Sen. Tom Coburn is no politician. A politician concerns himself more with politics than the good governance of the nation or his constituency. His main concern is re-election, thus he worries more about polls, photo-ops, publicity, sound-bites, and selfish, short-term convenience than the long-term national interest. He will follow the path of least political resistance, whether or not that path is ultimately the right one for the nation to venture down or not.
No, Sen. Coburn is a statesman. A statesman does the opposite of what I described above. Sen. Coburn is solely interested in the national interest. For example, he has led a crusade against earmarks because they elevate parochial interests above the national interest by creating burdensome deficits which, as George Will pointed out, "reverse the American tradition of making sacrifices for the benefit of rising generations." Despite this, politicians love earmarks. Bringing home the pork is always something they may crow about before their constituents come election time.
Another case in point; when running for congress in 1994 the senator promised to limit himself to three terms—a promise he kept. A politician would have made the same politically convenient promise and then found an equally convenient excuse to violate it if and when the opportunity arose.
Sen. Coburn has promised to only spend two terms in the Senate, should he be fortunate enough to be re-elected by the people of Oklahoma when his current term expires. If he is not it will not bother him however, "[t]he Republic will live on" as he puts it. He is simply more interested in shaming the Senate into governing responsibly then re-election and political survival(the central concern of the typical politician). Such statesmanship is far too scarce these days.
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