Is This Leadership?

Every now and again, Harry Reid comes up with an inspired tactic or otherwise good idea to remind us the kind of activist and effective majority leader he could be. The time he forced the Senate into closed session to demand discussion of prewar intelligence of Iraq the Republicans were avoiding was pretty clever. (Of course, when the Democrats took control of the Senate, they followed the Republicans' lead and continued to ignore the same issue.) And the decision to keep the Senate in session to thwart the Prez's ability to make recess appointments of nominees he could never actually get through the Senate was inspired. But most of the time--for whatever reason--he seems to lead his party in caving into whatever the Prez happens to want at the moment.

That seems to be pretty much what was intended this week for the FISA bill that was expected to include telecom immunity. We talked a little bit last night about what might've happened, and it seems like Reid just finally got pissed off by Republican intransigence on an issue that was going to see Democrats cave to give the administration everything they wanted. That idea was reinforced today at the National Press Club when Reid essentially announced that the FISA bill would not be completed by the February 1 deadline when the current FISA bill--the one that allows for widespread wiretapping without a court order--expires. He demanded that the Prez and his party should accept an extension of the current law until details of the replacement can be worked out. The Republicans, of course, will claim that the nation has lost the ability to monitor calls of potential terrorists. That's ridiculous, of course. There will still be laws in place to monitor anything that raises suspicion. Subpoenas will be required, but no court is going to stand in the way of investigating dangerous suspects. It's just the arbitrary surveillance without any oversight that will be required to stop.

In the past, I would have found these developments promising. The Democrats were finally standing up to the Republican bullies. I've seen this fall apart too many times, with the Democrats running back with their tails between their legs, desperately eager to toss all their principles aside so they can give the Bushies anything and everything they desired. Why will it be different this time? The Republicans were so ridiculously obstructionist against the FISA bill yesterday that there's no doubt in my mind that they wanted the Democrats to do precisely what they've done. The FISA vote is now scheduled for Monday afternoon, just a few hours before the Prez addresses Congress and the nation in the 2008 state of the union address. What better opportunity to ratchet up the fear that we've finally been able to set aside to a large degree. Bush will be playing T-ball with the Democrats, who will place themselves on the batting stand and wait for Bush to swing and knock them out of the park. How long will it take for the Democrats to turn tail at that point?

Also last night, I speculated that the presence of Clinton and Obama, in town for the state of the union and presumably in the Senate chamber for the FISA vote, would bring more juice to the issue. Unfortunately, that remains to be seen. Jane Hamsher asked each of those campaigns about the issue, with very disappointing results. Obama's people said he'd be in town, but they weren't sure enough about his schedule to say whether he'd be on the floor for the vote or not--they can't even guarantee whether he'll be able to register a "present" vote. As for Clinton, her campaign hasn't yet responded--are they ducking the question? Neither of these candidates exactly inspires optimism about the leadership they're prepared to offer from the White House.