The New York Times has a great profile on Senator Barbara Boxer today. The first paragraph says a lot, not only about Boxer, but about her fellow Democrats:
While some Democrats are still struggling to find their voices after November's election losses, Senator Barbara Boxer of California is not among them.Boxer is getting credit for the decision by the Democrats to slow down Condi's confirmation vote. Why? Because she asked tough questions about the biggest foreign policy debacle in recent history. And, as Boxer noted, it is not an intellectual exercise. American kids are being sent to die:
Before casting one of two Democratic votes against Ms. Rice on the Foreign Relations Committee - the other was John Kerry's - Ms. Boxer explained bluntly why she had been so persistent in pressing the national security adviser on what Ms. Boxer portrayed as the administration's misleading and misguided rationale for the war in Iraq.Boxer's challenge to Rice and Bush has generated enormous attention. Hopefully, it will provide some courage to her colleagues on the Hill.
"The fact is we've lost so many lives over it," she said. "So if we do get a little testy on the point, and I admit to be so, it's because it continues day in and day out, and 25 percent of the dead are from California. We cannot forget. We cannot forget that."
I think Senator Boxer handled this situation masterfully. She basically challenged Condi on Condi's own words. Imagine that. This paragraph in the article really has a very strong message for her colleagues.
Had she not been willing to take on Ms. Rice over the buildup to the war, Ms. Boxer said, she would not deserve her seat in the Senate. All she did, she said, was confront the nominee with her own words and the record.
