Gyroscope
A newsletter
for those unmoved by spin.
No. 59, January 24, 2005
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Gyroscope A newsletter
for those unmoved by spin. |
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| by John Nordin |
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Where
are the Democrats?
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A nominee for the highest law enforcement position in the land. The nominee favors the idea that the President doesn't have to obey the law. The nominee favors the idea that we can torture people. And he sails through the hearings with no trouble. A nominee for the highest diplomatic post in the land, the manager of our relations with the rest of the world. She's been associated with pissing off the rest of the world in a fashion never done in the entirety of American history. She gets an entire 2 votes cast against her and half the news coverage is about the "outrageous, partisan" actions of those two. Barbara Boxer still thinks she is a Democrat. So does Robert Byrd. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada sometimes remembers. But the bankruptcy of the party's leadership is shown in that by casting a single reasonable vote against Rice, Kerry vaults into the pantheon of Democratic leadership in spite of muffing a gift-wrapped opportunity to win election and doing nothing since then other than being seen walking the halls of the Senate. What is up with Biden? As a player, this guy comes out of high school with All-American written all over him, but now in his senior year, he isn't even starting. He votes for Rice? And what about Russell Feingold, hero of campaign finance reform? He votes for her. And even the sainted Barack Obama, personally picked by God and the media to lead the Democrats out of the wilderness, voted for her. With luck, that vote comes back to haunt him later. Listen to these people fall all over themselves
Feinstein, a Democrat, actually introduced Rice to the committee:
Sen. Sarbains spent his entire time asking her about the trade deficit. Dodd chided her for not spending more words in her opening statement on economics and Latin America. This is all the more puzzling, given that Rice is, at best, a mediocre official. The party line that this is a 'brilliant woman' is utterly unshakable, it is an article of faith held by the media and most of the individuals I've talked with. It's a crock. Can any of you name a single success that she presided over? Did she understand the terrorist threat prior to 9/11 and drive policy forward on this? No. Did she force interagency cooperation after 9/11? No. Did she keep the president focused on the main threat against us? No. Did she keep our allies on our side during the war? No. Does she deeply understand the issues facing us in Iraq? Not to judge by her answers. Did she make cool and correct judgments on Iraq before the war? Well, she called the evidence for WMD the "strongest I'd ever seen." Did she manage our relations with North Korea, with China, with any nation you can name in a way that excited the admiration of the world? No. Her biggest achievement is that Bush trusts her. And her reputation for brilliance looks odder given her flat affect and incoherent presentation in public. She has been tied up in verbal knots attempting to explain how she did or didn't comprehend a key pre-9/11 document on the terrorist threats to the U.S. She rambles and mumbles. It's not like Cheney, another rather dull fellow who has at least mastered the gestures and facial expressions we associate with intelligence. But this is the person who the Democrats could not lay a glove on. Where are the Democrats? |