What Mariano Rivera And Dick Lugar Know About Everything
The great Yankee relief pitcher Mariano Rivera tore up his
knee last week, ending his season, and quite possibly, his career.
The senior Senator from Indiana, Dick Lugar, will be torn
out of his job today, losing in the Republican Primary to State Treasurer
Richard Mourdock. His political career,
except perhaps in an appointed role, is probably over.
We are poorer for both these losses.
Rivera was the embodiment of grace under fire, quiet efficiency,
and class. If you love baseball, as I do, you know that there are only a
handful of players who achieve a certain level of excellence in this sport of
highly refined skills. Baseball is far more
like golf or tennis than the other major sports. Athleticism helps, but there is also a mental
aspect to the game, a certain discipline and even ruthlessness you need when
trying to do something that is exquisitely difficult for mere mortals. Rivera had those qualities, but conducted
himself in a manner than earned universal respect.
Lugar was a consistent conservative on social and economic
issues, but he made his real mark on foreign policy and defense issues. Notably, he worked across the aisle with
people like Sam Nunn, the conservative Democratic Senator from North Carolina,
on truly existential issues of the day, including arms control. His great accomplishments include significant
reductions in nuclear arsenals pointed at the United States and efforts at
keeping those weapons away from rogue states.
A man of intellect with a grasp of complexity, he was also a person of
grace and class. Lugar advanced the
cause of his state and his nation, and there are few things I can think of to
be a better epitaph for a politician.
Rivera was unique. By most calculations, both statistical
and from contemporary evaluations, he is the best relief pitcher of all time. Baseball fans may disagree as to where he rates among all pitchers, but, for comparison's sake, there is a statistic that normalizes Earned
Run Average among pitchers in relationship to a seasonal mean of 100. The highest mark by a starter was Pedro
Martinez at 154, followed by the Hall of Fame great Walter Johnson at 148. The second highest
ranked relief pitcher with at least 1000 innings pitched is Hoyt Willhelm at
147. Rivera is at 206, a number so
ridiculous it looks like a typo.
When Lugar was just 35, he won the mayoralty of
Indianapolis, and his time was marked plaudits from both sides of the aisle for
innovative approaches to difficult problems.
He narrowly lost his first race for the Senate to the legendary Birch
Bayh, but crushed the incumbent Democratic Vance Hartke two years later, and is
now ending his sixth term. He (was) so
popular that six years ago, the Democrats did not even run a candidate against
him, and he got 87% of the vote.
Sadly, a career that spans 36 years in the Senate also
straddles a time of intensifying partisanship.
In 1977, when Lugar was sworn in, the Senate and House had its share of
small-mindedness, but it also had people of real ability, thoughtful and
forward thinking, willing to fight like cats and dogs when necessary, but able
to do big things together when the nation’s interests were at stake. 36 years later, the Dick Lugars of the world
are rapidly becoming extinct and the Senate and House leaderships are filled
with mediocre strivers.
Why should I, a Democrat worried about a GOP takeover of the
Senate, mourn for the loss of a conservative Republican, particularly when Mourdock
is a polarizing figure who ran a bare-knuckled campaign and who might more
beatable? It just doesn’t feel right in
my gut. Mourdock was recently quoted as
saying “the time for being collegial is
past…It’s time for confrontation.” Another
nihilist, just what we all need.
Mourdock isn’t an aberration. All across the country, moderates of both
parties are being driven from office, and in Indiana, the situation is
particularly acute. Along with Lugar, Evan
Bayh, along with the Blue Dogs Baron Hill and Brad Ellsworth, are gone, and
Joe Donnelly will likely lose to Mourdock.
Obviously, as a New Yorker, I have very little feel for
Indiana politics. So I wrote a local conservative columnist, and he was
gracious enough to reply. He said, in
effect, that there were two types of GOP Mourdock voters. The first group were indeed the ones who
wanted confrontation. And the second
were people looking for more energy than the 80 year-old Lugar could give.
I found that a little comforting, that it wasn’t all about
the anger. I sometimes think that the
next great laboratory of change will be the Midwest, out of necessity. It has a great many problems and discordant
elements; social conservatives and more liberal university towns, large unions,
wealth and poverty, farms, mining and shipping, reeling rust-belt cities barely
hanging on to their industrial base. The
Midwest must evolve and all these interests have to be reconciled. There’s a
lot going on there right now, from the slashing partisanship of Wisconsin’s Governor
Scott Walker, to the more cerebral and less confrontational experimentation of Indiana
Governor Mitch Daniels, who seems to have something of the early Lugar in
him-he has a distinct ideology, but is more problem solver than spoils
collector.
Short term, things don’t look good. Politics as cage match, with good people the
casualties. The Yankees aren’t doing too well, either. But, I found a couple of
grace notes. Rivera announced he was
going to rehab and come back in 2013.
And a conservative columnist from Indiana took the time to speak kindly
about my city and of his family and mine.
I think I’m going to bank on Mariano and the Midwest. You have to have hope.
MM
