Stand up for ‘lame duck’
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Eventually we'll know more about why Amy Koch decided to resign as majority leader, but for now we're stuck with the same story that everyone gives for leaving every job: More time with family, and/or exciting new opportunities. Here's how she put it: "I want to explore some other options. I want to spend a little time with my daughter." No surprise there, nor anything revealing.
But here's what caught my attention: Koch's assertion that she didn't think the Senate Republican caucus should be led by a lame duck. Huh? In what sense is she a lame duck?
Only in the sense that Sarah Palin was, when she resigned as governor of Alaska with a year and change left to her term. Those who care about language and the meaning of words have to speak up now, or "lame duck" - a useful term in talking about politics - will be lost forever.
The term refers to an officeholder who is on the way out because of term limits or a defeat at the polls. Here's a handy look at its origins, provided in podcast form by my colleagues Curtis Gilbert and Molly Bloom.
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If "lame duck" meant what Koch and Palin are using it to mean, then every politician not planning to run again would be a lame duck. Robert Schlesinger at U.S. News and World Report made the point well a couple of years ago. Under Palin's logic, he wrote,
No president should run for a second term because they would instantly be a powerless lame duck, subjecting the country to four years of utter fecklessness. And if a president is then not going to run for a second term, they automatically become a lame duck as soon as they take office in their first term ... so they should not seek the presidency at all.
(I write this in full knowledge that there's a different word for people like me who struggle to keep language from changing: Dinosaurs. I wear the label proudly.)
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