Send In the Health-Care Clowns

As the public option starts to morph into an expansion of Medicare and Medicaid in the main tent, two Senate buffoons, Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman, are stepping up their side shows in the health care circus.

The Majority Leader is dragging slavery and woman's suffrage into the debate by invoking them as precedents for Republican resistance:

"When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough'...When women spoke up for the right to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right."

In another corner of the freak show section, Joe Lieberman's antics are drawing so much attention that TV ads for an opponent of Connecticut's other senator, Chris Dodd, are taking shots at him: "Joe never forgets who he ran to represent: Himself. It's not about you. It's all about Joe."

Hundreds of protesters from an interfaith organization, reports the Washington Post, "showed up at Lieberman's home in Stamford and at his office in Hartford, to plead (and pray) for him to support the bill. Among them was Rabbi Ron Fish, of Congregation Beth El in Norwalk, Conn., who was so supportive of Lieberman's 2006 reelection bid that he rushed through John F. Kennedy International Airport in search of a mailbox in which to send his absentee ballot before boarding a flight to Israel."

Meanwhile, behind the vaudeville, some liberals are pushing to lower Medicare eligibility to age 55, expand Medicaid to cover those with incomes up to 150 percent of the poverty level (up to $33,075 for a family of four) and/or effectively cap insurance company profits by requiring them to spend 90 percent of premiums on clinical services and activities that improve the quality of care.

None of these proposals can compete with Reid and Lieberman for amusement value, but they indicate that some serious negotiating is going on.

Sin in Nevada

In the state where marriage is a union between a man and a woman and the senator they both work for, John Ensign is still running ahead of Harry Reid in approval ratings and is now busy apologizing, not to his wife, but Senate colleagues for embarrassing them.

Members of both parties greeted him warmly in Washington yesterday, and Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander cited Ensign’s decision to give up his position of Policy Committee chairman as “a substantial step...an act of contrition.”

Ensign's transgression, reported to Fox News by a confused husband seemingly unsure of whether he was seeking money or moral vindication, has to be seen in the context of Nevada as America's oasis from Puritanism, where quickie divorces were invented, legal brothels flourish and the Mafia created casinos to relieve tourists of their inhibitions and life savings.

In this setting, immortalized by movies from "The Misfits" to "The Godfather," the real scandal may be not Ensign's peccadillo but Harry Reid's ineptitude in figuring the odds to get anything done as Majority Leader of the Senate.

That kind of sin is unforgivable.

The Harry Reid Embarrassment

As Democrats struggle toward a bulletproof majority (pace Norm Coleman), their impotence to get together and legislate or even confirm White House appointees underscores once again the fact that their Senate Majority Leader is no Lyndon Johnson.

"Nothing is simple if you’re Harry Reid," Gail Collins writes in her New York Times column today, citing his loss of 27 Democrats on a credit-card reform bill to an amendment allowing tourists to carry guns in national parks among a string of other ineptitudes during what the Republicans like to call "one-party rule."

Two years ago the dean of political columnists, David Broder of the Washington Post, labeled him the Democrats' Alberto Gonzales, "a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance," and with Obama in the White House, Reid's leadership skills have not noticeably improved.

Now Collins reviews his inability to get the President's choices, including his own Legal Counsel, confirmed "in a place that holds one important aspect of credit card reform is giving people the ability to pack a handgun at the Grand Canyon."

The Senate may have more than its share of clowns, but Reid is a dismal choice for ringmaster. Even in his barely populated home state of Nevada, the Majority Leader has ratings so low that, almost two years before he has face voters in 2010, his campaign has been grabbing for coattails by announcing that President Obama will headline a fundraiser for him later this month.

As Collins points out: "Ted Kennedy is sick and Robert Byrd is 91 and it’s a miracle some of the other ones can find their way to the Capitol. Even if you eventually get all 60 Democratic votes in the same room, how do you get them to do the same thing? You will remember that when Specter came over, Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska instantly said: 'They might have a 60-member majority. That doesn’t mean they have 60 votes.' Reid must have found the point Nelson was making less chilling than the fact that the senator kept referring to his own party as 'they.'"

Is Harry Reid who has been, as Broder notes, "assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth," the best crew chief for this fractious gang at a time when the President, and the country, need all the leadership they can get?

Obama in Democratic Crossfire

Not everything is Change in the new Washington. When Attorney General Eric Holder had the temerity to mention gun control the other day, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid shot him down with a hair-trigger NRA response.

To Holder's suggestion of reinstating the 1994 ban on assault weapons, Pelosi harrumphed, "I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now" as Reid's spokesman hastened to reaffirm the Majority Leader's votes against the original ban and the effort to reinstate it on expiration in 2004.

During the campaign, Obama took heavy flak for his remark that during hard times some people "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" and it cost him the Pennsylvania primary.

