By E. J. Dionne Jr.
The Washington Post
Friday, August 10, 2007
Shortly before noon last Saturday, about 20 House Democrats huddled in
Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office to decide what to do about a
surveillance bill that had been dumped on them by the Senate before it
left town.
Many of the Democrats were furious. They believed they had negotiated
in good faith with Mike McConnell, the director of national
intelligence. They sought to give the Bush administration the
authority it needed to intercept communications involving foreign
nationals in terrorism investigations while preserving some oversight.
But the administration held out for granting McConnell and Attorney
General Alberto R. Gonzales more power while seriously circumscribing
the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The Senate's
Democratic leadership, lacking the votes to pass a measure more to the
House's liking, gave the administration what it wanted.
At one point, according to participants in the Pelosi meeting, the
passionate discussion veered toward the idea of standing up to the
administration -- even at the risk of handing President Bush a chance
to bash Democrats on "national security," as is his wont.
Several members from swing districts -- including Reps. Heath Shuler
of North Carolina and Patrick J. Murphy of Pennsylvania -- expressed
openness to having Congress stay in town to fight if important
constitutional issues were at stake.
But the moment passed. Even some very liberal Democrats worried about
the political costs of blocking action before the summer recess. That
Saturday night, the House sent the president a bill that, as a
disgusted Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) put it, with just a touch of
exaggeration, "makes Alberto Gonzalez the sheriff, the judge and the
jury."
Most Democrats opposed the bill, but 41 (including Shuler) voted yes,
allowing it to pass. (Murphy remained passionately opposed.) The one
Democratic victory: The legislation expires in six months, meaning the
debate will resume this fall. But Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.)
warned his colleagues that "when you give up your rights under the
Constitution, it is not likely you are going to regain them."
The episode was the culmination of a shameful era in which serious
issues related to national security and civil liberties were debated
in a climate of fear and intimidation, saturated by political
calculation and the quest for short-term electoral advantage.
Politically, Republicans won this round in two ways. They got the
president the bill he wanted and, as a result, they created absolute
fury in the Democratic base. Pelosi has received more than 200,000 e-
mails of protest, according to an aide, for letting the bill go
forward.
Democrats concede they made an enormous tactical blunder by not
dealing with the issue earlier, forcing the question to the fore in
the days before the recess. One anxiety hovered over the debate: If a
terrorist attack happened and Congress had not given Bush what he
wanted, the Democrats would get blamed for a lack of vigilance.
"Could something happen over August?" Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) asked
in an interview. "Sure it could. What bothered me is that too many
Democrats allowed that fear to turn into a demand for some atrocious
legislation."
The saga also underscored how constrained congressional Democrats feel
because of their tenuous majority in the Senate. Had the Senate sent
the House an alternative bill, sponsored by Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-
Mich.) and John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the two houses could have
put a more limited proposal on the president's desk and challenged him
to veto it. But the Levin-Rockefeller proposal failed.
McConnell, in the meantime, played an ambiguous role. Democrats
acknowledge that the intelligence director never explicitly agreed to
the House leadership's proposal. But their fears that McConnell was
not calling the shots were stoked when Democratic leaders tried at one
point to reach him by phone. An assistant to McConnell let slip that
the intelligence director could not pick up because he was on the line
with the White House. It was another sign, said a top Democratic aide,
that "the White House was driving the train on this."
The entire display was disgraceful because an issue of such import
should not be debated in a political pressure cooker. It's not even
clear that new legislation was required; Holt, for one, believes many
of the problems with handling interceptions involving foreign
nationals are administrative in nature and that beefing up and
reorganizing the staff around the FISA court might solve the
outstanding problems.
But if legislation was needed, there were many ways to grant necessary
authority while preserving real oversight. The Democrats got trapped,
and they punted. The Republicans have never met a national security
issue they're not willing to politicize. This is no way to run a
superpower.
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