This is Nancy Pelosi's moment in history. It'll be longer than 15 minutes, I assure you. She will be ensconced in the history books for the ages, and not with a mere aside that she's the first female Speaker of the House.
Think of the men who challenged her for the Speakership a year and a half ago now: Men (note) like Seth Moulton and Tim Ryan. They are good at what they do and they did contribute decently to the early aspects of the presidential campaign. Yet, can you look someone in the eye and declare that they could have come anywhere near shepherding the Democratic momentum to get to the doorstep of the highly justifiable and absolutely necessary impeachment of 45, now about to get underway?
Don't hesitate. You know they wouldn't have. You could see the attitudes bursting out of them: We needed a man to take on this macho loser of a president. We need a man who can stand up to him.
Well, no. We didn't. We needed Nancy Pelosi, and she has him hooked by the back pocket, the ultimate nag, pulling on his ear. The photo of her standing up to him in the White House meeting room, scolding him, wagging her finger with him bristling in the response of a kid who's been called out for being naughty, is a classic. That photo alone just inspired about two million little girls to be president. Count on it.
And yet, and yet: Had Hillary Clinton managed--now we can say 'against all odds' because we know know exactly what she was up against, a genuine international conspiracy--to pull off at least one term of the presidency, would the mid-terms become the Democratic rout that they did, at least in the House, to deliver the Speakership to the Democrats once again?
As Speaker, Paul Ryan would have chuckled as his Republican colleagues delivered endless pressure and worked the press to introduce impeachment charges against the latest President Clinton, for e-mails and Benghazi and an executive order or two and heaven knows what else they could have contrived out of the kind of Constitution they think they can invent--regardless of how irrational and simply mystifying and ridiculously hypocritical they would have been. At the very least, they would have discredited her presidency as a one-off, and would have lined up a successor in a new race that would have been a 'correction' of the awful direction they've insisted on following. Mitch McConnell would have continued his stonewalling of nearly everything Clinton would have wanted and manage to blame her for all continuing failures. Upon impeachment, he would have fast-tracked it better than the Kavanaugh nomination, which of course would never have happened.
Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham would have endlessly eviscerated Clinton, regardless of the good she might have done or her efforts to reach out to the other side (which I'm confident she would have attempted). She would have tried to outlast the Republican echo chamber, but Republicans have a way of overwhelming with terse messages. The mid-terms might have been a Democratic disaster. Ryan would emerge not as the leaker and weasel he was, but as a bold, decisive leader of a recovering party, and a no-holds-barred candidate for the 2020 presidential nomination (which, you can bet, is still in the back of his mind).
Nancy Pelosi would have been regarded as a fading Democratic star, just riding out the credits until retirement (if indeed she wouldn't have retired by now). Her appearance in the headlines would be buried somewhere on page eight, maybe twice a year, even outside of San Francisco.
As it is, Pelosi holds the hole cards on the entire process. Careful as she is to respect and direct process, she has made sure to say that 45 hasn't been impeached, at least not yet. No one else leads this herd. No one else gets to speak for it. She does.
She is overstepping nothing. She's not trying to be president. She's doing what 45 has kept telling her to do--take measures to take him out because of his improprieties, his illegal machinations, and his utter disdain for the very meaning of the Constitution. Amidst this rhetorical all-out battle, she has never hinted at a told-you-so attitude, as if she knew all along it would get this way--though she certainly could have. All we're getting is what a good Catholic mom would do toward a recalcitrant boy who's been upsetting the neighborhood: I pray for him.
Those prayers have, or have not (depending on your viewpoint) been answered. Either way, it's time to act. He's been cut too much slack anyhow. The neighborhood Block Watch has taken hold. Everybody knows what this boy's been up to now. He can't help himself. He still thinks he can do anything he wants.
The gang of which he claims to be the leader (in fact, you can easily make the case that he's holding it back) continues to be a thorn in the side of any progress. They emulate him in their brash talk, their disrespect for house rules, and their suppression of female expertise, except to be echoes. The wreckage continues so the question can't be avoided: Is this the kind of community we want?
The awful 45 hasn't really brought all this to a head: Pelosi has by calling him on his outrageous acts and alarming, intentionally unaddressed incompetence (remember the wagging finger). She and the Democrats could, if they wanted to, stand by and watch all this and wait for 2020, as if all by itself it would create enough of a scenario to keep him from a second term (which it still might). But the Constitution provides remedies to remove ongoing damage to it, and she's taking the enormous risk to sail that stormy strait.
For this, we may in fact be better off. The disturbing, ferocious polarization which has been building for at least two decades has led us to this moment. Now it can be called to a moment of confrontation and determination, where it becomes something of a surrogate for what actually ails us, so easy to exploit: the inability to find consensus. Tragic and terrible as Hillary Clinton's defeat was, her presidency would not have served to address it. As Speaker, Nancy Pelosi just might.
It may be one of those unintended consequences that provides a win-win. The odds aren't good, granted. And there will be casualties along the way that can't be immediately foreseen, either, because things will be said that everyone may regret. But some of this might be what we've needed.
The woman has met her time. Good for her. Better for us.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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