Pelosied!

While listening to NPR today in the car, I heard a report in which President Bush criticized Speaker Pelosi and the delegation she led to Syria as undermining his authority and (what little may be left of) the credibility of US foreign policy in the Middle East. The thrust of his argument seems to be that it is the purview of the President of the United States—and his appointed Secretary of State—to conduct foreign policy, not the Speaker's. Mr. Bush's administration has sought to isolate Syria by refusing to negotiate with Damascus, due mainly to the perception of the Syrian government as a state sponsor of terror (a position bolstered by Syria's close ties to Hamas and Hezbollah, and it's role in the destabilization of the region, particularly in Iraq).

To which I say: of course Speaker Pelosi is trying to undermine the President's authority! The move is politically brilliant. That her meeting with the Syrians is a change from the current administration's policies must be viewed in light of public perception that Mr. Bush is out of touch with reality and recalcitrantly (and woefully) committed to ideological positions that in practice have led to a hopeless stalemate. The fact that she is challenging the status quo and taking action (rather than hoping estrangement will compel the Syrians to get in line) casts her in a proactive, refreshingly innovative light—even if engagement with Damascus is as counterproductive as the White House contends.

As recent polling numbers indicate (a recent Newsweek survey puts his favorability rating at 33%; Time 33%; USA Today/Gallup 34%; a CBS survey showed him polling as low as 30; and even a Fox news poll placed his favorability at 33%)*, the President is in so weak a position that Speaker Pelosi places herself in no danger by controverting his increasingly unpopular policies. In fact, criticism of the White House is so strong that she stands to gain merely by presenting herself as in opposition to Bush strategy. She doesn't need to stand for anything in particular per se, so long as she is viewed as anti-Bush. (This just three years after John Kerry lost his bid for the presidency by utilizing this very tactic!)

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad commented that it was very brave of Speaker Pelosi to have met with him against White House opposition. I disagree: again, President Bush's confidence rating is so low that Pelosi wasn't taking any political risk, but rather putting the political nail in his coffin. It's not hard to stand against policies that are this widely unpopular.

It needs to be said here that while the general disapprobation of the President's foreign policy—both at home and abroad—is incontrovertible, it is difficult for me to dismiss them as an abject failure. True, American casualties in Iraq are deplorable, as is the disastrophe created by the destabilization of Iraqi social and political life. At the same time, because it is impossible to know exactly what the situation would be had a different course of action been taken, it seems unfair to cast the current state as the worst of all possible eventualities. What if, faced with two undesirable options, the President really did choose the least of two evils? Still, Americans conjecture (with reasonable certainty) that things would likely have been better had we not invaded Iraq.

In any event, the Speaker's trip through the Middle East is a shrewd political move calculated to show that the new Democratic Congress is on its feet working to fix the problems left in Bush 43's wake. Just how much Americans will buy into this claim remains to be seen.

Well played, Ms. Pelosi, well played indeed.


^*Before having looked at the exact polling numbers, I estimated that they would fall somewhere in the mid 30s: I wasn't too far off. Who needs Gallup with estimation skills like mine?