Here’s a news item I didn’t want to see this Sunday:
Cindy Sheehan, the soldier’s mother who galvanized the anti-war movement, said Sunday that she plans to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unless she introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.
Sheehan said she will run against the San Francisco Democrat in 2008 as an independent if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush.
On the one hand, part of being an effective activist is being able to take extreme action that will draw notice to your cause (PETA is particularly good at this) and Sheehan is certainly attracting attention. People are listening, people are taking, and the issue is getting more light shone on it. In that regards, the threat is effective.
On the other hand, I think it’s a terrible idea. It’s bad for Pelosi, it’s bad for the Democrats, and most important, it’s bad for Sheehan herself. It was only some six weeks ago that she announced that she was retiring from the anti-war movement. Some retirement — launching a career in electoral politics with a third-party attempt to try to take down the Speaker of the House?
It sounds more like a recipe for additional personal and financial heartache for a woman who has already suffered quite enough. She won’t win, and she’ll probably further hurt her reputation (and her emotional stability) by trying.
The pain, grief, and anguish that Cindy Sheehan feels over the loss of her child, and the extent to which those demons drives her, is not something I can begin to wrap my brain around. But surely, there’s other ways to expunge that pain and those demons than by an action so destructive to herself and to the cause she is trying to fight for?