Vindication?

The newspapers, magazines and broadcasting networks have been filled the past few days with the news of who got the Nobel Peace Prize as if this prize any longer meant anything save the $1.5 million that goes with it.

This year’s winners were Al Gore and a United Nations committee on global warming. Unlike the Nobel science prizes which are determined by Swedish committees made up of acknowledged experts in their fields, the Norwegian peace prize committee is made up of politicians. That should tell the reader all he needs to know, that is, politicians giving prizes to politicians.

Journalists and politicians who are impressed with the words “Nobel Peace Prize” are of course trumpeting Al Gore’s win as “vindication” of his now historic defeat in the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you examine the full list of Peace Prize winners since 1901 (when Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventer of dynamite, created most of the prizes given today), you will note that until about a decade ago, the Prize was awarded almost always to deserving figures. In 1994, the co-recipient was Yasir Arafat, the very antithesis of “peace.” Since that time, it has been clear that the Norwegian committee often has a purely partisan political agenda. The science and economics prizes, in contrast, go to persons of great achievements later in their lives when it is clear that their work has had lasting impact.

The problem with this year’s prize is that the “irrefutable fact” of global warming, and its alleged clear and present danger to humanity is anything but fact. It is true that there is short-term warming, as has occurred with regularity over the past million years or so, as has longer-term warming and cooling (the latter produced the latest ice age about 10, 000 years ago). What global warming alarmists, including Mr. Gore and the U.N. Committee, are alleging is that industrial nations are causing this warming, that it will destroy or severely harm all of humanity, and that it can only be repaired by halting our current industrial practices (read as bringing the present capitalist industrial world to a standstill).A majority of scientists (many of whom know little or nothing about this specific subject) seem to agree.

But importantly, a number of scientists, especially those who are expert in the climatology and environmental fields, strongly disagree. Their disagreement varies from asserting that the dire predictions and narrow placements of blame are at best unproven and premature, and at worst, fraudulent.

I am not an expert in this area, so I do not know with certainty which side is more correct. But I do know something about politics, and I know a political agenda when I see it. Under the surface of the global warming “scare” is a whole program of dismantling Western (and now Eastern) industrial society, redistributing world wealth from developed and rapidly developing countries to undeveloped countries with little motive more than economic philanthropy.

Nor is the real effect of such philanthropy beneficial. That is because if the global warming threat crowd has their way, the prosperity of North America, Europe, China, India and Japan would evaporate, and the result would be dire unemployment, economic depression and human suffering. While this global warming movement does have a neo-socialist cast to it, it is instructive to note that the last remaining Marxist superpower, China, rejects it just as much as the U.S. government has. If anyone knows contrived economic redistribution, they do.

There is simply no factual evidence yet that global warming is long-term, although it is may ultimately be proven correct. There is no decisive evidence that the industrial world is primarily “causing” global warming. We do know that industrial pollution is destructive to human beings and the environment. When lead was removed from gasoline in the U.S. several years ago, there was an incontrovertible improvement in the American atmosphere. Carcinogenic or radioactive materials released in the air or exposed to workers and human populations are undeniably destructive and must be controlled or eliminated when possible. But just as the DDT scare was ignited decades ago by Rachel Carson, the scare turned out to be only just that, and wrong! In the meantime, not using pesticides meant, and means, denying hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of persons enough food and nourishment.

Those who claim the award of the Peace Prize to Al Gore “vindicates” him in history, vis a vis George W. Bush, are only disclosing their political agenda. It may be that history will judge Mr. Bush harshly and Mr. Gore well, but the award of the discredited Nobel Prize is proof of none of this, nor its ultimate confirmation.

Ask anyone in serious American politics of either political party if they would prefer to serve as president of the U.S. or win the Nobel Peace Prize. I think it is safe to say that the overwhelming majority would greatly prefer the former and say so without hesitation.

As for Al Gore, good for him for finding something fulfilling to do with his life after politics. Show business is great, and an Oscar is a serious prize. As for the Nobel award, my unsolicited advice is: Take the money and run.

