La Diva Sings Her Usual Aria

I caught Nancy Pelosi's act on Jon Stewart's Daily Show a couple of nights ago and was reminded yet again how much our elected Reps rely on the dismal state of American civics education to get away with forfeiting their Constitutional duty to rein in a runaway presidency. And was also struck again at how thoroughly out of place Nancy seems as Speaker of the House. She remains the perfect Pacific Heights socialite; all batting eyes, forced laughter, charming chit-chat. I don't say that as a sexist remark -- it's her choice to present herself as an airhead.

Maybe she's appearing on a comedy show but Stewart was asking her serious questions.

Like: did it ever occur to you people just to refuse Bush his allowance for his vanity war in Iraq? I was (somewhat) surprised to hear that the House of Representatives, under her leadership, had tried that very thing. Sure, they had voted the money; but they'd attached "conditions" to its use, like a "timeline." However, when the bill came back from the Senate, the timelines had been stripped out, so then they had no choice but to...And the problem all along was that darn 60 vote rule in the Senate, so poor Mr. Mumbles (Harry Reid) had no choice but to cave in to the wishes of the Republican, er, minority, because he couldn't get a timeline bill to the Senate floor for a vote.

Stewart, leaving behind his comedic persona, simply stared at her in disbelief. They're still using that pathetic excuse? Under Article I of the United States Constitution, no authorization bill for federal spending can originate other than in the House of Representatives. That's what Madison, Hamilton, et al. had in mind when they decided that the People's House should control the People's money. Really, it's the ultimate power; not even George W. Bush can do anything without money. He can rant and rave, hold his breath till he turns blue, blackmail Congress with the threat to expose them as a group of enemy collaborators, anything he wants - but he still can't do anything unless Nancy Pelosi agrees, as the leader of the majority party in the People's House, to give him the money to do it with.

One of the great ironies is that the Democrats, by funding everything in Iraq including the escalation in men and expense known as the "surge," have set the stage for their own unraveling. They have given McCain his best and only argument: I was right about the Surge, Obama was wrong. Let' face it, it resonates. As certain as I am this morning that it is a clear day in July, I am confident that those 30,000 troops were not decisive in bringing about the "progress" in Iraq. The prior ethnic cleansing, the walling off of sectarian neighborhoods, the cease fire called by al-Sadr, and sheer battle fatigue brought about a diminution of mayhem in Iraq, and the violence is far from over. The blood rivalries run so deep that Iraq will remain "fragile" (as the hawks put it) for a very long time, much longer than we can possibly afford to stay there. McCain talks as if what is going on there now is some sort of steady state that will sustain itself on its own momentum in perpetuity. This is crazy nonsense. Let's face it: we vastly underestimated how inherently unstable Iraq really is.

But such an argument, like the even better argument that the war was dumb to begin with, is slightly too nuanced for sound-bite America. Americans want to feel "safe," and the guy who can make you safe is the guy who can explain everything in a sentence -- there were bad people there, we stayed the course and got rid of them. Something along those lines. Never mind reality; we need something that will fit on an adhesive strip on my rear bumper. So La Diva and Mr. Mumbles needed to fulfill that mandate from the American people that was equally simple in its formulation: get this stupid war over with. They didn't do it. They played ball, played it safe, and Nancy, the perfect smiling hostess, is now serving canapes topped with roast crow, all washed down with a snifter of bitter gall.