This week the House Majority Leader came out strongly against revoking the telecom amnesty passed in last year’s FISA Amendment Act. Taken together with his other major policy positions, has anyone done more active harm to the left’s priorities?
For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.
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The headline is hyperbole, of course, and is just a cheap ruse to get you reading (look, it worked!) Any party that Strom Thurmond ever called home has the bar for Worst Ever set higher than Steny Hoyer can dream of clearing. Worst Alive, though – he gets my vote. What qualifies someone for that honor? First, the candidate cannot be a relative unknown plugging away at a fairly low level. There has to be the ability to do something really meaningful along with the production of something abysmal. A midlevel bureaucrat or county commissioner could be thoroughly disreputable and an incorrigible crook, but not the worst Democrat alive. Sheer magnitude of criminality is not enough. Stature is required.
Someone like William Jefferson is closer, but still not within shooting distance. He was not that well known nationally before his arrest, and the details of his crime seem almost like a caricature of Big Easy shenanigans. Moreover, the case didn’t have any legs. It did not bring down any other Democrats, nor was it something like the ruinous catalyst Mark Foley’s case was for the Republicans (which broke in the heat of election season, foreshadowed the Larry Craig/David Vitter scandals and contributed to a crippling perception of GOP hypocrisy). A little closer is John Edwards, who had nationwide recognition and attempted to win the Democratic presidential nomination with a secret nearly guaranteed to be exposed before the election. He did not get the chance to do so, though. Massive damage barely averted is still averted. No harm, no foul (but no second chance either).
Actual damage, prominence, implications for the party as a whole: These seem to be the essential ingredients. Consistent badness matters, too. For instance, Jay Rockefeller is no friend civil liberties. He was a tool of the telecommunication industry when it came to retroactive immunity for illegal surveillance. He wants to give the president outrageously excessive powers to control the internet. And he is not just on the wrong side of these issues, he actively promotes them. But on health care he has redeemed himself so completely that Marcy Wheeler took the extraordinary step of revoking her previously bestowed nickname for him (“Jello Jay”) given in honor of his unwillingness to show some spine when dealing with the Bush administration. Similarly, Michael Moore is pushing for a primary challenge to Chris Dodd because of his compromising ties to the financial industry, but Dodd was a lone and inspiring Senate voice in trying to prevent the Constitutional assault known as the FISA Amendments Act. (I agree he looks very bad on his loans, but he has an awful lot of good will to burn through in my book before I call for his ouster. Insert “LEAVE CHRIS DODD ALONE!” rant here.)
All of that narrows it down to Hoyer and Harry Reid (aka Senator Uriah Heep). Reid is in a position to do more damage to liberal priorities since he is at the top in the Senate and Hoyer is only second in the House. Usually they are neck and neck for the title, and while I do not question the judgment of anyone who gives Reid the nod, I think Hoyer has pulled ahead lately. First, Harry actually did something useful this week by canceling the Senate’s October 12th Columbus Day recess, giving the Senate just a little more time to get health care done via reconciliation before its deadline on the 15th. Hoyer has not skipped a beat, though.
He is in bed with the financial services industry like Dodd appears to be. He tried to sell out the public option, then when he got smacked down by Nancy Pelosi would only say it is “in flux.” He proudly shepherded the loathsome FISA “reforms” through the House. Now that some Senators are trying (maybe foolishly and in vain) to undo some of the damage he announces his opposition. Is there any upside to having this guy in the party? Every time he is in the news it is because he is busy kneecapping progressives. I hope he performs absolutely legendary constituent services because all of his positions seem to come straight from the George W. Bush playbook.
By the way, Rodricks’ column points out Hoyer’s “only opponent in the 2006 election was a Green Party candidate with under $10,000 in contributions.” He clearly has no incentive to act like a Democrat. If party leaders think that does not matter outside Maryland’s 5th Congressional District they should have a look at Germany, where “the big loser of [last] Sunday’s election is still undoubtedly the center-left Social Democrats…The party is only 10 percentage points ahead of its upstart far-left rival, the Left Party.” A base is neglected at a party’s peril.