In Congress, there are still long memories of the National Rifle Association's ability to mobilize opposition to any member who votes against the God-given American right to hunt squirrels with automatic weapons and, in the absence of any recent Virginia Tech massacre, our lawmakers will take on Wall Street, Detroit, health care lobbyists but not the self-appointed protectors of the Second Amendment.

For Harry Reid, a George Wallace Moment

Loathsome as he is, Rod Blagojevich, in his shrewd maneuvering to escape Patrick Fitzgerald's clutches, has put Harry Reid in a position reminiscent of the Alabama governor 45 years ago illegally standing in a doorway to block African-American students from entering.

When the Senate reconvenes Tuesday, if Blagojevich's appointee Roland Burris is there to claim his seat, the legal basis for denying him is shaky and the political consequences of a confrontation extremely unappealing in the new no-drama era of an Obama administration.

One possible scenario that could appeal to the Illinois governor and Fox News is to have Blagojevich himself accompany Burris into the building, just as federal officials brushed aside George Wallace to escort two African-American students into a University of Alabama building in 1963.

Blagojevich has been trying to blackmail national Democrats with the prospect of just such a symbolic confrontation by narrowing his choice to a black candidate, offering the position to Burris after being turned down by Rep. Danny K. Davis, as Lynn Sweet reports in the Chicago Sun-Times.

In a mausoleum of Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery, Burris, 71, under the seal of the state of Illinois and the words "Trail Blazer," has chiseled his many firsts in granite, including being the state's first African-American attorney general and the state's first African-American comptroller.

Whether or not he gets to add US Senator to the list is an open question, but meanwhile his sponsor is doing his best to bury Harry Reid and the Democratic Party in his name.

Second Thoughts for Caroline Kennedy

Just when things were going well on her upstate tour comes the word that Harry Reid has been lobbying Gov. David Paterson to name Caroline Kennedy to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.

Being backed a Majority Leader who can't get anything done is yet another obstacle for JFK's daughter, following the news that Al Sharpton is supporting her.

The usually publicity-shy Sharpton has sent the media an unsolicited statement announcing she had called him about the position and, with double-negative grandeur, he felt "compelled to state that I unequivocally disagree with those that say she is not qualified and could not bring needed leadership to this state and country."

Sharpton also disclosed he has "invited Ms. Kennedy to dine with me at Sylvia's this week in Harlem and reminded her that I took Sen. Obama there during his campaign so it's a good luck stop since he did all right."

If consorting with the likes of Reid and Sharpton is not enough to give Caroline Kennedy pause, Gail Collins asks "how much of her life does she really want to spend at fund-raisers for people she suspects will be indicted before they have a chance to cash the checks? How does she feel about admiring butter sculptures at state fairs?"

As if all this were not enough for second thoughts, has she really thought about what it would be like to have Chuck Schumer for a mentor yakking at her for hours at a time?

In her father's immortal words, how much is too much to "ask what you can do for your country."

Post-Partisan Depression

With Democrats ascending, the wordplay in Washington is improving even if the economy isn't. Pressuring Barack Obama to be more aggressive, Congressman Barney Frank said yesterday, "At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time. I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have."

He also chided the President-Elect's policy of reaching across party lines: "Having lived with this very right-wing Republican group that runs the House most of the time, the notion of trying to deal with them as if we could be post-partisan gives me post-partisan depression."

No worries about an excess of wit or a partisanship gap, however, on the part of Democratic Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who sent George W. Bush a gotcha letter on the Detroit bailout, urging him to use "the TARP funds, or to work with the Federal Reserve to make available assistance through its existing lending programs, or both."

Translation: We can't or won't do anything until our man takes over the White House, so if the situation gets worse, it's your fault if you don't do something but, if you do, we get credit for pushing you into doing it.

When President Obama is finally in charge, he will have more than one kind of partisanship to overcome.

Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader?

Obama passed on her as vice president but can still put Hillary Clinton on the team by backing her for Senate Majority Leader.

In that role, Harry Reid has been ineffectual in rallying Democrats to curtail Bush's excesses or even effectively articulate an opposition view. Now, with a Senate reshuffling that includes the stepping-down of Robert Byrd and the throwing-out of Joe Lieberman, "change" could be served by bringing Clinton to the forefront.

With a clear electoral mandate and wide margin in Congress, before reaching out to Republicans as he has promised to do, the President-Elect can solidify his own ranks by recruiting the faction of his own party he narrowly defeated to win the nomination.

By naming Rahm Emanuel chief of staff, Obama has shown he was no qualms about relying on former Clinton loyalists. Choosing the former First Lady as a legislative partner would be a logical next step.

During the primaries, there were insistent rumors that Reid himself was offering his position to Sen. Clinton as an inducement to concede the nomination. He denied them, but the idea now won't come as a shock.

