House Democrats Won't Repeat GOP Mistakes The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Bob Barr, November 9, 2006
On Wednesday, Nov. 9, 1994, after learning in the wee hours that morning that I was then a U.S. representative-elect, I had the opportunity at the Waverly Hotel to appear at a news conference with new Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich.
He spoke of new plans and programs with the self-assurance of a veteran leader. Even though Gingrich was about to assume a job no Republican had held in 40 years, publicly he and his transition team of House colleagues portrayed a sense of being in charge.
The difficulties of assuming command of one of the branches of government of the world's only superpower, however, began to manifest themselves as soon as the new majority began to consolidate power in the weeks following the election. Unlike their colleagues in the Senate, who had tasted and tested majority leadership in the 1980s, not a single member of the new House Republican majority had ever served in the majority. Mistakes were made that were directly and obviously the result of having been completely shut out of the corridors of power in the House for four decades.
First and foremost among those mistakes, perhaps, was not recognizing the true nature of their victory. Many in the new House majority incorrectly concluded that their 1994 victory was a mandate for all they had campaigned on:
- dramatically smaller government, quickly achieved;
significantly lower taxes;
and a complete rollback of many policies instituted in his first two years in office by their nemesis, President Bill Clinton (whom we repeatedly underestimated).
What many congressional Republicans failed to realize until much later was that their November victory was less of a vote of confidence in them and more a vote against Clinton. This miscalculation led to costly blunders in our first year; including trying to do too much too fast, which placed us far ahead of where the American public wanted us to be and where it felt comfortable being.
Another major mistake was the failure to think through leadership decisions and to make such moves based on long-term goals as opposed to simpler, short-term concerns like putting more senior members in charge of key subcommittees. Gingrich did break with precedent and wisely moved some less-senior members to committee chairmanships over the heads of more senior, but less shrewd members. However, he only did this in a limited number of instances, and he failed to realize the importance of doing the same thing at the subcommittee level.
Thus, in a number of instances, what later turned out to be key subcommittee chairmanships were put in the hands of weak, but loyal, senior members. Other full committee chairmanships, thought perhaps to be noncontroversial, were also left in the hands of weaker but more senior members.
This quickly proved disastrous later in 1995, when the first two major and very high-profile oversight hearings—Waco and Whitewater—took place. Weak GOP leadership on the panels heading those hearings severely limited any substantive or political gain the Republicans hoped to make, affording the Democrats in the House—and Bill Clinton—much-needed political momentum.
Added to these tactical blunders were as the U.S. House of Representatives. These administrative problems were magnified by the new majority fulfilling its promise as part of the Contract With America to cut House staff, and by retaining a number of senior Democrat staffers on key committees. The seeds of more than two years of fitful leadership were sown from the start. the Democrats are unlikely to repeat any of these mistakes made by the Republicans a dozen years ago. I suspect the Democrats know, for example, this election was more a vote against Bush than for the Democratic platform.
Perhaps most important, every senior Democrat in line for a House leadership post or a committee chairmanship has served in the majority; they have wielded power before, and they know how to use it (something many Republicans in the House have failed to grasp even to this day).
The Democrats will do everything in their power to avoid a return to second-class citizenship. They will be more likely than were the Republicans a dozen years ago to take modest steps, and to be careful lest rhetoric overtake feasible action. The goal for Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her battle-hardened team will be to spend two years laying the groundwork for further gains in 2008, and to push an agenda that will provide a solid and likely centrist platform for their party's standard-bearer.
- Bob Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.
Barr knows how to plan, but he needs help from real leaders like Newt, Rush, and many others that quit government out of disgust.