Hurled with force

Dorothy Parker famously commented of a bad novel that it should not be “tossed aside lightly” but “thrown with great force.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) seems to think the same of bad ideas.

Or at least, about ideas that cast an unattractive light on the Democratic Party.

Which is why, when Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) floated the notion of a war tax to finance operations in Iraq, the Speaker turned her guns on it and sank it.

She did not wait for a reporter to ask her a question about the idea and then airily dismiss it as though it were of no consequence. Instead she sent out her leadership team — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who said, “this is not a Democratic proposal” — and then issued a press release, stating: “Just as I have opposed the war from the outset, I am opposed to the draft and I am opposed to a war surtax.”

Glug, glug, down goes Obey’s war tax, never to be seen again.

It is significant that Pelosi’s statement mentioned the draft. That was an idea circulated in the last Congress and again earlier this Congress by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (N.Y.). It was envisioned as a way of connecting the public, giving everyone a much bigger stake in the prosecution of the war, and stimulating opposition to President Bush’s policy in Iraq. In the end, however, the GOP leadership called the legislation up for a vote, and it was the Democrats who wound up with egg on their faces; even Rangel voted against his own bill.

By mentioning the draft in the same breath as the war tax on Tuesday, Pelosi reminded both her own colleagues and outside observers that she will not be pushed around by even the most powerful committee chairmen.

She wants discipline, and she does not appreciate a grumpy maverick giving the party a public-relations black eye.

Republicans pounced together on the war tax idea, saying Democrats were reverting to type. The type? The type that wants to tax Americans whenever possible.

What was doubly irritating to the Speaker was that the Democrats had been making political hay out of the fact that the president was about to veto the renewal of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and had been taking a public-relations beating for it. Obey’s war tax suggestion cut clean across Pelosi’s messaging and prevented Democrats from reaping the political benefit of the veto when it came.

The Democrats won the majority in substantial part because Pelosi kept party discipline in the 109th Congress and thus made it impossible for the fissile GOP to pass legislation. The war tax suggestion this week showed both that discipline is difficult in her caucus, and that, despite that difficulty, the Speaker is determined to keep it.