Truisms are sometimes worth stating. Here’s one: It is easier to criticize than to govern.

Last week, as The Hill reported, House Appropriations panel Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) told caucus members that those defying their leaders on procedural grounds should abandon efforts to arrange meetings with him for “visiting firemen” from their districts.

A meeting with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was temporarily nixed because of Rep. Charlie Melancon’s (D-La.) vote against leadership on a procedural motion.

That was last week. This week, as Mike Soraghan reports, nine Democrats have signed on to a discharge petition to bring Rep. Heath Shuler’s (D-N.C.) border-enforcement immigration bill to the floor for a vote.
Discharge petitions, which hijack the vote schedule, are seen as a slap in the face for leadership, and nine is a high number of Democrats challenging their House bosses. Those bosses want their permission sought, rather than being presented with a fait accompli.

Or, as Obey put it, raising the specter of another, effective, disciplinary mechanism, “there are minimal dues we pay in this place. You get your seat from your district. You get your committee assignment from your party.”

Republican leaders made this plain when they ran the House up until the end of 2006. Members might have seniority on a panel but still not be the chairmen if they were unreliable followers of their leaders. The message was: Step on your boss’s toes while stepping out of line, and don’t expect to be rewarded.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) left in place the GOP’s six-year term-limit rule for committee chairmen.

Term limits give leaders the opportunity to reward loyalty (although they can also be a double-edged sword, prompting retirements, as Republicans found to their cost in 2006).

Democratic discipline was particularly impressive in the 109th Congress — Pelosi made it almost impossible for the GOP to govern — but it’s a lot harder to maintain that discipline and unity once you are in power.

Everyone in opposition wants the same thing — to take control. But once control is grasped, unity fractures.

Centrists and liberals in the Democratic Caucus, referring both to their own beliefs and to the beliefs of their voters, seek different things.

Victory in an election cycle necessarily means taking more competitive districts, and lawmakers representing more competitive districts have the biggest incentive to do what their voters want, irrespective of their party’s big-picture priorities.

Democrats have long claimed or admitted that they are less disciplined than Republicans. After the last election cycle, that is a debatable proposition. But either way, today’s House Democrats are feeling the pressures of disunity, and their leaders are getting tough to prevent those pressures building.