The Speaker's Grand Illusion
Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats Need to Get Real About What They've Accomplished

By David S. Broder
Thursday, December 27, 2007; A17



After one year of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, public approval ratings for Congress have sunk below their level when Republicans were still in control. A Post poll this month put the approval score at 32 percent, the disapproval at 60.

In the last such survey during Republican control, congressional approval was 36 percent. So what are the Democrats to make of that? They could be using this interregnum before the start of their second year to evaluate their strategy and improve their standing. But if Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House and leader of their new majority, is to be believed, they are, instead, going to brag about their achievements.

In a year-end "fact sheet," her office proclaimed that "the Democratic-led House is listening to the American people and providing the New Direction the people voted for in November. The House has passed a wide range of measures to make America safer, restore the American dream and restore accountability. We are proud of the progress made this session and recognize that more needs to be done."

While surveys by The Post and other news organizations show that the public believes little or nothing of value has been accomplished in a year of bitter partisan wrangling on Capitol Hill, Pelosi claims that "the House has had a remarkable level of achievement over the first year, passing 130 key measures -- with nearly 70 percent passing with significant bipartisan support."

That figure is achieved by setting the bar conveniently low -- measuring as bipartisan any issue in which even 50 House Republicans broke ranks to vote with the Democrats. Thus, a party-line vote in which Democrats supported but most Republicans opposed criminal penalties for price-gouging on gasoline was converted, in Pelosi's accounting, into a "bipartisan" vote because it was backed by 56 Republicans.

There is more sleight of hand in her figures. Among the "key measures" counted in the news release are voice votes to protect infants from unsafe cribs and high chairs, and votes to require drain covers in pools and spas. Such wins bulk up the statistics. Many other "victories" credited to the House were later undone by the Senate, including all the restrictions on the deployment of troops in Iraq. And on 46 of the measures passed by the House, more than one-third of the total, the notation is added, "The president has threatened to veto," or has already vetoed, the bill.

One would think that this high level of institutional warfare would be of concern to the Democrats. But there is no suggestion in this recital that any adjustment to the nation's priorities may be required. If Pelosi is to be believed, the Democrats will keep challenging the Bush veto strategy for the remaining 12 months of his term -- and leave it up to him to make any compromises.

An honest assessment of the year would credit the Democrats with some achievements. They passed an overdue increase in the minimum wage and wrote some useful ethics legislation. They finally took the first steps to increase the pressure on Detroit to improve auto mileage efficiency.

But much of the year's political energy was squandered on futile efforts to micromanage the strategy in Iraq, and in the end, the Democrats yielded every point to the president. That left their presidential candidates arguing for measures in Iraq that have limited relevance to events on the ground -- a potential weak point in the coming election.

The major Democratic presidential hopefuls all have their political careers rooted in Congress, and the vulnerabilities of that Congress will in time come home to roost with them. Today, Democrats take some comfort from the fact that their approval ratings in Congress look marginally better than the Republicans'. In the most recent Post poll, Democrats are at 40 percent approval; Republicans, at 32 percent. But more disapprove than approve of both parties.

That is another reason it behooves the Democrats to get real about their own record on Capitol Hill. It needs improvement. And in less than a year, the voters will deliver their own verdict.

