First of all, I want to give Nancy Pelosi credit for showing the Netroots respect and taking the time to come to Austin and answer questions. Ordinarily, the Netroots would not be a hostile audience (confrontational, but not hostile). Unfortunately, the recent House capitulation on the FISA bill has tipped the balance. The Netroots were already frustrated by no-strings-attached war funding and an accountability chasm for official executive misconduct. And these were the issues that confounded a clearly uncomfortable Pelosi during this morning’s Q & A.
The first two questions she fielded were on Inherent Contempt and the FISA law. She didn’t answer either question adequately. On Inherent Contempt she did a lot of talking but she would not commit to throwing Karl Rove in prison inside the Capitol if he doesn’t comply with subpoenas. She said that John Conyers told her to leave it up to him and that she was going to do that. I don’t exactly believe that John Conyers has the final say. Do you?
On FISA, we all know she has no excuse. But her explanation was badly misleading in that she blamed the Senate (in particular, 17 Democratic senators) for passing a bad bill off on the House. It’s true that the Senate did that, but not this summer…they did that last winter and the House killed it by stripping it of immunity.
She did not explain why the House revived a dead bill, included immunity, and sent it over to the Senate for final passage. If you had been following the FISA issue closely it was possible to fill in the blanks and get her basic point: there were too many Democrats in the Senate that wanted to pass something that the president would sign for her to get away with not bringing any bill up whatsoever. But Pelosi was skating on thin ice when she attempted to shift all the blame onto the Senate, and her lame efforts to tout good portions of the bill were depressingly familiar and insulting.
The question of accountability came up a second time when someone asked her how exactly she planned on holding the Bush administration and the telecoms accountable for their crimes. She spoke for five minutes about the environment, riffing off a question that had been addressed to Al Gore. Then she lamely responded that the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees have new oversight responsibilities and that there would be Inspector General reports. It was a typical non-answer.
Overall, Pelosi made a decent showing. She was clearly uncomfortable prior to Al Gore’s appearance on the stage. And some of her answers were inept or insulting. But she showed up and took the heat. I give her credit for that.