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Rock the boat,
David

What’s funny about Washington is how many people there embarrass themselves over and over and over again, and never seem to realize what a bunch of toolsheds they really look like after a while. Stu “Mr. Conventional Wisdom” Rothenberg is one of these kinds of people - a man who makes his living getting up in front of audiences and reading aloud passages from ABC’s The Note or National Journal’s Hotline. My favorite Rothenberg-is-an-idiot story was when I saw him tell an audience at the National Press Club that trade and globalization are not politically potent issues and that Americans don’t care about those issues. Little Stuey hasn’t said much about that since this year’s election, for good reason. But I digress…

Today, Stu takes to the blogs to say that Nancy Pelosi’s decision to back Jack Murtha for Majority leader “is so incomprehensible, so politically stupid that it has raised eyebrows among political journalists and insiders of all type.” Oh the horror, the horror - Washington reporters and insiders have their panties in a bunch. Stu goes on to tell us that “now I’m not so sure” that Pelosi “won’t drive the Democratic bus off the cliff.” He says Pelosi’s decision to back someone who lost was a “lose-lose proposition” for her and for Democrats generally because “reporters will have the Pelosi versus Hoyer story to kick around for the next couple of years, and Pelosi will forever have started off her historic speakership with a stinging, and very unnecessary, defeat.”

We should really feel sorry for someone like Stu. He’s been in Washington drinking the Kool-Aide for so long, he has lost all understanding of how power actually works. Because if he actually did understand the basic dynamics of power, he’d understand that all of this was, in fact, a win-win situation for Pelosi, no matter what the outcome. If Murtha had won, she would have had a close ally as her number 2. With Hoyer winning under these circumstances, she has also won because she has let him know that his disloyalty to the Democratic Caucus in the past on major issues has created a strong block of opponents to him - and that the only way for him to mollify those opponents is to stay in line in the future, rather than continue publicly undermining the Democratic Caucus as he has many times before. Not surprisingly, Hoyer’s victory statement was filled with declarations that he now appreciates Murtha’s leadership on the Iraq War (this comes after he attacked Murtha’s position on Iraq).

But the win-win nature of Pelosi’s intervention in the leadership race isn’t just limited to sending a message to Steny Hoyer. She has also won today because she has sent a message to the entire Democratic Caucus by letting every Member know that there will be unpleasant consequences to Hoyer-esque Democratic disloyalty. Though Hoyer won the election, you can bet he didn’t enjoy having a spirited opponent. Every single member of the Democratic Caucus now knows that when they behave the way Hoyer behaved in the past, they may face similar pain.

This is the same dynamic that happened with the Lamont-Lieberman primary. Some Washington insiders say the whole contest was a waste because Lamont lost the general. But what they don’t say - and probably don’t understand - is that the spirited challenge was a victory unto itself, because it sent a message to every other lawmaker in the country that they are not able to ignore the public without facing consequences.

Look, I’m no Pelosi shill - I’ve criticized her before. But as I said in an earlier post, Pelosi’s move isn’t the immature move that Washington’s professional navel-gazers are making it out to be. It was a very shrewd move, regardless of who won, and it is a marked departure from the Big Tent for Big Tent’s Sake mushiness of past Democratic leaders. Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised by the Establishment’s reaction to today’s election: People who make their living spewing Conventional Wisdom are offended/surprised/disgusted/frightened by the fact that things are changing now, and that Democratic leaders are actually spending political capital and trying to lead. Sometimes these leaders will lose an individual skirmish like Pelosi did today. But losing a skirmish isn’t necessarily losing - merely having a skirmish can be a major victory for a leader, whether in Congress, in a statehouse or in a business environment.

We may recall, for instance, that FDR famously had his staff battle each other to a pulp so that the best policy recommendations would emerge. We may also recall how Newt Gingrich waged many an unsuccessful fight with the GOP leadership in the 1980s. These people understood the power equations, and understood that the battle itself was of value to longer-term goals, regardless of the momentary outcome. And you can bet that as they amassed power and successfully pushed their agenda, there was a whole cadre of Stu Rothenbergs sitting on the sidelines naysaying everything.

So, while today’s Stu Rothenbergs (one of which happens to actually be Stu Rothenberg) fulminate about how Pelosi is supposedly weakened, and how she has jeopardized the entire election and the Future of the Planet Earth and the Universe, remember: the armchair experts often have very little understanding of how power is actually weilded, and, to paraphrase Lieberman, we progressives listen to these self-anointed “experts” at the progressive movement’s peril.

Let me put it more succinctly: Thanks for your column Stu - we’ll take it from here.