dangerous thoughts

For those of us hoping that the discipline the Democrats showed in the fall campaign would carry over to their governing in Congress, and that there would be fewer botched jokes and less precision self-foot-shooting in the majority, today was not an encouraging news day.

First, there was this story in the Washington Times suggesting that the Nancy Pelosi carved out a special exemption from the minimum wage bill for San Francisco-based Starkist Tuna.

There may be a legitimate explanation for this fishy provision, but it's certainly not articulated in the Washington Times article, which indicates at a minimum that the Speaker's team is not yet ready for primetime pushback.

Pelosi has to know that the Republicans will be jumping on any hint of Democratic hypocrisy after her team so effectively savaged the Republican culture of corruption in the run-up to the election -- and that a "Sorry Charlie" defense is just not going to cut it. We need to be cleaner than Caesar's wife -- and smarter than Carville's.

Second, there was this cover story in the New York Post whacking Senator Barbara Boxer for implying during yesterday's Foreign Relations Committee hearing that Condi Rice could not understand the sacrifice's the families of American troops are making because she is not married and has no children.

I appreciate Senator Boxer's passion and anger about the Administration's botched handling of the war, and Rice deserves to be held to account for her role in it. But it just undermines our credibility as substantive critics -- and the larger goal of accountability -- when it seems like we are crossing the line into personal cheap shots. We look petty and political, and, moreover, it distracts attention away from the policy questions that should be rightly pushed, while building sympathy for the target of our scrutiny.

It's this kind of overreaching that saved Bill Clinton's presidency, and, more recently and relevant to Democrats, weakened the case against Sam Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. For those who don't recall, whatever substantive questions/criticisms the Democrats raised about Alito's jurisprudence and ideology in the confirmation hearings were largely obscured by their baseless insinuations that the nominee held racist views. That left casual viewers to believe the Democrats on the Judiciary committee were more interested in conducting a political inquisition instead of a policy inquiry -- and turned Alito into the victim.

Now, Alito probably was going to get confirmed anyway. But Democrats certainly didn't help themselves -- or the public interest -- by veering into vendetta territory. That lesson seems lost on Barbara Boxer. Let's hope it's not lost on Harry Reid and Speaker Pelosi, who would be well-served to send a signal that they don't condone the implication of Boxer's remarks, whether they were intended or not.