Remarkable Mediocrity

KATZENMOYER: I'm in your own party!
JOSH: Doesn't seem to be doing us much good now, does it?

It's hard to believe that losing Evan Bayh is REALLY going to affect the Democrats - having a Democrat whom you can't count on come voting time and who indeed makes it his m.o. to work against the party isn't much more useful than simply having a Republican in his seat. Plus, surely I'm not the only person vaguely surprised that a Senator from Indiana was a Democrat in the first place. I mean, it's not like Brown winning Massachusetts.

And in reading Ross Douthat HERE, it appears Bayh was determined to spend his Senate career being a great big vessel of nothingness anyway.

And yet: the Washington media always hyped the guy. Moderate, midwestern, handsome in an anodyne way, well-spoken if you consider the ability to articulate obvious conventional wisdom a virtue.
But there was less there than met the eye. And now perhaps we see, in the way he handled this decision, one reason why.

As the lens backs away from Bayh's Senate career, conventional wisdom is starting to be that the view seems to somewhat lacking in substance. A la TNC HERE:

I once had the chance, along with numerous other reporters and editors, to speak with Bayh in an off-the-record context. I'd say the group was quite favorably disposed toward him going into the discussion -- here was a young, popular, telegenic moderate Democrat everybody could see on a presidential ticket soon. As far as I could tell, everybody came away thoroughly unimpressed. He said nothing especially disagreeable, it was just that he seemed so mediocre. He expressed himself entirely in terms of platitudes. Not a single interesting thought escaped his lips.

This wasn't a function of him avoiding uncomfortable positions. I've seen smart politicians dance around questions, and this wasn't that. This was just a completely unremarkable man who, had he not been the handsome son of a famous politician, would never in a million years have been a Senator.

I'm not naive enough to think or even hope that every Congressman is Jimmy Stewart meets Teddy Roosevelt. But I can't say the world is going to be any worse off because Evan Byah isn't in Congress.