Finally Getting It Right

As I mentioned in my previous post, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called Bush incompetent, among other things, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday:

"Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he's not a leader,'' Pelosi said. "He's a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon.''
...
"He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops, because he would not heed the advice of his own State Department of what to expect after May 1 when he ... declared that major combat is over,'' Pelosi charged. "The shallowness that he has brought to the office has not changed since he got there.''
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"Not to get personal about it, but the president's capacity to lead has never been there. In order to lead, you have to have judgment. In order to have judgment, you have to have knowledge and experience. He has none,'' Pelosi said.

That's good stuff, Nancy! Why hadn't you figured that out a year and a half ago? Here's some of what Pelosi told Tim Russert in a Meet the Press interview in November 2002 (The MTP transcript isn't online anymore, but my post about it is):

• Suffice to say, we stand should-to-shoulder with the president in the fight against terrorism.
• My concern was what going into Iraq, what the impact of that would be on the war on terrorism, which is a clear and present danger.
• I don’t question a decision of the president of the United States on his timing or the priority he gives a threat.
• MR. RUSSERT: But if the president decides to go unilaterally or with the British and the Turks without U.N. approval, you would support the president? REP. PELOSI: Yes, I would support the president.

Okay, give her a little benefit of the doubt. She was new on the job, right? Well, four months later, as Bush was loading the gun two weeks before the official start of the invasion, Pelosi gave her first foreign policy speech as minority leader, saying it was TOO LATE to stop Bush because the Dems had been such wimps earlier:

"If the Democrats had spoken out more clearly in a unified vote five months ago in opposition to the resolution, if the people had gone on to the streets five months ago in these numbers in our country and throughout the world, I think we might have been in a different place today," Pelosi said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

"But the fact that we didn't and because we were very split at that time on it, I think the president is too far down the road and I don't think he's turning back," the California Democrat said.

And then in May of last year, Pelosi was willing to give Bush a pass on the missing WMD's:

This week, Pelosi said it is "difficult to understand" why the weapons can't be found. Yet she did not seem concerned about whether any are found. "I am sort of agnostic on it; that is to say, maybe they are there," Pelosi said. "I salute the president for the goal of removing weapons of mass destruction."

Similarly, Senate Democratic Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who on the eve of war accused Bush of failing "miserably" to win international backing, now talks of giving the president "great credit" for winning the war.

Bush is incompetent, no doubt. But he's not the only one. The cartoon I posted this morning applies to Pelosi as well.