BLACKWELL: Bailout brawl

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By Ken Blackwell

Now that the bailout/rescue package is done, it's safe to talk about what happened last week. Last week saw perhaps the worst example of the opposite of statesmanship the nation has seen in a generation.

Some folks bit their tongues from responding to the shenanigans going on in our nation's capital. Congress is now so acrimonious that bipartisan talks on responding to the mortgage meltdown were always on the verge of collapse. Therefore, some who got sucker-punched took the statesmanlike high-road of not responding in kind while talks were ongoing.

That is what this crisis called for: statesmanship. A statesman recognizes the times when it is important for the country to sacrifice personal or partisan advantage. Some things are more important than politics. Three elements of statesmanship are rising above partisan attacks, accepting responsibility for troubles, and extending a hand of genuine teamwork to political opponents to work for the national interest.

An example was the Bay of Pigs fiasco. In 1961, there was a botched invasion attempt against Cuba, led by Cuban exiles with U.S. support. But the U.S. did not provide the air cover that the government promised the Cubans, and Fidel Castro's forces crushed the invasion and imprisoned, tortured or killed all who participated.

President John F. Kennedy railed against the CIA and others for these failures. Then he said that even though early planning for the operation had begun under Republican Dwight Eisenhower's administration and holdovers from that team were among those executing the operation, as president he was responsible. He did not blame the GOP, admitted his accountability, and worked with the other party to reform our intelligence system. That was statesmanship.

But last week showed us a clear example of the exact opposite of statesmanship. Even "Saturday Night Live" made a skit about it over the weekend, blasting the Democrats. In the skit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells the country that the Bush administration's policies caused the mortgage crisis. Then Democrat Congressman Barney Frank, chairman of the House Banking Committee, whispers to Mrs. Pelosi that it was the Republicans who sounded the alarm over the past few years and it was the Democrats who blocked it. At this Mrs. Pelosi tells Mr. Frank to shut up before people figure that out.

"Saturday Night Live" is dominated by liberals who love to take shots at conservatives. When SNL decides to poke fun at liberals, you can be sure that the situation is so egregious that it's just become over the top and even SNL can't resist making a joke out of it. The last time this happened was during the Democratic primary when SNL mocked the mainstream media for fawning over Sen. Barack Obama and clearly siding with him against Sen. Hillary Clinton.

When this must-pass bill first came to a vote last week, Mrs. Pelosi took the opportunity of her closing speech to broadside President Bush, saying that Bush-era deregulation was to blame here. Watch the speech on YouTube. Although it's expected in events like that for the Speaker to conclude legislative debate with a nonpartisan call for national unity, Mrs. Pelosi used it to make a blistering, ferocious attack on the president that one usually only sees from hardcore far-left or far-right activists. She essentially blamed everything on Mr. Bush. Way to rise above partisanship, Madam Speaker!

Mrs. Pelosi said this bill was vital, and begged Republicans to support it. While she was giving that speech, it was reported that Congressman Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), was planning to run attack ads against any vulnerable Republican who voted for the bill that Mrs. Pelosi was asking them to support. Ask for their vote, then attack them for doing what you ask. Nice double-cross.

Finally, House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank drank the hyper-partisan Kool-Aid. Watch the Bill O'Reilly interview from last week on YouTube. When Fed Chairman Greenspan and GOP officials called for reform of Fannie and Freddie in 2003, it was Barney Frank who led the House minority efforts to say that these comments were alarmist and harmful. He did the same in 2005, defending Fannie and Freddie and saying they were financially sound. Now that everything has collapsed, he howled last week that this was the GOP's fault, and that he bore no blame whatsoever. A profile in courage.

These three examples are the exact opposite of the three elements of statesmanship that JFK showed in 1961. They are as disgraceful as they are harmful to the nation. America needs statesmen. Voters should remember those incidents on November 4.

Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.