He did not comport himself honorably during that debacle, and I have voted for his opponent every election since.
I did not, however, bring it up the time I ran into him at the local RiteAid (he lives like three blocks from me), mostly because it was so bizarre running into him at the local RiteAid, which is what I said to him on that occasion.
You may be right about his voting record. And I don’t agree with term limits, either. However, legislators like Strom Thurmond, Arlen Specter, Robert Byrd and Ted Stevens serve nobody by hanging around till they’re nearly dead. The energy level is not there, even if the mental faculties are still sharp.
Eh, I’d happily vote for Lautenberg again if he runs in 2014. By then he’ll be going on 91 years old.
While I think term limits are a waste of time (and anti-democratic, to boot), I do wish the Senate had some system aside from pure seniority for allocating their committee assignments and so on.
It’s up to the voters to decide whether they’re capable of executing the duties of their offices.
I remember Thurmond being completely unaware of what was going on around him, reading out statements that had been written for him that he clearly didn’t get. (I recall his reading the name “Kim Jong Il” as “Kim Jong the Second.”)
As for Specter and Stevens, nothing in their behavior shows me that they aren’t mentally present.
I haven’t seen Byrd in a while, but there were times during the Bush administration in which he burned with the fire of righteousness. He clearly had his wits about him.
Whoa, did you see him election night? He was really out of it – shock, of course, not dementia, but it was truly sad. It also made it very, very clear that he is an old man.