I’m concerned about Nancy Pelosi. I’m not sure what she said here on Thursday.
Top story: @ABC: 'Asked if House Democrats risk giving Republicans grounds for criticism if they take too long to deliver articles of impeachment to the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi replies, "Frankly, I don't care what … pic.twitter.com/PlYbF944f0, see more https://t.co/NZOfSz2Cf2
— Wilma Tyus (@wilmatyus3) December 21, 2019
But at least the context and what she seemed to be trying to say had some relation to each other.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Now comes a press release from Pelosi, also on Thursday, in which she quotes Shakespeare. (H/t: Daniel Greenfield at FrontPage) It’s not just one line either. She goes full-bore with the Henry V St. Crispin’s Day speech.
The press release is of a “Dear Colleague” letter, for which the subject line reads:
Dear Colleague on the Moral Courage of the Congress
After some prefatory material, Pelosi continues thus (italics in original):
During this historic moment, let us recall the words of King Henry V, as immortalized by Shakespeare:
This day is called the feast of Crispian [sic]
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day;
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
It’s not clear whether she read the speech first, or if perhaps some staffers deployed it knowing that it is widely regarded as one of the finest battle speeches set down in the English language. (For starters, few modern politicians, Democrat or Republican, would be caught dead suggesting that the condition of the vile can be “gentled” by shedding blood alongside a band of brothers. There’s no gentling vile these days. It’s either ignored and papered over as if it never even happened, or it chases you out of town on a rail. There’s also the point that Shakespeare’s Henry V utters these words before the battle – before the outcome is known – and not after it, as if it’s a little self-congratulatory victory lap.)
There probably isn’t much more that needs to be said about it. Daniel Greenfield essayed this:
Because voting on two articles of impeachment against an opposition president you don’t like and then running away from your vote is just like invading France. We did it for the soldiers, the children, and to kill the frogs.
Not only is this sadly lazy. It’s the equivalent of writing a term paper that spends most of its time quoting other things.
He’s spot-on with the term-paper analogy. And with the laziness point. The Henry V allusion is certainly perfunctory.
There were some interesting things that happened on 18 Decembers of the past, however, which may make more sense to allude to than Henry V calling his troops to battle.
One is something I ran across online as the build-up continued to the impeachment vote in the House. On 18 December 1860, a state convention called up by the South Carolina assembly voted 169-0 to declare the state an “independent commonwealth.” The convention had met the previous day at the behest of the state assembly. It adjourned following the vote, and the state assembly took up the “independent commonwealth” question.
Two days later, on 20 December, South Carolina voted in favor of declaring independence from the Union, thus setting up Fort Sumter, several months later, and the Civil War.
Cued to hunt for 18 December events, I then discovered that Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibition, on 18 December 1917. After being signed by President Wilson, it was sent to the states for ratification. As we know, after ratification it never prospered as a – well, as a good idea. Ultimately, it was repealed to the ash heap of history.
Something to muse over: each of these three events – South Carolina’s secession, the 18th Amendment being passed by Congress, the House impeachment vote in 2019 – was one that required more definitive action later, by a lot more people, to have a significant effect. Will the impeachment vote, with its suspended effect pending the actions of many, turn out more like 1860, 1917, or perhaps neither of the above?
