or, Why the Democrats need to dump Reid and make Chuck Schumer their Senate Leader, lest they fall prey to Reid's anemic vision and weak leadership.
In our American system of government, the Senate is the most obvious obstacle to reform of any sort. With its nonrepresentative structure (Wyoming and California get the same amount of members), its obscure parliamentary procedures to block action and its six-year member terms, what you have is a legislative body that is difficult to manage under any circumstances. It becomes even harder when the body politic is intensely partisan and polarized. A good Senate Majority Leader must have the confidence of his (or her) members, must be an able spokesman of their party's principles, must know everything there is to know about Congress and must have the power and will to push for their party's priorities. It's a hard and thankless job, but both parties have produced some pretty good leaders back in the day: George Mitchell, Bob Dole, Howard Baker, and Mike Mansfield, to name four, were all strong and memorable Senate leaders.
I think it's safe to say that Harry Reid will not find his way onto any such list. Reid, who has been the Senate Democrats' leader since 2005 and Majority Leader since 2007, has been proven again and again to be a paper tiger, an impotent leader who was unable to pass most of the Democrats' agenda in the past Congressional term and has, since this year's election, set about further cementing his reputation as a poor leader at a far more exponential pace. If Democrats are serious about change, they ought to start by dumping Reid as soon as possible and replacing him with Chuck Schumer, the man more responsible than anyone from taking Democrats from a depleted 45-seat minority to a 59-seat supermajority. Or Dick Durbin, the Democratic Whip who has managed to get Democrats to mostly vote in unity while Reid stumbled to frame his party's positions coherently. Or Chris Dodd, who gained the favor of many progressives last year with his long-shot presidential campaign. Really, virtually any of the other members of the Senate ought to be able to do a better job than Reid, even most Republicans, as their mismanagement of the country still ranks better than Reid's performance as the Dems' leader, and it's arguable that someone working explicitly against the Democrats' interests couldn't do any worse.
Perhaps I jest too much. It wasn't always apparent that Reid was incompetent as his job. His tenure as Senate Minority Leader in 2005 wasn't too bad, really. He didn't have too many accomplishments to show for that term (that would be the year the Democrats were looking down the barrel of a 55-45 minority status) but he managed to hamstring the Bush Administration's second term agenda to some degree, most notably by torpedoing President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. It is quite possible that the passage of such a plan would have brought about the wholesale dismemberment of the welfare state that Democrats often accuse Republicans of desiring, and Reid managed to end that threat. However, Reid was unable to stop the nominations of two arch-conservative Supreme Court Justices and was unable to make the most of political openings such as the Terri Schiavo case and the sale of American ports to a Middle Eastern firm. Still, Bush's forward momentum was halted, and Reid regularly prevailed over his counterpart, the none-too-bright Sen. Bill Frist, who is now remembered more for his laughable beliefs that AIDS could be transmitted through tears and that Ms. Schiavo was, in fact, not in a vegetative state. It's almost hard to believe that Frist was considered a frontrunner for the 2008 presidential nomination at one point.
Unfortunately, as they say, all good things must come to an end. After the 2006 elections, Reid faced the much smarter and much tougher Sen. Mitch McConnell, rather than Frist, as the Republican leader. McConnell used procedural tactics like the filibuster far more often than ever before as a way of stopping legislation, but Reid did not force Republicans to read a phonebook for 18 hours, as in popular myth. Instead, he merely allowed McConnell to invoke endless debate under cloture motions. Why he chose to do this is unclear: the optics of Mitch McConnell reading a phonebook for 18 hours are much better than the optics of having a popular measure go down in defeat when it looks like it's Reid's fault. This, however, merely highlights Reid's lack of an instinctive knowledge of media management and public spectacle. He simply doesn't know how to capture the public's attention or to shape public opinion, which has been painfully clear when one looks at how little legislation has made it out of Reid's Senate. Perhaps the most painfully inept attempt at this was Reid's infamous "all night" session of Congress to debate a timeline for Iraq withdrawal, as if mere sleepiness would make Republicans suddenly antiwar.
