May 19, 2009

Pelosi’s Real Problem: Right Thing, Wrong Party

Nancy Pelosi in the news? Yes, indeed. You see, her problem is that she got caught.

No, not caught in the fudge of saying she was never briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or EITs . . . Washington’s favorite new euphemism for waterboarding. (I prefer to think of the sessions as ETQs . . . Enhanced Thirst Quenchers.) 

I mean, a politician obfuscating the truth? Whoa! Man bites dog!

Come on. We all know the Speaker’s real problem is that she got found out for having committed the cardinal sin of politics – diverging from her party’s core values.

Confronted in the aftermath of 9/11 by the face of terror – and the possibility that more attacks were forthcoming on American soil – the then-ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee made a stunning and, to the MoveOn.com/Daily Kos hard core of her party, unforgivable mistake: She acted like an adult, responsible policymaker and put the lives and security of her countrymen and women ahead of politics.

Oops. Busted! You see, Ms. Pelosi apparently forgot she was a Democrat. A “San Francisco Democrat,” at that.

As such, upon hearing that America’s Favorite Terrorists were enjoying those ETQs in their least favorite flavors, the job of the Woman-Who-Would-Be-Speaker was to:

a)       run screaming from the room, hands over ears

b)       have a staffer leak the 411 about the ETQs to the ACLU, Amnesty International, People for the American Way, Arianna Huffington and Jon Stewart,

c)       call for war crimes trials for W, Dick, Tenet, Alberto, Condi, Scooter, Rove and Jenna, (Fake IDs?  What else was she hiding?), and

d)       send ACORN out on a voter registration drive and unleash a wave of fundraising appeals (“Stop the Bush Inquisition!”).

Instead, Congresswoman Pelosi, displaying great reserve, allegedly responded to the news of the EITs with something like: “Can’t we get Jack Bauer involved in questioning KSM? Remember the head-rolling act from Season Two?”

Nothing like having been hurriedly ushered from the Capitol, with the doomed Flight 93 potentially drawing a bead on you, to focus one’s thinking.

Now, some seven years and eight months later, with the abject panic and unspeakable anguish of those hours fading, Gitmo’s guardians putting up the signs for the moving sale and its residents getting their welfare accounts and new identities all set up for their pending relocation to a Wisteria Lane near you (bringing a whole new meaning to the concept of Desperate Housewives), Nancy with the Gaffe-ing Face realizes she must do all she can to separate herself from the dark truth of her capitulation to common sense.

Getting hounded out of office for lying? No worries there. That’s reserved for Republicans. (See Clinton, Bill, Civil Contempt Citation, Obstruction of Justice.)

No, the much worse fate for Madame Speaker would be to have to face the full wrath of the America-Hating Left, the civil liberties absolutists, the terror apologists and – horrors! – MSNBC. Far less fearsome for Ms. Pelosi to be exposed, hung out to dry and held up for ridicule by, of all people, CIA Director Leon Panetta than to find herself featured as Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World” for admitting to having consented to subject cruel murderers to anything harsher than a toe-tickling.

Calculating that electorally and politically, she is safer in the warm embrace of her Left Coast constituency and the good graces of the Fahrenheit 911 Fan Club than finding herself savaged as a sellout by Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow and hammered in HuffPo, the Speaker’s only choice now is to hunker down and stick it out with her fabulously fictitious, mortifyingly misleading, hilariously hair-splitting, endlessly evolving and ridiculously risky accounts of her 2002 briefings.

All while knowing full well that she did the right thing. Just in the wrong party.