There's just no comforting way to put this: Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi portends disaster for House Democrats.
Her first official act was conceived and executed with the worst imaginable judgment, and that -- her judgment, not the customary Democratic disarray and divisions that ensued -- is what troubles most.
Take with a huge grain of salt all the soothing happy talk that sprang from the Democratic caucus and its sympathizers after the curtain went down on Pelosi's flop. Her egregious judgment inflicted deep wounds and they'll leave massive scars. For reasons that soon became clear, that sort of thing simply isn't done.
Her ill-advised (and apparently unadvised) intervention split the caucus into mutually hostile and suspicious camps when harmony was a post-victory given, it spotlighted an ethically questionable House member on the heels of an election largely fought over ethical shams, it showered attention on in-House pettiness rather than weighty issues of looming concern to the voters who put her party in power, it exposed ominous weakness in the leadership's authority, it elated and reenergized the dispirited GOP opposition, it foolishly distracted from "the message," and in general it instantly transformed the good vibes of November 7 into a public fiasco.
All of it was needless. All of it was negative, in vain and pointless. And all of it was so easily avoidable. There was simply no good reason for it, no good excuse.
My, shall we say, disappointment in Ms. Pelosi is nothing new, because her penchant for manifesting a most unappetizing inadequacy is nothing new. As I wrote following her third-place showing in a one-person interview on "Meet the Press" in May:
"I guarantee you there are a couple hundred Democratic members of the House of Representatives scratching their heads this morning, wondering why in God’s name they ever cast a vote for Nancy Pelosi as the public face of their party.
"She just made an appearance on “Meet the Press,” and it was a disaster. Worse than that, it was a lasting embarrassment for any progressive-minded viewer hoping to see something other than a profile in stuttering, stammering, defensiveness, vacillation and evasion. I haven’t felt that uncomfortable since watching Roger Mudd ask Ted Kennedy about his day.
"She said nothing with conviction, sitting instead visibly trying to recall her talking points cleared by a horde of nervous, focus-grouping advisers. As one sad example Tim Russert gave her the opportunity three times -- three times -- to pledge she would honorably and proudly work to repeal Bush’s inane tax cuts as Speaker, and she responded with empty, circumlocutory nothingness on each occasion.
"Her answers concerning Iraq were almost unintelligible but clearly contradictory; her solution to the energy crisis was stilted, bumper-sticker pabulum having something to do with shifting our focus from the Middle East to the Midwest -- get it? clever, huh?; her demotion of “investigations” to only “hearings” into White House crimes was a bizarre and muddled distinction; and the rest of what she didn’t say with excessive strain wasn’t worth hearing, either....
"If you doubt my assessment of her agonizing appearance on “Meet the Press” you can read the transcript here, though I would suggest you first take a slug or two of fermented fortification. It’ll rattle you. Really."
In the interim I held out hope that Pelosi would improve by taking a human relations class or a Dale Carnegie course or maybe just by reading Tip O'Neill's memoirs, Man of the House. No such luck.
To have to launch her Speakership with the anachronistic, foreboding words of "Let the healing begin" is not a happy sign.
I rarely agree with the prince of editorial darkness, Robert Novak, but his column yesterday was merely a sourced assessment of Capitol Hill's justifiably nervous climate: "Pelosi's mistake confirms long-standing, privately held Democratic apprehension about her abilities.... What they hesitate to contemplate is what lies ahead based on Pelosi's performance before she has taken the oath."
Based precisely on that performance, so acutely painful because of chronically poor performances, is there any reason for more hope?