What gift can you give to the people who have everything — or, rather, had everything until last November’s Congressional elections?
What kind of gift can you give them that will be a gift that keeps on giving…way into 2008…and right up until Election Day?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi apparently figured it out and gave this beautifully-wrapped-and-presented gift to the 2008 Republican Presidential candidate and Republicans running for Congress in 2008:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed out at Republicans on Thursday, saying they want the Iraq war to drag on and are ignoring the public’s priorities.
“They like this war. They want this war to continue,” Pelosi, D- Calif., told reporters. She expressed frustration over Republicans’ ability to force majority Democrats to yield ground on taxes, spending, energy, war spending and other matters.
This just isn’t foot in mouth. In political terms, it’s foot in mouth that will end with her foot emerging out of her other foot.
Republican campaign strategists who seek to paint the Democrats as way out there must be smiling tonight. People can (and will) debate the accuracy of her statement, but in political terms it’s a wonderful gift (just think of what former Mayor Rudy Giuliani will do with it if he is the nominee as he continues to fine-tune his talent for political ridicule).
“We thought that they shared the view of so many people in our country that we needed a new direction in Iraq,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference in the Capitol. “But the Republicans have made it very clear that this is not just George Bush’s war. This is the war of the Republicans in Congress.”
Pelosi’s basic point there is well taken.
In the wake of the 2006 election debacle, GOPers, despite some reservations and fears for their political future, took a deep breath and solidly-backed Bush on the war and the surge, turning thumbs-down on efforts by Democrats to build a coalition to exert more Congressional control over the war.
There had also been suggestions that Republicans running for the 2008 GOP Presidential nomination might try and distance themselves from the White House, but they have increasingly firmly hitched their futures to GWB and the war, too.
Campaigns are defined by “the moment.” And if, by the summer, the war is going well, this will neutralize it a bit in the elections. If it isn’t, the Republicans will have made a big mistake and will pay accordingly.
But Pelosi has now given the 2008 Republican nominee a wonderful quote that will also be used by conservative talk show hosts, bloggers and perhaps in ads.
Just as DEMOCRATS are unfairly and reprehensibly described by pro-war Republicans and some Republican Presidential wannabes as wanting to “cut and run” and wanting the defeat of the U.S. when they criticize war policy, now you have Pelosi suggesting that Republicans who may believe in either the war or the need for the U.S. to exit under circumstances favorable to the United States “like” the war.
All of this is further proof of the growing lack of perspective in American politics (on both sides) and the inclination to create comic-strip verbal caricatures and go for the jugular. A HINT TO POLITICOS: Verbal overreaching can backfire and work against your interests in 2008.
Pelosi seemed to sense that immediately:
Asked to clarify her remarks, Pelosi backed off a bit.
“I shouldn’t say they like the war,” she said. “They support the war, the course of action that the president is on.”“And that was a revelation to me,” she said, “because I thought the American people’s voices were so—and still are—so strong in this regard.”
But Ms. Pelosi may now find out a fact about gift giving:
Once you’ve given a gift, it’s hard to take it back.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.