Sunday, October 22, 2006

It's not revenge, it's justice. Repeat. And again.

I thought the profile of Nancy Pelosi that Lesley Stahl did on 60 Minutes tonight came off as an attempted smear that backfired. It was packed with sly sexism and loaded, juicy words like "revenge" but in the process, it made her look a lot better (to me) than may have been intended..


Well, she’s certainly brought order to the Democrats. She has insisted on no more bickering in public and just saying "no" to nearly everything that comes out of the Bush White House. In other words, party discipline: kind of like the Republicans do it. As a result, Democrats now vote together more often than they have since Eisenhower was president. How has someone so clearly not one of the boys managed to keep them in line?


Maybe Democrats aren't all cynical hypocrites who are afraid of catching cooties from a girl (especially if she's competent).

It ended with an attempt to get the Democratic leader to pledge-again-that should her party find itself in a position of power in a couple of weeks, they will not hurt Bush too much. He's already been through a lot, poor guy.


She has pledged that as Speaker she would give the Republicans rights they’ve denied the Democrats, like allowing them to introduce amendments to bills. But she may have trouble reining in the Democrats’ appetite for revenge. There’s already talk of multiple investigations and impeachment of the president.


As I've expressed before, few things make me angrier-or better explain why I don't watch TV news much-than the idea that the motivation for coming down on Bush and Cheney can be attributed to "revenge". No, they have committed crimes. It's not revenge, it's justice.

That said, it gave Pelosi a chance to put her justification for taking impeachment off the table better than I have previously seen it expressed.
This election is about [George Bush & Dick Cheney]. This is a referendum on them. Making them lame ducks is good enough for me."


It's not good enough for me-my "good enough" involves jail time, but I'm not completely naieve-but at least it does make me feel I better understand the political position that Pelosi is taking.

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