America's Dumbest Congressmen

America's Dumbest Congressmen
Radar ranks the 10 biggest fools
on the Hill
By Holly Martins

CONFEDERACY
OF DUNCES The 109th Congress busy doing nothing

Congress, as any CSPAN viewer can attest, has never been a
bastion of intelligence. As far back as a century ago, Samuel
Johnson was demeaning the nation's legislators as a "circus
of rogues and fools." But when it comes to sheer
stupidity, the men and women of the 109th have distinguished
themselves as a breed apart.

Despite a
notoriously compliant president and Republican majorities in both
houses, they've spent over 600 days in session without conducting
a shred of productive business, which is not to say they've just
sat around. As the war in Iraq raged out of control, they futilely
postured over an unconstitutional flag-burning amendment that was
clearly destined to go up in flames. They rallied around the
brain-dead Terry Schiavo after the Senate majority leader,
watching her on television, claimed to detect signs of life. And
their hijinks culminated this month with l'affaire Mark Foley,
which raised the question of just who a guy needs to blow on the
Hill to get the attention of the brain-dead House leadership.

But in a
notably dumb year, perhaps the dumbest move came from Senate
Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, who sponsored a bill seeking $20
million in taxpayer money for a party
to celebrate America's victory in Iraq. Not long ago such flagrant
obtuseness might have ensured the senator a place on our annual
list of America's Dumbest Congressmen. Alas, given this year's
stiff competition, he didn't even make runner-up.

BREAKING
BALLS Sen. Jim Bunning balks himself into office

10. Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Bunning is a
Hall of Fame pitcher who, during his eight years in office, has
shown "little interest in legislation that doesn't concern
baseball," writes Time magazine. And Kentucky
doesn't even have a major-league baseball team. His campaign style
is so completely unhinged that political observers openly
speculated in 2004 that the then-73-year-old was suffering from
dementia or Alzheimer's. "His is a tragic case of descent
into senility," says one Hill staffer, "except without
the 'descent' bit." To scotch the rumors, Bunning was forced
to hold a press conference and offer up doctor's reports.

Among his
antics that year: Telling a group of GOP fundraisers that his
Italian-American opponent, Daniel Mongiardo, physically resembled
Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay; referring on the stump to
the tragic terror attacks of November 11, 2001; and adding a
federal security detail to his campaign in the firm conviction
that members of Al Qaeda—the masterminds of November 11—had
targeted him for elimination. ("There may be strangers among
us," he darkly informed a Paducah TV crew.)

The piece de
resistance, though, was a debate with Mongiardo: Bunning notified
event organizers at the eleventh hour that he was tied up with
legislative business in Washington and would have to participate
via satellite. During the event it was painfully obvious that the
incumbent was delivering his debate points with the aid of a
teleprompter, violating the event's ground rules. And whatever
urgent business Bunning claimed to be in town for couldn't have
had anything to do with his job—the Senate had gone into
recess the previous Monday.

ASLEEP
AT THE WHEEL Rep. Patrick Kennedy is no roads scholar

9. Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI)
This
May, the tow-headed son of the ruddy senior senator from
Massachusetts plowed his car into a barrier—and himself into
infamy—while under the spell of an Ambien-fueled
hallucination. He then attempted to convince Capitol police he was
late for a floor vote at 3 o'clock in the morning. When the story
broke, Kennedy played the recovery
card, announcing that he suffered from depression and
addiction—to sleep aids and painkillers—and would seek
treatment at the Mayo Clinic. Twenty-four hours later the man who
had barreled down D.C.'s power boulevards in a runaway Mustang
convertible (with the lights off) presented himself as a role
model: "I hope my openness today and in the past, and my
acknowledgment that I need help, will give others the courage to
get help, if they need it."

In 1988,
during his maiden campaign for Rhode Island's state legislature,
Kennedy was stumped when radio callers asked him for the location
of his campaign headquarters. And once elected, he brandished his
signature lucidity on the House floor, where he lamented
middle-class America's inability to "make mends meet."

Despite a
cameo appearance in the Palm Beach date-rape allegation that
landed his cousin William in the tabloids, Kennedy handily won a
House seat in 1994. So he had a few years to warm up for the
Lewinsky hearings, which he likened to "pulling a fire alarm
in a crowded room." He was ably prepared to comment, having
developed a close familiarity with the Constitution: "I
myself have educated myself about the severity of the Articles of
Impeachment, and I want to share with my colleagues and the
American people some of the thoughts that I have learned."

