Pelosi and the Wrong Pledge

Plenty of people have already criticized Pelosi for her pledge not to impeach:

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told her caucus members during their weekly closed meeting Wednesday "that impeachment is off the table; she is not interested in pursuing it," spokesman Brendan Daly said.

This is presumably an attempt to defend against accusations that the Dems are trying for a partisan power grab. Defending against that sort of thing is important, sure, but here's the thing about today's political landscape...

There's no sense of proportion in modern American political debate. No sense of appropriate scale. If accused of condoning horrific torture at Abu Ghraib, you can retort with "we're not as bad as Saddam," as if that's defense enough. If you casually mention the existence Vice President's gay daughter in a televised debate, you can earn yourself a monster shitstorm of righteous indignation. If you're breaking the law with your wiretapping program, you just have to say you're only targeting the bad guys. Any defense, however weak, suffices against any accusation however large.

So if Nancy Pelosi wants to have a talking point available to defend against accusations that the Democrats are trying a power grab, she needs to talk about 2008, not 2007. She needs to say "under no circumstances will I seek presidential election in 2008."

Wha...?

See, if impeachment gets really rolling, the Dems will be accused of trying to get into the White House without winning an election (Republican Projection strikes again!). Pelosi needs to credibly claim she's doing it for the country, not to embarrass the right, not to benefit the Dems, not for herself. But she can use any vaguely relevant talking point to make that defense. And a pledge not to seek election in 2008 has several nice qualities:

* First and foremost, it puts the idea of successful impeachment of Bush and Cheney on the table. It suggests confidence that they could be convicted. It suggests that Pelosi has knowledge and a plan.

* It puts Republicans on the defensive. In chess lingo, it gains tempo. Saying "we're not going to impeach" delivers another dose of 'Democrats don't stand for anything' and lets the Republicans move the discussion to any topic they want: "Okay, now that we're done talking about impeachment, let's talk about tax cuts for the rich." But by suggesting that Pelosi thinks there's a possibility she'll be in the Oval Office by November 2008, that forces the Republicans to respond, and almost any response here is good: it keeps the word "impeachment" in the news. Cheney saying "if Nancy Pelosi thinks the president is going to be impeached and removed from office, she's fucking batshit crazy" is a fine response. It has the I-word in it. Tony Snow saying "the president isn't worried about impeachment" is a great response, because the public is catching on to the whole "lying all the time" thing.

* In politics, suggesting a thing can actually make it so. There are feedback loops: Bush's popularity falls, Republican politicians want to distance themselves from the unpopular president, so they criticize him, so his popularity falls further. We need 67 Senators to convict, but the nature of the feedback loop means that there's some smaller number which will snowball to the needed 67 once we get to it. Maybe that number is 60. Maybe it's 55. But sounding confident is the first step in establishing that feedback loop, and it's the reason that the GOP has been kicking our asses for the last twelve years.

So be magnanimous, Nancy. Be gracious in victory. Promise that if Republican Senators do the right thing after we take the House in November, that you won't take advantage.