New Congressional Leaders Bungle Already

The 110th Congress is already off to a silly start, and it won’t formally be in session until noon on January 3. In a bipartisan display of ineptness and political tone-deafness, both the Democrats and the Republicans have already found a way to shoot themselves in the foot. The Senate GOP has selected as its Minority Whip Trent Lott of Mississippi, who lost a previous leadership post after saying segregationist Strom Thurmond would have been a good president. Meanwhile, the Democrats in the House told Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stop being so bossy when they picked Maryland’ Steny Hoyer to be her deputy despite her open support of Ohio’s John Murtha.

The resurrection of Trent Lott is the more troubling of the two. At Senator Thurmond’s 100th birthday celebrations, the Mississippi Senator said, “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.” In 1948, Senator Thurmond ran as a States’ Rights Democrat a/k/a/ Dixiecrat against President Truman (and Henry Wallace ran against him as a Progressive, and somewhere in all of that was Thomas Dewey the Republican). The Dixiecrats’ motto was “"Segregation Forever!” Apparently, all those problems were letting black Americans vote and go to school with white Americans.

Now, the Republican Party of 2006 isn’t the Dixiecrats, and one is even prepared to accept that Senator Lott was merely trying to be kind to an old man and didn’t mean what he said (he is, after all, a politician). However, the big failing among Republicans is the general whiteness of the party. Ken Mehlman, who’s just leaving the Republican National Committee, explained that his party’s candidates “rely too much on white guys for our vote.” Giving Mr. Lott a formal leadership role only serves to aggravate this.

Moving to the other chamber and the other party, the Democrats have proved once again that leading them is like herding cats. Nancy Pelosi ran unopposed for Speaker, and she should quite simply have stayed out of the race for the second slot. She couldn’t help herself, though, and tried to repay ex-Marine John Murtha, who helped her win her previous job as House Minority Leader, with an endorsement. However, Mr. Hoyer wound up winning on a pretty impressive vote of 149-86, making him House Majority Leader. The fact that he and Ms. Pelosi ran against each other in 2001 for the job of Minority Whip in a very nasty campaign means this is just waiting to boil over.

One of the hallmarks of good leadership is knowing what battles to fight and what battles are not worthwhile. Mr. Lott should have done himself, his party and his nation a favor and turned himself into THE ADVOCATE for the Gulf States that have yet to recover from Hurricane Katrina. His house was one of the many destroyed; how much more credibility could he need? He would have been far more effective here than as Senate Minority Whip. Meanwhile, Ms. Pelosi had a chance to let bygones be bygones and turn her attention to leading the House of Representatives forward to correct the abuses of the White House. Instead, she undermined her own position without gaining anything. Who said the grown ups had arrived in Washington?

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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