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?

Hillary Clinton's Defining Moment

Today's transition hot topic is the rumor that the President-Elect is considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State and that the two of them have met in Chicago to discuss it.

Coming right after the buzz about her as Senate Major Leader, this seems to be a fork in the road for the former First Lady. Does she best keep her presidential hopes alive by devoting herself to domestic issues or foreign policy?

It may be a close call. In the immediate future, the economy will be front and center on the national agenda, but if any Obama initiatives fail (and some almost certainly will), should the once and future candidate risk taking the heat for them as legislative overseer? As the original proponent of "a vast right-wing conspiracy" a decade ago, how effective would she be in reaching across the aisle for bipartisanship?

As Secretary of State, Clinton would be the face of America interacting with world leaders, but it would be President Obama's policy and, while there might less glory in it, the position would strengthen her future claims about experience against any upstart political opponent in 2016.

If Obama offers her the position, it would be tempting and, for the rest of us, fascinating to see Bill Clinton traveling the world in the role of an upgraded Denis Thatcher.

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.

Harry Reid, the Un-Lyndon Johnson

Before he became President and lost a war, Lyndon Johnson was the most effective Senate majority leader in history. Today’s Democrats, trying to stop another war, could use his skills.

To put it kindly, Harry Reid is no LBJ. In six months as majority leader, he has consistently misspoken and mismanaged Democratic efforts to win over enough Republicans to change policy in Iraq, culminating in this week’s disastrous all-nighter.

It takes a unique set of mismanagement skills to help propel the Democratic-controlled Congress to lower approval ratings than Bush. To be fair, Reid has had to navigate differences about how to end the war in his own party and the ambivalence of Republicans who want to stay loyal to their President but fear for their electoral skins next November. Even so, his performance has been dismal.

In April, David Broder in the Washington Post called Reid “the Democrats’ Gonzales” for his gaffes, and liberal bloggers gang-tackled the venerable columnist. Three months later, Reid, looking more like Bush’s Brownie of FEMA fame, is turning out to be the polar opposite of Lyndon Johnson.

In 1966, Robert Novak of Valerie Plame fame was co-author of a book that described Johnson’s ways as a majority leader who worked with a Republican President, Eisenhower, to pass the first civil rights bill of the century. LBJ, knowing where every Senator stood on every issue and what it would take to win him over, would then go into action:

“The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours...Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint and the hint of threat...Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.”

No one expects Reid to be another LBJ, but some semblance of parliamentary and negotiating skills would go a long way toward building some real legislative pressure to end this miserable war. Then, if Democrats win next year, they will need effective leadership to start undoing the damage Bush has done. They can do better than Harry Reid.