Republican Delusions: Going Over the Political Ledge

There is something degrading going on in the national Republican Party as it prepares to contest the 2008 presidential, congressional and state elections. The Republican Party has won the presidency eight of the 14 elections since World War II, but during most of those administrations, the executive branch had to form a partnership with a Congress in which one or both houses were controlled by Democrats. Only Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" brought the Republicans back to power in the House in 1994, and only President Bush from 2001-2007 was able to govern with the entire Congress, and with the majority of state governorships, under Republican control.

In the wake of the Democratic victories in 2006, Republicans have reacted traditionally by going back to their party's right wing base for rejuvenation. Unfortunately, this reaction is precisely what is likely to ensure their continued disappointment at the polls, and their resumed role as a minority party.

Not that the Democrats, now back in power in Congress, are doing a very good job themselves. Ignoring their successes in winning the presidency in 1992 and 1996 with a centrist leader, and by 1995, a centrist agenda, they have since leaned back to the party-base left wing. Democrats have repeatedly rebuffed the centrist domestic agenda that would increase and perpetuate their majorities. They have further stymied themselves by choosing inept congressional leaders. Republican President Bush has continued to be unsuccessful in capitalizing on the early military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and popular support for him has plummeted. The national Democratic leadership, however, has recently fumbled the ball in the political red zone time and again. The 2008 presidential election should not be in doubt, even now 14 months from election day. But it is in doubt.

On the other hand, just as the Republican Party has seemed to come up with a governing strategy and perhaps a winning candidate (or candidates) for 2008, the party base is acting like lemmings going over the political ledge.

The recent immigration debate is emblematic of this disaster, but the extent of the problem is not limited to it. Social conservatives, sensing that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani might actually win the Republican nomination, have desperately met and declared that they will walk out on the Republican Party if it nominates him or someone like him (e.g. John McCain, Mitt Romney, or possibly, Fred Thompson).

This is ludicrous on its face, since all of these candidates, regardless of their personal views, have pledged to nominate conservative judges to the federal bench and Supreme Court (the only places where a president has any real influence on social policy). All of the major or so-called first-tier Republican candidates are economic conservatives, and each of them is likely to reverse the ambivalent economic spending policies of the Bush administration, a legitimate grievance the party base does have.

The alternative, in real terms, is unthinkable in its consequences for conservatives, that is, a generation or more of unrelenting tax-and-spend economic policies, an increase of abortion-on-demand, unending interventionist liberal federal courts and a foreign policy that caves into international public opinion and weakens our military defense and national security.

If that is what the majority of voters in the nation want, of course, and make that plain in a national election, then that is what they should have.

But if part of the conservative base of the Republican Party walks out on its candidates, popularly chosen, it will lead to an electoral rout without precedent and deprive most American conservatives of the ability to affect American policies, possibly for decades.

James Dobson and his colleagues speak of principles over power. As I have pointed out, this is exactly wrong. Any of the major GOP presidential candidates will deliver a conservative program. It won't be pure. But never in the history of democratic republics has any administration acted with "pure" conservatism or "pure" liberalism. Those who wish for purity are really yearning for a totalitarian state.

The same is true on the Democratic side. Antiwar zealots who hate Mr. Bush want their candidates to demand immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and surrender American sovereignty to organizations such as the (failed) United Nations. They want "pure" left anti-corporate government with high taxes, single-payer universal health insurance (and no way to pay for it), and a rejection of free international trade. Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden don't really favor such extreme "pure" views, but populist Democrats want to bully them into adopting these policies. Yes, their views are considerably more liberal than their Republican counterparts, but the proper place to make workable policy choices is in a national election, not from the political blackmail by each party's extreme wing.

Republicans have been indulging themselves in abstractions on the immigration issue, turning away a growing and important Hispanic electorate that had been increasingly voting its way in the last two presidential elections. Republican statesmen such as Mr. Gingrich have come up with reasonable plans that eschewed deportation and negative stereotypes. But these plans are ignored, and anti-Hispanic sentiments
are fanned into hysteria. Hispanic Americans do not fail to get the point. They will vote for the Democrats.

Political parties which chronically fail to assemble majorities eventually disappear.

Have you spoken with a Whig lately?

