Your political party has lost a presidential election. You are in the minority in the House and Senate. There is no clear heir apparent to lead your party out of the wilderness.
Sound familiar? This is the exact predicament Republicans found themselves in after the 2008 elections.
That’s when then-House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told my former boss, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), that we were no longer in the policymaking business — we were in the communications business.
Issa was appointed the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, leapfrogging over a handful of more senior members.
From the minority, with no subpoena power and no authority to convene hearings, Issa deployed a robust communications strategy that turned him into, in the words of the New York Times, Obama’s “Annoyer-in-Chief.” As the ranking member, Issa was able to use the power of the pulpit to generate a tremendous amount of media coverage and put the White House on the defensive.
Issa recruited a new class of Republican members to join the Oversight Committee — members the Republican leadership considered thorns in their side, such as Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). Back then, Issa and his group of disrupters were on the outside of the Republican establishment. Today, many of those men have become key power brokers in Trump’s Republican Party.
Democrats now face a similar inflection point. Trump and Republicans control the White House, House and Senate. There is no clear leader in the Democratic Party. And due to Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.)’s announcement that he needs to step aside as the Oversight Committee’s ranking member, Democrats are faced with a choice — and, like the 2009 Republicans, an opportunity.
One option is the tried-and-true seniority approach of going with an old-guard type like 70-year-old Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) or 87-year-old Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.). Another option is going younger, prioritizing communications with someone like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) or Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.).
This is a moment when we’ll see if Democrats really get it — if they truly learned any lessons from the recent past or if they’re just burying their heads in the stand.
Talking about how he would serve as the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Lynch said, “There is a job to be done — and as an attorney, this is an investigations committee, and so it’s serious business. It’s not going to be run in the press.”
Trump and congressional Republicans are hoping beyond hope that Lynch becomes the ranking Democrat on the committee. Members of his generation just don’t get it. This is not the Oversight Committee that Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) once led. This is the committee that has platformed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). You cannot treat this as business as usual and expect to gain any ground or make a real difference.
What Democrats desperately need is someone who can lead their side of the aisle and effectively combat the avalanche of disinformation, abuse of power and hypocrisy from Republicans, who intend to use the committee as a propaganda vehicle for the president. Democrats need to be led by a member who understands the modern media landscape and who can command media attention.
Frankly, the obvious choice was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and not just because she’s good on social media or at creating viral moments. Anyone who reduces her talents to just those McNuggets is an idiot who should retire from politics. It’s a loss for House Democrats that because of the outdated seniority system, she has decided to forgo another run to lead Democrats on the panel.
The last time I spoke with the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who was then chairman of the House Oversight Committee, he told me he personally asked then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to have Ocasio-Cortez join that committee. As their work began, he told me he had never seen another member show up more prepared for hearings than her. He told me she was the hardest-working member of the panel, and that was why she was so successful on that dais.
The idea that House Democrats are even considering a 70- or 80-year-old for ranking member sends the signal that they are intent on giving Trump and his merry band of MAGA disciples a free pass for the next four years. It hints that they would rather cling to the notion of how things used to be than deal with how things actually are. It telegraphs that, once again, they are operating from a position of weakness, not strength.
They still have a chance to do the smart thing and embrace some new blood ala Crockett or Frost. If that’s “too young” for the House Democratic leadership, then split the difference and install an effective communicator like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) or Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).
Oh, and if anyone thinks that the ranking member of the Oversight Committee doesn’t matter, I would remind them that the path that began with Issa in the minority led him to an investigation that came to be known as “Benghazi” — and a direct collision course with Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. We all know how that story ended.
Kurt Bardella is a NewsNation political contributor and a former spokesperson and senior advisor the House Oversight Committee. Follow him @KurtTakes.
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