Congress' Sound of Silence

The theme music in the halls these days should be the Simon and Garfunkel lament about “People talking without speaking/People hearing without listening/People writing songs that voices never share/And no one dared/Disturb the sound of silence.”

The post-Petraeus mood in both Houses is restless despair with Senate Democrats losing interest in the bill to “de-authorize” the war and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi poignantly asking centrists to propose some new plan to break the stalemate over getting us out of Iraq.

Meanwhile, Democrat Presidential candidates are talking about health care, immigration, anything but the war on the campaign trail.

It’s been a long, long time from May to September, and the party that took control of Congress with promises to get us out of the Middle East mess is well on the way toward owning it in the public’s eyes.

They may want to recall another line from the old song: “Silence like a cancer grows.”