Washingtonian magazine’s annual confidential survey of Congressional staffers is a fascinating, if not always reliable, take on who they view as their best and worst bosses in a host of categories.
Harry Reid, who may be the outgoing Senate majority leader, was voted both “worst speaker” and “most partisan” in that body. He came in second to Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski as “meanest.” Reid’s GOP counterpart Mitch McConnell was labeled the greatest “workhorse” and the “wisest” senator.
In the House, Nancy Pelosi took home honors as “most partisan” but also “best dressed.” John Boehner was voted “funniest,” while the now-departed House majority leader Eric Cantor was tagged as “lobbyists’ best friend.”
Back to the Senate, Ted Cruz is clearly not popular with many staffers, being tagged as a leader in several categories: “most partisan,” “biggest disappointment,” and “worst at the ask.” But the dangers of such anonymous surveys are also clear. Wisconsin GOP senator Ron Johnson was given the “clueless” award with Washingtonian claiming he earned the superlative
The old-fashioned way, spouting gaffes on climate change (Greenland “was actually green at one point”) and hyperbolizing (Obamacare is the “greatest assault on our freedom in my lifetime”) often enough to inspire a website titled Our Dumb Senator. What likely put him over the top in the survey, however, was filing a nuisance lawsuit this year that would have deprived Hill staff of their health-coverage subsidy.
Whoa. It turns out Johnson was right about Greenland, as per this recent article from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
And as for Johnson’s lawsuit claiming that Congressional staffers were excluded from the full impact of Obamacare by an illegal subterfuge? The suit hasn’t gone far because of the judiciary’s refusal to grant him standing to sue, but the facts are quite clear: President Obama personally ordered the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which supervises federal employment issues, to interpret Obamacare so as to retain generous congressional health benefits even though OPM had previously refused to issue such a ruling.
I can understand why Senator Johnson’s action would be voted “least sociable” on a Capitol Hill full of Beltway denizens, but it was anything but “clueless.”