IS there a point in our nation today where a politican can also become a leader and have to tell like it is?
Can a politican be a leader as well as play the politcal side?
I think they can, as Congressman Ron Paul and Senator Jim Webb do, but in my opinion these two guys are rare in Washington, and I would follow them anywhere.
At some point, today’s definition of lying (has become bending the truth) hurts the country, as it has really bad recently.
A bigger issue is does the public really want to hear the truth?
My opinion and I wrote a chapter in my recent book Manning the Legions on it, is that our public in general does not want to hear the truth about oil peaking (and our strategically horrible energy policies-the worst strategic mistake as a nation we have made in the last 40 years), global warming or overpopulation as long as it can possibility negatively impact the American Dream (shed responsibility in the pursuit of near term happiness). They elect these same people all the time to tell them what they want to hear. Pelosi is just part of that culture, and he or she who casts the first stones better duck themselves.
Anyway, I just got this from my good friend Winslow Wheeler who runs the Strauss Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, as well as editor of the recent anthology America’s Defense Meltdown, and the editor of my book Raising the Bar.
Take Care, Don
Subject: Pelosi’s Imperiled Pedestle I am a sometime participant at a blog run by National Journal. I couldn’t resist to opine on this week’s topic: Nancy Pelosi’s making herself a floater in her own punchbowl. My comments are below;
the blog is at http://security. nationaljournal. com/2009/ 05/congress- and-torture- holding-l. php
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s attempts to re-groom her non-oversight of the intelligence community and torture in 2002 are as pathetic as the Republicans’ pretense at outrage that any respectable Member of Congress would accuse the CIA of misleading Congress, let alone lying. An executive branch agency misleading Congress? Why, how shocking. In fact, it’s a long honored tradition, started not decades but centuries ago. That’s why the Founding Fathers crafted the Constitution as they did – empowering Congress to perform effective oversight – a function that historian Arthur M. Schlesinger deemed at least as important as the power to legislate.
Quite clearly, Pelosi – like almost every currently sitting Member of Congress – has no clue of the supremely important role of oversight and not the slightest idea of how to perform it, if she cared to exercise it. Congress’ oversight of the intelligence community has been and continues to be a null set. The most obvious indicator of that is the absence of transcripts of the briefings – if that is what you want to call them – given to Pelosi and others in 2002, which by the way would end the controversy and all the pretense in a heartbeat. That transcripts are still not made of these encounters tells us all we need to know about oversight enjoying any hint of revival in these matters.
The good news is that Pelosi’s standing in Washington is now greatly diminished as she twists and squirms to escape the can of worms she jumped into, as eagerly as she was clueless. That gives President Obama a major opening: to pursue his entire legislative agenda without the toxic handiwork of a Speaker of the House who puts short sightedness, hyper-partisanship, and personal status above all else. Unless she makes an even bigger mess of it, Pelosi’s seat as Speaker is probably secure, but now her high-handedness and narrow outlook are likely to be as diminished as her stature.
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Don Vandergriff 