A Double-Take Moment

Nancy Pelosi takes a short trip to Syria…evidently without the president’s permission. Yes, it bothers me, and not just because it’s the most depressing demonstration yet of the disastrous polarization of our government and isolation of our president. The truly repellent ingredient of this whole episode will be the image plastered all over the blogosphere tomorrow: Our San Francisco liberal, the first female Speaker of the House – and one of our finest emblems of the opportunity, equality, pluralism, and liberty that make America the flare of hope that it is – shaking hands with Bashar Assad, the Middle East’s answer to Baby Doc, symbol the exploitation, chauvinism, and thuggery that stultifies his country and his region.

The near-unbearable truth is that someone has to do this job, filthy as it is. The Baker-Hamilton commission has counseled it. The most experienced members of Congress, of both parties now, have demanded it. Our top commanders say there’s no purely military solution to the morass in Iraq. When President George W. Bush tells us that he can’t negotiate with an evil world, he’s telling us that he can’t fulfill the responsibilities of his office. He abdicates his right to represent us, and someone has to pick up the pieces. Frisco lefty that she is, Pelosi understands that someone has to lead.