Man, we could really use some Pat Leahy right about now.

Not that I have any beef with his decision to retire. It was the right thing to do. But Leahy was our D.C. wizard, our bureaucratic Batman, and now that he’s gone we seem to be struggling with, whaddya know, wielding influence on the federal level.

Leahy wasn’t the most progressive of figures. But his decades of seniority and his insider expertise meant that Vermont punched above its weight on governmental matters, especially when it came to money. I wouldn’t say we’ve got no clout in the post-Pat era, but we’ve got a lot less than we did when he was watching over Gotham.

Before the 2022 election, we had the president pro tem of the freakin’ Senate, plus a key leader of the House Democratic Caucus in Peter Welch. At a time when we were losing Leahy’s pull, Welch’s decision to run for Senate dealt us a double blow.

Now, Welch is a politician with a politician’s ego. It would have been awfully tough for him to turn down a career-capping promotion to the Senate and an exit from the barely controlled madness of the House. But he didn’t do Vermont any favors when he did so. At age 77, he won’t get the chance to reach the upper rungs of the senatorial ladder. And Bernie’s next term will almost certainly be his last, assuming he disposes of Scary Eagle Man in November. We’re gonna be charity cases in the Senate for years to come, and Becca Balint has just begun her ascent in the House. Plus, she’ll almost certainly run for the Senate at the first incumbent-free opportunity, putting us back at the bottom in the House.

The signs of our diminished leverage are subtle but unmistakable. A few examples:

• Our postal troubles. It’s hard to imagine Leahy putting up with the lack of a post office in his hometown. It’s very easy to imagine him having Louis DeJoy’s guts for garters. The USPS has dithered and delayed and defaulted on promises, and what do we get in response? Bleats of protest from our Congresscritters.

We’ve also got the Postal Service’s move to shut down mail sorting in White River Junction and rerouting our mail through, was it Connecticut? Or possibly Timbuktu? Leahy wouldn’t have stood for that.

• FEMA’s “plodding bureaucracy.” As other outlets were seemingly regurgitating press releases about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s stout response to our various natural disasters, Vermont Public’s Peter Hirschfeld posted a nice little stinkbomb of a story about how our municipalities are hamstrung by an agency seemingly failing in its core mission of, well, emergency management. (Which followed an earlier piece by, how about that, Hirschfeld, about the struggles of individual Vermonters to get any relief from the feds.)

Towns in at least five counties that were part of the 2023 federal disaster declaration have yet to get reimbursed from FEMA for catastrophic damage to critical infrastructure.

We’ve already experienced a few disasters since then, and FEMA hasn’t been able to handle the workload from July of last year? Shameful. I can only imagine what kinds of fresh hell Pat Leahy would have wrought. Welch offered the requisite quote about “immense frustration” with FEMA. Yeah, that and a five-spot will get you a venti at Starbucks.

• The disaster-funding-free short-term spending deal. Thanks to the recalcitrance of Republican dead-enders, Congress has barely managed to avoid a government shutdown. But the agreement doesn’t include any fresh funding for FEMA, which is already out of funds and effectively borrowing against next year. Has anyone had any second thoughts since Helene devastated a whole bunch of red states? Don’t know, and there’s no way to tell if Leahy could have made a difference. But I sure as hell would have loved to see him try.

I also have to wonder how Leahy could have leveraged his power to get Vermont more funding on a variety of needs — broadband, housing, easing the pain of diminished federal Covid aid, just off the top of my head.

I realize I’m crying over spilled milk, and again, I’m not saying that Leahy should have run for another term in 2022. But I am saying, in the words of John Lennon, that you don’t know what you got until you lose it. We lost a hell of a lot, and it came at what turned out to be a critical time.