THE
ETHNICIST When Sen. Conrad Burns opens his mouth, America
winces

8. Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT)
Burns,
Jack Abramoff"s favorite Senate bag man, raked in a cool
$137,000 in tribal casino money for his political action
committee, a congressional record. In exchange, he pushed through
a $3 million earmark on behalf of the Saginaw Chippewas in the
form of an education grant the wealthy tribe neither wanted nor
needed. But in his current re-election campaign against Montana
State Sen. John Tester, Burns reminded Big Sky voters why he was a
civic embarrassment long before Abramoff came courting. One
favorite was his reference, in an immigration speech, to the "nice
little Guatemalan man" who does yardwork around his estate
(the long-suffering Burns press office was forced to issue a
follow-up statement clarifying the cute little brown fella's legal
status).

Casting his
myopic gaze toward terrorism this summer, Burns offered a helpful
clue to law enforcement officials: Be wary of "faceless"
Arabs who "drive taxicabs by day and kill at night." But
this minor bit of sociological skylarking actually represents
progress, of sorts, considering his 1999 outburst blaming
"ragheads" for rising gas prices and additional episodes
in 1994 in which he delivered a casual joke from the podium about
"niggers" and told another audience that living in
Washington with so many blacks "is quite a challenge."

But he saved
some scorn for the working class, too. This summer, Burns
incautiously told a team of firefighters who had been battling a
raging Montana wildfire that they did a "piss poor job"
and that one in particular "hadn't done a goddamned thing."
He then wrote a public letter to governor Brian Schweitzer
requesting that he declare a state of emergency. Schweitzer had
done so 45 days earlier.

IT
TAKES A VILLAGE IDIOT Rep. Cynthia McKinney inspires fear
and loathing

7. Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)
With
her famously
bad hair and even worse manners, Cynthia McKinney has long cut
a slightly ridiculous figure on Capitol Hill. But this year she
went to new extremes. First there was her notorious encounter with
a Capitol Hill police officer who dared to ask her for ID. After
brazenly ignoring several polite requests, the caterwauling
congresswoman responded by walloping the officer in the chest.
During the ensuing fracas she complained that she was persecuted
for "being in Congress while black." But what really
cemented her position at No. 7 was her frivolous threat to sue the
Atlantic Journal-Constitution for defamation over an
editorial that decried her light record of legislative
achievement. "She doesn't have the power or prestige to pass
a resolution in favor of sweetened iced tea," the paper
opined. McKinney fought back by proudly producing a survey that
ranked her as the 277th most effective legislator in the House. In
fact the survey, by congress.org, placed her at 408.

The
embarrassing incident didn't end her absurd fatwa against the
paper. When the Journal-Constitution published a poll
showing her opponent in this year's primary with a commanding
lead, McKinney went ballistic again. "We have notified them
of their libelist [sic] writing," she said, darkly. A few
days later she lost by 20 points. Now she's preparing another
lawsuit charging that Johnson's runaway victory was the result of
compromised voting machines.

Among the many
constituencies that will welcome McKinney's departure are
Atlanta's Jews: Her fractious relationship with the community
dates back to 1992, when her father denounced her then opponent as
a "racist Jew." Two years later, she refused to denounce
the anti-Semitic rantings of a Farrakhan aide, and, in 2001, one
of her own aides was forced to resign after calling congress an
"Israel-occupied territory." When Rudy Giuliani returned
a $10 million 9/11 donation from Saudi Prince Al-Waweed bin Talal,
who blamed the attack on the U.S. relationship with Israel,
McKinney took it upon herself to write a letter of apology to the
prince. And at her concession
speech in August, when a staffer was inadvertently struck by a
microphone, McKinney supporters not only beat up the reporters on
hand, they hurled gems like: "You know what led to this loss?
Israel ... Zionists! Put your yarmulke on your head and
celebrate." Oy.

TOUGH
SCHMIDT Rep. Jean Schmidt leaves a stream of civilian
casualties in her wake

6. Representative Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
"Mean"
Jean Schmidt blazed her way into congressional history last year
by using her first-ever floor speech to paint Rep. John Murtha, a
decorated Marine Corps vet, as a coward, provoking a chorus of
jeers and calls for her expulsion (for violating a longstanding
rule against personal attacks from the floor.) Adding insult to
injury, the Marine to whom she'd attributed the statement denied
ever making it. Eventually, the red-faced rep was forced to
apologize and begged for her witless remarks to be stricken from
the Congressional Record.

