The dust-up over the purported appointment of Leon Panneta to head the CIA says more about Sen. Dianne Feinstein's political differences with President Obama and less about Senatorial prerogatives. Sen. Feinstein pretty much rubber-stamped George Bush's appointments, to the point that she was one of only six senators to vote to install the very controversial Michaeal Mukasey as Attorney General. A closer look at her Senatorial career makes pretty clear that she is no friend of progressives and may well present an impediment to President Barack Obama's agenda.
Few who know much about Feinstein carry any illusions that she is a progressive voice in the Senate. Going as far back as her tenure as mayor of San Francisco, she alienated that City's gay community by refusing to march in a gay rights parade and by vetoing domestic partner legislation. Her support of issues of import to LGBT community has been tepid at best. She only belatedly came out against Proposition 8 which banned same-sex marriage in California. After Democratic Senator John Kerry lost his 2004 presidential bid, Feinstein sugggested that Mayor Gavin Newsom's decision to allow same-sex couples to marry that year had played a role in Kerry's defeat.
In the Senate, she has earned poor ratings from civil rights and human rights groups. For example, in 1985, Feinstein worked to weaken the Alien Tort Claims Act, which has in recent years been used by human rights groups to hold dictators and human rights violators accountable in U.S. Courts. During most of her tenure she has received tepid ratings from the American Civil Liberties Union. In fact, she has been decidedly anti-civil rights in her actions supporting Bush's FISA legislation and retroactive immunity to the telecoms' complicit in warrantless tapping of American citizens. Feinstein was the original Democratic sponsor of the USA Patriot Act and the absurd Flag Desecration Amendment. In summary, Feinstein's position on privacy or protection of civil liberties is more in line with her colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
But Feinstein is no mere conservative on civil rights. She has gone so far on the other extreme as to earn good marks from the nativist and rabid anti-immigrant group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). She has oppposed comprehensive immigration reform and has generally been a hawk on immigration issues. She supported the 2001 Bush tax cut and voted for the Iraq war resolution in October 2002 and the $87 billion supplemental in November 2003. She supported the Medicare/prescription drug bill in November 2003. When she ran for governor in 1990 she emphasized her support of the death penalty. Her positions have so distressed activists that in 2007, activists from within the California Democratic Party made a push to censure Feinstein for "ignoring Democratic principles and falling so far below the standard of what we expect of our elected officials."
Then there is the matter of cronysm. In January 2007, an article in the Metro, a free Bay Area weekly, charged that she had used her position as ranking minority member on the Military Construction Subcommittee to steer contracts to firms owned by her husband. URS Corp. had received $1.8 billion in defense contracts and Perini Corp. $200 million. Feinstein has also received scrutiny for husband Richard Blum's extensive business dealings with China and her past votes on trade issues with the country. Critics have argued that Feinstein's support, as a member of the Senate's Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, of policies that may benefit her husband may raise the appearance of a conflict of interests. Suburban newspaper Metro Silicon Valley reported in 2007 that Feinstein's husband holds large investments in companies that have won large government contracts without competitive bidding.
Senator Feinstein earns high marks from environmental and womens' rights groups. But her past positions bode ill for issues of critical importance to the incoming Obama administration. Her tempest over the Panetta nomination may be the first salvo in a stormy relationship.