TERRE HAUTE — Despite what I understand about the sausage-making nature of politics (you don’t want to watch what goes on in the process), it is weird to see a woman I actually know portrayed as the antichrist and a city in which I lived for three decades as the gateway to hell.
But those nightmare visions are the theme of a Republican ad campaign that takes aim at U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her city.
“San Francisco values don’t belong in Indiana,” says an anti-Brad Ellsworth mailer with the Golden Gate Bridge in the middle of a Hoosier farm. “…a vote for the Democrats is a vote to give San Francisco more power,” says the Indiana Republican Party chair.
The last time I talked to Pelosi was this past spring in the basement of Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in San Francisco. The House minority leader and her husband were among several hundred people who’d gathered for a fund-raising dinner for a homeless charity organization that was founded a few years ago by film director Francis Ford Coppola.
Paul Pelosi was eyeing a candy-apple red Vespa that would be auctioned off for the charity. Nancy, dressed like all the guests in casual clothes, kiddingly reminded him he already has one of the classic Italian scooters.
She had given up trying to finish her pasta dinner as a steady parade of visitors — most of them friends — plunked down next to her to talk about San Francisco, Washington, their families, the homeless, the economy, Iraq and politics. As in my short catch-up with her, she asked more questions about each visitor’s welfare than she offered about her own work and worries.
Spending just a little “real time” with her reminded me what a remarkable human being Pelosi is. Born into a political family in Baltimore, she nevertheless served as a stay-at-home mother until her five children were old enough to allow Mom to pursue outside interests. Late start notwithstanding, she made her way from mere campaign worker to the first female member of Congress to be selected as her party’s house leader.
She and Paul have been married for 43 years and have grandchildren, yet there is a definite electricity between them that conveys “still best friends and lovers — after all these years.”
The encounter also reconnected me to a reality with which most of us lose touch, whatever our party affiliation: Our political leaders are people, not laminated cardboard cut-outs nor incarnations of Satan or Jesus.
Last week, Drew Hammill, in Pelosi’s communications office in Washington, said Nancy-the-nightmare ads also are being used in a North Carolina race as well as Indiana’s Eighth Congressional District contest. After 22 years in Congress, Pelosi has grown accustomed to seeing herself demonized for her liberal politics and criticized as not progressive enough by the most liberal of her constituents. She knows it comes with the territory.
“She’s served on the House Intelligence Committee for 14 years, she can handle whatever they throw at her,” Hammill said.
Like veteran politicians in both parties, Pelosi also has grown fatalistic about having her words twisted by the opposition and its supporters in the talking-head realm. Most recently, she was beat on for saying that five years after Sept. 11 is “too late” for even the immediate capture of Osama bin Laden to make the United States safer from terrorism because “the damage he has done” in those five years can’t be undone.
Never mind that the president repeatedly has said bin Laden’s capture is not a top priority or best use of U.S. forces in the war on terror. Never mind that the vice president, two days before Pelosi’s remarks, said of bin Laden, “If you killed him tomorrow, you’d still have a problem with al-Qaida” and its other leaders.
When Pelosi says it, it “can only have a demoralizing effect on American troops and intelligence personnel,” as Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican put it. Political business as usual.
However, it seems one aspect of the nightmare ads has gotten under Pelosi’s skin. Said Hammill: “They’re anti-San Francisco and that really irks her.”
The ads imply that “San Francisco values” are tainted and unfit for the good people of Indiana and North Carolina, Hammill said. He reviewed some of Pelosi’s legislative achievements for affordable housing, the homeless, environmental protection, education, public safety and transportation.
“She says, if that’s what that means, then, yes, that’s what San Francisco values are for her,” Hammill said.
I lived in San Francisco for 29 years and got a pretty fair idea of what its collective values are and how they compare to collective Hoosier values. I say “collective” because no city, let alone state, in this country has complete consensus on values. San Franciscans argue with each other about all kinds of issues, as do Hoosiers.
From what I’ve seen, house by house, family by family, person by person, there’s a lot of values-overlap for Indiana and San Francisco: safe streets, functional infrastructure, economic opportunity, good public education and health care, freedom to worship as one chooses, the presence of professional sports teams and arts and entertainment opportunities.
I’ve also seen enough to know that both San Franciscans and Hoosiers are typical Americans when it comes to helping people in crisis: empathetic and generous. Last year, Pelosi offered to return $70 million of San Francisco’s $129 million in federal transportation appropriations as relief for Katrina’s victims. She said, “The people of San Francisco would be very proud of that.”
Of course there are cultural differences. Why wouldn’t there be? San Francisco is the second-most-densely populated city in the nation behind New York with 16,000 people for every square mile. (Indianapolis, by contrast, has about 2,100 people per square mile.)
San Francisco sits on the edge of the Pacific Rim (and many active earthquake faults) and attracts 15 million visitors each year who pour about $7.5 billion into the city’s economy.
Pelosi’s constituency doesn’t look like those of Indiana’s senators or representatives: White people are a San Francisco minority (44 percent) with 39 percent of the city’s population having been born outside the United States. Only 14.5 percent of residents are children, while the city’s size, mild weather and plethora of social welfare programs have given it the highest per capita rate of homeless of any U.S. city.
In 2005, Pelosi won $17 million in federal funds to help house, feed, heal, educate and care for the children of those homeless and of people on the verge of homelessness. More than $2 million of that money went to Catholic-run service agencies, but you won’t hear about it from conservative Catholics.
To them, Pelosi’s support for legal access to abortion and birth control makes her deserving of excommunication from her lifelong church. These single-issue Catholics like to demonize the congresswoman, too. At least one conservative Web site literally refers to her as “Satan’s daughter.”
Last week, Republican strategist Ed Rollins did his own demonizing of both Pelosi and San Francisco during an appearance on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”
A consultant to GOP administrations since Nixon, Rollins said Pelosi “is certainly not” going to “convince Americans that the Democrats are going to get tough” on national security. Why? Because she “comes from San Francisco, one of the bastions of lawlessness in this country.”
Who cares that U.S. Census and FBI data show that San Francisco’s crime rate is lower than that of such cities as Minneapolis, San Antonio, Kansas City, Fort Worth, Memphis, Columbus, Ohio and, ahem, Indianapolis? Or that San Francisco is outpaced by those cities and many more in almost every category of violent crime — murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault?
Ed Rollins says on national television that Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco is a bastion of lawlessness and the line sticks. A flat-out lie becomes “the truth.” And, like the witch tales that Riley’s Little Orphan Annie used to tell around the kitchen fire, the lie is repeated over and over again with one purpose: to sow fear.
Annie’s audience found the fear-mongering “the mostest fun.” I guess the GOP does, too.
Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.
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