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I've been wondering lately if Nevada's Harry Reid has received any apologies since the Wall Street meltdown began.

For many years, Reid was the principal detractor in D.C. of Alan Greenspan, who chaired the Federal Reserve Board for 19 years. It was one of those inside-the-beltway things. Greenspan was a sacred cow. The Washington Post once reported that in the world of D.C., Greenspan was "above partisan criticism, a figure celebrated by many as a wise and evenhanded guardian of the economy whose public pronouncements not only move markets but also greatly influence policy debates."

As a result, until he became Senate assistant Democratic leader and then Democratic leader, Reid was regarded as a bit of a crank on the subject, particularly because he always voted against renewing Greenspan as Fed chair. Even after he became party leader, his criticisms of Greenspan were regarded as a bit odd. Here, for instance, is the Washington Post's Pulitzer-winning columnist David Broder, often regarded as the most admired journalist in the nation's capital:

"Hailed by his staff as 'a strong leader who speaks his mind in direct fashion,' Reid is assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth. In 2005, he attacked Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, as 'one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington.' ... The Democrats deserve better, and the country needs more, than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader."

It's always been a bit of a surprise that Greenspan so beguiled the capital city. He's something of a loon, a disciple of exotic figures like Joseph Schumpeter and Ayn Rand, and D.C. is the home of conventional wisdom, sacred cows, and the middle of the road. But in the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations, his unconventional views did not seem so out of place (keep in mind that Clinton was a conservative Democrat who led what one liberal leader called the fourth and fifth terms of the Reagan administration).

And as the Democratic Party moved away from its traditional advocacy of the working poor to being a well funded arm of the corporate U.S., few in the party made the case against Greenspan. Reid pretty much had that stance to himself.

The capital's comfort level with Greenspan got a big shove forward from Clinton, who plopped Greenspan next to Hillary Clinton in the gallery at his first state of the union speech. That followed the successful efforts of Greenspan and other alleged financial experts during the transition to convince Clinton to abandon his advocacy of the middle class in favor of romancing the bond market in his economic program.

On one occasion, Reid sponsored a measure to crack down on a complex shell game the Federal Reserve System was running, cooking the books and trafficking in pension funds Reid won praise from Ralph Nader but indifference from his fellow Democrats. Nader described the eventual defeat of Reid's amendment reforming the Fed's financial practices this way: "The treatment of Reid's amendment is the latest illustration of how subservient the Congress is to the Federal Reserve and how weak-kneed the banking committees are in resisting pressure from Alan Greenspan."

Now, in the aftermath of the Wall Street meltdown, Greenspan and his Fed tenure are being identified as causes of that meltdown, making Reid look like a prophet. Greenspan has been hailed before congressional committees to explain how he was sure that predatory corporations would "self-regulate" themselves, that he was in a state of "shocked disbelief," that the meltdown had destroyed his "intellectual structure." Democratic senators who were no help to Reid in earlier years jumped in to bash Greenspan's dopey theories.

So it would be nice to hear that some of those legislators and some journalists like David Broder are offering Reid some apologies as well as providing some assurance that they won't be so eager in the future to bash those who wander off the well trodden path of beltway conventional wisdom.