Barry Farber
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader, called President Bush “an incompetent leader ... who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon.” Those were NOT the words I later decided had merit. It was what Rep. Nancy Pelosi later told Tim Russert on “Meet The Press.”

She said she’d made that statement “with great courage, if I might say [that] about myself. ...”

Nancy Pelosi actually said that her comments about President Bush took great courage, IF SHE HAD TO SAY SO HERSELF! Roll that around in your mind for a short while the way you’d roll a choice brandy around on your tongue.

In the culture of my upbringing, you’re supposed to wait for others to laud you for your courage. But hey, who says North Carolina in the last century had all the answers? Maybe Pelosi has a point. If you want to be praised for your courage and nobody else is praising you, what’s wrong with praising yourself?

If no loving and sexy hand is available to slather your back with suntan lotion, shouldn’t you try to rub some into the right places yourself?

One of the late Allen Funt’s most hilarious TV episodes of “Candid Camera” featured a hapless schmo of a man trying to throw a testimonial luncheon for himself. And isn’t there an old Southern saying, “Whosoever tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not get tooted”?

So thank you, Nancy. You want the world to note your courage? OK. When they’re through, maybe they’ll have time to note mine.

I write this at a mid-June moment when the Kerry-preferring CNN declared that Kerry has finally “moved out” and established a major lead over President George Bush, and the Bush-preferring Fox News admits that Kerry has taken the lead.

Close your eyes, weaklings. This leap takes guts!

I declare that poll projection to be a heap of invalid, diseased twaddle. It is a commodity found in abundance wherever bulls congregate!

President George Bush will romp to a bruising victory over John Kerry – or whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be!

The never-to-be-forgotten columnist Damon Runyon once wrote, “The match does not always go to the strong nor the race to the fleet, but that’s the way you bet!”

Are the pollsters really trying to tell us that with the economy improving in all aspects, including job growth, the voters are going to turn into deep-dish philosophers and conclude: “Wait a minute. Let’s not credit President Bush with this. Had he managed things better, we would never have sunk so low and we’d have come back up a lot quicker”?

Two seemingly unconnected items are worth observing until the connection becomes clear. In the middle of this mid-June “Kerry break-out,” the New York Times ran a front-page, above-the-fold article headed by a three-column full-color photo of uniformed Iraqi policemen learning the basics of the assault rifle from an American soldier in Najaf. It was the hallowed Sunday morning paper and the headline read “Iraqis Start to Exercise Power Even Before Date for Turnover.”

The faces of those Iraqis reminded me of the resolute faces of the anti-communist Polish shipyard workers in Gdansk that ran in that identical spot on Page One of the New York Times Sept. 1, 1980. They knew they were up against the murderous kind of evil, but their mood said, “Bring it on!”

The byline this time said “Jeffrey Gettleman,” but I could have sworn the piece was written by Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice. It reported on the smooth and successful turnover so far of authority from Americans to Iraqis. The Americans in the piece were no longer occupiers. They were “consultants.” “They work for us,” said the Iraqi in charge of the water ministry. He pointed out that the Americans are good technicians and have a lot of knowledge. “But we make the decisions.”

That kind of article is pretty far from “The more we torture them the more they hate us” kind of screed. Why is the New York Times switching from anti-Bush poison to pro-Bush puff? Maybe the second item helps explain it.

The irascible Shiite hothead Muqtada al-Sadr just did a snappy about-face and, instead of vowing unending insurrection against the occupation, announced his support for the new Iraqi interim government. Why? Did he suddenly look himself in the mirror and say, “You know, I’m beginning to bore myself with all this meaningless militancy”? Possibly, but the chances are roughly equivalent to that of the New York Times looking itself in the mirror and saying: “You know, I’m getting bored with all this Bush-bashing. Let’s report something positive.”

No. Both the New York Times and Muqtada al-Sadr are reading the invisible messages in the air, sometimes known as sensing the way things are going. What’s that animal that scurries to safety when it senses an earthquake is coming? It’s less painful to edge back into consensus earlier than later.

A bit of ancient Hebrew wisdom tells us “When the fox has his day, bow down to him.” An update might read “When the chariot of your opponent begins to roll, if you can’t hop on, then at least get out of its way.” John Kerry would be wise to treat his terrific mid-June “lead” like perfume: something more wisely inhaled than swallowed.

Howell Raines, the far-left former chief of the New York Times, for no apparent reason hauled off a few days ago and lashed into Kerry in a strange and damaging way. He not only excoriated Kerry as a candidate but even went all the way ad hominem and attacked Kerry for looking like Lurch of TV’s “Addams Family”! And LIBERAL talk host Jim Hightower told a cheering Democratic crowd, “First we’ll get rid of Bush and then we’ll get rid of that ‘sack of concrete’ Kerry!”

That's the North Carolina equivalent of getting bitten by your own dog!

If the blowtorch attacks the cobweb, you bet on the blowtorch, not the cobweb. And if the economy AND Iraq continue their sharp turn toward the positive, you bet on the incumbent, not the “sack of concrete.”

OK, I’ve said it. I can’t erase it. Now, where do I go for my Pelosi Profiles in Courage award? I’m indebted to two California Nancys. Pelosi, for saying she has courage. And Reagan, for proving she does.