davidbroder@washpost.com

As the year draws to a close, it will be tempting for pundits—liberal and otherwise—to despair at the Democrats' inability to wield their new congressional leadership to affect real and swift change in the country. After all, the war in Iraq not only continues, but 2007 was its deadliest year. FISA presents a greater danger to American civil liberties today than it did when the Democrats took their gavels in January. And the radiant vision of Karl Rove being escorted down Pennsylvania Avenue to jail never came to pass.
But there have been successes, too. Many have emerged as part of an aggressive oversight effort, which has dragged a number of scandals out of the shadows and into the cleansing daylight. Democrats in both the House and Senate have led the way in exposing corrupt leadership at the Department of Justice, in revealing just how shadowy the president's domestic spying program is (and how unpopular it is among members of the federal law enforcement community), and in alerting the country to the damaging and deadly role private military contractors play in war zones.
So as we all take the measure of 2007, here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly in a year's worth of congressional oversight. Quiet as a mouse. There certainly have been gaffes, softballs, and missed opportunities. And the most obvious are found in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security—the Senate's version of Rep. Henry Waxman's Oversight Committee in the House. Unlike Waxman's enthusiastic probing, the Senate chair conducted zero proactive investigations into Bush administration malfeasance. It's chairman? Connecticut's Joseph Lieberman.
Fit for a Prince. Likewise, when Erik Prince, the now-infamous CEO of private military contractor Blackwater, was called to testify before Waxman's committee on October 2, many assumed he'd be slaughtered. Blackwater contractors had recently massacred more than a dozen Iraqis and had been implicated in a host of other atrocities. Waxman even came armed with a long and damning report about the company's misdeeds. But by the end of the hearing, Prince had found his stride. He shifted the focus from Blackwater to structural problems with the war effort in Iraq and refused to disclose how much of his company's billion dollars in federal contracts constituted profit. He closed by graciously thanking the committee for its hospitality. "Glad I could come here and correct some facts," Prince said.
Naming names—of sources. Over the summer, the House Judiciary Committee created an electronic tip line for whistleblowers in the Justice Department. Do-gooders provided enough personal information to allow the committee to investigate, but were assured the information would be kept in confidence. And it was—until the committee accidentally sent a list of the whistleblowers' email addresses to every address that had been entered at the site, including Vice President Dick Cheney's public email: vice_president@whitehouse.gov.
Foresight is 20/20. Blunders weren't confined to investigations. Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer helped Republican Judiciary Committee members endorse the nomination of then-designate Attorney General Michael Mukasey, despite his equivocal answers to questions about torture. The full Senate confirmed him by a vote of 53-40 on November 8; just one month later, the Department of Justice revealed that CIA videotapes of two detainees being interrogated—and allegedly waterboarded—had been destroyed, despite widespread objections among members of the government in the know. Given Mukasey's unwillingness to describe waterboarding as torture—and therefore a crime—some, including Senator Joe Biden, want an independent investigation of the matter.
The year started on a better foot for Democrats. Mukasey's nomination was the result of months of congressional tenacity in uncovering the administration's lies and distortions about its firing of U.S. attorneys and its warrantless wiretapping program. Throughout the spring and summer, the House and Senate Judiciary committees uncovered documents and held hearings that shook the Justice Department to its foundation.
Oops, did I say that? The U.S. attorneys scandal erupted almost immediately after the Democrats took over Congress, and, as such, became the focal point of their oversight. In their first weeks in power, Democrats interrogated Justice Department officials and obtained documents at odds with their testimonies. On May 23, under a grant of limited immunity, Justice's former director of public affairs, Monica Goodling, told the House Judiciary Committee that her one-time colleague, then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, had misled the Congress about the extent of White House involvement in politically motivated firings of U.S. attorneys.
Poor bedside manner. Just days earlier, on May 15, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey detailed for the Senate Judiciary Committee a 2004 attempt by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to make then-Attorney General John Ashcroft sign off on the National Security Agency's so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. Delirious in his hospital bed, Ashcroft refused, referring Gonzales instead to Comey. Comey thought the warrantless domestic snooping illegal and did not approve it. When the White House attempted to go over his head, he and several senior Justice Department officials threatened to resign.
All in the family. Prince's graceful exit from Waxman's October hearing was not the end of the Blackwater saga. A big part of Blackwater's job in Iraq is to protect State Department officers, but former Inspector General Howard "Cookie" Krongard had a peculiar allergy to watchdogging the relationship. On November 14, we learned why. Waxman's committee asked Cookie some tough questions—among them, did he know that his brother, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, was a member of Blackwater's advisory board? Cookie first insisted that his brother had told him otherwise in a conversation six weeks prior. During a break, he called his brother Buzzy and, he says, learned the hard truth, prompting him to vow before the committee to recuse himself from all Blackwater investigations going forward. The story didn't end there. Later that same day, reporter Spencer Ackerman of TPM Media reached Buzzy by telephone and learned that Cookie, according to Buzzy, had known of his brother's role at Blackwater for weeks. In the wake of this revelation, Cookie stepped down from his position altogether. Whether he'll face a perjury inquiry remains to be seen.
The attorney general has no clothes. Perhaps the biggest oversight victory can be found in the dislodging of Gonzalez. On July 24, brewing Justice Department controversies came to a head when Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and embarrassed himself badly on a number of fronts. In his testimony, Gonzales insisted, among other things, that the warrantless wiretapping program was a matter of little controversy within the Department of Justice—that all disagreements had involved another, unidentified intelligence operation. But two days later, on July 26, FBI director Robert Mueller, under questioning by the House Judiciary Committee's Rep. Mel Watt, admitted to having "serious reservations about the warrantless wiretapping program." The admission raised two possibilities: Either the wiretapping program had once been much more aggressive than we know, or Gonzales had directly perjured himself.
In September, following in the footsteps of a host of senior Justice officials, Gonzales tendered his resignation—a capstone of a series of investigations so aggressively obstructed that three current and former administration officials may well be held in contempt by one or both houses of Congress in 2008.

