in 2011, Harry Mason Reid, the Senior U.S. Senator from Nevada and current Senate Majority Leader for the Democrats, will celebrate his 45th year in politics. First elected as Lieutenant Governor of Nevada in 1966, Harry has worked his way through the ranks, serving as the state's Gaming Commissioner for several years, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the early 1980s, and finally as a U.S. Senator beginning in 1987. Most recently, Reid has been responsible for ensuring Democratic concensus in order to pass a monumental, and hotly contested, health care bill, which is slated to happen in early 2010 and begin going into effect in 2011. What should be a celebratory year for Mr. Reid, though, might very well be overshadowed by the recent unveiling of comments Mr. Reid made during the 2008 Presidential elections. Harry was an ardent supporter of Democratic candidate Barack Obama, and had been since early in the primaries, but he made the mistake of saying, as quoted by CNN, that Obama could win the Presidency because of his ""light-skinned" appearance and speaking patterns "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."" Just hours after this was reported, media outlets across the globe were quoting Mr. Reid; the blogosphere abounded with frantic, angry posts; and conservatives (plus a few liberals) were calling for Mr. Reid to resign his position. Comparisons (inexact at best) have been made to disgraced national politician Trent Lott who resigned a similar post over racially charged comments last decade, and conservative pundits are using the opportunity to claim a double standard going into the 2010 midterm election season. Lost in all of this is Mr. Reid himself, who has gone through all of the trouble to personally call and/or meet with his fellow colleagues whom he embarrassed, including the President of the United States himself, who does not at all seem offended or perturbed by the comments. It will be interesting to see what comes of all of this, but every media outlet from the Huffington Post to FOX News to USA Today to the Wall Street Journal is slamming Mr. Reid, damaging (perhaps not unfairly) the reputation of a lifetime servant of Nevadans over less than 10 words uttered in private a couple of years ago. Such is life in modern politics-- half a century of dedicated service (Mr. Reid once choked a man who tried to bribe him and had to be restrained by FBI agents) may not withstand a poorly-worded, insensitive phrase uttered about a man that he actually respects and supports.

 

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