Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is reportedly working to steer the Democrats to the center — to try and avoid precisely the kind of thing Rep. Charles Rangel is attempting to do with his use of bringing up re institution of the military draft as an ideological political bludgeon. The Boston Globe reports:
Anxious to chart a centrist course with Democrats’ new majority in Congress, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top deputies are busily working in private and public to rein in the liberal ambitions of some senior party heavyweights –including proposals to reinstate the military draft and end the Pentagon’s ban on gays in uniform.
This is the key test for the Democrats. The American public voted for divided government once again. Are the Democrats going to act like responsible guardians of the voters’ concerns and provide serious, vigorous Congressional oversight, alternative policies that will increase substantive policy debate, and a higher-profile other-alternative media voice now that they have the Congressional power soapbox?
Or will the Democrats quickly become like kids who were kept off candy being given the keys to enter the candy shop whenever they want?
Pelosi has urged House Democrats, including incoming committee chairmen, to use the first weeks of next year’s congressional term to focus exclusively on proposals on which the party is unified and legislative goals that are within reach, according to Pelosi allies and aides.
It’s the same strategy, of sorts, that George Bush used when he first got in: it’s picking some issues to debut on the American scene and making sure you have the VOTES to get the issues to fall your way. This is why Pelosi’s recent effort to plop Jack Murtha into the slot as her second in command was such a poor decision; she didn’t have the votes.
One of the first things Pelosi did was make it clear that Rangel’s idea of re-instituting the draft was a nonstarter:
Yesterday, Pelosi and the incoming House majority leader,Representative Steny Hoyer, quashed talk of reinstating the draft one day after Representative Charles Rangel said he will file a bill to make that happen. Rangel, a New York Democrat, is in line to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the most powerful posts in Congress.
“The speaker and I have discussed scheduling; it did not include that,” said Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat.
Bottom line message: No way, Jose…
And impeachment? She won’t make some liberal talk show hosts (particularly some of the local hosts and callers on Air America stations’ local versus network shows) very happy:
Already, House Democratic leaders have extracted a promise from the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, to rule out impeaching President Bush. Conyers is the lead sponsor of a bill that would investigate whether to recommend “grounds for possible impeachment.”
And in the when-will-they-ever-learn department, she has also moved quickly to try and short-circuit those who want to immediately turn to a key gay issue. In case you don’t remember, Bill Clinton’s focus on gays in the military when he first took office is now viewed as a huge political mistake because it gobbled up some momentum, decreased his political capital, and made some Americans question his list of priorities:
Pelosi has also tempered hopes of reversing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on the service of gays and lesbians in the military, after two key Democrats — Representatives Martin T. Meehan of Lowell and Barney Frank of Newton — said last week that they want to repeal the policy.
Though Pelosi believes homosexuals should be able to openly serve, she has made clear that she believes Democrats have more urgent national-security priorities — including changing course in Iraq and investigating war-related contracting.
The list Pelosi is drawing up is a markedly centrist one, one that has the possibility of expanding or maintaining the Democratic party’s winning election coalition rather than splintering it:
Pelosi and Hoyer outlined an agenda yesterday for early next year that Pelosi said will relieve “the middle-class squeeze.” It avoids hot-button issues such as tax cuts, gay rights, and abortion for popular issues such as a higher minimum wage, more affordable student loans, and congressional ethics reform.
“These issues are bipartisan in nature,” Pelosi said. “That’s why we recommended them. We thought they were areas that are relevant to the lives of the American people, and that would have bipartisan support.”
So perhaps stubbing her political toe badly with the Murtha episode — and getting a thumbs-down on that issue from many Democrats who in-effect sent her a message that there are limits to the kind of control she can assert — Pelosi is as politically nimble as some suggested a few weeks ago.
The key to long-term growth for a political party is capturing the center and adding independent and centrist votes along with reliable party partisan votes. (If you don’t believe it, then just read this book.)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.