[Promoted by DHinMI]
Lying on the hospital bed alongside me was Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth century writer and historian. He made a strange companion for me to choose.
Really, I thought my mood would have resulted in a somewhat more enjoyable companion. I had some eight tedious hours in front of me on the day ward, attached to a puppy-dog of a drip feed slowly pumping into me multiple units of red blood cells. This, I am told, will now be a ludicrously regular and vital feature of this latest chapter of my disconnected life. It is a rather stupid way of slowly dying so I am busily signing twelve month contracts with my broadband supplier, a week ago purchased a Volkswagen based motor caravan and I am making other long term commitments to turn the whole episode into just another crazy way of living.
This apart, it was collecting the new reading glasses from the optician that was partly responsible for the selection of the book. After almost two years of miscommunication regarding a not very significant eye cataract, I could at last again read without the fatigue that has made me disinclined to pick up a book during this time.
I do not use the reading glasses to peer over when looking at the nurses, who ignore my growls of petulance at the start of each transfusion session and who stroke my arm with a real gentleness to discover a place in which to then insert their invasive needle. I neither want to discomfit them this way, as if giving some stern judicial sentence, nor do I want to undermine my fantasies by bringing them into too sharp a focus. For I still have fantasies, not least because the tender caress followed by the sharp jab of the sliver of metal is a not unpleasant reminder of a lifetime of such caressing love followed later by sharper jabs at the hands of similar delightful creatures.
The optician has a showcase displaying antique 19th century spectacles from Europe and America. My new pair of half-lenses appears to be of the same era. This, and the excitement of being able to read small print again with ease, appeared best celebrated by going to my bookshelf and selecting a beautiful, hand bound leather, gold embellished volume published two centuries ago. Never choose a book by its binding, I have always been told. Wise words. My failure to listen to them was the reason that I ended up trying to relieve the boredom of the day by a feeble attempt to concentrate on a demanding treatise by Carlyle on the life and works of Friederich Schiller.
In it, he writes with approving but qualified criticism of the first play written by the, then, young German writer. It reminded me of an unanswered email that I had received from Wmtriallawyer about one or two of our comments and diaries here on Daily Kos.
Schiller, so wrote Carlyle, created his early characters in the way that only a young poet would. The critic admired the keen edged knife with which they are carved out, whilst recognising their lack of depth and the complexity which would give nuance to their existence. Of them, he said, "though traced in glowing colours, are outlines more than pictures". Schiller was to admit his chief fault had been "in presuming to delineate men two years before he had met one"
Many of our diaries and comments are like this – they sharply etch our views in a way that allows no misinterpretation of their meaning. For us, it not a fault that we delineate our policies so starkly. That is our job as radicals. It is not for us to make the compromises or temper our thoughts to gain effect or acceptance amongst the wider mass of voters. That is for those whom we elect to handle such matters whilst we hold them accountable. I will not accept criticism that we speak so clearly because we do not have the responsibility of power. It misses the point of why we are here.
We need to be conscious of what we are doing, however, otherwise we are writing with an ingeniousness that undermines our credibility as political commentators. Many of us do not have the excuse of our diaries being the product of the awakening thoughts of a young poet. Nor would we want them dismissed as such. We ask that they are accepted as the genuine aspirations of the netroots. Yet we are necessarily idealists, in that we have to define a clear set of values by which to measure those whom we observe. Even so, we need also be realists. It is this realism that gives depth to our understanding of the nuances of power.
It is, however, a fierce and unremitting stance we take. We demand a purity of performance in a world of politics in which nothing is pure. We may wish it were otherwise, but it is the way of politics. Nor is Daily Kos immune from our celebrity culture, where we build up Obama, Edwards, Gore and others to heroic levels, only to feel let down and rejected when they disappoint us on some issue. (Here on Daily Kos, the majority seems to have already rejected Hillary Clinton for this reason before the Primaries had even begun) These hopefuls, of their own ambitions and our own desire for them to give us at last some of our Promised Land, will always disappoint us on some issue - all of them in their own individual ways. However keenly that which some term as "betrayal" might be felt, it is surely only the naive who will express a shock when this occurs. It rarely should lead to the rejection of the totality of the person whom we had previously so highly elevated.
Is it possible that the political position taken by many liberal commentators is sometimes as intolerant as that taken by many of the conservative on the right? I believe it is and none are suffering more from this at the moment than Nancy Pelosi.
How does the world outside our own hallowed site see the performance of this once bright luminary of our firmament? Well, I turn to the Investors Business Daily to inform me:
"Democrats can't depend on Pelosi to deliver, Republicans can't depend on her to run the House fairly and the American people can't depend on her to bring integrity to Capitol Hill. Is there any reason for her politics-driven speakership to continue?" - (10/31/2007)
Forgive me if I reject the Investors Business Daily as the formative source of my political opinion. Yet I find this echoed time and again here on Daily Kos.
Rather than commit the unpardonable sin of calling out one of our diaries or comments (though I cannot for the life of me see why doing so is not fair comment here) let me turn to one of our allies in trying to bring decency to this indecent world of ours. Let us read what Margaret Kimberley, who normally writes at BlackAgendaReport.Com, says:
" Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of what passes for Congressional leadership have perfected their criminal enterprise. Every act of treachery is followed by lame excuses for inaction. The truly spineless ones, progressives wallowing in denial, foolishly whine, asking each other what is wrong when the answer stares them in the face. The Democratic party is complicit in killing democracy.
