Time makes it all make sense

I knew Time's list of the ten best senators (h/t the Corner) would make my worldly horizon's a little broader when I read what makes a good senator:

[T]here is a whole variety of skills that America's Senators have developed over 218 years to help them raise and spend tax dollars, oversee the operation of government and, in the case of the best among them, pass laws that benefit their constituents, their country and the world. TIME spoke to dozens of academics, political scientists and current and former Senators to pick the 10 best of the 109th Congress. One made it because he puts unsexy but important issues on the national agenda, another because his backroom negotiating turns conflict into consensus. A third got on the list for his diligent bird-dogging of Enron, Homeland Security and the Pentagon. Then there's the prodigious across-the-aisle dealer, the fierce defender of her constituents and the expert who sees around corners. As with any all-star team, we sought a broad range of gifts rather than settling on 10 great pitchers or middle linebackers.

Wow. Knowing how to spend other people's money, knowing how to bully innnocent citizens and other representatives into giving you even more money, manipulating other people, and attacking people who actually do things. I have my daddy's credit card and zero sense of personal responsibility -- maybe if I lose what residue of character and upbringing I have, I, too, can become a senator!

But here is the list of people who have apparently conquered those higher aspects of human nature to become great senators (and then a few who failed because they try so hard and can't get stomach-turning legislation passed - lusers!):

1. Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) - bravely broke ranks with Congressional Republicans to strong-arm billions of dollars of spending by threatening to block defense bills.

2. Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota)- uses lots of charts.

3. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) - aka "the Debater." Argues with his fellow senators without using notes.

4. Ted Kennedy (D-Chappaquiddick: good one, Taranto!) -- he made the list - shocker! - by being willing to compromise his principles. (Good Lord, what is wrong with these people?)

5. John Kyl (R-Arizona) - lies to people to get them to do what he wants.

6. Carl Levin (D-Michigan) - hates Enron, likes hearings.

7. Richard Lugar (R- ) - disagreed with Reagan in the '80s, can sleep through Russian bag checks, and hates nuclear proliferation (in the rogue-state/terrorist kind, but close enough for Time) and disagrees with Bush's India deal.

8. John McCain (RINO-Arizona) - no brainer, this one, like Kennedy, but McCain has "moral authority," so he opposed torturing terrorists for information and is trying to keep voters, money, advertising, and all Americans who are not already members of the media or political establishment out of political discourse by any means necessary. And where he finds a loophole in McCain-Feingold, he tightens it.

9. Olympia Snow (RINO - Maine) - tried to thwart Bush judicial nominees and is opposed to eavesdropping on terrorists. But what sells her is her willingness to kiss constituental babies and strong-arm Thad-Cochran-esque spending bills back to her district.

10. Arlen Specter (RINO - Pennsylvania) - rude, abrasive, mecurial, and unprincipled, especially to other Republicans.

As for the senators who suck? Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) tried hard but simply can't get any of his wonderfully compassionate progressive legislation out of committee; Wayne Allard (R-Colorado) is boring and barely talks on the floor; Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) is mean to staffers and doesn't do anything when he has the potential to ask such tough questions; Conrad Burns (R-Montana) is so forgettable, they mixed his link up with Wayne "the Dullard" Allard's; Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota) is a cowardly wuss who proposes pansy-titles legislation (seriously -- Department of Peace and Non-Violence?) without a snowball's chance of hell of passing a Republican Congress and makes other Democrats look wussy in comparison.

Good grief.