My favorite Senator
The Senate, which fancies itself the world's most exclusive club, has its Sir John Hawkins. He was the 18th-century musicologist whom Samuel Johnson called "a very unclubbable man." The very unclubbable senator is Oklahoma's Tom Coburn, 57, a freshman Republican whose motto could be: "Niceness is overrated."
Coburn is the most dangerous creature that can come to the Senate, someone simply uninterested in being popular. When House Speaker Dennis Hastert defends earmarks -- spending dictated by individual legislators for specific projects -- by saying that a member of Congress knows best where a stoplight ought to be placed, Coburn, in an act of lese-majeste, responds: Members of Congress are the least qualified to make such judgments.
This guy is more than a breath of fresh air. He is the key to resolving the corruption within Congress and the Senate.
