Pelosi Rejects Both Harman and Hastings for Chairmanship

House leadership conjecture doesn't usually make front page news. But in an era of the 24-hour news cycle, and a new incoming Democratic Congress, high scrutiny has been paid to inside-baseball. People have been wondering aloud just who Madam Speaker-Elect, Nancy Pelosi, will choose to be the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

And with the chattering class abuzz, Pelosi made official this week the decision that insiders have suspected she would make all along. She will reject both of the top ranking Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee for the job.

Pelosi's decision drew special interest due to the unique swirl of political jockeying that usually remains behind-the-scenes, but which came to the fore because it involves two of the issues of highest concern to the voters this year: Iraq and Corruption.
The highest ranking Democrat on the panel, Congresswoman Jane Harman of California, represents a now-rejected "stay the course" approach to the war in a year that Democrats promised to change the status quo. Critics also claim that Harman has failed to provide meaningful oversight of the executive branch. To complicate matters for Harman is a Justice Department investigation over whether or not she improperly sought assistance from a Pro-Israel lobby to pressure Pelosi for the job.

Because Harman's term on the committee is set to expire, it wouldn't normally be difficult for Pelosi to jettison her. The problem is that the second highest ranking Democrat on the panel is even more troublesome. Pelosi's next choice would be Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida, who was driven from his post as a federal judge by a 1988 impeachment for bribery.

Democratic consensus formed early that neither candidate was appropriate, but Pelosi still had several factions within her own party to grapple with before she came out and said so.

There were the Blue Dog Democrats who backed Jane Harman's hawkish stances and prickly managerial style. But Harman wasn't the only candidate with backers. Alcee Hastings is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and they supported his bid.

Pelosi's relationship with the Congressional Black Caucus has had its ups and downs. They were angered several years ago when Pelosi passed over another member of the CBC to make Harman the ranking member in the first place. Pelosi further angered the CBC when she stripped seniority from Representative William Jefferson of Louisiana after court documents revealed that he'd hidden almost $100,000 in his freezer.

Some say that Pelosi's snub of Hastings will further deteriorate her relationship with the CBC, especially since Hastings claims that he was innocent of the crime. But others note that it was Representative John Conyers, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, who was instrumental in impeaching then-Judge Hastings in the first place.

Concluding that Hastings was guilty, Representative Conyers made an impassioned speech about racial justice, saying, "We did not wage the civil rights struggle in order to substitute one form of judicial corruption for another."

In the end, the Democratic pledge to provide meaningful congressional oversight and to clean up corruption in congress, made the appointment of either Harman or Hastings an impossibility. Speculation now centers on who Pelosi will pick instead.