Chuck Hagel: 5% Good, 5% Bad, 90% Sketchy as Hell

I'm ... bemused.

People just can't seem to get enough of Senator Chuck Hagel and his straight talk on the President's latest Iraq fantasy. It's been this way ever since he started voicing opposition to the occupation several months ago - but my, oh my, how we all love the good senator after this week's resolution in the Senate.

I've read more than a few frenzied blogsters over the last two days calling on Hagel to ride this grand chariot of truth and honor all the way to the White House. Why, he's a hero! He's an independent thinker who's got the solid brass balls it takes to stand up to the president!

Likewise, for every "Father my children, Chuck Hagel" rant, an army of outraged observers marches in to steal away the bipartisan love. Their weapon of choice: Hagel has managed to amass one of the most conservative voting records in the U.S. Senate and can't be trusted.

These are both legitimate and interesting arguments, but I just can't relate. Hagel has been one of my senators since I was in fifth grade. Fifth grade. For me, he's got the "new" appeal of an eight-year-old piece of furniture. I watched as Hagel spent his first seven years in the Senate using that arch-conservative streak to build one of the greatest (or for some of us, most frustrating) personality cults in the history of Nebraska politics. The progressive elements of Husker Nation tuned him out long ago as it became clear that we would not be able to get rid of him (we don't have the voter registration numbers to actually confront our problems here), so he's really not a novelty at all anymore. Luckily, this substantially bored outlook on the good senator puts me in a position for some thoughtful observation. Here, friends, is my carefully distilled, aged-in-an-oak-barrel, calm and collected musing on today's Chuck Hagel.

Hagel IS:

• He is a fundamentally reasonable person, if only recently. The last thing I want to do today is take away from Hagel's monumental decision to come out so strongly against pumping more troops into such a morass of foulup idiocy. Clearly the argument can be made that he's only posturing for a presidential bid, but a Hagel that's establishing himself as a vocal opponent of escalation is light years better than a hawkish Hagel - no matter what the motivation.
• He is a damn good person to have on our side in this particular fight. Put his voting record aside briefly and understand that Chuck Hagel can both articulate foreign policy better than most and exercise tremendous pull within the Senate's security community. Indeed, he did vote to start the war in the first place. Given that Tom Daschle, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd all made the same mistake, this is a very poor reason to insist that Hagel be cast out of the debate on Iraq (although Hagel's vote likely stemmed more heavily from a streak of partisan hackery than did any of the aforementioned Democrats). Anyway, welcome the fact that he's helping in the ultimate goal: Ending absolutely pointless American deaths in Iraq as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, the past is a cruel mistress, and the past shows us that Chuck Hagel is most definitely NOT:

• He is not a fundamentally reasonable politician. We can only hope that he's coming from the gut on his Iraq stance, but as recently as last October, Hagel was all over the local radio stumping for a sad, bald little man named Pete Ricketts (who eventually lost to Sen. Ben Nelson by thirty points or so). To say that war sexually arouses Mr. Ricketts is probably an understatement, and Hagel's dogged partisan support of him in an effort to "get back" at Nelson for a nasty 1998 campaign is more than a little telling.


• He is not responsible for many good votes in the Senate. At all. This has been elaborated upon time and again by countless livid anti-Hagel people, all of whom have a really good point: Chuck Hagel talks like a man who wants to be the next great moderate president, but for years was a staunch supporter of the Bush Doctrine and took horrible stances on ... well, literally every issue. Including Iraq, until a few months ago.

Make every outlandish declaration you want about this man; in the end, there are only two fundamental truths surrounding him: We should be thankful he came around on Iraq and Hagel does deserve credit where credit is due - but anyone who's ready to ship him to the Oval Office isn't thinking clearly enough about what that would mean after the war is ended, which it will be under any Democratic president.

Yes, it's frustrating when Hillary Clinton can't avoid being a wishy-washy, noncommittal tool. That's why we don't have to nominate her. But folks, past the Iraq posturing, Chuck Hagel is sketchy as hell. He really, really is. Considering the dozens of other monumental issues facing the country before 2012, it would be prudent to weigh the dozens of issues he would absolutely butcher as president against the one issue he would get right.