David Broder wrote a very interesting column for the Washington Post about… Harry Reid. Broder’s thesis: Reid is just as incompetent as Alberto Gonzales.

Here’s a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats — a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.

If you answered ” Harry Reid,” give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end.

President Bush’s highly developed tolerance for egregious incompetence in his administration may have met its supreme test in Attorney General Gonzales, who at various times has taken complete responsibility for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and professed complete ignorance of the reasons for their dismissal. This demonstration of serial obfuscation so impressed the president that he rushed out to declare that Gonzales had “increased my confidence in his ability to do the job.”
[…]
On “Fox News Sunday,” Schumer offered this clarification of Reid’s off-the-cuff comment. “What Harry Reid is saying is that this war is lost — in other words, a war where we mainly spend our time policing a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. We are not going to solve that problem. . . . The war is not lost. And Harry Reid believes this — we Democrats believe it. . . . So the bottom line is if the war continues on this path, if we continue to try to police and settle a civil war that’s been going on for hundreds of years in Iraq, we can’t win. But on the other hand, if we change the mission and have that mission focus on the more narrow goal of counterterrorism, we sure can win.”

Wait - so the war is lost but can still be won? That means that it’s not lost then, is it? If something is lost, one cannot possibly win it anymore.

Broder:

Everyone got that? This war is lost. But the war can be won. Not since Bill Clinton famously pondered the meaning of the word “is” has a Democratic leader confused things as much as Harry Reid did with his inept discussion of the alternatives in Iraq.

Broder then gives some examples of other, umh, slips of the tongue from Reid, like, o, say, calling George W. Bush a “loser;” Alan Greenspan, “one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington” (looks who’s talking); and saying that Frist has “no institutional integrity”, because Frist planned to leave the Senate to fulfill a term-limits pledge.

Of course, Reid later had to apologize for these remarks.

Josh Marshall rightfully points out that Gonzales is - still - much worse than Reid (for one thing, Gonzales has probably been lying about certain matters), but Broder’s main point still stands: Reid is incompetent. He is causing too much controversies, he is not careful enough, he is pandering to the base about matters like abortion, when exposed he contradicts himself and makes no sense whatsoever… He says things that do not just hurt him, but the Democratic Party as a whole…

I do not quite understand why the Democrats elected Reid to be their leader in the Senate. Surely there must be better candidates out there?

(Of course there are - the Dems also have some great politicians)

Also read this post by Ed Morrissey: he exposes and debunks, what he calls, “the five myths of Reid. In his update, he links to this story: Republican Duncan Hunter called on Reid to resign as Senate Majority Leader.

Boy o boy, how the Democrats are hurting themselves. It is unbelievable. Whether one agrees with what Republicans are saying and doing right now or not, one has to admit one thing: Reid has caused this problem himself by acting stupid.

I once heard that if the Democrats can be trusted to do one thing, it is to lose, when it seems impossible for them to do so. Is that what we see happening right now? Granted, the Republican noise machine is in full swing and jumps on everything that the Democrats do, but point is: the Dems should not provide political opponents with so much ammunition.