Sometimes Life Just Sucks

It's time to announce my new award. It will be given weekly to the politician who has the worst run of luck in the previous seven days. Straight up, I'll tell you I stole the name for my award from the title of Judith Viorst's wonderful children's book about a boy called Alexander.
So, allow me to unveil my new:

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week Award

I haven't decided what the winner will get. I was thinking of an emergency shipment of cookies and milk to soothe the wounds to their psyche, but I'm open to suggestions. I had a lot of good candidates for this new award, but one stood out from the crowd. So, the envelope please. Now, the drum roll. My winner is:

U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon

I am not a big fan of Weldon's -- a feeling that is reciprocated by the Delaware County Republican -- but you have to feel sorry for the guy. Here he is in the midst of a tough re-election campaign and he spends the week getting hit left and right. Let me count the ways:

Terrible: In comes Time columnist Joe Klein to do a profile on Weldon's race against Democratic Joe Sestak. It ends up being a Valentine to Sestak, who's portrayed as a Jimmy Stewart-type, filled with earnestness and savvy (a rare combination.) As to Curt, the Klein piece includes these gems. There's this quote. "Curt can be absolutely brilliant," says a House colleague. "But there's also a slightly unhinged quality to him." And this one: "He's like an out-of-shape boxer," says one of Weldon's friends. "His timing is off. I know he deeply regrets that comment about Sestak's daughter." Yikes! And that's a friend talking?

Horrible: A liberal Washington-based goo-goo group comes out with a list of the Hill's "Most Corrupt" electied officials and guess who's on it? Curt Weldon. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) blasted Weldom and others for "egregious, unethical and possibly illegal activities." This is not the first run-in Weldon has had with CREW. In 2004, CREW wrote the Justice Departmeet seeking an investigation into Weldon after the Los Angeles Times ran a piece about his daughter's work as a lobbyist. While the allegations are not new, the CREW "Most Currupt" tag comes at a bad time. Like in the midde of Weldon's re-election campaign. Here is Bill Bender's piece on the flap that ran in the Delco Daily Times.

No Good: A couple of year's ago, Weldon got a ton of ink on his "Able Danger" allegations -- his assertion that American intelligence officials bobbled the ball before 9/11 because they had knowledge of some of the organizers of that terrorist attack and did nothing to stop them.

On Thursday, the Pentagon's Inspector General's office released a report debunking the "Able Danger" allegations. His fellow Able Dangerites lambasted the report, as did Weldon, who told the Delco Daily Times that the Pentagon was out to get him by releasing the report right before the election. But, the headline on the story must have made Weldon wince. "Report: Curt wrong about Able Danger"

Very Bad: Finally, this morning, the Inquirer runs a piece about a certain pol coming to help Sestak. Guess who? Bill Clinton. Outside of Ed Rendell, Clinton is arguably the most popular Democrat in the Philly burbs. He won Delco both times he ran for President. While in the Navy, Sestak worked in the Clinton White House as a military staffer. Clinton's appearance on Oct. 5th will be a free media bonanza for the Democratic challenger. He is the last person you want around if you are a Republican in a district that has been trending Democratic in recent years.