By Jason Leopold and Alan Breslauer
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s appearance
Monday at a West Los Angeles college to discuss her recently published
book was marred by dozens of protestors and several angry outbursts
by audience members who demanded Pelosi immediately authorize a House
committee to hold impeachment hearings against President George W. Bush.
The Speaker made it clear she would not
support any effort to hold impeachment hearings against President Bush
saying that the president “will be gone in a hundred days.”
Halfway through her discussion at The
American University of Judaism, where more than 300 people paid $30
each to hear Pelosi speak about her upbringing and her family’s impact
on her political career as detailed in her book Know Your Power: A Message
to America’s Daughters,
the topic shifted to Congress’s historically low approval rating and
how it reflected on Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker.
American University of Judaism’s Rabbi
Robert Wexler, who moderated the 75 minute discussion, which did not
include a question and answer session with the audience, asked Pelosi
to analyze a recent Rasmussen poll that found nine percent of voters polled believed
Congress was doing a good job, far lower than President Bush’s overall
approval rating.
According to the results of the July
poll, 72 percent of voters believe Congress is more interested in furthering
their own political careers. Fourteen percent believe members of Congress
are genuinely interested in helping people.
Pelosi responded to the statistics by
defending her performance and the performance of her Democratic colleagues
in Congress.
“I preside over the greatest collection
of integrity and idealism,” Pelosi said.
Prior to her appearance in West Los Angeles
Monday evening, CNN’s Larry King interviewed Pelosi. She told King
she was willing to drop her staunch opposition to offshore drilling
and would likely allow the House to vote on the issue.
She said, in her opinion, the reason behind Congress’s historically
low approval rating was largely due to the fact that Democrats could
not muster up the votes to end the Iraq war, which the Democratic Speaker
from San Francisco said she could not do much about because of the Democrats”
razor-thin majority in both Houses.
Wexler, however, continued to press Pelosi to elaborate on her response
given that the Rasmussen poll suggested that a wide-range of issues
beyond the Iraq war was responsible for Congress’s single-digit approval.
Pelosi, visibly flustered, said she was well aware that “much more
work needs to be done.”
In November 2006, Pelosi explained the
significance behind the record voter turnout that helped shift the balance
of power in Washington for the first time in 12 years.
“People voted for change and they voted for Democrats who will take
our country in a new direction,” Pelosi said during a victory speech
in San Francisco on Nov. 8, 2006.
But Pelosi, who became House Speaker, never managed to exact the change
she promised. She explained that she and her colleagues tried vigorously
to pass legislation to end the war in Iraq.
“The public doesn’t want to know about process and 60 votes,
they want outcomes, they want results,” Pelosi said, explaining
why Democrats could not end the war as promised prior to the midterm
2006 elections.
But Pelosi’s comments appeared disingenuous to many, since she was
largely responsible for crafting an appropriations bill in backroom
discussions with House Democratic leaders, passed in June, and then
worked secretly with the White House budget director offering up concessions
on Iraq war benchmarks if Bush would agree to the domestic spending
attached to the final bill with little debate preceding a vote on the
measure.
In fact, since the electoral victories in November 2006, the Democratic-controlled
Congress has approved more than $300 billion in emergency spending bills
for Iraq and Afghanistan without the benchmarks or withdrawal timetables
that Pelosi and other leaders said they would demand.
When Pelosi launched into the reasons an administration led by presumptive
Republican nominee Sen. John McCain would be dangerous for the country,
identifying the candidate’s support for an endless war in Iraq and his
intention to uphold many of the questionable constitutional interpretations
relating to torture and civil liberties during the Bush administration,
Pelosi said the only way to “dig our way out” is by electing
Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“Whether it’s the deficit or the challenges to the constitution
we have to dig our way out,” Pelosi said, adding “this election
is like death for life on this planet as we know it today.”
Her response led Peter Thottam, founder
of the LA Impeachment Center, to demand Pelosi “do her job”
and pursue impeachment hearings against President Bush for launching
a war on false pretenses.
“Who gave you the right to take the constitution and shove it down
the toilet? Who gave you the right to take impeachment off the table?
Nobody told them to do this,” Thottam shouted at Pelosi moments before
Secret Service agents removed him from the packed auditorium and turned
him over to officers with the Los Angeles Police Department. “One
million Iraqis are dead. Five thousand Americans are dead. You have
destroyed the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments.”
Pelosi seemed stunned by the outburst, but the way she addressed Thottam’s
charges further fanned the flames and led to additional verbal protests
over her decision not to hold the administration accountable for what
many individuals in the audience believe are High Crimes and Misdemeanors
by President Bush.
When a member of the activist group Code Pink stood up and insisted
Pelosi brush up on her reading regarding evidence of the Bush administration’s
long list of alleged constitutional violations, Pelosi reacted angrily.
“I take an oath of office to uphold the constitution of the United
States and don’t tell me that I don’t do that,” Pelosi said, using
hand gestures to emphasize her disdain over the impeachment demands.
“Why don’t you go picket the Republicans in Congress that will
not allow us to have a vote on the war. This is not very effective.
Not very effective.”
“As Speaker of the house, the third
highest office, first is the president, then vice president, and then
Speaker, I take my responsibilities deadly seriously,” Pelosi said.
“I try to promote bipartisanship but that’s not what the other side
wants.”
Before Election 2006, Pelosi declared impeachment “off the table,”
in part, to avoid alarming centrist voters. Now, with Democrats hoping
to gain additional seats in Election 2008, a similar political calculation
applies, fearing a backlash against a last-minute drive to impeach Bush
and Cheney. Bush knows that Pelosi long ago rejected impeachment proceedings,
the one instrument included in the Constitution for Congress to wield
against a President who has abused his powers.
Pelosi’s refusal to consider impeachment
hearings or cut off funding for the Iraq war prompted antiwar activist
Cindy Sheehan last year to launch a campaign for Pelosi’s congressional
seat. On Monday, San Francisco election officials said Sheehan has obtained
enough registered voters on her petitions to be placed on the November
ballot. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, is running
as an Independent.
At the conclusion of Monday evening’s
presentation, Pelosi signed books but refused to answer questions about
her policy decisions. The Public Record asked Pelosi whether she would
authorize the full House to vote on contempt charges against former
White House political adviser Karl Rove, who has refused to comply with
a congressional subpoena to testify about his role in the alleged political
prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat.
Immediately following his query to Pelosi, The Public Record’s Alan
Breslauer was grabbed by Secret Service and dragged away from the table
where Pelosi was signing copies of her book. The Speaker did respond
to Breslauer’s question, however, saying a vote on contempt charges
against Rove is “up to [House Judiciary Committee Chairman John]
Conyers.”
Jason Leopold is Editor-in-Chief of The Public Record. Alan Breslauer is a frequent contributor
to BradBlog and maintains a personal blog, HotPotatoMash. He can be reached at hotpotatomash@gmail.com