City with Two Frankens

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Well that was fast.  Actually it’s been excruciatingly slow, but now that Al Franken has blocked all the Minnestota legal roadways, Norm Coleman has given up the ghost and declared his hopes for re-elections dead.  After nearly eight months, the man has caved.  What kind of fighter was he?

Obviously a tenacious one, to put it mildly, but now the time has come for Al Franken to become Senator Franken.  And yes, we’re distantly related. And no, I’ll not be commenting because we’re even more distant professionally.

He’s a politician, I’m a journalist, or at least try to be.  We have not been talking since he started his campaign way back when because there was no way we could compare notes.

As a reporter, and not as a Franken, I will share with you the curiosity  I’ll have about the ease with which Senator Al will be able to leave the Comedy Club and join the Comity Club of the United States Senate.  In case you are wondering what the hell I’m talking about, the rules of that august body literally enshrine the requirement that members practice the aforementioned “comity”.

It’s be interesting to watch how Al Franken’s sharp wit reconciles with the dull bombast of the Senate. It’ll be equally interesting to watch how long the Democrats’ new so-called “filibuster-proof” majority is really filibuster-proof.  It’s a fiction.  Senator Franken will be joining 99 others whose loyalty is much less to their parties than to their individual egoes.  President Obama is already finding out what congressional  leaders already know.  As the cliche goes, controlling Senators is like herding cats. Very very slow moving cats dedicated to the principle that the US Senate is where progress comes to die.

But now, Mr. Franken comes to Washington. The district will welcome him.  I intend to welcome him too the first time I see him…with a barrage of skeptical questions.