Congressional leadership doesn’t breed candidates for “Profiles in Courage” or “The Best and the Brightest,” but in Harry Reid, the Democrats may have what Reid himself once called President Bush, “a loser.”
A growing unease with Reid’s performance as Senate Majority Leader will be brought to a boil today by David Broder’s Washington Post column dubbing him “The Democrats’ Gonzales.”
Broder cites Sen. Chuck Schumer’s exertions to extricate his party from Reid’s “the war is lost” statement, which is true enough but not the best basis for negotiating a political and diplomatic solution in Iraq.
“Hailed by his staff as ‘a strong leader who speaks his mind in direct fashion,’" Broder writes, “Reid is assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth...Reid's verbal wanderings on the war in Iraq are consequential--not just for his party and the Senate but for the more important question of what happens to U.S. policy in that violent country and to the men and women whose lives are at stake.”
A bit much? Maybe. If Reid were a Senator without leadership responsibility, a newspaper columnist or a blogger, his outspokenness would be admirable.
But in a job where negotiation, persuasion and even behind-the-scenes arm-twisting of the kind that made Lyndon Johnson famous are required, this may not be time to match a stubborn, not-too-swift President with a preening, pugnacious adversary.
If this is liberal treason, so be it.
WHO is Broder calling a "continuing embarrassment"??
ReplyDeleteAnd WHAT is he thinking of comparing Harry Reid to Gonzales???
What about the international embarrassment that is the Bush Administration? What about the embarrassing national press corps and their practice of the "herd journalism that got us into Iraq?"
I'm sorry to say that I have little respect for David Broder -- though I once valued his opinions.
Now I often find myself wondering just who it is that he is trying score points with.
I guess I've never thought the Iraq war is, or would be, "winnable" (the way the neocons were approaching it back in 2002). And I want my elected representatives to call it for the losing proposition it has proven to be.
There are better ways to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. And much more that should be done in diplomacy and border protection to protect us at home. We know that.