But crass
vet-baiting seems to be a conditioned reflex for Schmidt. In last
spring's hard-fought special election campaign against Democrat
Paul Hackett, an Iraq war vet, her staff publicly suggested that
his combat record did not qualify him to hold office. Which is not
to say she isn't above exploiting American soldiers for her own
political benefit: Witness a recent debate with her GOP primary
opponents to which Schmidt arrived 40 minutes late with the
explanation that she had been comforting a dead Marine's
family—and her cringe-worthy demand that the crowd then join
hands in prayer.

Meanwhile,
here's a taste of how she characterizes the mindset of Iraqi
civilians. "The Iraqi's perception is that we're all
powerful," Schmidt wrote in a recent newsletter, offering her
thumbnail portrait of the noble savages. "We watch them from
space with technology they cannot even imagine ... They know we
can do anything." If only.

VEGETATIVE
STATE Sen. Barbara Boxer caught in a fruity deep thought

5. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Boxer
is a limousine liberal running a few gallons short of a full tank.
After convening a Democratic press event at a gas station to
publicize high oil prices and accuse Bush and Cheney of being too
cozy with the oil industry, California's junior senator "hopped
into a waiting Chrysler (18 MPG)," noted the Washington
Post, "even though her Senate office was only a block
away."

Then there are
Bab's manglings of diction and logic, such as this chestnut:
"Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, 'Thank
God I'm still alive.' But of course those who died, their lives
will never be the same again." Boxer's most egregious crimes
against language are on florid display in her self-infatuated
novel A Time to Run, which features a California senator
embarking on a bold, maverick crusade to protect children from
violence. One passage describes "a magical time when the
three of them caught the rainbow, found the pot of gold beneath
it, and managed to forget how easily and swiftly that fairy gold
could slip away." And then there's the ghastly way Boxer
envisions a lustful courtship: "Her skirt was very short, and
Josh found himself mesmerized by her perfectly shaped, silken legs
with kneecaps that reminded him of golden apples—he couldn't
remember having been captivated by kneecaps before—and her
lustrous thighs."

MEET
THE PUTZ Rep. J.D. Hayworth (left) looks as dumb as he
his

4. Representative J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)
After
a long tour as a Sunbelt TV sportscaster, Hayworth rode the 1994
Republican revolution into office, where he started things off by
telling a group of environmental activists that untrammeled
logging was a conservation measure because forests are a fire
hazard. He distributed leaflets on the House floor accusing
Maryland Democrat Steny Hoyer of promoting "sex training for
federal employees," planning to indoctrinate them into drug
use, and pushing New Age cult worship, all because of a proposal
to extend health coverage for abortions under dire circumstances.
And the amendment Hayworth was protesting so absurdly wasn't
Hoyer's at all—it was actually the work of Hayworth's fellow
Republican, Rep. Ron Packard of California.

Over the
years, he racked up more than $150,000 from Jack Abramoff's
clients, $64,520 in the last election cycle alone, second in the
House only to Majority Leader Dennis Hastert. Alone among Congress
members, though, Hayworth has refused to return any of the tainted
funds, offering only this rationale: the donors don't want the
money back.

Hayworth's
dimness is so legendary on the Hill that one Arizona colleague
told a reporter that he's a textbook example of the power of
gerrymandering because of his continued ability to get re-elected
despite saying "any foolish thing." Recently he put that
thesis to the test, openly approving the nativist writings of the
anti-Semitic auto baron Henry Ford and repeatedly mis-stating a
reporter's first and last name during an interview. Of course,
Hayworth is a strong supporter of "English only" bills,
proving yet again the adage that those who can't do, legislate.

FOSSIL
FOOL Sen. James Inhofe's presence on Capitol Hill is an
inconvenient truth

3. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)
Inhofe
is best known for his categorical claim that global warming is
"the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"—a
rhetorical flourish he recently refined by likening climate change
theories to Nazi Lyndon
LaRouche the American Ambassador to England.

But that's not
the half of it. As far back as 1972, he called for Democratic
presidential nominee George McGovern to be "hanged with Jane
Fonda" for referring to alleged atrocities committed by
American troops in Vietnam. In 2001, he took to the Senate floor
to announce that Israel was justified in whatever treatment it
handed out to Palestinians because, after all, God had promised
the Jews the land they occupied. For good measure, he also called
Palestinian terror bombers practitioners of "satanic evil,"
and intimated to the New Republic that both Bill and Hillary
Clinton were out to assassinate him.

