Sen. * against the tide of history

David Broder:

Chuck Hagel, the senator from Nebraska, describes himself as a "tidal" politician, one who believes that larger forces in society shape careers more than the ambitions of individuals. "The only mistakes I've made," he told me last week, "were when I tried to go against the tide."

Today, that tide may be carrying him away from his Republican Party and toward a third-party or independent ticket with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- a development that could reshape the dynamics of the 2008 presidential race.

Next month, Hagel will make a threshold decision -- whether to run for a third term in the Senate. He gave me no definitive answer, but my guess is that he will say that 12 years of battling the institutional lethargy of Capitol Hill will be enough. Certainly he is under no illusions about how much he can achieve as one of 100 lawmakers.

On the contrary, while Washington is gridlocked in partisan battle between two equally spent parties, the country is moving rapidly, he thinks, to the conclusion that neither Republicans nor Democrats have the answers to the problems people see.

The war in Iraq is the prime example, a war on which Hagel was perhaps the first prominent Republican to break with the president. Credit problems that have shaken the mortgage markets and fed the decline in housing add to the sense of anxiety. And the abject failure of Washington to deal with the issue of illegal immigration is fueling further frustration.

...

Just when you think Sen. * cannot get anymore pathetic he rises to the occasion and meets with a reporter who is as out of touch on his political viability as he is. For those who are new to this blog, Hagel got his Sen. * name because polls use an * to designate candidates who do not get one percent support from voters. Bloomberg has already read the polls and decided that a third party candidacy would not be viable, but Chuck Hagel apparently still has his fantasies and David Broder is willing to indulge them. Just as the surge is showing his judgment about Iraq was wrong, Hagel is still trying to act like he has just the message everyone wants. Forget about it.