Nancy Pelosi’s short tenure as Speaker of the House has been hailed as historic but also has been marred by discord within her own party, an uproar over her request for a large government jet to ferry her home and now a serious stumble abroad.
In her latest mishap, Pelosi went to the Middle East this week with the aim of brokering a peace between Israel, the United States’ closest ally in the region, and Syria, a widely recognized state sponsor of terrorism.
Pelosi said she was “very pleased with the reassurances we received from Syrian president [Bashar al-Assad] that he was ready to…engage in negotiations for peace with Israel.” The meeting with Assad, she told reporters, “enabled us to communicate a message from Prime Minister [Ehmud] Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks as well.”
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Trouble was, Olmert denied that he had authorized Pelosi to pass along this conciliatory message. In fact, his office issued a statement saying quite the contrary.
Before conducting peace negotiations, the statement said, “Syria must cease its support of terror, cease its sponsoring of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, refrain from providing weapons to Hizbollah and bringing about the destabilizing of Lebanon, cease its support of terror in Iraq, and relinquish the strategic ties it is building with the extremist regime in Iran.”
Back home, conservatives and liberals alike criticized Pelosi’s diplomatic freelancing as naive, sloppy and dangerous.
Republicans on Capitol Hill jokingly took up a collection to bring her home.
“I never thought I’d say this, but I really wish Nancy Pelosi was back here in the Capitol,” a top GOP aide said.
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill dismissed any suggestion that the speaker undermined the president but said “she thinks constructive dialogue is critical. This cold shoulder approach is getting us no where with Syria.”
Since becoming Speaker-elect in the November elections, miscues have plagued Pelosi.
First, she lost an effort to install Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., as her second-in-command. Instead, fellow Democrats picked her longtime political rival Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., to become majority leader.
Earlier this year, she came under harsh criticism for trying to secure a larger Air Force jet to fly her nonstop back and forth to her home in San Francisco.
Last month, in what figured to be a moment of unalloyed triumph, she lined up 218 votes – the bare minimum required – to support a Democratic war-spending bill that included a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Instead, she took heat for stuffing the “emergency” legislation with $20 billion in pork-barrel spending.
Read other stories by Charles Hurt
