Diatribes of Jay: Experience and Speaker Pelosi

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The most astounding of all the astounding things about Donald Trump is his utter lack of experience. What board of directors would hire a CEO for a movie company who had never had anything to do with movies but watch them? Who would pick as CEO of Apple an utter novice to phones, computers and code?

I wrote a whole essay exploring how a CEO with no experience in making cars—but plenty in economics and finance—nearly destroyed General Motors. So now we have a national CEO with no experience in elected office—not one day!—before he became president. He’s now on a clear glide path to doing to our nation what Rick Wagoner did to GM; he just hasn’t had nearly the same time to wreak destruction yet. Once he has had time, should anyone be surprised at the result?

Now comes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She’s a woman in a job previously held only by men. So what? What are her chops?

Here they are, ingenues and wannabes. Read ‘em and weep:

If you count high offices in the Democratic Party as well as public office, Speaker Pelosi has held office continuously for 41 years! She has held public office as a congresswoman or congressional leader for 31 years. And she has held top positions in the US Congress, on the same level as the president and cabinet, since becoming Minority Leader in 2002. That’s seventeen years and counting.

Few, if any, of our presidents could match that sort of record. In my table showing the pre-presidential experience of Abraham Lincoln, five recent presidents, and Hillary Clinton, there is only one pol—JFK—who had more than a third as much experience in public office (before or other than the presidency) as Speaker Pelosi. Should we really all rejoice that that vast bulk of our House of Representatives—including the emotional babies and extreme ideologues in the so-called “Tea Party” and “Freedom Caucus”—are political ingenues who can count their years of political experience on the fingers of one hand?

So why doesn’t Speaker Pelosi get the respect her self-evident heft deserves? Beats hell out of me. She’s good looking and pays attention to her appearance. But should that reduce her clout? Do you really want someone making judgment calls for our nation and our entire species to look as slovenly as Steve Bannon?

Speaker Pelosi also has had a beautiful and successful family life, starting before her career in party and public office. She had five children and now has six grandchildren. Should that hurt? Don’t most career women want to have it all, just that way? Why should any begrudge Speaker Pelosi for having it all and rising to the top of our government, too? Why should any man? Isn’t Speaker Pelosi’s robust family a sign of her energy, vitality and humanity?

Republicans and Fox have spent decades painting Speaker Pelosi as an “extreme liberal,” a clueless woman in a man’s world, and a lightweight. Why? Could it be that they actually recognized her talent and merit early on, and they wanted no one to notice that, most of the time, she’s the only adult in the room?

I don’t know Speaker Pelosi personally, and I haven’t followed her career closely before sitting down to write this essay. For me, the clincher came yesterday, when newly elected Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D. Mich.) provoked a Tweetstorm by advising Democrats to “impeach the motherfucker!”

Of course the new congresswoman was referring to President Trump. She’s one of the two first Muslim women ever to become US Congresswomen.

But what a way to make an entrance! In one fell swoop, Tlaib violated the First Law of Michelle Obama (“When they go low, we go high.”) and mimicked the very man she detests. Not only that: she gave him and his propaganda mill (Fox) video fodder to play in endless loops, virtually forever, to rile up their “base.”

Needless to say, responding to Tlaib’s public gaffe required sensitivity and political skill of the first order. Here’s how three Democratic members of Congress handled it:

Jerry Nadler, a longtime Democratic Congressman from New York and newly appointed Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is a fine legal mind and a heavy hitter. He reportedly had this to say:

“I don’t really like that kind of language, but, more to the point, I disagree with what she said. It is too early to talk about that intelligently. We have to follow the facts.”

So the judicial heavy hitter publicly rebuked the ingenue, putting himself on the side of the party’s enemies. He also appeared to foreclose impeachment proceedings no matter what the Executive or GOP does to distort, redact or suppress the findings of Mueller’s investigation. Smart? Party building? You judge.

Another Democratic Representative, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D. Mo.) reportedly “just expressed shock.” He cried out, “Jeez, no!” when told of Tlaib’s remarks and said, “Oh lord.” While perhaps an honest, spontaneous reaction, his was unguarded and, like Nadler’s, an implied rebuke of a freshman representative on the very day she took her oath of office.

While also saying she disagreed with Tlaib’s language, Speaker Pelosi reportedly said no one should “make a big deal about it” because the president also has a foul mouth sometimes. She later observed,

“I’m not in the censorship business. I don’t like that language, but I wouldn’t establish language standards for my colleagues.”