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-This article was first published in The Washington Times on October 12th, 2007.

A New Debate System: Some Modest Suggestions for 2008

The presidential debate institution, long in decline, has entered its "boutique" stage with major party candidate debates now taking place in Hispanic, black, gay/lesbian, religious and evangelical, social values, and other venues. I think the diverse venues are a good thing, and it is positive for the major parties to reach out to constituencies neglected in the past, but I don't see the quality of the political dialogue and conversation itself improving as well.

Marvin Kalb and Newt Gingrich have proposed a new system for the nominees of the major parties (and a major third party candidate if one comes forward) with their Nine Debates In Nine Weeks proposal. This would have one debate a week with the major party nominees in the nine weeks before Election Day, 2008. I recently endorsed this because I think the proposed open format is a huge improvement on the rigid and murky format of the current debate system which is really designed to obscure the candidates' views rather than clarify them.

In response, I received some thoughtful and constructive comments, including some from very experienced presidential campaign operatives, suggesting that, while the Nine Debates idea is excellent in principle, it is very unlikely to be accepted at the nominee level by either party.

That is because, as was pointed out to me, holding nine debates in the nine weeks prior to election day would paralyze the presidential campaigns from most of their necessary political activity, and force the candidates and their staffs to spend most of their time continually preparing for the next debate.This would have the secondary consequence, it seems to me, of exacerbating the dependence on TV and radio political advertising, something which already saturates the airwaves at election time.. Live speeches and personal campaigning by nominees would be drastically reduced from already
reduced levels of recent presidential campaigns, losing further the authentic spontaneity of the final weeks of a national election.

Some might say this is a necessary trade-off, but I don't think this is so. I also don't think Mr. Kalb and Mr. Gingrich are inflexibly wedded to the original calendar for their idea. I know that Mr. Gingrich, in particular, is more interested in reforming the process and improving the dialogue than anything else.

So I would like to suggest some changes in the calendar of the presidential debates, and perhaps some tweaking of the structure, without altering the important innovation the Nine Debates proposal essentially makes.

First, I would schedule the debates right after (or if the nominees are certain beforehand, to begin before) the presidential conventions. This is usually a period when campaign activity is reduced and thus public interest wanes. In effect, this would stimulate the national attention at a time that is often neglected by candidates and their campaigns. Instead of nine debates, I would think about holding five to seven of them. I would not schedule any debates in the three weeks before election day, although (if the candidates agreed to it) there could be a final, nationally televised and radio broadcast debate just before the election to climax the debate process and the presidential campaign itself.

With these changes, I would nevertheless keep the open format suggested by Mr. Kalb and Mr. Gingrich. This is the essential and very constructive innovation they have proposed. The historic Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 have been frequently mentioned, but it must be remembered that the nature of national and local political communication has been drastically altered in the 150 years since then. In those days, a great live public debate was the only way for voters to impartially compare the candidates. There was no television and radio, and virtually every newspaper and magazine in the nation was affiliated with one party or another.

Nonetheless, the principle and need for face-to-face confrontation by the candidates and their ideas remains the same. The Kalb/Gingrich proposal argues for few formal rules and lots of "reciprocity" (to use the word Abraham Lincoln suggested be the format basis of his debates with Douglas).

We saw this operate effectively last February when former Governor Mario Cuomo of New York and Mr. Gingrich held a "dialogue" at Copper Union in New York City on the anniversary of Mr. Lincoln's famous speech there which made him a presidential candidate for the first time in 1860.

I believe these are modest but vitally important alterations to the Kalb/Gingrich presidential debate proposal, alterations that would bring the actual nominees to face each other in a way that will enhance the presidential campaign ahead immeasurably.

I offer these suggestions in the spirit of a pragmatic approach to the idealism of how we want to elect our next president.

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-This article was first published in The Washington Times on September 21st, 2007.

Local Bridges Falling Down

By sheer coincidence, I happened to be typing at my computer only three blocks away from the Interstate 35 bridge when it collapsed in Minneapolis two weeks ago. I heard the crash, but had no idea what it was until a few minutes later I heard sirens which did not ever seem to stop, as well as numerous helicopters overhead. When I turned on the radio, I learned what had happened.

