The Mind of Al Franken
Minnesota's new senator is no clown.
Now that he is a senator-elect, Al Franken is allowing himself a joke or two, and so are the people he is talking to. "Franken, I know why you dragged this whole thing out: you like all the attention, don't you?" President Obama said as he congratulated the former comedian on his long-delayed and court-reviewed election victory.
The president complimented Franken on having "held up well under stress," which allowed the Minnesotan to make the deadpan offer of "tips" on how to survive in the political limelight.
The president, according to Franken, laughed at that one. "He's a funny guy."
No higher praise.
Asked Wednesday by a Minnesota Public Radio interviewer what he would be thinking when he is sworn in next week, Franken dead-panned again. "I will be thinking about protecting the
Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic," he said.
Wonderfully droll. And long overdue, at least by my lights, though I have to admit that Al and I have been friends for more than two decades.
So take what I say here with the appropriate shaker of salt.
I see where Sen. James of Oklahoma Inhofe called Al "the clown from Minnesota."
That statement, in and of itself, is amusing—since it comes from a man who has declared global warming "to be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"; who has demanded, admittedly with no justification, a criminal investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency; who has suggested that Sonia Sotomayor is a slave to "her own race and gender"; and who announced that he would vote against her on the day she was nominated, hearings be damned.
Now that is a clown.
Al Franken is not one.
What the guy has, above all, is a remorselessly logical, mathematically precise mind. It was the brain behind a lot of his humor, which de-pended on reducing things (such as self-help advice) to their logically absurd and contradictory essentials.
He aced the math SATs in high school and a number of math courses at Harvard on his way to a degree there. His son, Joe, did the same on his way to engineering honors at Princeton.
It will be fun, and instructive, to watch Franken asking questions at committee hearings. His first chance to do so may well be So-tomayor's confirmation hearings. He already has said that he wants to ask her about campaign-finance reform. He's for it—especially since he's spent the last two years raising cash.
Not only is Franken not clownish, he isn't so down-the-line liberal, either. The way he had to earn his victory—going to every town in every country and listening to every local concern from farmers, local businesspeople and union members—means that he is no Hollywood liberal. He has been mugged by reality.
He is not dogmatic. He is practical. On Wednesday, he repeated his assertion that he favors "universal" health care that involves "universal access, that is affordable and high quality." "Health-care organizations" should be "patient oriented" not just "profit oriented." But I didn't hear him issue a demand about a sweeping "public option"—the sine qua non for liberal groups.
On foreign policy, don't expect him to be a one-man flock of doves. He reluctantly, but earnestly, supported President Bush's initial deci-sion to go to war in Iraq—though Franken quickly soured on, and then became infuriated about, the administration's handling of the war and other aspects of the fight against terrorism.
After a series of USO tours to the war zone stretching over years, Franken has built up an innate respect for, and trust of, the military. He's not going to be the reflexively anti-Pentagon guy many would expect from a former writer on Saturday Night Live.
Throughout the campaign, the most impressive thing about Al was his focus—and his determination to take the best, and often the most cautious, advice. One would-be advisor told him that the best way to deal with his show-biz background was to shine a light on it, play it up.
"That was 100 percent wrong!" Al told me last night. He was laughing.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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