Dalai Lama can’t bring peace to Capitol Hill

Angels stared down from the Capitol Rotunda and Lincoln, Grant, Eisenhower and Jefferson looked on as Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday to the 14th Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader and the embodiment of peace and compassion for millions of people.

{mosads}Occasionally adjusting his red and saffron robes, the Dalai Lama bowed to each speaker and the audience before taking a seat between President Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on the dais. But his spirit could not stop the political warfare between the president and congressional Democrats.

The sniping began earlier in the day when Bush chided Congress nearly 30 times during an opening statement at a press conference. Later in the day, the House Republican Conference chided that the Democratic-sponsored wire-tapping bill would require a warrant to wiretap Osama bin Laden.

“We’re now more than halfway through October, and the new leaders in Congress have had more than nine months to get things done for the American people. Unfortunately, they haven’t managed to pass many important bills,” Bush said.

Pelosi said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that Bush may be “the decider,” but his veto of State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) legislation meant some families would be forced to do without coverage. She said in a second statement that Bush was “standing in the way of progress for the American people.”

As if there were not enough criticism left, Bush, Pelosi and the other congressional leaders attending the ceremony ripped into China for its occupation of Tibet and treatment of the Dalai Lama. They assured the Beijing government that the earthly manifestation of the living Buddha is not a threat to China.

The ceremony’s focus was honoring the Dalai Lama, but, being Congress, lawmakers also used the occasion to highlight their long personal relationships with His Holiness.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) said he was the first lawmaker to invite the Dalai Lama to Capitol Hill in 1987. They met in a small committee room.

Pelosi said she too attended that meeting, in which the Dalai Lama scaled back his ambition for an independent Tibet, instead calling for an autonomous Tibet.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she met the Dalai Lama in India in 1978 with her husband, Richard Blum. As San Francisco’s mayor, she gave him a key to the city during his visit in 1979 to the West Coast.

Scores of lawmakers stood to catch a glimpse of the world’s most famous symbol of inner peace, who is the 146th recipient of Congress’s highest honor.

Rep. Thelma Drake had to leave to attend an Armed Services Committee  hearing set to start midway through the ceremony (and although she was displeased to see the actor and liberal activist Richard Gere in the audience). Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) ran back to his office to take a photo with a group of high-school students and returned to the ceremony.

Bush, Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) grasped for rhetorical flourishes in their prepared remarks.

Bush gave the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959, his highest compliment, calling him “a good man.”

House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) voice cracked during his speech honoring the Dalai Lama.

Their rhetoric, however, did not match author Elie Wiesel’s. The Holocaust survivor and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Congressional Gold Medal spoke of his long kinship with the Dalai Lama in a more somber tone.

“As long as you are in exile, you will not be alone,” Wiesel said. “One day, if God gives me the years, we will go to Tibet together.”

The Dalai Lama occasionally made self-deprecating jokes during his remarks.

“Speaking today is like taking English examinations in front of dignitaries,” he said, adding that he learned to speak English 60 years ago in Tibet.

The spiritual leader also joked that politicians have good intentions, but they sometimes tell “a little lie here and there.”

He thanked the U.S. government for its support, which he said “has not gone unnoticed in China.”

He did not hesitate to chide China for its human-rights record and warned that the country’s rapid growth threatened Tibet’s rivers and the region’s ecology.

He reminisced about lawmakers, including Sens. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) and Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who have died or retired since his last visit to the Capitol in 1991.

“Death is our final destination; you have to go there,” he said. “What we can do is only pray for those souls no longer with us.”