He was supposed to quell a lingering Democratic soap opera over who would head the House Intelligence Committee in the 110th Congress. Instead, Texan Silvestre Reyes has added a subplot of his own. He spent much of last week as late-night talk show fodder, thanks to his badly flubbed answers to some simple questions about Islam.

In an interview with CQ Dec. 7, one month after winning his sixth term, the former Border Patrol manager from El Paso mischaracterized al Qaeda as “predominantly Shiite.” (In fact, the terrorist organization’s Sunni roots are key to its founding.) The incoming chairman then went completely blank when asked where the Middle East terrorist group Hezbollah falls on the Sunni-Shi’a divide. (Like its Iranian sponsor state, it is overwhelmingly Shi’a.)

Reyes may be able to use the capital’s holiday quiet to ride out the media furor over his gaffes. But the episode is symptomatic of a much bigger problem for incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and the rest of the new Democratic congressional leadership. The party clearly lacks any alpha figure on national security. Neither caucus has someone with the equivalent heft of Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Vietnam prisoner of war who’s now the pre-eminent Republican voice in Washington on military and foreign policy. And no Democrat has yet staked a clear claim to be the party’s moral heir of J. William Fulbright, the Arkansas senator whose coming out against the Vietnam War was a turning point in Lyndon B. Johnson’s losing battle for the country’s hearts and minds.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts might have filled those shoes at one time, but his frequent stumbles over Iraq — together with his loss of the presidential election two years ago — have likely put him out of the running.

Other senators are waiting in the wings, but none is especially out front on the vital security issue — an increasingly urgent need, it would seem, as President Bush weighs his “new way forward” in framing strategy in the Iraq War.

Richard J. Kerr, who worked closely with Congress over his 32-career with the CIA, suggests that Delaware’s Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. “is a natural,” but also expects New York’s Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton “to become very active as we approach ’08.”

Retired Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, who had been top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, offers a pair of Senate dark horses. Rhode Island’s Jack Reed is “a West Point graduate with military experience,” he says, and then there’s newcomer Jim Webb of Virginia, “who has a military background, was Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy and has a son in Iraq.”

But the bench appears much thinner on the House side, as Pelosi’s Intelligence Committee woes make all too plain. “The House leadership does not appear to have credentials to speak to foreign policy,” says Kerr. He said House leaders might do well turning to either their new Armed Services chairman, Ike Skelton of Missouri, or their returning Appropriations chairman, David R. Obey of Wisconsin. Turner also likes Skelton as well as South Carolina’s John M. Spratt Jr. , a veteran moderate on Armed Services. Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke, who now chairs Good Harbor consulting, says that Democrats have “a number of very experienced people” but “they have not been able to sell themselves as experts.”

The basic political brief for the role is not that demanding — particularly in the Pelosi-engineered era of party message discipline. “The Democratic message should be that America’s security is protected by maintaining both military strength and international respect,” Turner adds, “and credibility.” It should say, “We are optimistic about the future and we are committed to protecting the homeland from radical extremists. We stand up for our values, we seek to build alliances and always search to find common ground with friend and foe.”

The leadership vacuum might paradoxically prompt Pelosi’s Senate counterpart, incoming Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, to prevail upon a legislator who has notoriously been off message on the critical issue of the Iraq War: Joseph I. Lieberman , whose support for Bush’s policies cost him the Democratic Senate nomination in Connecticut this year. “It could be an interesting play,” offers former FBI counterintelligence chief Harry B. Brandon.

But William S. Cohen, the former GOP senator from Maine who became Democrat Bill Clinton’s Defense secretary, doubts that congressional Democrats would allow that. “They might say, ‘Wait a minute, Joe, you won in Connecticut, but aren’t you in lockstep with John McCain on defense and foreign policy?’ ” Cohen speculates that party leaders will want someone who can offer a clear alternative to 2008 presidential aspirant McCain, who opposes an Iraq withdrawal and favors military strikes on Iran if diplomatic pressure fails to deter its apparent pursuit of nuclear weapons.

For new leadership, Cohen says Lieberman is “not different enough.” A more likely choice is “someone from the campaign trail,” which doesn’t necessarily mean a fresh face: “It could be Hillary.”