A bull’s-eye on Pelosi

IN THE YEARS BEFORE the 1917 revolution in Russia, the communist leader Vladimir Lenin was an exile in Switzerland and shadowed everywhere he went by a member of the czarist secret police. The pursuit of Lenin was the spy’s full-time assignment, so it was essential that no harm befall the exiled communist, lest the spook lose his job. That’s why, when Lenin got into a financial bind, it was the czar’s gumshoe who bailed him out.

So it is with Karl Rove, President Bush’s political strategist, and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. For Rove, Pelosi is the perfect target and symbol to rally the GOP base for the 2006 congressional election. How better to divert the attention of swing voters from the Iraq war, gasoline prices and lobbying scandals to the visceral issues of same-sex marriage, abortion and gun control than to rail against an incandescent San Francisco liberal? Should any threat emerge to Pelosi before November, she could get moral, if not material, assistance from the West Wing.

It’s now pretty clear that the Republican strategy for retaining control of both houses of Congress is to present to the American people a parade of horribles: zany leftists with radical social agendas taking over Congress and, like diabolical Lilliputians, tying down Bush with investigations, subpoenas and special prosecutors.

A turnover in Congress would certainly bring forth a very different collection of leaders. In the House, the powerful Ways and Means Committee would be chaired by Harlem’s Charles Rangel, an old-style liberal just itching to stick it to the toffs and high-rollers. The Judiciary Committee would be commanded by the fiery and volatile John Conyers Jr. of Michigan -- like Rangel, an African American of an indelibly liberal stripe. The tempestuous David Obey of Wisconsin would likely take over Appropriations.

These replacements would be terrifying to hard-core Republicans -- if any of them could distinguish these Democrats from a cord of wood. Names such as Rangel, Conyers and Obey simply do not strike terror in the hearts of GOP loyalists as does that of Pelosi, the embodiment of what, to conservative eyes, is eccentric and bizarre about the Democratic Party.

For starters, Pelosi is a woman -- a fit representative of what conservatives delight in calling the “Mommy Party.” The toxic molecules that attach to this term include a craven shrinking from the use of force in international politics and excessive solicitude for society’s unfortunates.

Strike two is Pelosi’s 8th Congressional District, which takes in roughly 80% of the city of San Francisco. This conjures up in conservative minds carnality, sensuality and immoral excess, and it casts Pelosi as the front-woman for the dreaded “homosexual agenda.” Finally, there is the aura of white-glove political dilettantism that hovers over Pelosi, which leaves her open to the charge of being a well-turned-out political commissar oblivious to the daily concerns of ordinary Americans -- such as stem cell research and civil unions.

The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, a kind of Uriah Heep figure, does not offer much fodder for GOP demonization. Reid, a self-effacing abortion opponent, is an uninviting target for Rove’s sharpshooters, but the Manga-eyed, often artless Pelosi has a bull’s-eye painted on her. Does this make her a liability for the Democrats going into the 2006 elections?

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you fight with the team you have rather than the team you wish you had, and Pelosi’s leadership is not universally admired by her Democratic colleagues. But when you think of Pelosi as a vulnerable public persona, you’ve got to ask, “Compared to whom?” To that bungling nimrod, Vice President Dick Cheney, or to the Lord of Misrule himself, the president of the United States? Throw in the rest of the GOP duffers, such as the FEMA fumbler Michael Brown and the blackguard Jack Abramoff, and Pelosi looks like a ministering angel.

Rove’s ability to associate Pelosi with people and groups conservatives love to hate might win him the party’s right-wing base in 2006. But compared with flimflamming Indians over casinos, leaving Americans stranded on rooftops, starting a war over phantom weapons of mass destruction and shilling for the oil industry, Pelosi’s shortcomings in the eyes of critical swing voters will appear downright endearing.