Seeking to do the job native Minnesota press won’t do, I have written more than a hundred posts to present a true portrait of Amy Klobuchar. She has the local press serving on her public relations team. Minnesota journalists are mostly happy to serve in this capacity, but when they fall short of her expectations, she uses methods undreamed of in How To Win Friends and Influence People to get what she wants.
One headline that Klobuchar has never before encountered is the pleasingly blunt one supplied by Racket News for the Matt Taibbi column excerpted by John Hinderaker: “Amy Klobuchar, you suck.” Taibbi has dubbed his current anti-censorship venture “Project Amy” in her honor.
I know the Minnesota press is in love with Amy, but Taibbi documents the ludicrously favorable treatment of Klobuchar by the national media as well. I learned from Taibbi that the national press has saluted Klobuchar for her great sense of humor. In the stories Taibbi cites, Klobuchar is presented as the queen of comedy. Seeing her up close at home, however, I have found her to be one of the most boring people I have ever met.
Taibbi has rightly focused on one element of Klobuchar’s political project that is seriously threatening. I have slightly revised and edited a 2017 post to fill in the portrait.
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Former funnyman and Senator Al Franken titled his best-selling memoir Al Franken, Giant of the Senate. He posed for the book’s self-mocking cover. The title and the photograph made a small concession to self-awareness, or to the public relations value of pretending self-awareness, but he deserves credit for the thought. It was a joke.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar pretends no such self-awareness. With the active assistance of her hometown newspaper and its equally braindead counterparts on the national stage, Klobuchar holds herself out as a giant of the Senate. She has a certain genius for avoiding outspoken stands on important issues and leading the way on trivial matters calculated to garner broad public support. If she secures a favorable headline or two in the process, it’s no coincidence. It is the true object of her efforts.
Senator Klobuchar is a reliable vote for the Democratic Party line, but she is quiet about it. She doesn’t want to upset anybody. She wants the reputation of a problem-solver who is above nasty partisanship. She wants to be deemed a giant of the Senate, without the irony.
Klobuchar wants more than anything else to preside over an era of good feelings — of good feelings about Amy Klobuchar. Senator Klobuchar attaches her name to many bills that don’t amount to much, such as the proposed 2015 bill to resolve the crisis of the detergent pod. It represents the reductio ad absurdum of the vacuity to which she has reduced herself in the service of self-promotion. Klobuchar relies on such vacuity to present herself as the true giant of the Senate.
In August 2017 Senator Klobuchar appeared on the Comedy Channel’s Daily Show. “Daily Show host Trevor Noah gave [her] a gushing welcome Tuesday night,” according to the Star Tribune’s Maya Rao — so you know it must have been bad. Although she was appearing on a comedy show, Klobuchar’s vaunted sense of humor somehow went missing in action.
Noah pointed out that Senator Klobuchar had been ranked as the most productive senator in terms of getting bills passed into law. That’s supposed to be a good thing.
Noah had no idea what he was talking about. He was relying on data compiled by Medill News Service from the tracking website GovTrack for the 114th Congress (Jan 6, 2015-Jan 3, 2017). Klobuchar was found to have sponsored or co-sponsored 27 bills that had been enacted into law in the session.
Klobuchar touted her accomplishment in a December 2016 press release. The Star Tribune dutifully followed up in a story by Allison Sherry entirely lacking in analysis. In terms of “productivity,” Franken ranked right up there with Klobuchar. Perhaps Franken really was a giant of the Senate.
Klobuchar earned recognition with 27 bills that she sponsored or co-sponsored. Five of the 27 bills concerned naming or renaming federal facilities. The late 18-term Eighth District Congressman Jim Oberstar loomed large in Klobuchar’s accomplishment, such as it was. Most of the rest of the bills carrying Klobuchar’s name amounted to little more than nothing. Even so, Klobuchar’s bill to resolve the crisis of the detergent pod apparently didn’t make it. (She claimed credit for action taken by Procter & Gamble on its own.)
Trevor Noah’s show was a mainstay of the Comedy Channel. It was supposed to be funny. Noah nevertheless misplaced the humor in Klobuchar’s legislative distinction.
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