Pelosi: She’s What’s For Dinner

The saddest thing about the current mess embroiling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is that the country finds itself mired in the one mess that it needs so badly to move past – the controversies of Bush years. The unpleasant truth is that many peoples’ hands were soiled in the anxiety filled aftermath of 9/11; but to pillory Pelosi now, as if she was the executive who ordered policy of torture – is to attempt to absolve the Bush administration for its human rights violations by claiming that somehow “everybody did it” or “everybody knew.”

I certainly won’t defend the memory of a 60-something speaker in a high-pressure job who probably attends thousands of meetings a year. I’m approaching 60 myself and sometimes have difficulty remembering where I put the car keys. But to implicate her in the policy of torture is absurd. Who knows who knew what and when? This is a bottomless game and one with ultimately no answers. In the meantime, only one interest is served by trying to entrap Pelosi, and that is the interest that is really behind stirring this pot that should have been covered with the election of Barack Obama.

Right now the Republicans are facing an enormously popular president embarking on enormously popular policies. And conservatives can’t stand it. They’ve got no traction at the polls, none in Congress, the White House, the media or the courts, so they’ve decided to bang on the nearest table – scandal. Unfortunately for the House speaker, as far as conservatives are concerned, she’s what’s for dinner.

As I won’t argue the wonder of Pelosi’s memory, so I won’t exalt her speaking skills. She’s made a hash of press conferences and has difficulty even keeping the pages of her prepared statement in order. A Cicero or Obama she’s not. The problem for her opponents is that looking foolish at a press conference is not the same thing as guilt – it’s only what it is – looking foolish at a press conference.

What is most significant is that even during that affair, Pelosi still called for the creation of a truth commission to investigate the alleged crimes of the Bush years. Clearly, she would have to testify before such a commission under oath, as would officials from the CIA, and under oath means pains and penalties for perjury. Affirming support for such an institution doesn’t strike me as the act of a guilty person.

Given the enormities of what this country faces – war, recession, a changing international order – I predict that the Pelosi mess will soon fade and assume its real status: something more than a tempest in a teapot but something less than a real scandal. Right now, the media needs controversies, and Republicans are only too happy to oblige. Tough luck for Speaker Pelosi that this week, she was it.

But if I were here, I wouldn’t worry too much – soon Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Washington to meet with President Obama. With Netanyahu as dessert, Pelosi will be finished as an entrée and the Congress can resume the peoples’ business.