A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Nancy Pelosi has the critiques coming. Let's give the microphone to Howard Fineman:

Years ago I spent Election Day in San Francisco with Rep. Nancy Pelosi as she made her way around town. She was elegant, smart and popular, moving from restaurant to clubhouse to street corner in the Italian hilltop neighborhood of a city that is more like her native Baltimore than tourists realize. It seemed that her ambition, and perhaps her destiny, was to be a Democratic Boss in the manner of her late father, who had been Baltimore mayor.  

If Speaker-to-be Pelosi is going to succeed as Speaker of the House, she had better learn--fast--from the fiasco known as the Hoyer-Murtha Race. She violated every conceivable rule of Boss-like behavior: she lost, she lost publicly, she lost after issuing useless and unenforceable threats to people she barely had met, knowing (or having reason to know) that they would tell the world about her unsuccessful arm-twisting. And she lost big: by 149 to 86 votes.

One of the first rules of politics is that power is the appearance of power. Especially early in the game, you don't risk that aura on a fight you are not sure you can win. The contest for 10018 was a secret ballot, which lessened the power of arm-twisting. Also, Rep. Steny Hoyer (another Maryland product) had worked hard for many months to secure verbal commitments from across the Democratic membership. Such commitments are hard to undo, even if the person trying to undo them is about to become the Speaker.

Pelosi changed course, never a good idea for a wannabe Boss. Her original plan was to stay neutral in the race between Hoyer and Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania. Then she quietly started making calls for Murtha, whom she felt she owed a debt of gratitude for his willingness to oppose the war in Iraq. Then she accepted his request to make a public endorsement (in the form of a letter) and she set about to seriously pressure members to back her man. By then it was already too late. In the last week the Hill and the city were abuzz with stories about Pelosi's hard-line tactics. But rather than engender fear--and remember, it is better to be feared than loved--the moves engendered derision. The last thing you want them to be doing is laughing at you.

And to the New York Times:

Nancy Pelosi has managed to severely scar her leadership even before taking up the gavel as the new speaker of the House. First, she played politics with the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee to settle an old score and a new debt. And then she put herself in a lose-lose position by trying to force a badly tarnished ally, Representative John Murtha, on the incoming Democratic Congress as majority leader. The party caucus put a decisive end to that gambit yesterday, giving the No. 2 job to Steny Hoyer, a longtime Pelosi rival.

But Ms. Pelosi's damage to herself was already done. The well-known shortcomings of Mr. Murtha were broadcast for all to see -- from his quid-pro-quo addiction to moneyed lobbyists to the grainy government tape of his involvement in the Abscam scandal a generation ago. The resurrected tape -- feasted upon by Pelosi enemies -- shows how Mr. Murtha narrowly survived as an unindicted co-conspirator, admittedly tempted but finally rebuffing a bribe offer: "I'm not interested -- at this point."

Mr. Murtha would have been a farcical presence in a leadership promising the cleanest Congress in history. Ms. Pelosi should have been first to realize this, having made such a fiery campaign sword of her vows to end Capitol corruption. Instead, she acted like some old-time precinct boss and lost the first test before her peers.

As incoming speaker, Ms. Pelosi will be dogged by skepticism -- from within the party and without -- about her political smarts and her ability to deliver a galvanized agenda.

And mind you, another mistake may be in the offing:

NEWLY MINTED House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is off to a rocky start. On the same day she was formally elected to lead the new Democratic majority, party colleagues refused to endorse her bizarre choice of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who was investigated but not charged in the Abscam scandal more than two decades ago, as her second-in-command.

That embarrassing experience should induce Pelosi (D-San Francisco) -- who appeared chastened before reporters Thursday -- to reconsider another ill-advised promotion: Her apparent intention to bestow the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee not on the panel's ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), but on Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.).

Hastings, like Murtha, seems an unlikely choice for a leadership role in what Pelosi has been advertising as "the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history." Hastings was impeached as a federal judge and removed from office in the late 1980s (although he was acquitted of bribery in a criminal trial in 1983).

A litany of explanations have been adduced to explain why Pelosi would bypass Harman, an expert on intelligence matters who has won the respect of both parties while criticizing some of the Bush administration's excesses in the war on terror. None of them is persuasive. Harman has earned this chairmanship.

The argument most often cited for bypassing Harman is that under House rules, her rotating membership on the Intelligence Committee is about to expire. But Harman's supporters note that since 2003, term limits on the committee (which in any case can be waived) don't apply to the chairman and ranking member. They also point out that the independent 9/11 commission called in its recommendations for longer tenures on congressional intelligence panels as a way of fostering continuity and institutional memory.

Then there is the claim that awarding the chairmanship to Harman rather than Hastings would offend the sacred principle of seniority, as well as the sensibilities of the Congressional Black Caucus (Hastings is African American).

Seniority has never been the only criterion for the awarding of committee chairmanships in either party. As for black representation in the leadership, two other African Americans, Reps. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) are slated to head the Ways and Means and Judiciary committees, respectively.

The most substantial -- and alarming -- speculation regarding the Harman-Pelosi rift is that the speaker may consider Harman too moderate. If one of the reasons Pelosi backed Murtha was because he took it to Republicans on the war in Iraq, Harman -- who initially supported the war -- may be insufficiently partisan in Pelosi's eyes.

Pelosi, who has vowed to lead the House from the center, should think twice before indulging in a witch hunt of colleagues who can work well with Republicans.

I trust, by the way, that those who clamor for bipartisanship from the Administration will note that Pelosi is considering shunting Harman to the side precisely because she is not considered partisan enough. And I trust that they will be at least as loud in denouncing this kind of behavior as they are about complaining that George W. Bush continues to send conservative nominees to the Senate.

Because to do otherwise is to be hypocritical. And we wouldn't want that.