A Jerk or A Loon?

John Podhoretz, writing in The Corner, offers his thoughts on Sen. "Weepy" Voinovich's three-hanky speech in the Senate yesterday:

There he was, Sen. George Voinovich, the Republican from Ohio, choking back tears and then weeping as he spoke against John Bolton in the well of the Senate. I have to tell you, my first response was that he has gone totally crackers. The rhetoric he used was, quite simply, bananas. I mean, he fears for the lives of his grandchildren if Bolton is confirmed?

But then, I remembered -- and we should all remember and keep posting the fact that -- George Voinovich was fined $1,500 by the Federal Aviation Administration when he was governor of Ohio for insisting on his personal plane taking off even though the FAA had declared a no-fly zone at the Cleveland Airport because President Clinton was in town. "Shoot us down!" he screamed at an air-traffic controller. Then he spent six months fighting the FAA fine on the grounds that -- well, he didn't have any grounds. There are numerous interpretations of the incident. 1) He's a jerk. 2) He's a loon. 3) He's a jerk and a loon. 4) He's a loon and a jerk. 5) He's a jerky loon. 6) He's a loony jerk.

For the record, I go with the simple "jerk." And I hope his press secretary calls me to complain about this, which press secretaries of hotheaded, self-indulgent, loudmouth senators often do because their hotheaded, self-indulgent, loudmouth bosses insist they do so. Oh, how I hope.