In sum, Nadler took the chance to stomp on his new colleague and establish as party policy his view that impeachment must wait, presumably for Mueller’s report to emerge some day in full detail. Cleaver let fly unguarded remarks that Fox and conservative video will probably play ad infinitum, ad nauseum, every time they play endless loops of Tlaib’s unfortunate gaffe. That they are likely to do at least as often as they played loops of then-candidate Obama’s pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright declaring, “God damn America!”

Of the three Dem reps, only Pelosi managed to get it just right. Her rebuke was subtle and indirect, a matter of style, not substance. At the same time, she reminded her audience how foul-mouthed and personally foul our president is, and she signaled her new flock that she will be a nurturing and encouraging leader, fostering independence in both style and substance. She is not going to emulate the authoritarianism of Trump or even Hillary Clinton.

What more could a new member want?

I’m a writer by background and training. I don’t respond well to gaffes or insults on the spur of the moment; I take time to dream up just the right riposte.

But I’ve had a lot of time to think about this one. And after twelve hours, I can’t think of any better way than Speaker Pelosi’s to avoid endorsing Tlaib’s gaffe, yet to compare it favorably with the endless stream of profanity, insults, hate and lies that vomits from Trump’s mouth daily, and to encourage the new Democratic House members to be themselves (cautiously, one hopes) and watch what they say without killing their spirit of independence.

Where does the energy in the Democratic party come from? Does it come from red-state reps trying to walk the delicate line between party apostasy and accommodating mindless right-wing extremism—like prescribing yet more guns and shooters to address the vast surplus of personal weapons in our society? Or does it come from the reps of marginalized people who have a chance—perhaps the first in their communities—to do something for their voters, to assert their rights as Americans?

Doesn’t the last question answer itself? Pols who first taste the chance to assert their constituents’ rights as Americans are like a loop of wire in a magnetic field. They are the dynamos that generate the electricity that renews and restores America.

That’s what forty-one years of experience in politics teaches you. You don’t pick it up in your first year. You don’t necessarily have it pat by your fifth or tenth. You get it from the long haul, from “paying your dues” over four decades, as Speaker Pelosi has. And only vast experience gives you the skill to keep those dynamos turning without offending or alienating the complacent and often insensitive majority.

As for substance, Speaker Pelosi comes from the most progressive city in our nation, San Francisco. She has been in the vanguard of every progressive movement, from gay rights, through farm workers’ struggles (Cesár Chavez) and a living wage, to the grand fix to our national health-insurance fiasco known as “Obamacare,” which she pushed through the House by three votes.

Her progressiveness has hardly waned over the years. She knows what she wants. But she’s won (and lost) more battles than most of the new members of Congress will see in their entire political careers. She knows that “politics is the art of the possible,” and she knows how to make what’s possible real. Without abandoning their spirit or their zeal, the new members would do well to sit at her feet and learn how, treating Speaker Pelosi with the respect, if not awe, that her long experience in countless battles, and her delicious victories in some, deserve.

Unbeknownst to most Democrats, and deliberately obscured by Fox’ and others’ propaganda, Speaker Pelosi is the most grizzled political general the Democrats have. Hillary Clinton is undone, in part by her own tin ear and flaws in character. Speaker Pelosi has nothing of the kind. Instead, she has vastly more political experience—and mostly more executive experience—than all of the presumed and announced Democratic presidential candidates, with the possible exception of Joe Biden.

Joe Biden currently holds no political office. And Chuck Schumer, Speaker Pelosi’s counterpart in the Senate, is still in the powerless minority. He can do nothing but propose, complain and view with alarm. Speaker Pelosi and her majority control one House of Congress, the People’s House.

So Speaker Pelosi is and ought be the de facto leader of the Democratic Party. She has earned that office, and she is best qualified by experience and accomplishment. She should remain leader until, in convention assembled, the party picks its presidential candidate for 2020. She is the right person, for the nonce and perhaps for the duration, to guide and lead the progressive revival that every young Democrat wants.

The Dems are lucky to have her. They should thank whatever God they worship that she is theirs, that she is Speaker, and that our nation has a real adult—a smart, nurturing, savvy and skilled female—among so many spoiled children vying for office, power, and their fifteen minutes of fame.

In the twilight struggle between Speaker Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, which side are you on? Isn’t that all that matters now?

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Diatribes of Jay

05 January 2019

Experience and Speaker Pelosi

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