Thoughts from the Cloven One

Bob Novak draws the ire of a lot of people on the left. (Wasn’t it Wonkette who said he had “cloven hooves”?) He wears three-piece suits and has a brusque, stand-off-ish manner. And he’s a far-right conservative.

But I have to say I’ve always liked the old-school, paleocon curmudgeon. Sure, he’s a conservative—but he’s not an uncritical one. Perhaps more importantly, he earned his stripes as a reporter and has been around so long he was trying to convince Rolling Stone’s Timothy Crouse that he shouldn’t be profiling him in The Boys on the Bus, a book about the 1972 presidential elections.

This was years before he developed shows like Crossfire and The Capital Gang for CNN (both good in their time) and decades before he walked off CNN during a live broadcast. (Yes, I thought that was pretty cool, too.)

So it was interesting to hear his take on the upcoming election on Meet the Press with Tim Russert on Sunday. He was asked about what a turnover in power could mean—Novak sees the House going Dem and says the Senate is too close to call:

[A]ll politicians always say, “This is the most important election we’ve ever
been in,” because it is to them. I would make the argument, this is one of the
least important elections I have seen because everybody is really looking ahead
at 2008 as an important election.

Because if the Democrats win the
House, as is, as is probable, then it’s—they can pass a lot of legislation, get
nowhere in the Senate. Senate is a very difficult thing to get through. And the
president will suddenly discover his veto pen that he had—that he had kept—lost
track of for six years.

I would still argue that retaking the House could provide the Dems a base to put forward a plan and better position themselves for 2008.

But it’s an interesting thought, nonetheless. Even if they take the House, it’s still going to be an uphill battle.