It's hard to imagine a rookie senator who's better equipped to confront a complicated issue like Syria than Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey.

Before winning a Senate special election in June, Markey served for nearly four decades in the House, and he's a recognized policy heavyweight in the halls of Congress. Yet when it came time for him to cast a critical committee vote Wednesday on the use of force in Syria — the most important vote of his brief career in the Senate — Markey essentially took a pass. He voted "present," making him the only one of 18 members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to dodge a "yes" or "no" vote.

Predictably, Markey is taking a public beating for his nonvote vote.