By Alan Caruba
Thursday, April 12, 2007
"Everyone rises to their level of incompetence," wrote Laurence J. Peter, the author of 'The Peter Principle', a book that enshrined that wonderful insight in American culture ever since its publication in 1969. Watching Nancy Pelosi since she ascended Constitutionally as Speaker of the House within Dick Cheney's heartbeat of the Presidency, I was reminded of that.
When the Washington Post takes you to task, as it did on April 5 in an editorial, "Pratfall in Damascus", you have to know that Nancy is in way over her head. Her trip to the Holy Land of Israel and the unholy one of Syria was a complete debacle. "We come in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," said Speaker Pelosi. The Post editorial dismissed that as "ludicrous."
Still, I thought, you don't get to be Speaker by being stupid. Or do you? In May 2006, John Dickerson, the chief political correspondent of the left-leaning website, Slate, wrote a scathing appraisal titled "Nancy Pelosi, Super-Genius: The House minority leader answers the GOP's prayers." Dickerson was concerned about a Washington Post interview with Nancy prior to the November elections. Pelosi had outlined her plans if the Democrats were to take control of the House, demonstrating, as Dickerson put it, that "Democratic leaders were actual adults."
The outline of what was supposed to be the fabulous first 100 hours or days of the House with Democrats in charge led off the interview, "Then, as if to kill her plans...Pelosi announced that her new Democratic majority would also launch a series of investigations reaching all the way back into the first months of the Bush administration. Across the country," Dickerson wrote, "vulnerable Republican candidates are saying thank you to Pelosi." The threat of investigations, of course, came true, but did not deter the very slim transfer of control to Pelosi and company.
The daughter of Baltimore mayor and congressman Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., the family business was politics. Speaker Pelosi attended Trinity College in Washington, D.C., married San Franciscan Paul Pelosi, had five children in six years, and remained totally devoted to Democrat politics. She rose through the ranks of California's Democrat Party to serve on the Democratic National Committee and won her seat in Congress in 1987, being reelected ten times. She was the first woman to serve as "whip", the number two post in the minority party, then minority leader, and with the November elections became the Speaker.
Presumably, one does not achieve such success by being stupid. Yet, as Speaker, everyone has witnessed her saying and doing some astonishingly stupid things. The Washington Post admonished her, saying that, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad."
Her office website gushes with pronouncements and proclamations. She never lacks for an opinion on anything from Iraq to Cesar Chavez's birthday. In Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalism, the Speaker suggested to the king that they really ought to do something about woman's rights in a nation where they are not permitted to drive a car and can be stoned to death for adultery.
My office receives dispatch after dispatch regarding Pelosi's obsession with global warming and energy issues.
The House of Representatives is under the control of a woman who has drunk deeply of Al Gore's global warming Kool-Aid. "The scientific consensus on global warming is rock solid." No, Nancy, it is not. All across the globe, scientists are speaking out against this hoax even if the mainstream press continues to ignore them.
Her opening remarks on Feb 8 to the Science and Technology Committee included the predictions that, "We can expect rising sea levels, more intense storms, increased drought in some areas and more floods in others, heat waves, spread of tropical diseases, extinction of species, changes in ocean salinity, and melting ice in the polar regions."
Speaker Pelosi is moving political mountains regarding "energy independence and climate change" that she regards as issues of "national security and national urgency." Let it be said that no nation on earth can or will ever achieve "energy independence." That is why China is investing heavily in Africa's oil reserves and cutting deals with the likes of Iran and Sudan, and Russia is colluding with Middle Eastern dictatorships to set up a cartel like OPEC to control the price of natural gas.
For someone so concerned with energy independence, one wonders why Speaker Nancy opposes drilling for our own oil in Alaska or protests that "Our fragile coasts, from Alaska to California to Florida, require greater protection than a mere presidential moratorium that can be easily lifted. Lasting protection under the law is essential." In other words, let's make it illegal to drill for the potentially vast amounts of oil and natural gas on the continental shelf of America!
Speaker Pelosi doesn't understand energy issues.
Speaker Pelosi doesn't understand that global warming is a fraud.
Speaker Pelosi doesn't understand that setting a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq is a bad idea, though leave we shall at some point.
Speaker Pelosi doesn't understand that she is neither the Secretary of State, nor Commander-in-Chief.
Speaker Pelosi actually refused to let the House vote on a resolution that offered support to Great Britain when its seamen were taken hostage by Iran.
Speaker Pelosi either doesn't understand or doesn't care that investigating everyone in the Bush administration is a distraction from its first responsibility to protect our nation.
Speaker Pelosi holds out little hope to those who want our borders to be more secure against the flood of illegal aliens that continues to pour into our nation.
The Peter Principle is alive and well. Just keep an eye on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and watch it in action.
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