Perverse Senate System

Mattew Yglesias writes with regards to Ted Kennedy's death's impact on Senate committee assignments:

Part of the larger moral of the story here is that one of the perverse
aspects of the committee system is that it encourages progressive politicians to
maximize their power on the issues where they take the least-progressive stands.
I agree with Tom Harkin about almost everything except agricultural policy. And
Chris Dodd has a much better record on all the issues that aren’t financial
institution regulation than on the issue he has the most power over. If you just
reassigned everyone at random, you’d probably improve outcomes.