How’s Harry doing so far?

It’s been six months since Harry Reid ascended to majority leader of the U.S. Senate. I suspect the nation now sees what Nevada has long known: The senior politician from Nevada is just that — a politician and little more.

No statesman or deep thinker, Harry has demonstrated over his long public career little ability to broker solutions for problems that require any degree of finesse. He is a garden-variety partisan official who infrequently rises above the parochial interests of his party or his district.

All that said, I dared hope for more. Now, I suppose I never expected Sen. Reid to suddenly transform into Winston Churchill, but Harry is a smart guy, and his instincts, if he would put them above party politics, are fairly good. After some three decades of bare-knuckle political fights in Nevada marked by narrow victories followed by scorched-earth political revenge, I thought he might — just might — rise to the occasion.

Maybe he’d impart a little Searchlight coffee-shop common sense into the national political process and, hope against hope, even use a little of that scorched-earth revenge instinct against terrorists who seek to harm Americans.

I pointed to the moon regarding Harry’s leadership potential. Unfortunately, his first six months on the job leave me looking just a little past the end of my finger.

Now, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. At least 75 percent of our elected officials never rise above their raw ability to get elected. Getting elected is who they are. It is why they exist from term to term. For these lesser leaders, getting elected is the end, not the means to an end. So, to the extent that I am critical of Sen. Reid, I am also critical of most politicians, liberal and conservative.

But given Harry’s opportunity at national and world leadership, I want more from Nevada’s highest-ranking politician ever. I am sorry to say that the signs of disappointment appeared from the get-go.

In January, when former President Gerald Ford’s state funeral was held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., it was expected that leaders of both parties would gather to show national unity.

But in this easiest of leadership obligations to fulfill, Sen. Reid came up short. He declined to alter a junket/vacation to South America.

Unconscionable, really. Had this been a Democrat (say, former President Jimmy Carter), do you think Sen. Reid might have lifted a finger to get to the funeral? Without doubt.

Now that we’ve had six months to look back on it, this error in judgment, with partisan overtones, was the first indication that Sen. Reid’s leadership skills were questionable.

Then, in April, Sen. Reid uttered his now-infamous comment that the war in Iraq was “lost.” He deservedly received heaps of scorn for the comment. When our men and women in the military were being shot at and bombed trying to defeat a resilient enemy, Harry said the war was already “lost.”

It was an unwise comment in the extreme, more befitting of a party hack than a national leader.

And finally, we come to the immigration reform bill that suffered a well-deserved, messy death in June. This so-called “compromise” bill contained a legislative stew of controversial reforms. Championed by President Bush and Sen. Edward Kennedy, the bill was sent to the Senate, where Reid tried to rush it to passage before it could be halfway understood by the American people.

Thanks to a near tea-party revolution, senators’ phones, mailboxes and computers were jammed with opposition from people in the heartland increasingly upset as the bill’s details dripped out daily. Support withered, and Reid’s stealthy tactics failed.

Agree or disagree with the immigration reform bill, a strong leader would have had the courage to stand up to both President Bush and Sen. Kennedy and say: “Look, boys, as the leader of the Senate, I am no potted plant in this process. We’re going to take our time and sift through every detail of this bill. Why? Because it is too important to pass in the dead of night. We have at least 12 million human beings in our country illegally and we need a lasting fix for both them and us. To ram this through and worry about the unknown consequences later is irresponsible, and as the leader of the Senate I won’t allow it.”

But Harry didn’t have the guts for that. Instead, he led like a sheep. And, like a sheep, he got sheared.

I know that there are many who like and dislike the politics of my senator. You are welcome to those views. My only point is that no matter how you come down on specific issues, one thing is perfectly clear: If Harry’s leadership trajectory doesn’t change, you can index Sen. Reid’s legacy under “partisan politician,” not “statesman.”

I still hold out some hope for change. In America’s move forward, the more Sen. Reid behaves like a statesman, the better off we all will be.

Sherman Frederick is publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media. Readers may write him at sfrederick@reviewjournal.com.