Leadership faces far too familiar

In D.C., deja vu all over again

Saturday, November 18, 2006

If voters thought they had sent a message to Congress demanding change, it's not clear that Washington was listening.

On Nov. 8, House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi promised "the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history" - a sentiment echoed by incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid during the campaign.

That's a popular view, as GOP pollster Frank Luntz found. In an election night survey, Luntz discovered that among voters who switched their allegiance from Republican congressional candidates in 2004 to Democrats in 2006, "unethical and illegal behavior going unpunished" was the second-most important issue after illegal immigration.

But to borrow a mantra from the Reagan years, "personnel is policy." The people most likely to reform hidebound institutions are those who have previously bucked the status quo.

The past week's leadership races in the House and the Senate signal that - no matter what voters may have asked for - Democrats and Republicans like things the way they are, thank you very much. Expecting lawmakers to be accountable for their behavior may take more than one election cycle.

Both parties have shown remarkable tone-deafness, starting with the Democrats:

• Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was Pelosi's hand-picked selection for majority leader. Murtha is a notorious pork-barrel spender. And on Tuesday, Murtha told House colleagues that proposed ethics reform bills were "total crap." And he is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1970s Abscam bribery scandal.

Democrats rejected Murtha by a 2-to-1 margin. But he would have been a bad fit to lead "the most ethical Congress in history."

• Rep. Alcee Hastings D-Fla., Pelosi's likely pick to chair the House Intelligence Committee, is another mind-boggling choice. As a federal judge, Hastings was impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate in another bribery scandal. He was never charged with a crime. But again, he's no Mr. Clean.

Republican voters who expected better from their party will face disappointment as well:

• Mississippi's Trent Lott is the new assistant minority leader in the Senate. That's the same Lott who resigned as majority leader in 2002 after he said America would have been better off had Strom Thurmond been elected president in 1948 - when Thurmond ran on the pro-segregation Dixiecrat ticket.

Lott also said this year he was "damn tired of hearing from" bloggers and members of the House and Senate who wanted to rein in political pork projects.

• Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., were re-elected as leader and whip by Republicans, though they're now leading a minority. Each won by comfortable margins over Mike Pence of Indiana and John Shadegg of Arizona, respectively - genuine reformers who vowed to bring transparency to budgeting and spending, and make sponsors of congressional earmarks defend their proposals in public.

Leadership contests may seem like inside baseball to the typical voter. And the 110th Congress will surely be judged by the policies it enacts rather than the personalities who run the show.

But perceptions matter. And voters who thought they threw the bums out may be stunned to realize that the bums are quite satisfied to stay where they are.