Election time? Yes, and it's “High Noon” for all those Gary Cooper wannabes, for closet Churchills and the likes of “Horatius at the Bridge.”
For Republican incumbents, that is. They're a finally endangered species who have come to contemplate the coming Tuesday as reenactment time for Custer's Last Stand.
But not all the president's men are giving up, even now. Or hadn't you noticed the almost single voice with which journalistic keepers of the flame are warning one and all about an imminent threat to our national well-being, if not to the entire Western world? These juiced-up Jeremiahs have spotted a new mushroom cloud on the horizon – with an epicenter that some of us will be surprised to learn is right here in California.
It's Nancy Pelosi!
She's the congresswoman-in-waiting to become history's first female speaker of the House. In a rash of “opinion pieces” that read suspiciously like talking points from the Republican National Committee, San Francisco's Eighth District representative is seen as hopelessly left wing, “out of the mainstream” – possibly a harbinger of more terrorism.
And, oh yes – a woman. A pretty one, too. Most amusing of all, I felt, was the critic who couldn't accept the prospect that TV cameras at future State of the Union addresses would find this lady perched alongside the vice president, above and behind You Know Who.
I'll not try to account for any writer's testosterone level. But given a choice, I doubt that most of us would opt to retain our now familiar State of the Union backdrop – two dour old stiffs whose presence suggests the “before” panel in an ex-lax commercial.
Among other products of the weekend mourner's bench I spotted this strange bit of reporting: “Polls show that most Americans know nothing about Pelosi and many don't even know who she is. With the election barely a week away, it's time they learned.”
Well, I should think so. She was recently on “60 Minutes,” of course. Yet if those unidentified polls are accurate – that folks don't know much about Nancy Pelosi – is this not a sad reflection on the editors and experts who pride themselves on keeping us informed? If some of them now decry, as a grim result of their failed oversight, that a wholly unworthy legislator slipped past their sentry posts and will shortly become second in line to the presidency after the vice president – well, where should these unhappy scribes fix their gaze if not into a mirror?
Did they fail to perform their job? Perhaps news attention has centered too often and for too long on the U.S. Senate, where 100 members may be easier to cover than a teeming 435 on the House side. If overlooking the lady from San Francisco, these guys have missed history in the making.
For woe or for weal, Pelosi was elected her party's floor leader two Congresses ago. If the self-styled experts knew beans about how these things work, her move up the ladder – and, with a change of House leadership, her likelihood of achieving the top spot – would come as no surprise. And if she's as dangerous as all this eleventh-hour arm-waving would have us believe, who was remiss for failing to sound the alarm?
Happily, we needn't be frightened by what we read or hear. A truly rewarding aspect of self-government is that the action never gets too far off-center. In being sent to Washington year after year, Congresswoman Pelosi of course felt compelled to listen to a good many of those Bay Area crazies. But to lead a national party in Congress, she's also adjusted to the restraints imposed by colleagues elected from many other parts of the land. She would not now be poised, come January, to lead “the People's House” had she failed to accommodate the views of colleagues elected from the more conservative South and Midwest, from industrial states that presently seem hurt by foreign competition, and from ever-moderate New England.
And though it's something the doomsayers find difficult to understand, Nancy Pelosi seems to personify the family values conservatives insist they seek in public officials. A dangerous activist? She provided nothing beyond precinct work while five children were growing up. And her first run for office waited until after the last child had left the nest. She's been in Congress only since 1987. Hardly a frightening factor, this homebody at age 66.
Hey, guys – maybe it's time to call off the attack dogs, and wish her well.
Van Deerlin represented a San Diego County district in Congress for 18 years.
