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Politics : Those Damned Democrat's -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (811)	11/15/2002 12:27:13 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1604

Cal Thomas URL:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/ November 15, 2002 The confidence factor There is a difference between cockiness and confidence. The one is a character flaw in prideful men, and pride, as the Proverb warns,"goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18). The other is an essential ingredient in a leader who not only believes in himself and the worth of his ideas but also that the people he leads will follow him if they know where he is going and why he wants to take us there. President Bush has this new confidence, which increasingly resembles the bold optimism of Ronald Reagan. It has been enhanced by the election results, but it was forged in the adversity of the post-9/11 world, which is entirely different from the one that existed when he took office. This new confidence was seen in full force as he addressed District of Columbia police officers and firefighters last Tuesday (Nov. 12). After praising the reelected Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Anthony Williams, for doing a"great job" and saying he"appreciated" the service of liberal Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) (confident people can afford to be charitable), he thanked the emergency personnel who keep Washington"buttoned up" so that"I feel safe living here." He praised at length the chief of police, Charles Ramsey, who became a national figure during the Chandra Levy-Gary Condit soap opera two summers ago. Probably none of those he mentioned voted for him (D.C. politics is heavily Democratic), but confidence does not require universal approval. The president made another pitch for a department of homeland security, which the lame-duck Congress is likely to give him. That's because Democrats seem less confident than they were in their preelection hubris. Reading the president's speech makes at least two impressions. One is that the president believes we are going to be attacked again, despite massive efforts to hunt down and root out the terrorists among us. That's partly because our immigration policy has been far too liberal, and we have allowed our enemies to live among us, even permitting them to become U.S. citizens. Citizenship has not changed their evil intent. "The enemy can strike us here at home," said the president, and he warned that"the old ways" of dealing with threats to this country are gone and that America itself is now"a battlefield." It wasn't a complaint so much as a warning against complacency. The second impression made by the speech is that the president hasn't changed his objectives. If anything, he has become more resolved. He pledged a strategy for"hunting these killers down one at a time" and said his post-Sept. 11"doctrines still exist." These include - his black or white statement -"you're either with us or with the enemy." He added,"There is no cave deep enough for these people to hide in .... There's no shadow of the world dark enough for them to kind of slither around in. We're after them, and it's going to take a while .... We're after them one person at a time. We owe that to the American people. We owe that to our children." Reminding us whom we're dealing with, the president said,"This is a war. (Sept. 11) is not a single, isolated incident. We are now in the first war of the 21st century. And it's a different kind of war than we're used to .... Part of the difference is that the battlefield is now here at home. It's also a war where the enemy doesn't show up with airplanes that they own, or tanks or ships. These are suiciders. These are cold-blooded killers." Part of a president's job is to warn the public of threats and then deal with them as best he can. Another part is to motivate and mobilize the country to be on the alert and to be co-combatants against those who would tear down what generations of us have built. President Bush is likely to get far more out of the new Congress than his detractors think possible. That will be due, in part, not only to his slender congressional majority but to a new confidence that will quickly infect his supporters as well as his opponents. ©2002 Tribune Media Services

To: calgal who wrote (811)	11/15/2002 7:52:27 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Respond to of 1604

Journeys With Nancy? We hear there was grumbling among House Democrats yesterday when documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), tried to bring her digital camera into the members-only caucus at which her mother was elected Minority Leader. The writer-director of "Journeys with George," the HBO documentary about George W. Bush's presidential campaign, has been following her mom around Capitol Hill this week and recording events for posterity. Yesterday Nancy Pelosi's opponents, Tennessee's Harold Ford Jr. and Ohio's Marcy Kaptur, agreed to let her daughter attend the closed-door meeting in the Cannon Caucus Room, but the younger Pelosi was told to leave the camera outside. Instead she gave it to avocational photographer Sam Farr, a member from California and staunch Pelosi partisan who videotaped portions of the secret proceedings. "She didn't slip the camera to me; I demanded that she give it to me because I like to record history," Farr told us. "My style as a photographer is photojournalism -- so my focus was people .... I think Alexandra and I will have to decide what we do with the video, depending." Farr added: "Whatever grumbling there was came from the staffers. I didn't hear anything from members....We're the party of transparency." But another witness, who asked for anonymity, told us: "Some members were grumbling that it was inappropriate and disrespectful to have a camera in a closed caucus meeting. One member said, 'This is not George Bush's press plane.' " Our efforts to reach Alexandra Pelosi were unsuccessful. washingtonpost.com