And then there
was the recent debate over the latest constitutional amendment to
ban gay marriage, when Inhofe assured Senate colleagues of his own
virility and that of his manly forbearers. "My wife and I
have been married 47 years. We have 20 kids and grandkids. I'm
really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family,
we've never had a divorce or a homosexual relationship." It's
the same flawless gene pool that produced a man who thinks our
situation in Iraq is "nothing short of a miracle."

PORKY
PIG Rep. Donald Young likes to make you squeal

2. Representative Donald Young (R-AK)
The
scene: Fairbanks, Alaska, 1994. Congressman Don Young, already in
office for 20 years, is on the stump preaching the virtues of Newt
Gingrich's Republican revolution to a group of high school
students. Just look at all the wasteful things the federal
government does with taxpayers' money, he tells them. The National
Endowment for the Arts, for example, funds art involving "people
doing offensive things ... things that are absolutely ridiculous."
One student asks, "Like what?"

"Buttfucking,"
replies the great scourge of obscenity and instructor of youth.

Young's
performance remains a classic in the annals of congressional
idiocy, offering that rare, supremely unselfconscious moment in
which one of our nation's legislative solons lets his addled mind
graze freely. But the real irony of this legendary gaffe is that
the congressman lecturing on government waste was the very same
man who, years later, would be responsible for Alaska's fabled
"Bridge
to Nowhere," a $233 million project constructed entirely
of pork. And it's the same man who, when asked about his state's
outrageous $941 million transportation bill, boasted "I
stuffed it like a turkey," before adding that detractors of
the bridge—equal in length to the Golden Gate but connecting
to a town with a population of 50—could "kiss my
ear."

SYBIL
SERVANT Representative Katherine Harris is the biggest
boob on the Hill

1.Representative Katherine Harris (R-FL)
If
dumb Congress members were the X-Men, Harris would be their
Wolverine—a mutant possessing fearsome
skills, the product of a demented government experiment gone
horribly wrong. Back in 2000, the then-Florida secretary of state
thrust herself into the national spotlight by peremptorily calling
the state for George W. Bush. Of course, the longtime crony of
Bush's brother Jeb was also Florida's GOP campaign chair. Two
years later, after she won her seat in the House, Harris wasted no
time becoming a by-the-numbers culture warrior. But she really hit
her stride on the campaign trail. Running for re-election in 2004,
she told voters in Venice, Florida, that a "Middle Eastern"
man had been arrested for trying to blow up the power grid of
Carmel, Indiana. Neither the mayor of Carmel nor the governor of
Indiana—nor anyone else acquainted with reality—had
any idea what Harris was talking about.

Florida
Republicans responded with sound skepticism when Harris put
herself forward to face off against Democratic Senate incumbent
Bill Nelson in 2006. But Harris was undaunted, allegedly telling
campaign consultant Ed Rollins that God had asked her to run for
Senate.

Nevertheless,
the Supreme Being seems to have other plans for Florida
Republicans—and especially for Harris's campaign team. Team
Harris has hemorrhaged more than 25 senior staff and consultants,
Rollins among them, over the past year. They rush for the exits
every time there's a fresh report on Harris's shady dealing: her
$2,800 dinner with MZM defense contractor (and Duke Cunningham's
lubricator in chief) Mitchell Wade, who reportedly vowed to kick
in $200,000 for a Harris fundraiser; her withdrawal of $100,000
from her campaign coffers to pay for repairs to her house; news
that the FBI is collecting her campaign e-mails for review; and
her decision to conceal from her lead staffer a federal subpoena
concerning the abuses.

Need more?
There was the surreal appearance on Hannity & Colmes
during which Harris stood in profile for the entirety of her
softball
interview, seemingly intending to showcase her pronounced dé
colletage to Fox News viewers. There was Harris's whisper campaign
after the increasingly desperate state GOP reportedly approached
former congressman and cable-host Joe Scarborough to run against
her and that Scarborough had a "dead intern problem."
Mainly, though, there's her Stalin-esque management style, which
includes attacking staffers for such trespasses as procuring the
wrong kind of candy, or for screwing up her Starbuck's order
(extra-hot low-foam nonfat venti triple lattes with one packet of
Sweet-n-Low). It's the sort of unhinged megalomania that makes us
giddy. At one point, Harris's battered staffers tested her by
submitting a two-month old speech she had written herself: She
pronounced it "terrible." Unfortunately, early polls
suggest our No. 1 pick won't be around to entertain us much
longer. Enjoy her while you can.