I have complimentary and important things to say about Kyrsten Sinema, but I don't know her and my distant observation is befogged by her mystery.
If I write that she's exactly what the doctor ordered for American politics, which I'd like to say, because that case can be made, might I be endorsing ... I don't know ... a weirdo, a flake, a cynical game-player?
If she were local, I'd have direct insight. But she's Arizonan and, in contemporary national political terms, kind of low-profile--not in regard to showing up in headlines, but in terms of appearing on national political television programming, revealing traits one might assess over time.
So I sought advice from a couple of Washington insiders. Here's what I got back: I seemed to see her just right--as a positive independent force in our politics but, as one put it, "different." And, yes, she's her own free spirit, averse to Washington convention. But what's wrong with that? Isn't that part of what you like?
And, yes, she got friendly with big investment-banking people, took their campaign donations and used the leverage of her decisive vote to kill a carried-interest tax increase they opposed.
But we've let all our modern big-time politics become a matter of legalized implied bribery. Why single Sinema out when she raises money for her continued political interest and does a favor for big donors? The only thing unique about her is that she's such a key and decisive figure operating from the eccentric center in a split-even Senate that the confirmed partisans spit their disdain for her by citing a commonly shared sin.
And, yes, she said years ago as a young House member that Joe Lieberman was being absurd by leaving the Democrats for independent status--for doing precisely what she's doing now for precisely the same reasoning. But isn't double-speak the native tongue of many politicians?
Sinema likes and gets along with Mitch McConnell. She spoke by his invitation at his McConnell Center lecture series in Kentucky. He introduced her as the most effective freshman senator in his memory, speaking of cases that can be made.
To liberals and partisan Democrats, McConnell is the devil for the brutal way he installed a Supreme Court to take away women's rights. But there are Republicans who, day to day, are far less reasonable, far less pragmatic and far less sane.
Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have spoken at the McConnell Center.
Here's what Democratic partisans and liberals can thank Sinema for: She cast decisive votes to confirm scores of federal judgeship nominations by Joe Biden.
Here's something the nation can thank her for: She heard some of her Democratic colleagues expressing grudging willingness to settle post-Uvalde for imperfect incremental gun reform. So, she bounded to McConnell and asked whom she should see in the Republican caucus to get talks going.
He put her in touch with John Cornyn of Texas, who ended up getting heroically booed at a Texas Republican Convention for a law that spends millions on mental health treatment, closes a "boyfriend" loophole on domestic-violence red flags on gun purchases and applies juvenile records to gun purchases for persons younger than 21.
Here are the questions for partisan liberals scoffing and demanding only more dramatic gun reform, which can't pass: Are you against mental health treatment? Protective of battering boyfriends? Against gathering all relevant information on minors purchasing guns? Are you indifferent to the few lives any of that might save?
The infrastructure bill, which the White House cites as maybe its main achievement, was not the White House's achievement, but that of a bipartisan group of senators whom Sinema led, or at least prominently drove.
Now she's working with Republicans on an immigration bill that would establish a 10-year path to citizenship for Dreamers, expedite the decision process for refugee-seekers and enhance spending on new processing centers along the border.
Liberals tend to call that a pitiably inadequate proposal except when they express horror at expediting the refugee-seekers' decision process because that, they say, is heartless.
To be Sinema, or an independent-minded near-centrist, is to stand alone amid reckless two-way traffic.
So, with the proviso that I have no personal insight on whether Kyrsten Sinema is a weirdo, I submit she is indeed just what the doctor ordered--a politician who tends slightly left but insists on working in a toxic environment with Republican friends to get something worthwhile done.
We don't need a third party. The two we have are problem enough. We need individuals inclined one way or the other but not beholden, and bounding the other way to work among friends.
But what, Democrats cry, if it turns out that Sinema, by running as an independent for re-election in 2024, elects a Republican in the three-way jumble with a Democrat?
That's Arizona's decision. And the easy and right one would be just to vote for Sinema.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.