Chris Cillizza tosses a spotlight on Sen. Evan Bayh, whose centrist instincts are making the once-rumored VP contender a fly in the soup of Obama’s administration:

Bayh’s actions have caused some grumbling — privately, of course — among some in the White House who view his freelancing as less than helpful in seeking to push Obama’s legislative agenda through Congress.

A friendly suggestion for these anonymous grumblers: Re-read the frickin’ Constitution. Neither Sen. Bayh nor any other member of Congress is there to be “helpful” to the President’s “legislative agenda.” To the contrary, Congress was designed by our long-dead founding fathers to stop individuals — even those as meritorious as Obama — from getting everything they want. Job #1 for Bayh and his colleagues is to challenge and question, to check and balance. Hence Bayh’s retort to his veiled detractors:

“One hundred percent agreement is an unrealistic standard,” Bayh said of his critics, adding that anyone who marches lockstep with someone else “has abdicated either his brain or his backbone or both.”

Abdicating brain and/or backbone was precisely what Bush’s Republican-controlled Congress did — and we know how well that turned out. And no, I’m not suggesting Obama is Bush. What I am suggesting is that, regardless of the person, worshiping blindly at his or her altar is a thoroughly dangerous proposition; American government is predicated on accounting for the flaws and risks of human nature; and for those reasons, we should applaud those who, like Evan Bayh, understand and act on their Constitutional obligation to serve as ballasts to individual power.