Prometheus 6

[W]hile President George W. Bush was quick to say he'd offered Pelosi a list of "Republican interior decorators" to help her spruce up her new office, no one in either party expects the White House to bend over backward to help the Democratic Congress find its groove.

Democrats’ Challenge: Stay in the Center
By Jonathan Darman
Newsweek

Nov. 20, 2006 issue - Like any newly elected congressman, Indiana's Brad Ellsworth has a lot to learn. Before he had even digested his victory over Republican incumbent John Hostettler last week, Ellsworth was poring over forms and factoids, shipped straight to Indiana from some new friends on Capitol Hill. "They're asking me what kind of BlackBerry I want," said a mildly exasperated Ellsworth. "I don't know what kind of BlackBerry I want. I've always just used a cell phone." As his campaign staffers caught up on sleep, Ellsworth worried over pension plans, travel arrangements and finding a home in the nation's capital. "Did you know that some [congressmen] live with seven or eight other guys?" he asked. "People back home would be amazed."

But wide-eyed as he may be, Ellsworth has already learned a crucial rule for survival in Washington: find allies you can trust. Two days after his victory, he placed a call to another newly elected Democratic congressman, North Carolina's Heath Shuler. Shuler is a former NFL quarterback; he and Ellsworth, a sheriff, had been two of the "macho Democrat" stars of the '06 cycle—manly men whose conservative positions on issues like abortion and gay marriage had helped them win in their Red States. Now Ellsworth was calling to congratulate his soon-to-be colleague and to say that the two should stick together in the new House. After all, he said, they both had to answer to the same kind of conservative constituents back home—and both know they won't last long in Congress if they go native in D.C. "We both won; now we're both in the same boat," Ellsworth said. "We've got to remember that the people back home put us here and they can take us back out."

Most Democrats in Washington weren't thinking so far ahead. After 12 years in the minority, the Democrats swept control of both houses of Congress—and the party leadership reveled in the exotic new pleasures of victory. Rahm Emanuel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, danced on national television. Harry Reid, the usually staid Senate Democratic floor leader, kissed the television screen in his hotel suite when a network projected Claire McCaskill the winner in her hard-fought Missouri Senate race. Nancy Pelosi, soon to be the first female Speaker of the House, paraded across the broadcast networks, a proud grandma in an olive pantsuit, proclaiming herself "thrilled."

But Pelosi has been around long enough to know that in Washington the party never lasts too long. She will soon be judged on her ability to make the Congress work, no simple task for an incoming Speaker whose majority in the House is thin and is made up of members with loyalties to different generations, regions and ideologies. Fresh-faced conservatives like Ellsworth might say they don't "want our president to be viewed as weak," but they won't have much say about the matter with powerful Democratic committee chairmen like John Conyers and Henry Waxman mulling investigations on issues like Iraq-war contracts and NSA wiretaps. And while President George W. Bush was quick to say he'd offered Pelosi a list of "Republican interior decorators" to help her spruce up her new office, no one in either party expects the White House to bend over backward to help the Democratic Congress find its groove.