Speaker for the Misled

Probably the very worst thing you can say about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s much criticized junket as amateur ambassador without portfolio to Syria is that Jimmy Carter approves. Given everything else that has been said so far, that’s saying something.

Carter, whose Nobel Peace Prize was won largely as a result of holding Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat hostage at Camp David, torturing them with homespun piety until both would gladly have converted to the Unification Church and signed anything just to get out of there, has been a chronic disgrace as a free-lance diplomat ever since leaving the White House. Come to think of it, his official track record in the Middle East, the Camp David Accords aside, wasn’t all that hot, either.

It’s comforting, though, to see how quickly Democrats can approach the Republican standard for overreaching their legitimate authority once back in power. If nothing else, it has a wonderfully clarifying effect on our understanding of the negligible difference between the parties in their grasp of such trivialities as separation of power.

I won’t speak to the substance of Pelosi’s rather inverted “Road to Damascus” experience because it is irrelevant to my basic point, which is simply that in matters of foreign relations, the United States must speak with one voice. Sadly, that voice is currently George W. Bush’s, but I’d make the same claim if Pee Wee Herman were president. All you need to know about this particular point when it comes to high stakes negotiations between real or potential adversaries can be learned, as silly as it may sound, from The Godfather.

When Don Vito Corleone declines Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo’s request to provide political protection for his drug business, Sonny speaks out of turn at the meeting. Sollozzo notices Sonny’s enthusiasm for the deal and this leads directly to the hit on Don Vito. Too late does the Don admonish his son, “Never tell anybody outside the family what you're thinking again!”

Okay, so it’s just a movie. But the point is valid nonetheless. In diplomacy, like negotiations of any sort, if you show division in your ranks your opponent will attempt to exploit it. Even when American foreign policy needs to be changed, as I believe our policy in the Middle East does, the likes of Pelosi or Carter gadding about the world speaking from a position of perceived power and influence is a foolish and dangerous thing to do. Carter should have known better years ago, but his ego prevents him from grasping this fact and acting accordingly. Let’s hope for America’s sake that Pelosi is still capable, as the media like to say, of growing in office.