It’s an odd circumstance for a journalist to be, by accident, at the site of a local event which becomes the number one news story in the nation, and among the top stories in the world for several days. I knew that it would be only hours before many of my colleagues would be in town to cover this story, and of course, they did come with so many satellite trucks that it resembled the site of a national political convention.

Bridges are by their nature important parts of almost everyone’s daily life. There are many tens of thousands of them, and we cross them many times a day without thinking about it.

Bridges are not only what we use every day for transport, they are by their nature powerful symbols we use in our language as metaphors for how we understand, and how we relate to others.

It should be no surprise, then, that the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis would lead to an avalanche of commentary and interpretation about political and economic matters not directly related to the disaster.

Eusebio Val, Washington correspondent for the Spanish daily La Vanguardia and an astute observer of the United States and Europe, wrote me a few days later from his home in Barcelona (where he was vacationing) that many Europeans were interpreting the Minneapolis bridge collapse as a metaphor for their belief that America’s power was declining in the world. He does not necessarily agree with that, and I certainly don’t, but it illustrates how easily a local and single incident can be transformed into something else.

Back in the United States, it did not take very long for local political partisans, mostly Democrats, to contend that the bridge collapse was the result of the Republican governor of Minnesota not agreeing to raise taxes in the recent legislative session. The legislature is overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats who have called for dramatically increased taxes.

The same theme was echoed by national Democrats, and bills were immediately introduced to raise the national gasoline tax to pay for bridge maintenance and repairs.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a conservative Republican who had previously and, I think, gutsily resisted tax increases and prevailed, suddenly announced that he might call a special session of the state legislature to raise the gasoline tax, even though Congress had speedily approved and President Bush signed a bill for $250 million to pay for a new bridge.

The local public apparently did not agree. A poll taken at the height of emotion about the disaster showed overwhelming opposition to an increase in the gas tax. Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, a political moderate, wrote an Op-Ed in one of the local daily newspapers suggesting that new taxes were not the solution, but a new approach was, citing three recent bridge repairs in record time at lower cost using private companies and incentives. Newt Gingrich wrote an Op-Ed in the other local daily suggesting the same thing.

Mr. Pawlenty is a very smart guy, and I can’t imagine him going forward with a gas-tax increase. Instead, using a new free-market approach with incentives, he and local officials could get the new bridge built and in operation in time for the Republican National convention next September in St. Paul. What a statement he and Minnesota could then make — welcoming delegates and the national media with a ceremony to open the reconstructed bridge in less than a year and under budget.

With so many bridges in the United States, many of them in various states of disrepair, an actual collapse is a very rare event. This suggests a variation of the axiom that “All politics is local” as “All bridge collapses are local.” Indeed, there is evidence that the I-35 bridge, with bumper-to-bumper traffic the day it collapsed and several trucks reportedly parked on the bridge, loaded with many tons of crushed stone to be used for the repaving then underway, was the result of a significant weight overload compounding its already known structural weaknesses.

Yet knowing the actual cause will have to await the investigation now underway.

Bridge safety is very important, and every bridge in American should be safe and secure. We should also use a bridge disaster like this one as an opportunity to reconsider how we maintain our bridge infrastructure (and how to do that without just throwing in new taxes as a substitute for innovation).

But let’s also be careful about trying to contrive a tragic local event into something it is not.

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-This article originally appeared in The Washington Times on August 17th, 2007.

Myths and 2008

Not only has the 2008 election season begun prematurely, but a series of myths about it has been insinuated into the commentary about it.

We are being told that the blogosphere has changed presidential politics unalterably. Breathlessly we are informed that in 2008 Americans will elect the first “Internet” president. Not only are pundits saying this. Bloggers themselves are promoting the notion that they have now “arrived,” and will likely determine the outcome.

But it is instructive, I think, to note the notorious campaign against Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in 2006. This campaign was largely initiated and fostered by the most well-known lefty netroot blogs who did indeed put forward a candidate against Mr. Lieberman who won the Democratic primary. But Mr. Lieberman reinvented himself as an “Independent Democrat,” and subsequently defeated this Democrat and the Republican in the race by a large margin. Mr. Lieberman now sits in the Senate as an independent who caucuses with his old party, the Democrats, and the margin is one vote — his.

