Howard Fineman

The Mind of Al Franken

Minnesota's new senator is no clown.

Jul 1, 2009

Email To A Friend

Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.

SPONSORED BY

Now that he is a senator-elect, Al Franken is allowing himself a joke or two, and so are the people he is talking to. "Franken, I know why you dragged this whole thing out: you like all the attention, don't you?" President Obama said as he congratulated the former comedian on his long-delayed and court-reviewed election victory.

The president complimented Franken on having "held up well under stress," which allowed the Minnesotan to make the deadpan offer of "tips" on how to survive in the political limelight.
The president, according to Franken, laughed at that one. "He's a funny guy."

No higher praise.

Asked Wednesday by a Minnesota Public Radio interviewer what he would be thinking when he is sworn in next week, Franken dead-panned again. "I will be thinking about protecting the

Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic," he said.

Wonderfully droll. And long overdue, at least by my lights, though I have to admit that Al and I have been friends for more than two decades.

So take what I say here with the appropriate shaker of salt.

I see where Sen. James of Oklahoma Inhofe called Al "the clown from Minnesota."

That statement, in and of itself, is amusing—since it comes from a man who has declared global warming "to be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"; who has demanded, admittedly with no justification, a criminal investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency; who has suggested that Sonia Sotomayor is a slave to "her own race and gender"; and who announced that he would vote against her on the day she was nominated, hearings be damned.

Now that is a clown.

Al Franken is not one.

Member Comments

- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: wgliberty @ 07/05/2009 10:47:09 AM

Minnesota politics have always been, in this generation, an entertaining circus. It's one of the things that makes me miss living there. The net result has been interesting newscasts good for a political junkie like myself, but realistically, the state hasn't produced a politician worth giving serious consideration to since Eugene McCatthy. Minnesota is now represented in the US Senate, the worlds' greatest deliberative body, by Amy and Al, two hard left individuals who prize idealogy over genuine intellect. Living proof that people get the government they deserve.
- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: Quid Pro Quo @ 07/04/2009 8:51:04 PM

The reason Gore didn't win is that he wasn't able to disenfranchise the military vote as he was desperately trying to do before the election was over. That and the "pregnant chad" nonsense.

As for economic mess? Take the time to do a little research before you post... this is a matter of record:

http://www.thehispanicconservative.com/articles/2-the-fanny-mae-and-freddie-mac-debacle.html

Next time, please bring more than your liberal, hate filled opinion to NW blogs.

As for your opinion on Iraq, talk with your new found liberal democrat ally, Colin Powell.

"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.... "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan."

--Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, February 5, 2003

Powell made that statement about month before the invasion.

Liberal hindsight doesn't come close to 20/20.
- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: Apolitical @ 07/03/2009 5:22:44 PM

Bush elected twice? I seem to recall Gore was voted by majority of the Americans and Bush only won because of the count in Florida. In a state run by his brother Jeb and whose election is managed by a cuckoo GOP partisan Katherine Harris. And Palin? She's a governor in a state where our city's dog catcher has more constituents. But beside that, you can just check the inevitable correlation. You put dumb in office and what did the country get? Economic, political, and moral crisis plus 4,341 young Americans dead for an unnecessary war in Iraq when the people we are after is in Afghanistan.