Believe what you want?

I want to believe what I want to believe. I try to remind myself of this often. Take for instance Nancy Pelosi. In the news this morning the nearly starved conservative pundits are licking their chops over Pelosi's accusation that the CIA misled Congress in 2003 over the use of torture, water boarding in particular, and her revelation that she was advised in a classified briefing that it had been used.

I am a Democrat. So I want to believe that all of Pelosi's actions and inactions were reasonable, if not laudable. But of course they were not. It is never that way when it comes to governance, especially in matters of war and intelligence gathering.

But I am not alone in my prejudice. It is obvious that the conservative pundits want to believe what they want to believe as well, that is, that all of Pelosi's actions were unreasonable and unlaudable. Using the Rovian gambit, the conservatives are now trying to blame Pelosi for not pushing back against illegal interrogation practices in 2003, and equating that somehow, in the public psyche, to responsibility for the whole sad affair.

Whatever Pelosi's knowledge was, it was classified. She could not fight back publicly. So what is being criticized is her failure to push back within Committee and against the administration, both of which were absolutely controlled by the death grip of the ideologues of the Bush Administration, known for making bad things happen to people who challenged policies. Resistance would have been futile. But I often enjoy a good exercise in futility.

I believe Pelosi and others, primarily Democrats, did fail the nation by not standing up to the Republicans after 9/11 . I believe the patriotic thing to do would have been to risk persecution and perhaps prosecution in order to expose and challenge the tragic and destructive policies of the Republican juggernaut. But the Democrats were at best weak, and at worst, more concerned about self-preservation than about the nation itself.

But the Democrats did not do the evil deeds. That was the Republicans, no matter how you cut it. Democrats were just spineless.

This time the Rovian gambit is risky for the Republicans, who apparently are prepared to go all in on what appears to be a desperate gamble. They have not quite figured out President Obama. They are not used to dealing with honesty and openness. It confuses and confounds them.

The gamble is that by bringing Pelosi into the waterboarding controversy, the President will somehow be less likely to investigate the whole affair. So far, prior to this Pelosi moment, he has been reluctant to do so, fearing a distraction to the legislative initiatives he wants to accomplish early on. But if anything, bringing Pelosi into the controversy increases the chances of the President seeking an investigation. If there is going to be a distraction anyway, the President might prefer to add the investigation to his impressive leadership record thus far. And the President has made it clear he does not tolerate incompetence, even among his own.

I think we all want to believe what we want to believe.

I am as guilty as anyone.

Maybe someday we can get to the point where what we want to believe is to believe the truth, not matter who speaks it.

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