After Pelosi, time for some thinking

The trouble with Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Damascus was the thinking behind it, writes Michael Barone,

the thinking that gave Pelosi confidence she could produce progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
At the heart of that thinking is this proposition: We’re the problem.

Crudely put, it’s the Blame America First way of thinking.

(Actually, in the larger view, we are the problem, but not in the way the Blame America Firsters think.  It is our global commonwealth of trust and trade that is pitching the backward, parallel-cousin-marrying Middle East into chaos.)

 The problem, writes Barone, is the woman at a Democratic fundraiser who said:

“we were very safe under the Clinton administration.” No, we weren’t “very safe” — we just thought we were.

The depth of misunderstanding in a remark like that is telling.  The woman did not, after all, come up with that notion out of thin air.  She was just repeating what the Democratic zeitgeist was telling her.

Talk about “Bush Lied!”  To push a meme like that out among the Democratic faithful is setting up trouble for the future. 

And maybe the only way America can deal with it is to put a Democrat in the White House and force him—or her—to deal with reality. 

Don’t believe us evil warmongering Republicans. Get out there and experience reality for yourself, pal.

Then you’ll find out whether American is really the problem.  And you’ll find out whether we were really “very safe” in the Clinton years.

And then it will be time for some thinking.