What the blogosphere can do, however, is raise money and produce volunteers. That is because it is read primarily by activists in both parties. While most attention has been given to leftist blogs, some significant conservative blogs have grown and prospered, including Power Line in Minnesota. While Power Line is national in its focus, another partisan political blog in that state, Minnesota Democrats Exposed, has emerged as the most powerful political internet presence there. Its carefully researched campaign against comedian Al Franken’s putative effort to win a Senate seat there in 2008 has devastated Mr. Franken’s public image almost before he began to run for the seat, and has seemingly cemented the idea that the entertainer is an angry, foul-mouthed parvenu instead of a serious-minded candidate. This blog is Mr. Franken’s worst nightmare, and it has provoked many Democratic strategists to try to find another candidate against popular incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

Sen. Hillary Clinton is no favorite of most liberal blogs, but she remains her party’s frontrunner. Likewise, the conservative blogosphere has not been especially friendly to Sen. John McCain, but after a weak winter season during which former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani replaced him as the Republican frontrunner, Mr. McCain is making a comeback, and may yet win the nomination.

Another myth is that conservatives and evangelicals are demoralized, and that some of them will stay home in 2008 because the Republican nominee may not be as much of a “true believer” as they are. Yet polls show that the three least “pure” conservatives — Messrs. Giuliani, McCain and Romney — have most of the support, including among strong conservatives. Although a few ultra-right leaders are saying they will stay home in 2008, there are signs they will not be heeded by the conservative rank and file.

An almost completely unnoticed phenomenon is the “Salute to Israel” movement organized by Pastor John Hagee, a broadcast evangelist from San Antonio who reaches millions of conservative Christians via television every week. Eschewing the usual social conservative issues, Mr. Hagee has focused on a single issue, U.S. support for Israel and the Jewish community worldwide, and has rallied evangelicals into an unprecedented non-conversionary campaign to rally public and political support against the increasing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic tone in Europe and among the left in the United States.

Overcoming initial resistance from most of his fellow television evangelists, beginning in the 1980s, Mr. Hagee has recently organized numerous well-attended events (by evangelicals and religious Jews) in almost every large city in the country. He claims that he now has up to 50 million evangelicals aroused to the issue and on his side. Even if this figure is exaggerated, there is little question that if the populist base of the Democratic Party continues its drift toward a less favorable attitude to Israel and applies this pressure to its eventual presidential nominee, they could cause a powerful reaction at the polls in 2008.

A second reason that conservatives may stay home next year is a myth is the very public awareness in recent weeks that conservatives are one vote short of a solid majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Anthony Kennedy did side with them on the partial-birth decision, but he has sided with the liberals on other important issues. Pro-life conservatives know that a Democratic president in 2009 will undo their recent gains, and they will not be staying home next year.

The current self-indulgence of the Democratic congressional leadership in calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq has created the newest political myth about 2008, that the Democrats will continue to placate their left populist base and throw away the momentum they gained in 2006.

If they do, and persist in their efforts to raise taxes dramatically, it may be the shortest political realignment in U.S. history. Just as the GOP contest lacks overly conservative presidential aspirants, the Democratic race has so far only one truly left first-tier candidate, former Sen. John Edwards. Mrs. Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama (probably) and Gov. Bill Richardson, on the other hand, are more down-to-earth liberals, and more likely to move, if one of them is nominated, to the political center.

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-This article originally appeared in The Washington Times on May 3rd, 2007.

A Bumpy Start for the '08 Campaign

In the rush of candidates to declare themselves into the 2008 race for president, it has only belatedly been noticed that Ms. Pandora, that original celebrity of Greek mythology, has declared herself into the contest. Of course, she's not a candidate, but for the zillionth time she opened her legendary jar (it was a mis-translation to call it a box), and let out the usual suspects of greed, vanity, slander, envy and covetousness.

