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Thursday, Jan. 08, 2009

Democratic leadership hurting Congress, people

Indications are that President-elect Barack Obama has convinced the thicker heads in Congress to quit their obstinacy about Roland Burris.

It was a necessary step if the Democrats in Congress were sincere about bringing about the "change" Obama promised the voters.

It was beginning to look like the change ought to start with congressional leaders.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., ought to either get with the program or get out of the way.

They're old-school partisans who seem only faintly interested in reaching across the aisle to work with Republicans unless pushed, as Obama now seems to be doing.

Reid has shown a breathtaking display of stubbornness and old-fashioned political cantankerousness in the case of Sen. Burris, D.-Ill.

In the process, he led the Democratic caucus into a kind of parody of responsible leadership.

Reid is legitimately scornful of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, who is under investigation for, among other things, trying to sell the appointment to Obama's old Senate seat.

Blagojevich, if guilty (and there seems little doubt about that), is contemptible and should spend some of the next few years in a federal penitentiary.

But he is charged, not convicted, and according to the law, he has the duty and responsibility to appoint Obama's successor.

After the scandal erupted, the governor backed off and made a surprisingly good choice for the Senate in Burris.

If Burris had been touched by allegations against Blagojevich, his appointment should have been challenged.

But that's not the case.

He's as clean as a laundry tub, according to the prosecutors looking at Blagojevich. What's he done to keep him out of the Senate?

Absolutely nothing.

But Reid and cronies, looking to make easy face time on television in the days immediately after the accusations against the governor were made public, proclaimed self-importantly that they would not seat any appointee from Illinois.

Then, faced with a good choice -- a former state attorney general and, by all accounts, a good man to boot -- they squirreled away in their offices, too churlish to admit they were wrong and too impolite to apologize.

Reid has been a bland leader in the Senate from the beginning. This was about the only time he showed any backbone and it was the wrong time.

Democrats would be wise to start grooming someone with more leadership characteristics and less self-importance to run the show in the Senate.

The same is true of Pelosi.

The most recent evidence of her being out of step with the bipartisan initiatives of the Obama administration is a move by Democrats to take away a tiny sliver of power (well, near-power) that Republicans had in the House.

By suggesting changes in bills the majority party proposed, it was possible for the minority Republicans to get the bills reconsidered, with the chance they might even be voted down.

It seldom, if ever, worked.

But it gave GOP House members at least a shred of influence.

Now, that's all gone.

The Democratic majority can't stand even that tiny slice of power going to the Republicans.

It's the same old-time politics that voters said they wanted to end.

Obama's biggest problem in governing from the middle, as he says he wants to do, will come from entrenched professional Democrats with fossilized brains.

With Democrats playing keep-away in Congress, Obama will have his hands full getting his programs the wide support he desperately needs to succeed.

And the American people have even more at stake than Obama.

It's time for the Democrats to reorganize around the principle of progress rather than party.

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