The New Congress: Can the Democrats Get Anything Done?

By KAREN TUMULTY

Herding cats. Pushing a string. Making yourself heard in a preschool where no one has had a nap. The analogies that have been used to describe what it's like to be in charge of Congress have always suggested that the titles Speaker of the House and Senate majority leader were someone's idea of a joke. But now that the high fives and jubilant photo ops are behind them, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have to run the place. Whether anything is actually accomplished on Capitol Hill over the next two years will depend largely on the skills these two leaders develop in maneuvering through the tricky challenges ahead.

Pelosi is known for her steel; no one crosses her without paying a price for it. And she will need every bit of that toughness to manage a caucus that promises to grow more fractious. Much has been made of the relatively conservative bent of the incoming freshman class of House Democrats, many of whom were recruited to run because they fit so well in districts that have been sending Republicans to Washington for years. Once they arrive, however, they will be working under a set of committee chairs who proudly and tenaciously represent the farthest-left edges of their party--and who have been chafing under the past dozen years of G.O.P. rule. Most of the rest of the Democratic caucus also tilts to the left and is just as anxious to reassert itself.

Filling the exceedingly sensitive post of House Intelligence Committee chairman will be a good test of how Pelosi works. Her fellow Californian Jane Harman, its ranking member, wants the job, but Pelosi doesn't particularly like Harman, so speculation is that Pelosi could go to the next in line, Florida's Alcee Hastings. That would please the black caucus, but there's no small political problem in the fact that in 1989 Hastings was impeached by the (Democratic) House and removed by the (Democratic) Senate from his federal judgeship for conspiring to take a $150,000 bribe (although he had been acquitted in court). Pelosi must also deal with a potentially bitter and ideological race for the majority leader's job, which is the No. 2 post in the Democratic leadership.

For all the internal intrigue, Pelosi's job at least gives her a tight command of the House floor and requires her to pull together only a simple majority to get things done. Reid must surely envy that. It takes the support of 60 Senators--enough to get past a filibuster--to get anything controversial passed in the Senate; he's nine short of that. And while the majority leader has power over the schedule, the Senate's arcane rules give any individual Senator the power to bollix up the works.

A person to watch will be incoming minority leader Mitch McConnell, one of the Senate's canniest operators. After wrangling with McConnell for years over campaign-finance reform, Senator John McCain declared, "There are few things more daunting in politics than the determined opposition of Senator McConnell." President Bush does not want to spend his last two years in office vetoing one Democratic measure after another. So McConnell will play a position much like the goalie in a hockey game, blocking legislation from ever reaching Bush's desk.

And finally there is the reality that the 2008 presidential campaign will be under way, and Reid oversees a chamber that is brimming with potential contenders of both parties. Primary politics in both parties rewards grandstanding and ideological purity, not compromise and teamwork. That's hardly a formula for compromise-- or for getting much of anything done.