There's something about Nancy...

Okay, time for credentials. If you can't tell from other stuff I have written here, I am a Democrat. In some ways I am pretty liberal. I agree with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on a lot of positions. I just wish she would step down.

Maybe, if the Democrats win the White House, then Ms Pelosi can be shoved aside for an effective Speaker. Actually I would settle for an ineffective speaker as long as she (or he) didn't sow policy disasters in her (or his ) path.

I have not liked Nancy Pelosi since a day in the summer of 1990. She was visiting Beijing at the time; a fairly junior Congresswoman from San Francisco. She and an aide were escorted by their Chinese guide to Tienanmen Square. It was a year since the infamous massacre.

Now, let it be said that I have no sympathy for the Chinese government and less for that particular government. But I have a soft spot in my heart for civil servants of all stripes. Maybe I am naive, but I think most civil servants are people who just want to do a good job and get home to dinner and family. Sure there are some who are pretty nasty and thuggish -- probably more in China that the US -- but most are probably pretty decent souls who are trying to do the best they can for their families and are motivated by a modicum of patriotism.

The fellow that guided Nancy Pelosi that day in Tienanmen Square was likely such a civil servant.

So Nancy and her aide, standing in Tienanmen Square, unfurl a hitherto concealed banner which condemns China for the massacre. Of course, as a visiting Congressional delegation, she and her aide faced no real risk. Not so for her guide I am sure. China tends to be harsh on civil servants who fail to prevent such embarrasments.

Nancy got a headline and some juicy political theater. Her guide was probably lucky to keep his organs.

Ms Pelosi continues to pull some bone-headed stunts. Most recently, she did her best to rip NATO apart and make an awful situation in Iraq worse. The script this time was a resolution condemning Turkey's genocidal behavior in Armenia 90 years before.

For the record I oppose genocide -- something else that Ms Pelosi and I agree on. What the Ottoman Empire did in Armenia during the years 1915 - 1918 was a crime against humanity. In the years since 1923, the Republic of Turkey has been been loath to address the crimes of its predecessor regime, even as the Ankara government dismantled much of the Ottoman Empire's machinery of despotism and oppression.

It is important to realize that there is a difference in degrees between committing a crime and having trouble coming to grips with it. The Republic of Turkey should come to grips with the crimes committed by the Ottoman Empire, but the Republic does not deserve condemnation for something it did not do.

But what is the point of the United States House of Representatives deploring Turkey's reticence at a time when Turkey seeks admission to Europe, at a time when the first, and pretty much only, secular majority Islamic nation in the world is struggling to hold Islamism at bay. And what, for God's sake is the point of shoving a thumb in the eye of Turkey's military at a time when we are asking them to trust us and not bomb the hell out of Iraqi Kurdistan and set off a regional conflagration. Thanks to Ms Pelosi that scenario came frightenly close.

Lest you think that Speaker Nancy confines her antics to confounding foreign policy, consider her behavior as Speaker. She could not get along with her colleague, Jane Harman, who was next in line to chair the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Therefore she decided to edge Harman aside in favor of Alcee Hastings of Florida, who had been impeached from a Federal judgship for felonious behavior. To chair an intelligence committee! It took the intelligence agencies notifying the Speaker that they would not be able to discuss classified material with Hastings before she backed off and appointed Sylvestre Reyes of Texas.

Then there was her very public attempt to push John Murtha as Majority Leader over Steny Hoyer. Hoyer had incurred Pelosi's displeasure a couple of years before when he ran against her for Minority Leader. Murtha had earned Pelosi's regard for his stand against the Bush Administration's conduct of the war, and for his loyalty to her. But John Murtha is not without baggage -- lots of baggage -- that would have given the Republicans ample ammunition to fire at the Democratic majority. By publicly opposing Hoyer's candidacy, Pelosi squandered any good relations she should have enjoyed in the early days of her speakership, jeopardizing the Democratic majority's ability to carry out an agenda that might correct some of the President's blunders.

Pelosi isn't dumb, I am sure. She just does dumb things. We don't need her as Speaker; thats for sure.