Of a couple thousand columns the one I’d most like to have back -- there is competition -- was calling for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to step down after Republicans, in a rout, captured the House in 2010.
If she had, who would have led the effective resistance to Donald Trump’s first Administration, tamed left wing activists in her own party, shepherded through Joe Biden’s agenda and then pressured the aging President to bow out in 2024? She was the most effective Speaker in our lifetime.
I am not going to call on Chuck Schumer to retire as Senate Democratic leader though more than a few Democrats are. The Senate is different from the House and Schumer is no Pelosi anyway.
He is not a good public front for the party. He appears too old, almost 75, too New York and too much of an insider. This would be an even bigger problem if the Democrats take back control of the Senate next year.
That doesn’t mean, however, he shouldn’t remain as leader.
There are two distinct types of legislative politicians: outdoor representatives who shine in public appearances and in the media; and indoor politicians who excel at crafting legislative consensus, setting priorities and mastering procedures.
For example, Newt Gingrich, as distasteful as he could be, was good outdoors, leading the Republicans to take over the House in 1994; he then was a lousy Speaker.
Conversely, when a predecessor, Democrat Tip O’Neill went on television it made his staff nervous and he was a very effective Speaker for ten years.
Schumer today is a mediocre outdoor politician. More than a few Democrats cringed when he took the lead in the recent shutdown fight with the White House. A number of Democrats -- mostly House members and a few Senate candidates -- are calling for him to step down as leader.
The latest catalyst was when Democrats lost the shutdown fight without getting an extension of health care subsidies. It’s a bum rap, not just because he was in the minority. Running Senators, it’s said, is like “herding cats,” some of whom don’t like to be tamed.
The five term New York Democrat has some clear strengths. He’s smart, versed in substance. No one works harder.
Some years ago my wife and I gave a commencement speech at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. They told us the New York Senator would make an appearance to speak as he usually does. He did and quickly left for another commencement upstate. Peter King, a Republican House member told me he also hits Long Island high school commencements.
He’ll go most anywhere -- he was an unlikely Nebraska pheasant hunter with the state’s Senator Ben Nelson. A short time later he got a crucial vote from the Nebraskan.
There are two unrealistic expectations for Schumer or any successor. The first is to emulate the master of the Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson, who years ago brilliantly cut deals and made trade-offs that greased legislation.
Today some of that would generate phony scandals. The type of intelligence he shrewdly gathered on colleagues might not go over so well in these times.
The other is placing a premium on ideology. Liberals chatter about replacing Schumer with someone like Connecticut’s Chris Murphy or Brian Schatz of Hawaii, believing they would push a more left wing agenda. There is nothing to indicate either would be a skillful legislative leader or that they could ram through a left wing agenda with, at best, a thin majority.
Much will depend on whether Democrats take back the majority -- the odds have risen to close to 50% -- which elevates the stakes. If Schumer wants to keep his position, he’ll have to turn over more of the public role to articulate, younger colleagues: Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin, Cory Booker of New Jersey or Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
Harry Reid, the top Senate Democrat before Schumer, was, with one or two exceptions, a good leader, while generally deferring to others for the more public, or outdoor, role.
If there is a contest, more than ideology, it’s a personal vote. It’s also a secret vote. Remember the insight years ago of Arizona Congressman Morris K. Udall who went into a House leadership race thinking he had a chance. He lost decisively. The engaging Arizonian said this taught him the difference between a caucus and a cactus: “On a cactus, the pricks are on the outside.”