Taking Sheehan seriously

John Nichols, in one of the blogs featured on The Nation website, surely seeks to answer the various flippant and frivolous right-wing responses which have appeared to Cindy Sheehan's challenge to Nancy Pelosi. What prompted Sheehan to deploy her giant-like moral authority against Pelosi? Pelosi's assault on the constitution itself!

Before last year's election, Pelosi announced that impeachment was "off the table." It is probably good that she did not try to nullify another section of the Constitution -- say, the part about freedom of speech. But Pelosi did serious damage to the system of checks and balances when she declared that her House would not use the tool created by the founders to assure that the legislative branch could keep errant executives in line.

Does that have anything to do with trying them for high crimes and misdemeanors? Here are Nichols' concluding paragraphs:

. . . Sheehan's notoriety would make the race a more serious one than the easy runs Pelosi has enjoyed since she won her House seat in a 1987 special election.

Could a Sheehan challenge actually upset Pelosi? That's a long shot -- and Sheehan, who is far more savvy about politics than her critics recognize, knows this.

But she also knows that politicians are most likely to respond to political pressure. So Cindy Sheehan is turning up the heat on Pelosi with a political threat that George Bush -- after his long and bitter experience of tangling with the "Peace Mom" -- would undoubtedly advise the Speaker to treat with a good measure of seriousness.

That's the key: seriousness. Not flippancy.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Tags: Sheehan, Pelosi, seriousness