Too Much Business As Usual

The worst thing the Democrats could do is to not keep campaign promises:

It was a solemn pledge, repeated by Democratic leaders and candidates over and over: If elected to the majority in Congress, Democrats would implement all of the recommendations of the bipartisan commission that examined the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But with control of Congress now secured, Democratic leaders have decided for now against implementing the one measure that would affect them most directly: a wholesale reorganization of Congress to improve oversight and funding of the nation's intelligence agencies. Instead, Democratic leaders may create a panel to look at the issue and produce recommendations, according to congressional aides and lawmakers.

I always thought the "implement all the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission pledge" was part of this continued belief in the wholesome goodness of Washington blue-ribbon panels (just look how good the Iraq Study Group is turning out to be), and that maybe they should be actually scanned before implementation. But the thing is that Democrats all over the country campaigned on this. And the trepidation doesn't seem to be a cause of reconsidering how best to protect the homeland, but turf battles:

It may seem like a minor matter, but members of the commission say Congress's failure to change itself is anything but inconsequential. In 2004, the commission urged Congress to grant the House and Senate intelligence committees the power not only to oversee the nation's intelligence agencies but also to fund them and shape intelligence policy. The intelligence committees' gains would come at the expense of the armed services committees and the appropriations panels' defense subcommittees. Powerful lawmakers on those panels would have to give up prized legislative turf.

But the commission was unequivocal about the need.

"Of all our recommendations, strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most difficult and important," the panel wrote. "So long as oversight is governed by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need."

Now Democrats are balking, just as Republicans did before them.

This seems to be held up because Pelosi doesn't want to step on Murtha's toes and take away his control of the intelligence budget on his Defense Appropriations subcommittee. That is so not the way to do business for the American people. I see that there's more than a little business as usual going on. It should be expected, for sure; most of the leadership has been there a long time, and this is part of politics. But it's a bad sign.

I do believe Pelosi is doing the right thing by keeping term limits in place on the Intelligence Committee. That was also a Commission recommendation, and it would have given us Chairwoman Harman, who's been consistently wrong by toeing the neocon line for decades before getting religion after a primary challenge. Not everything the 9-11 Commission did is the gospel, and people who think they have a monopoly on the best ideas are often wrong. The problem I have was making that promise for implementation in the first place, and then breaking it. And that the rationale for breaking the pledge is all tied up with the old-boy network of power battles and turf wars.