By Henry J. Stern
November 17, 2006

The struggle for the majority leadership of the House of Representatives, a powerful position recently held by Tom DeLay , made the top of page one of today's Times in a story by Carl Hulse accompanied with a four-column picture featuring the unhappy couple.  PELOSI REBUFFED OVER HER CHOICE FOR HOUSE POST. The surprising margin, in a secret ballot before which both sides claimed victory, was 149 for Hulse and 86 for Murtha,  t

There have been four editorials on this subject in two days: Times: Fri SPEAKER PELOSI TEMPTS DISASTER; Post Thu MS. PELOSI & MR. PAYOFF, News Thu PELOSI'S POISON PICK; Sun Fri: PELOSI'S FIRST DRAMA. All the New York papers, both the liberal and the conservative ones, agreed that Hoyer was the more suitable candidate.
 
A long profile of the new majority leader, Steny Hoyer, in today’s Times on A26, by Kate Zernike, A CULTIVATOR OF LOYALTIES, gives the story of his rise in Maryland politics.  It was fascinating to read of his early interactions with Nancy D'Alesandro, only daughter of the Democratic boss and Baltimore mayor from 1947 to 1959,  Tommy D'Alesandro.  One of Nancy's five brothers, Tommy III, was mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971.   She and young Steny Hoyer were both Congressional interns, and later served on the staff of Maryland Senator Daniel Brewster.  Nancy met Paul Pelosi in Washington, DC.  When they married, they moved to his home town, San Francisco, where Nancy she won a special election to Congress in 1987, succeeding the late Sala Burton, who had replaced her husband Philip Burton, who died in1983. Nancy defeated a San Francisco supervisor, Harry Britt, who ran on her left.
 
Pelosi’s next encounter with Hoyer came in 2001, when with the help of the large California delegation, she defeated him for minority whip.  She advanced to minority leader when Dick Gephardt left that position to run for President in 2004. Gephardt's   candidacy crashed and burned in the Iowa primary, after which he withdrew from the race.  When she became minority leader, Hoyer became whip, and they served together through 2006, when happy days returned in November, and the speakership came within reach.
 
Whether Pelosi was injured or rescued from further disaster by Hoyer's defeat of Murtha is disputed in three columns in the Post, two today and one yesterday.  Today, John Podhoretz writes PELOSI'S FIRST FLOP, but he sees the Democratic infighting as healthy, and the result as good for their party.   Deborah Orin-Eilbeck's column, CALL HER 'NANCY SHREW'?  is a gripping exercise in political abuse, much of which appears to be at least partly justified by what we have heard of the facts.  Read it, whether you agree or not. Ms. O.-E. is the Washington bureau chief of the Post., and recently added Eilbeck to her by-line, she was a fierce critic of President Clinton. In yesterday’s Washington Post, Robert V. Novak, of Valerie Plame fame, writes; HER 1st MISTAKE: Pelosi’s Foolish Embrace of Murtha.  Novak predicted Murtha’s defeat a day in advance.
 
The political effect of this unseemly intraparty squabble will play out over the months to come.  In any circumstances, leading Democrats has been described as herding cats, which is to say that it is almost impossible.  Ms. Pelosi should not be a victim of sexist stereotyping, but she does run that risk if her actions are stereotypical.
 
To us, the dismissal of Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and the substitution of the impeached Federal judge Alcee Hastings as chair of the Committee is a more grievous action, which is even more likely than the Hoyer-Murtha grudge match to earn the Democratic Party public contempt on the issue of integrity.  The dispute is likely to result in the selection of a third party, who has not had Mr. Hastings rare experience of being impeached and removed from office for official corruption.  But since Ms. Pelosi's major purpose is to derail Ms. Harman, her California rival, she would probably settle for another candidate as long as she obtained revenge for whatever slight Ms. Harman had inflicted on her delicate persona, possibly even voting for Mr. Hoyer in 2001.

Lord Acton said, and everyone in our business knows, that power corrupts.  It took the Gingrich revolution about a dozen years to decay into Abramoff and DeLay and Cunningham and Ney and Foley and other lesser known villains.    Ms. Pelosi, in pushing Murtha of K Street and the impeached judge Hastings, seems, presumably unintentionally on completing the destruction of her party's reputation for integrity a far shorter period. 

To many Americans, the 2008 elections are extremely important.  The differences between the parties on economic and social issues are substantial, and the selection and confirmation of moderate Federal judges is crucial.  These important issues should not be jeopardized by the vagaries of a latter day Lady Macbeth.  We hope that this week's trauma will restore the Speaker-to-be to the arms of reason and fairness, so that she and her colleagues can justify the confidence the American people have placed in them. 


#330 11.17.06  842wds