Nancy Friggin' Pelosi

I am currently watching the aftermath of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's appearance on the Daily Show. I know the Daily Show isn't credible news, but it's the woman's own words that have me angry.

I am pissed. Let me begin with a quote:

Stewart: Are you proud of what Congress has done in this term?
Pelosi: I'm proud of what the Democrats have done.

Pelosi continued to expond on this bent, whining that the reason that Congress has been about as effective and meaningful as the British monarchy, ("a vestigal body" in Stewart's own phrasing) is, of course, the Republicans.

Are you serious?

In a nation where the line in the ideological sand might as well be a moat of lava, you're excuse for ineffectuality is something that I might do as a five-year old? It was their fault?!

Now, I agree that the Republicans have been stalling legislation, and if the legislation that the Democrats were trying to pass were undeniably the right path, I'd be whining right there alongside her. But it isn't. As I have routinely lamented, the Democrats are trying to pass bills that fit perfectly with their agenda.

Now call me an idealist, but this ISN'T how a two-party system is supposed to work: each side creates an agenda, then attempts to pass that agenda through the legislative process against the other side's attempts. Guess what happens when you try that? WHAT WE HAVE NOW!!

The way it's supposed to work, at least according to my Political Science professor, is that each side creates an agenda, and then the two sides cooperate rationally to reconcile the two.

Sound ridiculous? It shouldn't.

Essentially, what Pelosi is saying by stating that Republicans are making Congress ineffectual is that the Democrats are inherently, irrevocably right, and the Republicans, by opposing them, are either stupid are evil.

Those are the exact words I use often to describe fundamentalists. Although Pelosi isn't as obvious about it, the not so subtle message in her complaints about the Republicans is inherently identical.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these people who think Pelosi is just an arrogant, snooty, liberal femi-nazi off to destroy America as we know it. But this hacks me off. You cannot, as one of the country's most powerful politicans, go in front of the nation you serve, and tell them that the reason your institution is worth approximately it's collective weight in vienna sausage is that the opposing party won't lie down and do your bidding; at least not without a heaping helping of narrow-mindedness.

Now before liberals get up in arms and conservatives applaud, let me make this perfectly clear. The democrats aren't the only ones guilty of this. The Republicans are just as guilty. In fact, we, as Americans in general, are guilty, because, sadly, the Congress represents the American public at large. In the words of Dennis Miller, "America's greatest renewable resource is narrow-minded righteous indignation."

So, to all you Nancy Pelosi's out there, Democrat and Republican, it's high time that somebody, or even better somebodies, finally realize that this partisan finger-pointing is not going to get us anywhere.

But it's going to take somebody a whole lot more important than me.