It’s a bad start, and the risk is that the Democrats are going to throw away their big chance.

This week has brought comedy to their efforts, as the new Democrat head of a congressional committee on intelligence proved unable to tell Sunni from Shia, incorrectly maintained that al-Qaeda belonged to the second persuasion, and stumbled into paralysed silence when asked the same question about the Shia group Hezbollah.

The bigger problem is the lack of Democrat strategy exposed by the past five weeks since the congressional elections — and above all, the lack of anything coherent to say on Iraq.

This follows the breathtaking mistake of Pelosi’s first moves after the party’s November 7 electoral victory, when she tried to insert a longtime ally as her chief deputy, despite questions about his opposition to the reform of ethics rules, and overwhelming House support for his rival.

But the concerns about strategy stretch beyond these early, inept decisions by a single leader.

The biggest gap in policy, however, may prove to be on Iraq. Democrats owe their reclamation of both houses of Congress to the unpopularity of the war, and to the collapse of confidence in the Bush Administration’s competence.

At the moment, they need do nothing but sit back and watch as Bush, looking more strained in each public address, flounders to find a response to the Iraq Study Group’s case that the US pull its troops out.

[...]

At some point, Democrats will have to say what they think should be done in Iraq, if they are to look capable of winning elections, rather than accepting victory handed to them by a losing president.

While all of this, unfortunately, speaks to the basic ignorance of a vast sea of voters on how all of this works, politically that's irrelevant. When you sell yourself on some nebulous slogan such as being able to do a "better job" in areas you have no real control and and you get the job, you'd better be able to deliver. Right or wrong if people buy into your sales pitch and you don't deliver, there will be political consequences.

The level of ignorance and incompetence at the highest levels of both political parties in America is actually quite staggering. After the mid-term elections, in which the Democrats gained control of Congress, many predicted that the Democrats, led by Pelosi, would quickly remind most Americans why they had turned away from this party years before. These predictions are rapidly coming true. There seems to be an incredibly deep layer of venality, stupidity, and corruption in the American political class. It's hard to imagine how this situation will rectify itself. Maybe this would be comical were people not dying and suffering as a result of the bumbling incompetence and unbridled self-serving on both sides of the aisle. America is in desparate need of more capable leadership, but both parties seem unable to answer the call.

Fred Reece, Istanbul, Turkey