Word: pelosi
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Dick Cheney's displeasure and Nancy Pelosi's discomfiture may have revived the idea of setting up a "truth commission" to look into the Bush-era counterterrorism policies, but President Barack Obama still wants no part of it. According to David Axelrod, the President's senior adviser, Obama remains convinced that looking forward rather than back "is best for the country...
...thumb's-down. But they gained some traction in recent weeks, thanks to fresh controversies over the CIA's detention and interrogation policies under Bush. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has repeated claims that the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects helped save thousands of American lives. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had to deny that she was informed about the CIA's use of waterboarding and has accused the agency of misleading Congress. (See pictures of the aftershocks of the Abu Ghraib scandal...
...John Spratt, chairman of the House Budget Committee, says Pelosi's kitchen cabinet, of which he is a member, is too small. "She would benefit from greater diversity of opinion," he says, adding that her small circle of confidants leaves her isolated and vulnerable to missteps when unanticipated issues arise. In the wake of the AIG bonus scandal, for example, Pelosi and other leaders moved quickly to pass sweeping legislation to drastically tax executive compensation. Such a gesture might have done incredible damage to the market had cooler heads in the Administration and the Senate not prevailed...
...same thing has happened with the truth commission that Pelosi so ardently wants, in order to investigate the Bush Administration's policies on torture. Obama has long resisted looking back, in part for what most people agree are shrewd political reasons. Pelosi, however, leaped at the Obama Administration's recent release of the Bush Administration's torture memos to renew her call for the commission. Republicans accused her of complacency with the policies at the time - turns out she was briefed on the extreme interrogation methods in September 2002 - and we all found ourselves looking back, combing through the records...
...Pelosi has taken pains to centralize the power of the Speaker's office. Members can't take trips abroad, get on a committee or even sign out a room for a meeting without her permission. But that kind of omnipotent power works only when members are confident it will be exercised under control. Despite her missteps, Pelosi has been able to run the most unified caucus in half a century. But if she wants to keep it unified - and keep running it - she might need to stick to her own playbook...