DID PELOSI WIN OR LOSE?

My brother in Astuteness, Punditarian, says Pelosi won when her choice for Majority Leader, John Murtha, lost. It seems to me that there is a sense in which she did win. It would have been bad for Pelosi and the Democratic Party to have had Murtha in such a position of power.

There's a saying that goes, "That which does not kill me only makes me stronger." That's some beautiful shit to ponder when you're trying to push through a marathon. It's kind of a philosopher's version of "Just do it." But, it isn't really true. Ask the runner with a severely herniated disc if it only serves to make him stronger. One has to wonder if Pelosi might have suffered a political herniation trying to carry Murtha across the finish line. The Los Angeles Times certainly thinks so:

That embarrassing experience should induce Pelosi (D-San Francisco) — who appeared chastened before reporters Thursday — to reconsider another ill-advised promotion: Her apparent intention to bestow the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee not on the panel's ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), but on Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.).

Hastings, like Murtha, seems an unlikely choice for a leadership role in what Pelosi has been advertising as "the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history." Hastings was impeached as a federal judge and removed from office in the late 1980s (although he was acquitted of bribery in a criminal trial in 1983).

Captain's Quarters comments:

After the vote yesterday, almost every Democrat went out of their way to say that the election of Hoyer did not indicate any damage to Pelosi's standing in the caucus. However, that simply won't fly. Even the NYT understood the significance of the revolt against Pelosi's purge; it shows that the back benchers will not fear Pelosi or her ham-handed threats to strip them of committee assignments. For a caucus with a slender majority, this disunified start portends a season of difficult whips, especially since she's hardly invincible to revolt.

The New York Times concurs:

Nancy Pelosi has managed to severely scar her leadership even before taking up the gavel as the new speaker of the House. First, she played politics with the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee to settle an old score and a new debt. And then she put herself in a lose-lose position by trying to force a badly tarnished ally, Representative John Murtha, on the incoming Democratic Congress as majority leader. The party caucus put a decisive end to that gambit yesterday ...

For my part, I say Pelosi is not permanently wounded. Her ability to unify the party will be defined, as it is for all leaders, by her response to opposition, from outside forces, on the major challenges of her time. There will always be internecine fighting over who deserves appointments, laurels, and credit. So, it is not at all surprising that the Democrats would have been working at cross-purposes on such a vote. This Democratic Congress will not define itself by such squabbles. Their history will be written according to their response to the War on Terror, and the social and economic issues of this epoch.

Having watched Republican unity wax and wane from the period right after Bush was elected, through September 11th, and then after the 2004 elections, we know that periods of harmony are like isolating a neutrino in a particle accelerator. You see its effects for a very brief period of time, before it disappears and shows up again somewhere else in a different time.