February 26, 2007

Tattling Nancy: Not Ready for Prime Time

Dick Cheney was mean to Nancy Pelosi. And she’s telling!

The Speaker of the House and her fellow surrender-advocate Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) have proposed just about every impediment imaginable to the Iraq war effort – from restricting funds to flat out bringing the troops home without key objectives achieved. There is no way around what this is. Pelosi and Murtha have decided it’s time for America to lose this war.

But advocacy of defeat need not be rebutted by the indelicate action of actually calling it what it is. That’s not nice. Oh wait. The vice president doesn’t appear to care.

“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the Al Qaeda strategy,” Cheney told ABC News. “The Al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people . . . try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit.”

Let’s review. Pelosi and Murtha propose that we leave Iraq and stop fighting. Cheney points out that this means we quit, which means we lose, which means the enemy celebrates. This all seems quite rudimentary, but then, I’m not Nancy Pelosi, who fumed that Cheney had questioned her patriotism.

So upset was the Speaker that she decided to call President Bush to tattle. Heartbreakingly, Pelosi was only able to reach Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. There’s just no substitute for tattling to The Man Himself.

It’s hard to imagine a silly news story like this having legs beyond a few hours. But in the Anna Nicole News Cycle, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility, so the day after Cheney stated the obvious fact that quitting means losing, he was asked by reporters if he would take back his criticism of Pelosi.

Nope.

“She accused me of questioning her patriotism,” Cheney said. “I didn't question her patriotism. I questioned her judgment. You also have to be accountable for the results. What are the consequences of that? What happens if we withdraw from Iraq? And the point I made and I'll make it again is that Al Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will. That's their fundamental underlying strategy, that if they can kill enough Americans or cause enough havoc, create enough chaos in Iraq, then we'll quit and go home. And my statement was that if we adopt the Pelosi policy, that then we will validate the strategy of Al Qaeda. I said it and I meant it.”

I guess he’s not taking it back.

Now, there is nothing new under the sun here. Complaints about imaginary attacks on their patriotism represent a long-established, if almost never successful, Democratic tactic. Perhaps Cheney had reviewed his history, because his retort of having questioned her judgment rather than her patriotism was word-for-word the same thing George H.W. Bush said in 1988 when Michael Dukakis tried testing the same fine whine.

Dukakis refused not to have his patriotism questioned: “Of course he’s questioning my patriotism! Of course he is! And I resent it!”

Pelosi won’t miss a ride on the victim carousel either, and reporters covering the story were only too happy to help her.

Consider the issues at play here. The Speaker of the House urges that America essentially quit and lose a war. The vice president says that would be, uh, quitting and losing. Whose remarks are challenged by reporters? Not the person who wants to lose. That’s fine. But if you criticize the person who wants us to lose, you will be barraged with questions about whether you will take back the criticism.

Speaker Pelosi is proving herself not ready for prime time. If she can’t handle the mild criticism Cheney offered here without going ballistic and whining to the president to stop people from being mean to her, she isn’t going to be very formidable on any serious policy matter.

As for the reporters who badgered Cheney about taking back the truth, one would hope that in matters of war and peace, the news media would focus their coverage on more serious angles. But one would be inviting disappointment to hope for such a thing.