Well, forgive me again if I utterly reject this view, made all the harder because it is written by someone whose opinions are so often alongside many of our own. It crosses the boundary where our polemic as radicals destroys the very thing that we most want to achieve. It gives delight to our opponents whilst destroying our own confidence in our own people. It marginalizes us in the classic way that we have seen radicals in Europe as well as the States marginalized, so that our voice no longer counts.
It is her interview in Christian Science Monitor that has most recently outraged many. For example, Capitol Hill Blue gives its interpretation that is not contained within the newspapers own report::
"Talking about anti-war progressives and moderates whose complaints were growing louder every day, she became both dismissive and insulting: "They are advocates," she said. "We are leaders."
She did not dismiss, insultingly or otherwise "anti-war progressives and moderates". Those who read the article will find no such emotive colouring of her comment. She made a simple statement of fact – a simple reminder of the reality of political life. We are indeed advocates, we do not have to compromise in the way that our leaders do, because they have the responsibility of treading through the entanglement of the political web. If there is a need to gently remind us of this fact, then we should not react like it is two years before we have come to understand the difficulties of exercising political power in our countries by condemning out of hand those to whom we entrust this task.
Rightly in that interview, Nancy Pelosi tells us that ""The war has eclipsed everything." She is not without self-criticism "I don't disagree with the public evaluation that we have not done well in ending this war," she said.
Nancy Pelosi has the difficult and often competing tasks of not just trying to enact new legislation now but also of trying to create a climate for the election of a Democratic president in 2008. "But the majority of the people want what we want" is the frustrated cry of so many on here "Why can’t Pelosi deliver?" Yes, the majority of people want to end the Iraq war, but it is a skittish opinion and insecure in its willingness to accept the concept of defeat – even self-inflicted defeat through mal-administration. I have read nothing more devastating than the poll result (fortunately modified by others) that says that the majority of American people are willing to bomb Iran. Which one of us is so certain that we know the right political stance to take now that can use such volatility in public opinion, an opinion that has failed to learn the lessons of the last six years, so it can ensure the climate for success for whichever candidate emerges as our choice in 2008?
Again yes, we know that American public opinion overwhelmingly wants change. Yet it is not a foregone conclusion that the majority are committed to that change being Democratic.
I do not envy Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid or anyone the job of pulling the strings of this entangled mesh. Maybe it was just me, in my country bumpkin way in the hills of Wales three thousand miles away, that was so surprised to find, after the euphoria of taking control of Congress, that a firm minority and a stubborn President could combine to veto those policies that had suddenly seemed attainable. Maybe it was just me who failed to realise just how easily a strong Democratic Party was vulnerable to being wrong footed in the eyes of the electorate. I would be a damn fool, after these many months of watching the machinations of the Republican minority and the influence that can be exerted on the attention-deficited electorate that exists in both our countries, if I didn’t now realise the truth.
I have not forgotten that the most Conservative of British newspapers revealed shortly after Nancy Pelosi assumed office the details of the "Republicans plot to bring down Pelosi ... and Clinton with her". I do not want to assist them in this task. It hurts when I see diaries on Daily Kos do this to her or to any of our Primary candidates who may be entrusted to take our hopes forward, to whatever greater or lesser extent.
I remember what the BBC wrote in praise of her on its site shortly after Nancy Pelosi took up her leadership role:
" Ms Pelosi's personal voting record puts her to the left of many in her party. She was one of 126 House Democrats to vote against the use of force in Iraq in 2002, although after the war had started she voted to finance it.
However, her track record as a fiercely partisan House leader who has succeeded in unifying her party on important votes may help her to balance these differing expectations.
She is credited with masterminding the Democratic Party's successful strategy for derailing Mr Bush's plan to overhaul the social security system through partial privatisation.
Her fund-raising prowess is unquestioned: the mother-of-five has raised more for the Democrats in this mid-term election than almost anyone else."
Since then, despite Bush, despite the solidarity of the Republican vote, much has been achieved in Congress by her. I will criticise the level of that achievement freely with many of you, I will question the effectiveness of the tactics, and I will certainly bewail some of the outcomes. That is my job as a writer on Daily Kos, that is our entire job as radicals. I will do so without having to modify those views by obscuring them with the obfuscation that is called political realities. I ask only that we do not do the Republican job for them by disparaging personally our leaders, whether they be leaders of the Senate Majority or Primary candidates struggling to enunciate our views against a GOP back-cloth of deliberate misinterpretation and a superficially influenced electorate. That is not our job on Daily Kos nor anywhere else where we are fighting for our ideas.
We must not let our denunciation of our own people become more shriller as the Primaries begin. Or should I say "more Schiller". Most of us are not young poets with no experience, but by now are seasoned political commentators with a clear idea of how to strongly voice our ideas without the need for naivety in how we do it. It is the thought of seeing a Democrat in the White House that is one of the things keeping me, and will keep me, going. In this, you are all my friends, so forgive me if I question how sometimes we approach it and ask for a small transfusion of support for Nancy Pelosi and the others up there trying to do their job.