A quick review of Ms. Pandora's resume: In Greek mythology, she was the first woman, and the giver of gifts. Everything was fine until the god Prometheus stole the secret of fire and gave it to mankind. The uber-god Zeus then ordered Haephaestus, the god of technology, to make Pandora part of the punishment of mankind for this theft. She subsequently opened the jar which contained and held back the miseries of mankind and loosed them on the world. No wonder the ancients treated women so badly. (But if Zeus ran for president in 2008, he wouldn't carry a single precinct.)

Politically incorrect as she may be, however, Ms. Pandora is in the game in 2008. That's because, instead of waiting until the autumn of 2007 to declare their intentions, most of the presidential aspirants this time didn't even wait for the ball to fall in Times Square, and started announcing as soon as the 2006 elections were concluded.

Several commentators, myself included, have begun to observe this premature phenomenon. Undoubtedly, as some have already suggested, the technology of communications has undergone such a transformation in the past four years, that it was a jar waiting to be opened. In any event, Mr. Haephaestus is back in business.

It has also been suggested that some partisans are in a hurry to get Mr. Bush out of his command post, and consider an early campaign a way to distract him from his duties.

But no matter the causes, the "miseries" are out of the jar, and as far as I know, once they're out, there is no putting them back in.

So what will Ms. Pandora's little ritual do to the 2008 contest?

It will, as David Broder and others point out, make fundraising and political discourse go out of control.

Certainly, the financial aspect of campaigns that last eighteen months is a farce. Mrs. Clinton declared McCain-Feingold dead as a smelt in the harbor when she was the first to opt out of the federal program. One by one, the other serious candidates in both parties (perhaps minus Senator McCain) are following suit. The sheer cost of a campaign visit to one of the major primary and caucus states with a full retinue of campaign staff, air transportation, ground transportation, security, hotels, etc., now can exceed the entire budget of an entire pre-convention presidential campaign only a few decades ago. And that does does not include TV, radio, internet and print media advertising.

The prediction that the nomination contests in both parties will be over after Super Tuesday early next February rests on the premise that one candidate in each party will win most of the delegates in those early contests that could include delegate-rich Florida, California, New York, Michigan and Illinois and other states. (There is another scenario that few seem to be considering now, i.e., that party voters in those primaries, having been subjected to a year of sound bites, gossip and insults, will remain undecided, and will split their votes among two or more of the top contenders, or they will elevate a long shot into contention.) The conventional wisdom is based, of course, on the precedents of recent nomination contests, and it is logical that a consensus candidate will emerge early. But the havoc that is overtaking this process, with its elongated calendar, might produce an ironical result, i.e., no candidate with the nomination sewed up before the party conventions.

Already the infighting is producing a tone of bickering between and about personalities, Mr. Obama taking on Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton firing back, the media savaging Mr. Biden's loose lips, the tabloids highlighting Mr. Edward's extravagantly opulent new home in North Carolina while trying to champion the poor, the wags and pundits speculating whether Mr. Gore will win an Academy Award or not. With Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Murtha in the lead, the Democratic aspirants are falling over each other to bring our troops home from Iraq. Can even Democrats endure this mulishness for the next twelve months?

As for the Republicans, the top contenders do not represent the traditional GOP formula for social conservatism. Mr. McCain is a maverick, his campaign finance law is a shambles, and he's a hardliner on Iraq. Mr. Giuliani has extreme chutzpah because he asserts that his pro-gay, pro-choice views views are trumped by his tough record on crime and his conduct during and after September 11 when he was mayor of New York. Mr. Romney's Mormon faith and his charisma are too tempting for the media to pass up for a mere discussion of serious issues, and besides, he's decided, after years as a Massachusetts moderate, that he's the new conservative hero. The Republican hopefuls have become zebras without stripes. Only Mr. Gingrich won't play ball, but the gossip columnists are lying in wait for him should he suit up for the game.

What happened to the clock ticking on social security, private pensions funds, and health care? What happened to an education system in collapse? What happened to immigration policy out of control? What happened to the international security and trade system threatened as it has not ever been before?

Only Ms. Pandora may know the answer to these and any other truly important questions and issues facing America in 2008. But remember, her role is to punish mankind. Most persons didn't know or forgot that when she opened up her jar and let out all those nasty items, the myth says she left one thing, hope, inside.