Clinton's ascension would be a powerful metaphor for cracking the glass-ceiling with women in the leadership positions of both houses of Congress, and her passion on domestic issues would nicely compliment Joe Biden's strength on foreign policy as surrogates for the new Administration's views.

The efforts of both Clintons during the campaign and the logic of a Hillary run in 2012 as a natural heir to a successful Obama Administration are strong arguments against any worries about possible subversion.

In his reaching out for bipartisan consensus, the President-Elect could start with unifying his own party.

The One-Party Rule Scare

In this desperate week of fighting to hold onto Washington power, the GOP will play its last card--to arouse voter fear of what one-party rule would do to the country, of what the "Socialism" of Barack Obama would mean if supported by filibuster-proof majorities that would give Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid a free hand.

By implicitly acknowledging the defeat of their White House ticket, Republicans could make the argument in an attempt to save such endangered Senate seats as those of Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, Saxby Chambliss in Georgia and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.

Since Americans have an innate mistrust of concentrated power, the notion could gain traction for voters with short memories. They would have to forget the past two years of "checks and balances" that prevented extending health care to impoverished children and setting reasonable timetables for withdrawal from Iraq, among other majority desires.

Some might look at the first six years of the Bush Administration with a compliant Congress that produced a disastrous war, a ruined economy and an assault on the Constitution. That was one-party rule with a vengeance, but does that make the case for an impotent divided Washington or for putting the future in the hands of a party that won't abuse its power?

No reasonable person would be willing to trust an Obama Administration and Democratic Congress with unlimited power but, in cleaning up eight years of Bush wreckage, it makes sense to let them start doing the job without their hands tied.

Gut Check Time for Democrats

The party that could win the White House and extend its majorities in both houses of Congress next year is in disarray.

In confronting a President with abysmal approval ratings, Democrats have managed to lose every major battle this year--over the war in Iraq, children's health insurance and illegal wiretapping--and dissipate the mandate that gave them legislative control last November.

Now the internal bickering is on. Today a sappy memo from a House aide blames it on semantics. "Why,” writes Dave Helfert, who now works for Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii). “are we defending S-CHIP instead of advocating a ‘Healthy Kids’ plan?...Republicans have been kicking our rhetorical butt since about 1995.”

But imitating Frank Luntz won't solve the party's problems. True enough, as a new book "The Political Brain" argues, Democrats may be too cerebral instead of going for the gut. But their real problem is not language but leadership.

On the surface, Bush's intransigence and their narrow margins in both houses have tied their hands, but no more so than the failure of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to get beyond playing it politically safe.

Their approach to S-CHIP is symptomatic. Yesterday they passed another bill that inches toward the White House position with an Oliver Twist-like, "Please, sir, we want some more."

As for slowing the war in Iraq or stopping a new one against Iran, they have not only given up trying but talking as well. On the overriding issue of our time, Democrats have been cowed by accusations of "not supporting the troops" if they block funding. It's past time for someone to step up and rally them to try.

There are signs that something is stirring. Chris Dodd is threatening a Senate filibuster of FISA bill provisions to grant telecoms retroactive immunity for helping Bush-Cheney spy on Americans, and other '08 candidates may join him. Not exactly "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," but it could be a start.

What's the point of winning it all in '08 if Democrats don't show the will and courage to change course between now and then?

Losing the Anti-War War

Evidence that the Iraq narrative has turned is everywhere.

“Victory Is Within Reach in Iraq,” a Wall Street Journal headline enthuses this weekend, claiming that “highly respected officers including the commander of Special Forces in Iraq, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, reportedly feel it is justified by the facts on the ground.”

The Washington Post reports “The Next Challenge in Iraq,” quoting Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command:

"I look at the numbers, and I say the success that General Petraeus and the guys have made is amazing. But how do we leverage that to get the Iraqi government to take decisions that will provide enduring security? How do we help them take advantage of this?"

The Los Angeles Times cites, “Tough going for antiwar Republicans,” reporting that “Despite months of pressure, no more than eight Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have backed any measure that mandates a troop withdrawal. And GOP strategists predict that is unlikely to change.”

How much our situation in Iraq has changed is highly debatable, but the battle is Washington seems to be lost. What do Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi do now?

Bush’s stubbornness and their own ineffectual legislative maneuvering have put them in a bind. To persist in railing against the war may only feed charges that they are “defeatist.” To back off efforts to get us out of Iraq will enrage those who gave them control of Congress to do just that.

In coming months, they will undoubtedly concentrate on domestic issues--health insurance, housing, tax reform--to persuade voters that Democrats can get something done.

Meanwhile, the dying in Iraq goes on. The numbers may be slightly smaller, but the blood is just as real as it was before Americans lost hope of stopping it anytime soon.