Yet another good guy gives up on Washington

For Republicans like Davis, these are gloomy times. While John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate energized the party after a long stretch of depressing developments, the most optimistic Republican strategists still expect further losses in Congress even if McCain wins the White House.

The way Davis sees it, the system has become dysfunctional. Bush has so destroyed the party’s public standing and Congress has become so infected with a win-at-all-costs mentality that there is no point in staying. “You know, the Cubs fans used to put the bags over their heads,” he told me when we met for eggs at Mickey’s Dining Car in St. Paul the first morning of the Republican National Convention. “That’s what I feel when you say you’re from Congress, because there are just so many things we’re not doing.”

This might be dismissed if it came from a fringe player on Capitol Hill, but for years Davis was one of the rising stars, a quintessential inside player who as part of the leadership managed to steer his party to election victories in even-numbered years while working with Democrats on legislation in odd-numbered years. He ran the House Republican campaign committee for two elections and later bypassed more senior congressmen to become chairman of the House Government Reform Committee until his party lost control of Congress. He spent a lifetime getting to this point and is now washing his hands of it, even as he foresees a fiscal reckoning after so much unbridled government spending, most recently to bail out Wall Street.