your top 5 fav and least fav senators

[angus]

Hmmm.  Don't know that I can think of my five favorite, since there aren't five that I really like.  I can come up with three that I like:

Trent Lott, Dianne Feinstein, and John Kerry

and six that I don't like:

Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Edward Kennedy, Thad Cochran, and Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

To be honest, these are the only sitting US senators that have ever been my senators and so they're the only ones I have ever seriously scrutinized.  I guess I'm pretty neutral on the other 41.

[nclib]

3. menendez

Why?

He's tough, attacks his opponents hard and ruthlessly, and is a corrupt machine politician.

he supports banning flag burning!

Oh, OK move up Sherrod Brown.

doesnt brown also support the flag burning ban?

He voted for the ban while in the House.


As for my list...

Favorite (no particular order):

Kennedy
Sanders
Boxer
Feingold
Harkin

Least favorite (no particular order):

Lott
Inhofe
Coburn
Chambliss
Allard

[TheresNoMoney]

Best:

1) Feingold
2) Dorgan
3) Obama
4) Wyden
5) Harkin

I also really like the freshmen Tester, Brown and Webb.

Worst:

1) Inhofe
2) Cornyn
3) Roberts
4) Chambliss
5) Judd Gregg

[AkSaber]

Favorites

1. Uncle Ted
2. John Sununu
3. Lisa Murkowski
4. John Ensign
5. Mel Martinez

Don't like

1. Hillary
2. Barbra Boxer
3. Diane Feinstein
4. John Kerry
5. Chris Dodd

[memphis]

Hmmm.  Don't know that I can think of my five favorite, since there aren't five that I really like.  I can come up with three that I like:

Trent Lott, Dianne Feinstein, and John Kerry

and six that I don't like:

Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Edward Kennedy, Thad Cochran, and Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

To be honest, these are the only sitting US senators that have ever been my senators and so they're the only ones I have ever seriously scrutinized.  I guess I'm pretty neutral on the other 41.

I think you mean 91.

[angus]

I think you mean 91.

Okay, 100 - 9 = 91.

yeah, I guess I do.

I will also have formed opinions of Charles Grassley and Tom Harkin probably by New Year's Day, so we'll call it 89.  I noticed Grassley keeps six offices, one of which is about five miles from my new apartment.  A ten-minute trip by car, a fifteen-minute bus ride, or a twenty-minute bicycle ride.  I'm sure I'll stop by there sometime next month.  Harkin only has five, and the closest is nearly an hour away by car.  Not sure when I'll get down that way.  I'm told that a number of senators, including McCain, Obama, and Clinton, have all made campaign stops within a few miles of my new apartment as well.  I'm always saying nasty things about McCain particular, and nice things about Obama, but thats more with an eye to how I favor them as potential presidents, and not so much judging them as US senators.  I'm sure I'll get a chance to meet them, and others, in person over the next few months and I'll be able to form opinions of them as well, but again moreso with an eye to their presidential aspirations.  Nothing like meeting them in person, shaking hands, and smelling the breath, to decide whether I like them.  For example, I never liked Lott till I actually got a chance to hear him speak and shake his hand recently.  Nice handshake.  Nice breath.  Great public speaker.  Excellent story teller.  Very good sense of humor.  I think I already mentioned the story he told about losing a big piece of his ass.  Aftermath of hurricane Katrina.  Major infection.  Surgery. Great story, and he tells it in a humorous way.  He also tells of his fall from grace, back when the GOP bailed out on him and replaced him with that hapless, miserable Tennessee physician as majority leader.  What a hack.  Lott tells the story in a humorous way as well.  Mama always told me to be quiet and listen once in a while, 'cause a closed mouth gathers no foot.  That sort of thing.  Bill Clinton was funny like that as well.  Hillary's not.  She's just crude and judgemental.  Offensive, even.  Bush is beginning to rub me the wrong way as well.  Anyway, I understand Lott's also quite an accomplished baritone singer.  Used to be in a barbershop quartet with Jim Jeffords and two other guys.  He does have a nice, soothing voice.  Velvety, but not velveeta.  Deep, but not booming.  And a nice smile.  A little bit of the Mussolini twinkle in his eye, though, or maybe Simon LeGree.  Cheney has that hard gleam as well, but on Cheney its somehow scarier, whereas Lott's overall charm compensates for the proto-fascist gleam in his eye.  These are the kinds of things you learn when you get to actually meet people, or at least hear them speak in an intimate setting.  Hopefully, there will be lots of opportunities to do just that over the coming months.

[Conan]

Fav:

Kennedy
Kerry
Feingold
Boxer
Schumer

Least Fav:

Inhofe -genuine freak
Brownback - genuine freak
Martinez -self-hating  and ungreatful
Coleman - the luckiest man on earth
McCain - flip-flopper / no principles

[7,052,770]

and six that I don't like:
Thad Cochran

woah, really?  I didn't realize that anyone, Mississippian or otherwise, disliked Cochran.
What is it about him that you don't like?

[angus]

He was boring, chauvinistic, and dry.  And quite full of himself.  We had to sit through his 30-minute schpiel my first year here.  May 2005.  One nice thing about working in a small state with few universities is that even the smallest schools can land a top politician most years, and you actually get a chance to press the flesh and question them after it's done.  Two of the three years I was here, MUW landed a sitting US senator to speak at Commencement.  Not too shabby.  (By way of comparison, when I got my PhD from Boston University, a top fifty school and the third-largest private school in the country, our commencement speaker was the governor of Puerto Rico.  Woo hoo.)  So I was listening to Cochran--well trying to listen as he droned on and my eyelids felt weary and weak and I decided that it must not have been a Columbian who designed the heavy woolen robes and eight-pointed tams and velvet backflap hoods that faculty must wear in the stifling humidity and oppressive heat of a typical May day in Columbus--and all I could hear was hubris.  Stumping, campaigning, misplaced nationalism, and hubris.  Not that there's no place for that, but this wasn't the appropriate venue.  A small women's university in the Deep South can be a welcoming place, and no doubt Cochran's politicking and haranguing was suffered with the grace and charm and dignity with which the graduates here are possessed.  My colleagues and I, on the other hand, are largely not locals and therefore not usually as charming, and we made no pretense of humility.  Well, okay, everyone was nice and tried to stay awake and quiet during the speech, and dutifully applauded afterward, but when it was all over you could hear the groans and see the eyes roll backward in the head.  And no one really hung around to try to ask Cochran questions.  I only mention that to assure you it wasn't my imagination, but that the impropriety of his speech, probably prepared for another audience--one that he deemed important enough to prepare a speech for--was striking.  Attacking the opposing party and bragging about one's legislative accomplishments are fair avenues, but not necessarily the most appropriate avenue of approach for a university commencement speech.  Such speeches are meant to be inspiring, congratulatory, humorous, and, most of all, brief.  Lott was a breath of fresh air.  Charming, gentlemanly, and he seemed to know that to know one's audience is the hallmark of a good speaker.  Well, that and humor.  And Cochran was possessed of neither.

Oh, well, I guess it could have been worse.  I'm told that the speaker a few years ago showed up very drunk and horny and said all sorts of inappropriate things to the graduates in his speech.  Actually, I think I'd have enjoyed that more than Cochran's speech.