the family 401(k). Or to get serious with the governing news, by scanning the rumored competition for Secretary of State (Kerry! Holbrooke! Hillary!). Or to entirely wean oneself by mining the latest celebrity nuggets, the best of which features Jennifer Aniston dishing on Angelina in the pages of Vogue….although, to be truly escapist, there is always the prospect of watching James Bond emerged unscathed from yet another sheet of shattering glass.

But no. Campaign ’08 persists, with a trio of extended denouements in Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia. For the unrepentant political junkie, it’s hard to decide which undecided Senate race is the tastiest. It’s sort of like being ushered into an ice cream shop and forced to choose between fudge swirl, fudge brownie, and rocky road.

Take Alaska, for instance. They’re still counting the 90,000 absentee ballots, and the latest word is that the Senate Republicans in Washington may actually be spared the embarrassment of welcoming back, into their midst, a convicted felon. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving GOP member and recent recipient of a guilty verdict on seven federal corruption counts, is now trailing his Democratic challenger by roughly 800 votes – a gap that may widen, because many of the early votes were cast during the time period when the verdict was dominating the news.

No doubt the national GOP would be saddened by the prospect of suffering yet another ’08 defeat, but at least the Senate Republicans would be off the hook. A few members have been insisting that, if Stevens comes back to town in triumph, his colleagues should vote to expel him from the Republican caucus. But the members of that chummy chamber do not like to punish their own (witness the Democratic hesitance about Joe Liebeman), even for a felony conviction. So perhaps the absentee voters of Alaska will cure their discomfort.

On the other hand, if Stevens prevails in the balloting, and ultimately is forced to resign if or when his conviction is upheld by the courts, the ensuing special election could conceivably bring Sarah Palin to Washington – a scenario that, at minimum, would delight many of the comedians and humorists who fear that Barack Obama might not provide sufficient material.

But if the Alaska overtime competition doesn’t tantalize, consider the Minnesota Senate race, which should already have taught the Democrats a lesson – namely, that if you want to cruise to victory in a blue state in a great Democratic year, you do not nominate a comedian who has a 35-year history of left-leaning, off-color jokes…much less the authorship of a Playboy article entitled “Porn-o-Rama.”

Fortunately for Al Franken, he’s just 200 votes shy of incumbent Norm Coleman, who has sleaze problems of his own – namely, that he has supposedly accepted $75,000 in secret payments from an Iranian-born businessman-buddy who allegedly funneled the money to Norm via the wife of Norm. The allegations surfaced in a lawsuit filed by a former business associate of Norm’s businessman-buddy…you get the idea. It’s juicy stuff, as are all the various charges and counter-charges about vote-counting irregularities (especially the Coleman campaign’s claim that a Minneapolis election official was driving around with 32 absentee ballots in her car – an odd complaint, given the fact that, as a matter of procedure, election officials routinely transport absentee ballots in their cars…because that’s how the ballots are brought to the tallying sites).

And the official recount hasn’t even started yet.

It will take another month, which at least guarantees us more entertainment into the holiday season, especially if all the lawyers get involved. Mitt Romney is also pumping some of his money into the Coleman effort, hoping to put down an early marker on 2012. There are even scenarios where the dispute might ultimately require a decision by the U. S. Senate, which would be fine with me, because it would be sad to see all this seaminess undercut the cultural traditions of Minnesota Nice.

Nevertheless, if Minnesota seems like a snore, consider Georgia. State law dictates that if nobody gets 50 percent of the vote in a Senate election, the top two finishers have to compete in a runoff. Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss got 49.9 percent, so now he’s in a runoff, on Dec. 2, with challenger Jim Martin. Obama foot soldiers are marching again, this time for Martin. And Chambliss, who won his seat in the 2002 election (thanks in part to the pro-GOP headwinds after 9/11), is getting outside help from some of the biggest Republican stars.

It’s perhaps a sign of the GOP’s sorry state that one of its biggest stars right now is the guy who just lost his national race by roughly 8.2 million votes and seven percentage points, the worst Republican showing in 44 years. But Georgia went red on election day, and that makes it safe political turf for John McCain.

But consider Chambliss’ history. Back in 2002, while running against incumbent Democrat Max Cleland, he put up an instantly infamous TV ad which suggested that Cleland was soft on America’s enemies – notably Osama bin Laden, whose face appeared in the ad. It was a particularly creative charge…given the fact that Max Cleland as a young man had gone to Vietnam with four limbs, and had returned home with one.

The Republican establishment, most notably Georgia GOP chairman (and ex-religious right leader) Ralph Reed, strongly defended the Chambliss TV commercial. But one of its most fervent critics said: “I'd never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield - it's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible.”

That was John McCain…then.

Yet today, fresh from the campaign that destroyed his “maverick” reputation, McCain is stumping for Chambliss. Before our election overtime extends any further, somebody should give the guy a compass and send him off in search of his soul.