Today's WaPost contains a little piece on our Madame Speaker from San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi. In it, her recent "leadership" on the healthcare issue is discussed, particularly her role in the recent House Committee vote to move healthcare legislation forward (though not on the President's aggressive timeline). This vote was important for Democrats, as it represented the rise of the Blue Dogs and showed and ability to compromise internally--one that will be tested in the months to come as the full House and Senate get involved (my personal feeling is that the bill that will leave the House Committee is as good as the Blue Dogs will get it, and it will become more liberal as time goes on---therein driving the Blue Dogs away, again).
In the article, there are a number of statements of admiration and support from Democratic lawmakers about her role in the debate and her performance as Speaker. But there's something here that I simply can't get. I have never before been confronted with a politician on "the other side" for whom there has been a more obvious disconnect between public performance and private support. Put another way, the great Democratic politicians of the past 40 years have all managed to grab a solid amount of my admiration--even Al Gore! But there they are--Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary, et al, doing their thing, pissing me off, but all along the way earning a grudging respect. What I can't figure out is why I have come to see Nancy Pelosi as utterly without merit, a complete partisan hack, intellectually benumbed, and simply out of her depth? Clearly it is a matter of a misperception on my part--if all these really smart politicians think she's such a great gal, marvelous leader, the very reincarnation of Boudica in our time, how can I be so wrong? But apparently I am, 'cause Steny Hoyer thinks she's the bomb-diggity.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
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3 comments:
"What I can't figure out is why I have come to see Nancy Pelosi as utterly without merit, a complete partisan hack, intellectually benumbed, and simply out of her depth?"
Perhaps because you are even marginally astute? And because Steny Hoyer is a fool who likely owes something to the Baltimore D'Allesandro family, from whom the worst SotH of my lifetime hails, for his own political career. Maryland politics drove me out of the state permanently due to the likes of these people and a state government infrastructure comprised with a majority that defies any positive descriptor higher than "deliberately inept".
Getting back to Speaker Pelosi, Maryland raised her and San Francisco embraced her. Should we have expected any thing less than a liberal of epic proportions?
Mudge, our country was founded on liberal principles. sorry, conservatives went the way of the tories.
Anon--a little education is sometimes a dangerous thing, so let me commence the intellectual beat-down.
1. The liberal principles our country was founded upon is a different definition of the word liberal than has come to be applied to a left of center ideological persuasion. "Liberal principles" flowed from the Enlightenment era "liberal tradition", and that included 1) a free press 2) an independent judiciary 3) free thought and speech 4) individual rights 5) limited government and 6) rule by consent. Contemporary liberalism is an entirely different concept. For another example of how a word used to describe one thing and now another, see use of "gay".
2. Our revolution was a CONSERVATIVE revolution. The Second Continental Congress broke with England TO PROTECT RIGHTS THEY ALREADY BELIEVED THEY HAD. The Adams, Jefferson and the rest agonized over breaking with the King, believing that Parliament had been acting at variance to the liberal principles I describe above. The true Revolutionary nature of the Declaration of Independence was that it represented FINALLY a realization that it was indeed the KING who was abridging their rights as ENGLISHMEN...and this was too much. Contrast this with the French Revolution, which was decidedly NOT a conservative revolution.
I do not believe that it would be a stretch to say that if the signers of the Declaration could come back to see the role government in people's everyday lives today, they would be unfamiliar with it.
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