Remember that Pelosi won by only 118 to 95 in her election as speaker. Her support was not overwhelming to begin with. She is a movement liberal. Her political antecedents come from the George McGovern wing of the party. She is a leftist-reformer. An insurgent. But Hoyer is a regular Democrat. Representing a district in the Washington suburbs of Maryland, he is almost a civil servant himself. He is no radical. While he can be counted on to pass Obama's programs like a good Democrat, he is not the kind of guy who will get out in front of the president to upstage or pressure him. He will fit right in, unobtrusively backing the president. (Full disclosure: He's a former client. Very former.)
Above all, Obama cannot allow the distraction and disruption of a feud between speaker and CIA head to sow the image of an administration at war with itself. The speaker is the hired help. She exists to serve her president. And, right now, he needs this fight like he needs a hole in the head.
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Dick Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of
2010: Take Back America. To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to
www.dickmorris.com