[Mb-civic] Dems Need A Newt Of Their Own - Elizabeth Wilner, Chuck Todd - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Dems Need A Newt Of Their Own
The Party Can't Have a Revolution Without the Revolutionaries

By Elizabeth Wilner and Chuck Todd
Sunday, February 19, 2006; B05

Back in 1992, seven upstart Republican freshmen forced real change in 
the House of Representatives.

Egged on by a more senior revolutionary, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), 
these feisty newcomers exploited the House Bank and Post Office scandals 
unfolding on the watch of a longtime Democratic majority. The GOP 
lawmakers even posed for a poster, a macho black-and-white group shot. 
"The Gang of Seven," the caption read. "We closed the House Bank. We're 
changing Congress. Join the fight."

Today, as a lobbying scandal plays out on the watch of the Republican 
majority in Congress, the question is: Where is the Democrats' Gang of 
Seven? Why isn't some spirited group of junior House Democrats capturing 
the public's imagination and sinking its teeth into the spreading Jack 
Abramoff mess? And where is the Democratic equivalent of Gingrich?

In Congress, reform often comes from the back bench. Junior members have 
the least to lose and the shortest -- and thus usually the cleanest -- 
records. These unlikely agents of change are often change's biggest 
beneficiaries. Five of the members of the Gang of Seven still serve in 
Congress. One, John Boehner (Ohio), just became the House majority 
leader; one, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), could conceivably become the 
Senate majority leader (provided he gets reelected); and one, Rep. Jim 
Nussle, may win election as governor of the swing state of Iowa.

And yet, after languishing in the minority for more than a decade, the 
Democrats' back bench has yet to produce a Gang of Seven or an insurgent 
leader such as Gingrich, who inspired dozens of GOP House candidates in 
1994. Most of the Democrats elected since the Republicans took over in 
1994 simply replaced other Democrats. Moreover, none was really elected 
on a message of bringing "change" to Congress.

The absence of a Democratic Gang of Seven is even more glaring given 
that there hasn't been much new blood flowing into the House leadership. 
Not a single ranking member (i.e., the top member of the minority party) 
on 21 House committees came to office after the Republicans took 
control. And in only five instances has a GOP committee chair been in 
Congress longer than his Democratic ranking-member counterpart.

Even in the majority, Republicans are better about promoting new 
members. Although Gingrich is gone, one part of his legacy remains: 
six-year term limits on committee chairmanships. As a result, Republican 
members, including reformers, climb higher, faster. But Democrats 
continue to take a top-down approach to ordering their ranks in 
Congress. Old-timers -- and in many cases, old-time liberals -- still 
lead the party's charge in many fights. Look at the roster of Democratic 
ranking members; the only relatively recent arrival (1994) is Bennie 
Thompson of Mississippi on the Homeland Security Committee, which is a 
new panel.

If Democrats were to gain control of Congress this November and made no 
changes to their current lineup, nine of their new committee chairs 
would be members who won their first elections before 1980: David Obey 
(1969), Ike Skelton (1976), George Miller (1974), John Dingell (1955), 
Henry Waxman (1974), John Conyers (1964), Nick Rahall (1976), James 
Oberstar (1974) and Charlie Rangel (1970). These folks would oversee 
major committees. Faces of change they are not.

House Democrats have been slow to promote younger members of their ranks 
in part because of the lessons that current Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi 
(Calif.) learned at the knees of skilled machine politicians, including 
California's Phil Burton and her father, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., who 
rose through the Democratic ranks in Baltimore. Machine politicians are 
reared on a seniority-based, pay-your-dues regimen.

This style of leadership, which Pelosi also inherited from Democratic 
predecessors such as former House majority leader Dick Gephardt (Mo.) 
and former House speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill (Mass.), punishes those 
who speak out too much and can have the effect of suppressing young 
firebrands.

Pelosi recently told reporters that she does seek to promote younger 
members, noting the "major role" some of them played in quashing 
President Bush's proposed overhaul of Social Security. However, it's 
hard to give any young rank-and-filers credit for that when there was a 
multimillion-dollar partywide effort to rally grass-roots outrage.

Back in the early 1990s, Gingrich and the Gang of Seven did not only 
attack Democrats; those insurgents also stormed their own party's 
ramparts and took on the GOP's moderate leaders and senior members. Not 
so with younger Democratic members today. Because Washington has become 
more partisan, there is tremendous pressure on Democratic members to 
fall in behind a unified party message. Republican party leaders and 
Bush administration officials are quick to point out dissent within the 
Democratic ranks and cast it as a sign of weakness.

The longer they linger in the minority, the more desperate Democrats are 
to grab hold of an issue they might ride to majority status. The 
Abramoff scandal, in the hands of the party's Hill leadership and 
national committee strategists, went straight from spark to media 
wildfire with no time to do the kind of slow burn among a small group of 
reform-minded members that the bank and post office scandals offered the 
Gang of Seven.

The overlooked part of the 1994 revolution is that this landmark in our 
modern political landscape took time. There were GOP rumblings in the 
1990 budget wars, followed by the 1990 election of some dynamic 
Republican freshmen. A message of change doesn't bring success 
overnight; it takes cultivation and cajoling, badgering and bludgeoning 
and a joyfully rebellious spirit that House Democrats appear to sorely lack.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702477.html
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