Inside Politics

CELEBRITIES

“Don’t look now, but the unlikeliest people are being restocked as celebrity inventory: politicians,” Wall Street Journal columnist writes.

“Barack Obama made Forbes’ Top 100 celebrities this year, the first sitting head of state ever. Obama is now the country’s main celebrity. The cameras are on him, all the time. He gives speeches. That’s his main act, most of the time,” Mr. Henninger said.

“Barack and Michelle. Nancy, Sarah. Arnie. Eliot. Joe. Huck. Mark. Barney.

“It makes sense. Their supply is capped by elections. South Carolina and New York can have only one deranged governor. Mass marketing can’t produce politicians and cheapen them further. Most of the time they don’t do much of anything, just like celebrities. Meet Senator [Al] Franken.

“It may not last. A poll in the last election found that most people think they could do a better job than their own member of Congress. So I expect that TV will soon create a reality Congress show. Average people could pretend to run a whole country, just like the celebrities who are pretending to run Washington.”

ROADKILL

“The rubber hit the road in Congress last Friday, but it wasn’t a transportation bill or a car-company bailout. It was the House vote on ‘climate change,’ which would still be known as ‘global warming’ if average temperatures had not inconveniently failed to go up over the past 11 years,” former Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“Everyone, of course, wants to be a good steward of our planet. No one wants to be responsible for destroying the rain forests or polar bears. And no one wants his fingerprints on the thermostat if the Earth is warming,” Mr. Santorum said.

“But everything changes when politicians pull the trigger on a program that increases taxes and kills our economy, jobs, and standard of living. The rubber hits the road.

“Thus, President Obama had to pull out all the stops - and dish out some healthy helpings of pork - to eke out a slim majority in the House for a ‘cap-and-trade’ program designed to address global warming.

“But getting the needed 60 votes in the more cautious Senate isn’t likely. One reason is that the Senate is preparing for the rubber to hit the road on another contentious issue - health care reform.

“Like global warming, health care reform seems swell in the abstract. Who doesn’t want everyone to have all the highest quality health care he needs?

“But what happens when lawmakers attempt to tax employees’ existing health benefits, replace private insurance with a government plan, ration care based on patients’ utility to society, and limit access to expensive therapies? More rubber. More road. More hitting.”

EMBARRASSING

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