The Boxer Metaphor

Victor Davis Hanson has a nice piece on Barbara Boxer's disraceful treatment of Condoleeza Rice

The symbolism of the recent heated exchange between Senator Boxer and Secretary-of-State Rice was telling. For hours on end, speaking without notes, a proud, poised African-American professional woman from Birmingham, Alabama parried withering cross-examination from a succession of liberal senators angry over the war.

Boxer, the Bay Area’s premier progressive and crankiest of the questioners, has had a history of defining political disagreements in terms of personal partisanship, of us-versus-them rather than of mere opposing ideas. The senator once went after erstwhile rival Bruce Herschensohn, Senator Packwood, and Clarence Thomas for their purported sexual insensitivities—but urged forgiveness for President Clinton’s more egregiously inappropriate conduct, whose preemptive bombing of Milosevic she supported despite the absence of either Senate or UN approval. More...