But, as John Cleese would say, don't mention the war! This is Reid's most pathetic display, after all. Democrats won in 2006 by taking a firmly antiwar stance. They were, however, unable to deliver on their promise, and Reid's fecklessness has much to do with it. It became clear early on that Bush wasn't going to withdraw on his own, so Senate Democrats decided the best way to induce Bush to end the war was to cut off funding. One attempt at that, in mid-2007, was to tie funding to a timeline for withdrawal. The proposal passed the House and (amazingly) passed the Senate, largely because everyone knew Bush would veto the bill and Reid didn't have the votes to override. But Reid wasn't completely powerless. Bush let it be known that he would veto any Iraq funding bill with a timeline attached, and Reid could have stood tall and said that he wasn't going to send Bush a funding bill without a timeline. Those of us following the story know how it ends, and those vaguely familiar with the Democratic Party's recent history can guess: Reid buckled under and sent Bush a bill to the president's liking. One can argue that it turned out for the better: Iraq has improved a bit since the middle of 2007, after all. Reid, however, proved one thing with this entire display: that he wasn't tough enough for his job, and that all you had to do was get a few Southern Democrats worried before Reid knuckled under to avoid losing them on the vote. The lost Iraq chicken match would have been enough for a no confidence vote in most parliamentary systems, but Reid stayed on for the same reason why Democrats lost consistently throughout the 1980s and 1990s: an excessive focus on intraparty Democratic politics rather than pushing an agenda and acquiring political power. This has become a pattern.
The Iraq vote (and, indeed, there were other Iraq votes that followed a similar pattern) was merely the first of many failed threats emanating from Harry Reid's office. Consider the relatively recent case of Joe Lieberman. Lieberman needs no introduction, and in 2008 Lieberman crossed party lines to support John McCain's presidential bid. Everyone figured that Lieberman was toast after the 110th Congress ended, along with his status as the Dems' 51st Senator (and therefore critical for keeping a majority). Reid himself did more than hint that Lieberman was finished after the latter agreed to speak at the Republican National Convention. But Reid bungled this as well. Lieberman, a man who thought it was politically savvy to tie himself to George W. Bush after 2006 and John McCain in 2008, nevertheless managed to outmaneuver Reid. By excusing the threat of booting Lieberman out of the Dem caucus (or actually, you know, doing it) and making the loss of Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee chair the opening bid for Lieberman's castigation, Lieberman was able to frame that punishment as the maximal option, and then subsequently argue that it was too harsh. Rather than taking decisive action, Reid avoided accountability by turning the decision over to the full caucus. And the caucus gave Lieberman a slap on the wrist. Once again, Reid was more interested in internal Democratic politics at the expense of showing actual leadership and following through on his threats. As a result, a man who is functionally a Republican on national security matters will be chairing the Homeland Security and Government Oversight Committee. This is, shall we say, scary.
The most recent test for Reid is the Roland Burris affair. Reid said he wouldn't seat Burris, despite media reports that he would and a legal commentary that suggests he cannot help but give Burris his seat. This is, of course, the Reid leadership in a nutshell: making threats that he cannot back up and being unable to see the broader political ramifications of what he's doing. If Reid were constutionally unable to seat Burris, I would say that would be a politically savvy move. Unfortunately, Burris was legally appointed and there appears to be no hint of foul play. While most people don't want Burris to be seated, it appears inevitable that he will be, regardless of Reid's objections, and it will only serve to make Reid appear even more impotent, which is difficult even to imagine.
The effects of Reid's incompetence are becoming more and more apparent as party discipline has broken down in the Senate. Right now, two high-ranking Democratic Senators on the Intelligence Committee are openly trashing President-elect Barack Obama's choice of who ought to run the CIA. One of those, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is going even further and contradicting Reid by saying that Burris ought to be seated. And why shouldn't she? She's not going to face any retribution, and it only reinforces the old conceptions of Democrats as basically chickens following a decapitation. Compare this to the House, which is under particularly strong leadership by Nancy Pelosi. No Members of Congress have stepped on the Democrats' message so far as I can tell. There is simply no substitute for strong leadership in making things happen. Reid can issue all the threats he wants, but anyone who has been watching knows that Reid will not back them up. I cannot think of a single instance of Reid standing tall and flexing his muscles on anything. He has lost his credibility, and new blood is most assuredly needed in the Democrats' Senate Leadership.
It is becoming clear to me that Reid is going to be the biggest obstacle in the Democrats' plans for change. He simply cannot deliver on his promises. It is unclear why he's still The Man in the Senate. In 2005, the choices for leadership were relatively meager. Now the Democrats have quite a bit of options. I personally think that Schumer is the best choice: he's got a safe seat, he's gotten about a quarter of the Democratic caucus elected and they owe him, he's not bad at shaping public opinion and he has shown repeatedly that he is concerned with how things play on Main Street, if you will pardon the cliche. He is, in other words, the anti-Reid. Dems need to seriously rethink their leadership if we want to see the sort of change that Barack Obama has promised.
