Democratic House Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s ascension to House speaker a few weeks ago had many of us feeling a bit lighter in the loafers than usual.

Come on, a well-respected liberal senator from California with a stellar voting record on progressive social reform serving as the first female speaker in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives – could it get any better than that?

Pledging to lead “the most ethical Congress in history,” Pelosi appeared to have developed the poise and leadership qualities necessary to guide the 110th Congress – with its slim Democratic majority – away from the whirlpool of debt and cronyism the Republicans set in motion during what has been one of the most unethical administrations in history.

And the GLBT community has a lot to gain from the congressional change in leadership. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act finally has a chance to pass (well, Congress at least), and two GLBT-friendly legislators, openly gay Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Military Readiness Enhancement Act sponsor Marty Meehan, also D-Mass., are poised to take over two key posts, the Financial Services Committee and the new Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, respectively.

But then came Hoyer. Pelosi blew off the No. 2-ranking Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in favor of tarnished Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha for House majority leader, presumably due to Murtha’s opposition to the Iraq war.

Calling Murtha “tarnished” is putting it mildly. His infamous “I’m not interested – at this point” refusal of a lobbyist bribe years ago, caught on tape and rebroadcast ad nauseum by Pelosi’s laughing opponents earlier this month after the announcement of his nomination, is the most visible example of Murtha’s corrupt reputation in Washington, and the first indication Pelosi may not be the wizened House speaker we’d hoped for to lead us through the political muck and mire.

Though Hoyer, reportedly a longtime rival of Pelosi’s, doesn’t have the most stellar record himself (he has also dabbled in big-money politics, according to The New York Times), his indiscretions are far less damning than Murtha’s.

Ugh. Wasn’t this the exact type of cronyism the Democrats criticized the Republicans for?

Luckily, House Democrats, in true democratic fashion, quickly put the kibosh on Pelosi’s nomination of Murtha and installed Hoyer instead.

Pelosi’s first impression thus marred, she still had a chance to recover. Capitol Hill pundits may have understood the enormity of Pelosi’s error in judgment, but the average Joe would have chalked up the misstep to a one-time occurrence, weighing Murtha’s fierce opposition to the Iraq war against his past indiscretions and moving on from there.

But then came Harman. Pelosi recommended House Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., for chair of the highly-sensitive House Intelligence Committee instead of the committee’s ranking Democratic member, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif. Though the centrist Harman hasn’t escaped her share of criticism, most notably for her early support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, at least she owned up to swallowing a lot of bad military intelligence and then committed herself to “reform of the intelligence community” while speaking before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in January 2004.

Hastings is another story. In 1989, the House voted 413-3 to impeach Hastings, who at the time was serving as a federal judge, for involvement in a bribery plot. In fact, Pelosi was among those House reps who voted to impeach him. Hastings was then convicted by the Senate and removed from the bench. In a recent letter to Democratic members of the House, Hastings asserts that his impeachment proceedings were tainted by politics. Sounds like a denial of wrongdoing to us.

The only plausible explanation for Pelosi’s fumble in nominating Hastings, which she has since withdrawn, is that she was trying to appease the Congressional Black Caucus (after another caucus member, Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., was ousted from the committee when Harman returned as chair following a failed gubernatorial run). But out of the 40 voting members of the caucus who serve in the House, there are numerous qualified African-Americans to choose from for leadership posts on other committees. Leave the Intelligence Committee to Harman. Indeed, with his cred, what the hell is Hastings doing serving on the Intelligence Committee at all?

Recommending legislators with shady pasts for prominent positions isn’t exactly the best way for Pelosi to live up to her promise that the 110th Congress, which convenes in January, will be the most ethical in history. Thankfully, her Democratic colleagues are helping her on that front until she realizes that she needs to surround herself with – and start listening to – better advisers.