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_disp...-oversight.html
By Brian Beutler, Media Consortium
Brian Beutler is the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium, a network of progressive media organizations, including Mother Jones.

The highlighted portions weren't intended to preclude anyone from reading and considering the article in it's entirety, only to support my contention that things aren't as one-dimensional as some would paint them. As the author points out, the Dem's performance has been a mixed-bag for a variety of reasons. I often see things more simplistically than I should, and overlook the obvious in my rush to judgement. As seperate issues, I've been critical of both Reid's performance and the fact that Lieberman hasn't been kicked out of the party. As so often happens, the other day someone (might have been Thom Hartman) tied them both together in a way that caused me to reconsider. Boot Lieberman, lose control of the senate. Threat of Lieberman switching=leverage to constrain Reid. Seems like a very good possibility. And, with the exception of not having the house votes to overide vetos, the Senate has been the Dem's stumbling block. BTW, in the article's original format it's more obvious that "quiet as a mouse" refers to Lieberman's committee and not to the Democrat's performance generally.

Nancy Pelosi is full of shit, but what's new about that? She is, after all, a Democrat, and she represents Democrats perfectly.

Nancy Pelosi is full of shit, but what's new about that? She is, after all, a Democrat, and she represents Democrats perfectly.

The highlighted portions weren't intended to preclude anyone from reading and considering the article in it's entirety, only to support my contention that things aren't as one-dimensional as some would paint them. As the author points out, the Dem's performance has been a mixed-bag for a variety of reasons. I often see things more simplistically than I should, and overlook the obvious in my rush to judgement. As seperate issues, I've been critical of both Reid's performance and the fact that Lieberman hasn't been kicked out of the party. As so often happens, the other day someone (might have been Thom Hartman) tied them both together in a way that caused me to reconsider. Boot Lieberman, lose control of the senate. Threat of Lieberman switching=leverage to constrain Reid. Seems like a very good possibility. And, with the exception of not having the house votes to overide vetos, the Senate has been the Dem's stumbling block. BTW, in the article's original format it's more obvious that "quiet as a mouse" refers to Lieberman's committee and not to the Democrat's performance generally.

Nancy Pelosi is full of shit, but what's new about that? She is, after all, a Democrat, and she represents Democrats perfectly.

lieberman could never be elected in ct. as a republican... check the election records for the last 75 years... that move would be political suicide.

That wouldn't prevent him from changing parties for a good reason.
Especially if the party bosses ask real nice.

you think he'd give up his ability to be a senator? damn, he's an ass, buty he's an ass because he can act like a pube while claiming to be a dem... his puppeteers wouldn't give him a cent if he weren't a senator.

Wow. We have a foul...................................unsportsman like conduct................................15 yards....................it remains third down.

*Tweet tweet!* (whistle)
/They do whistle after things like that, right? I know nothing of sports.

usually its before they announce the penalty...

and then they whistle after to restart the clock.
I think they just like to blow and make noise.

what, like larry craig?

I think they just like to blow and make noise.