by Frank James
Our one-time Tribune colleague Naftali Bendavid has a good piece on The Wall Street Journal's website on how congressional Republicans are trying to navigate the new Washington dynamics of a Democratic president in the White House and a Congress with fairly solid Democratic majorities.
A photo that ran with the story caught my attention. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader and a conservative from Kentucky, sat in a chair talking to someone beyond the frame.
A portrait of President John F. Kennedy hung above him on the wall. The photo might leave a lot of people thinking that McConnell was trying perhaps too hard to get with the Democratic program by having the JFK portrait in his office.
A passage from the story would lead the reader to believe that's the case. It's this paragraph:
"I think it's important not to be in a hurry," Mr. McConnell, of Kentucky, said in an interview in his office in the U.S. Capitol last week. "The new president has high approval ratings. Polls indicate that both Republicans and Democrats want him to be successful. We want to be a respectful, loyal opposition."
But the photo of McConnell wasn't taken in the minority leader's office. Instead, it was taken in the offices of Senate Majority Leader's Harry Reid (D-Nev.)
(Photos by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
Here's another view of the office from Reid's website, a photo of his meeting with University of Nevada at Reno officials.
Just another example of how you can't always trust your eyes.
Comments
So ol' Mitch has a portrait of JFK up in his office?
Don't tell anyone on the radical right about this because they're saying that if McConnell is not 100% uncompromisingly hard right all the time the next four years, then he's betrayed them.
Great! Force him to be even more irrelevant and marginalize Republicans even more. We've just seen what that led to in Ohio. The righties have ruthlessly attacked faithful conservative semi moderate George Voinovich for every small deviation from their craziest whims and he finally got sick of it and retired. We're going to see a Democratic Senator from Ohio in 2010. Nice work, radical righties. Maybe you can break down Mitch McConnell to the point where he can be defeated too, we almost knocked him off last time.
Posted by: Lester Hannity | January 21, 2009 4:29 PM
To Lester Hannity,
The whole point of the post was that McConnell doesn't have a JFK portrait in his office.
Frank
Posted by: Frank James | January 21, 2009 4:59 PM
I know Frank, but going after McConnell is just too much fun. I couldn't resist.
He's worthless...
Posted by: Lester Hannity | January 21, 2009 5:10 PM
Yes, sometimes you may have to read the article, but what would be wrong with a Republican having a picture of JFK on a wall. JFK ain't Jimmy Carter.
Posted by: Django - N Exile somewhere in/around the 30th Parallel | January 21, 2009 6:20 PM