Eugene Robinson: A Speaker Who Stood Out

[babylonsister]

I'm so glad he wrote this; she deserves all the kudos she gets.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_speaker_who_stood_out_20101105/

A Speaker Who Stood Out
Posted on Nov 5, 2010

AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Nancy Pelosi speaks in front of a less than thrilled then-president George W. Bush.

By Eugene Robinson

snip//


But amid the wreckage of Tuesday’s GOP rampage, there’s one person for whom I feel awful: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She’s losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well.

Pelosi would never ask for, or even accept, my sympathy—that’s not her style. Her place in history was secure the moment she became the first woman to take possession of the speaker’s gavel. Still, she squeezed every drop out of her four-year tenure. To string together a couple of sports cliches, she came to play and she left it all on the field.

I regret that the nation has never come to know the actual Nancy Pelosi. Most Americans are probably familiar only with the caricature that her political opponents sketched—the effete “San Francisco liberal” who knew nothing of America outside her mink-lined cocoon, where the taps ran with Chablis and nourishment consisted of unpronounceable French cheeses, served up on silver platters by waiters who were certainly gay, and quite possibly married.

That’s not the Nancy Pelosi known to anyone who has ever met her. While the term “San Francisco liberal” is accurate, it’s also true that she grew up—and learned the rough-and-tumble of politics—in gritty Baltimore. Her father, Tommy D’Alesandro, was a legendary “Charm City” mayor and political boss. Her education in how to count votes, and keep them counted, began at a young age.

snip//

The GOP was only able to make Pelosi an issue because she was so effective as speaker. Obama came to office with a long, ambitious agenda. Pelosi had a big majority to work with in the House, but it was ideologically diverse—Blue Dogs, progressives, everything in between. Somehow, she managed to deliver.

Some of the votes she won looked impossible. On health care reform, there appeared to be no way the House could ever be persuaded to pass the more conservative bill that had passed the Senate. At one point, she told me she could only find “maybe a dozen votes” for the measure. But she and Reid managed to find a workable set of modifications—and a clever parliamentary maneuver to pull the whole thing off.

I was at the Capitol that day when the House passed the landmark health care bill. Tea party groups were protesting outside, egged on by Republican members of Congress who came out onto a balcony and led the catcalls.

Pelosi did what was right for the country, and what’s right isn’t always what’s popular. Democrats may decide they need a less-polarizing figure as minority leader; if they do, well, that’s politics. But I’d love to see her stay in the Democratic leadership—and I’m betting that eventually she’d find a way to take back the gavel that she pounds with such righteous authority.

[lamp_shade]

1. Take that gavel home with you Nancy. Dust it and polish it up now and then so it's all nice and

shiny in two years when you bring it back to the chamber.

[Hekate]

4. From your mouth to God's ears. Madame Speaker is one of my heroes.

:patriot:

[Fruittree]

2. I agree - she did an amazing job and was vilified by so many

who seem to be totally ignorant of what she actually managed to achieve.

[RandomThoughts]

3. I support her also.

I don't have many people I think of as heroes in life, or role models in life, but she fits in that category, her tenacity with that other special quality of what a leader should be is admirable.

[Hekate]

5. Thanks for posting this Babs. It's a good piece on a great woman.

That look on Baby Caligula's face is absolutely priceless! :spray: :rofl:

[babylonsister]

6. Ha! The picture had to be posted; that's how all the rethugs

thought of her.