Chris Dodd abandons Ted Kennedy imitation; stays on his own sinking ship

A few weeks ago, Chris Dodd was eager to take over the official chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee as a tribute to his good friend Ted Kennedy, so as to continue Ted's life work of bringing socialized medicine to the United States.

Tonight, Dodd decided to stay with the sinking ship he's already been piloting, the Senate Banking Committee 

This is quite a surprise, since the conventional wisdom just days ago was the Dodd would benefit politically from quitting the Committee responsible for the 2008 Financial Meltdown and going to the committee that is writing the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care bill. (not that anyone can figure out exactly what it says, anyway)

So what happened?

Maybe Dodd decided that being blamed for only one sinking ship was enough, and once Obamacare sank it would be wise to be out of the line of sight when folks went looking for scapegoats.

What also happened is one of Dodd's Republican opponents, Sam Caligiuri,  has been hammering Dodd for trying to run two committees at once, and failing at both jobs. 

I  am calling on Senator Dodd to decline the position of the HELP Committee Chairman, if it is offered to him. He should be finishing the job he has barely started of fixing the financial sector problems that got us into this economic disaster in the first place, and not spending his time promoting ill advised health care legislation.

Guess Mr. Dodd couldn;t conjure up a coherent response to Senator Caligiuri's challenge. 

Of course, there's been no progress on reforming the financial regulatory system all year, because Dodd was out pretending to be Teddy Kennedy. Now Dodd returns to a reform effort in tatters. , as nothing has been done in months to advance the complex issue.

Hey, it's not like we didn;t have a financial meltdown recently or anything that would warrant making this a priority.

Well, let's give Dodd credit.  He's staying on the same sinking ship he's already captained. After all, Captain Smith is treated more kindly by history than Bruce Ismay.