Can you imagine a Lincoln, a Franklin Roosevelt, a Ronald Reagan, or for that matter, a Hubert Humphrey without hope? Is there anyone in the current crowd of candidates, Republican or Democrat, who has anything real to tell us that will make us look to the future with some optimism?

Hold on, folks, this may be bumpier than we thought.

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-This article originally appeared on Real Clear Politics on February 24th, 2007.

Nancy the Not-so-Great

Despite continuing reports that Speaker of the House-designate Nancy Pelosi intends to name Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings as chairman of the important House Intelligence Committee, I do not think she will do so.

Mr. Hastings, before winning his congressional seat, was a federal judge accused of bribery. He was acquitted of these charges in a trial, but the House of Representatives, based on these accusations, then impeached him, and the Senate removed him from office by convicting him. Both the House and Senate at that time were controlled by the Democrats.

Mr. Hastings subsequently won a Florida congressional seat, and has been acquiring seniority on the intelligence committee since then. He is not the ranking Democratic member, however. Rep. Jane Harmon of California is. Mrs. Harmon, however, does not get along with Mrs. Pelosi, and it is no secret in the Capitol that the speaker-designate does not plan to make her the committee chairman.

In a move that is still reverberating, Mrs. Pelosi endorsed Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania over Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland for House majority leader. Mr. Hoyer, like Mrs. Harmon, was an old opponent of Mrs. Pelosi from the days when the Democrats were in the minority. But when the Democratic caucus met last week, it voted by a very wide margin to make Mr. Hoyer the majority leader. Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Hoyer have had to spend most of the last week and this week making nice and trying to gloss over their former antipathy. No doubt the controversy will soon fade when the Democrats take control of the House in January, and have to get down to business.

But making Mr. Hastings the House Intelligence Committee chairman would be a controversy that is unlikely to go away any time soon. It is a public-relations nightmare for the Democrats, who will have to explain again and again why a man who was impeached and removed from office as a federal judge should become the chairman of so sensitive a committee. (Indeed, serious questions could be raised as to why he is on the committee at all.) It could even raise a minor constitutional crisis if President Bush and his administration balked at working with the chairman, citing the fact that we are currently at war with terrorists all over the world. Most Americans might sympathize with the view that only men and women of the highest integrity should have access to the nation’s most important secret intelligence.

Mrs. Pelosi’s decision is complicated by the fact that Mr. Hastings, who is black, has the support of the liberal Congressional Black Caucus, which apparently wants to make this an issue of political correctness.

The bottom line, however, is that Mrs. Pelosi’s challenge now is not to continually settle old scores, but to get her party off to productive leadership of the House. The presidential election is now the political focus of the media and the political class, and those who clamor for a Democratic president in 2008, especially if that person is to be the first female president, do not need chronic self-caused controversy and pettiness to surround the Democrats’ attempt to restore their credibility to lead the nation.

Of course, any speaker has the right to have persons working for and with her or him who are sympathetic and like-minded as much as possible. Mrs. Pelosi, however, has already been forced to face the reality of working with Mr. Hoyer. In addition to the Intelligence Committee, she must also name the other committee chairs, and if her track record so far continues, she could arrive at her swearing-in in January in a veritable quagmire of intraparty hostility so intense that she could not effectively preside over the House.

Republicans have been observing this spectacle with no small pleasure. They were decisively beaten in the midterm elections and lost many members, not to mention control of the Congress. The prospect that Democrats would botch their victory, and do it so soon, has helped Republicans through some of the trauma of their wounds. They lost many seats in traditional Republican and swing districts, and would like nothing better than to have the current Democratic takeover be the shortest in history.

I suspect that, in spite of initial emotions, the Democratic leadership does or will soon realize how very large its task is, and how vital it is to the longer-term goal of winning back the White House (which they will have held only 12 years in the past 40).

I don’t think the country voted the Democrats in so they could settle a few small scores. The country wants the Democrats to demonstrate they can take charge of our many big problems.

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-This article originally appeared in The Washington Times on November 22nd, 2006.