Remarks former Senator Evan Bayh has made while walking out the door have some in Washington rankled. Partisanship is, apparently, a rather touchy subject.
Sen. Evan Bayh's surprise decision not to seek reelection touched off a debate Tuesday among strategists and scholars about whether the Indiana senator's depiction of the "brain dead" politics and hyper-partisanship of Congress is accurate or overblown — and, if accurate, whether walking away was the right decision.
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[I]t was as much Bayh's stated reasons for leaving as the consequences that stirred controversy. "If in fact he believed that the Senate was broken and dysfunctional, then he had a responsibility to stand and man the pumps rather than run for the lifeboat," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University.
What say you? Should Bayh have fished or cut bait?