Darrell Issa's Agenda

— By Kevin Drum

| Mon Jan. 3, 2011 8:56 AM PST

Dave Weigel says that Darrell Issa's trash talk about Barack Obama being "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times" is just that: trash talk. It's gaining him the spotlight, and now that he's got it he's going to pursue a fairly ordinary investigatory agenda:

Issa's in roughly the same position that John Conyers and Henry Waxman were in when they took over their committees in 2007. At one point, both of them went on record saying they'd consider ("keep an openmind" was Waxman's phrase) impeachment hearings. Voila, instant attention, instant pushback from leadership, and they went on to investigating the stuff that they'd intended to, like the U.S. attorney firings.

Issa became a national figure by taking a bank shot and bankrolling the petition to force the 2003 California recall; if anything he's savvier about media coverage than either Conyers or Waxman. He's got people primed for a 1995 redux of investigations of picayune scandals, but his talk about those scandals are only the entry point into what he really considers "corrupt." That's liberalism and corporatism, transparency about the ugly kludges that marked our response to the recession.

Maybe so — though I'm not sure Issa is quite as savvy as all that. Remember, when he bankrolled the recall of Gray Davis in 2003, it was because he figured it would make him California's next governor. That turned out to be a somewhat less than savvy read of the political situation.

That said, Weigel may be right about Issa's agenda. Still, my experience is that, for the most part, it's best to take politicians at face value. There aren't nearly as many of them pursuing clever three-bank shots as pundits tend to think. Issa's agenda will probably be 80% fairly normal conservative harrassment, but I'd be surprised if the other 20% wasn't some pretty crazy red meat Dan Burton-esque lunacy. He may well decide that ACORN and the New Black Panthers are yesterday's news, but just wait. New stuff like that will crop up, and Issa probably won't be able to resist diving in.