With Adversaries Like This . . .

Winston and I have been traveling a large portion of the day; it came as a shock to learn, as this story reports, that the Democrats in the House and Senate are simply refusing to name any of their party members to a congressional panel to look into the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Obviously, the maneuver is flawed as a matter of substance; in effect, it's a complete and total abdication of the responsibility to govern (in much the same way as is the establishment of entities like the base-closing commission to make the tough choices in deciding which military bases to close). Congress, after all, had the responsibility to appropriate the monies which -- we are now being told -- should have been spent on levee repair. Congress was the body that established the Department of Homeland Security, now under fire. It seems to me that it would be tantamount to a dereliction of duty for the Congress to sit back and ask another group to tell it where it "went wrong" (if it did) -- isn't that something Congress should be trying to figure out for itself?

But the Dems' decision to boycott the panel is also a mistake from a political and strategic standpoint. The American people are looking to see who is serious about governing, and who is trying simply to score political points. As the minority party, rather than simply refusing to participate in a Congressional investigation, shouldn't the Democrats be asserting, instead, that they will make sure that the process is one of integrity? But Nancy Pelosi, as the article linked above indicates, has already decided what the panel will find. If that's her view, well, it doesn't speak well of the many congressional investigations that the Democrats have run over the years (e.g. the Iran Contra panel). But in any case, it demonstrates that the minority party is willing to scuttle any procedure with which it disagrees, rather than trying to solve the problems that everyone noted last week. And that approach won't sit well with the American people.

After all that, one is tempted to conclude that with adversaries like the petulant, recalcitrant Democrats, President Bush really doesn't need allies (which, occasionally, is fortunate, given the lukewarm responses on the part of too many Republicans to assorted left wing hurricane slanders and myths).