Pelosi falls to the back of the pack of speakers
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
July 30, 2009
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| House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif. smiles on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, July 17, 2009, during a news conference on health care reform. Working day and night, House Democrats advanced major health care legislation through two committees on Friday and struggled to line up the votes necessary to prevail in a third. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) |
In an era of symbolic breakthroughs, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is closing in on a dubious achievement — being the least effective leader of the House in the modern era.
Since the 1920s, when Speaker Nicholas Longworth rescued the position from a brief period of irrelevancy, the office of speaker has been held by political heavyweights.
The 17 speakers since Longworth have mostly maintained or enhanced the power and prestige of the post, but with a train wreck taking shape in the House, Pelosi may be remembered for diminishing the office.
And when historians inspect the record of the lady from California, they will find that hubris and empty talk sealed her fate.
In seven months, the House has taken up the largest spending package in history, new fees on carbon emissions, and the reordering of the American health care system. Any one of those would have been considered a signal accomplishment for a single legislative year.
But Pelosi embraced all three proposals from the White House. In addition to trying to manage a legislative load that would baffle the flight boss on an aircraft carrier, Pelosi pridefully picked a politically damaging fight with the CIA. Rather than concede she knew some of the rough stuff being tried on terrorists after 9/11, the speaker opened a range war with America’s spymasters.
If Sam Rayburn — the Texan who defined the position in the 20th century — had been faced with an impractical president who wanted too much too fast, Rayburn would have backed him down.
Rayburn was tight-lipped in public and careful never to make promises he couldn’t keep. When Rayburn was finishing the work of the New Deal for Franklin Roosevelt, few beyond the Red River Valley knew his name. He was wise enough to know that worked to his advantage.
But Pelosi, who learned her craft in the minority, believes that she is some sort of super spokesperson for the Democratic Party. When she could simply disparage George W. Bush and then hold another fundraiser, talk was enough.
But now President Barack Obama is doing enough talking for everybody, and Pelosi is still confusing status with power. She is constantly in the spotlight, snarling at her foes one day and backing down the next.
On Sunday, Pelosi made a pledge to pass health care legislation before the August recess that begins this week. On Monday she changed that deadline to “whenever.”
When told by Politico that she had sunk to a 25 percent approval rating, Pelosi said, “I don’t care.” But that seems rather unlikely for a person who seeks so much attention. Plus, she knows her unpopularity in the districts of moderate Democrats reduces her power as speaker.
A Blue Dog Democrat recruited to run in a deep-red district gets points for shunning Pelosi, not being browbeaten by her. So her unpopularity has compounded the problems caused by her indecision.
Minority Leader John Boehner likens serving in the Pelosi-led House to standing in front of a machine gun: There is always something coming at you and there’s no time to think.
But the casualties will likely be Pelosi’s fellow Democrats.
Having been arm-twisted into massive fees on greenhouse gasses, centrists balked at voting for a budget-shattering health plan. They saw that the Senate had cast aside their cap-and-trade bill, leaving their “yea” votes to molder until they reappear in a 2010 campaign commercial.
Pelosi said she would make her members walk the plank again on health care, but they refused. Unless the Senate passes a bill first, don’t expect any bold strokes from the House.
Had Pelosi told Obama that he could have health care but not global warming fees, she would have faced only one contentious vote, and would have done it on an issue with broader Democratic appeal than the new religion of global warmism.
Joining Pelosi in the bottom tier of speakers are Jim Wright, the Texas Democrat whose ethical lapses helped pave the way for the Republican takeover of 1994, and the passive Bostonian John William McCormack, who couldn’t respond to the changing political composition of the Democratic Party in the 1960s.
The months to come will decide if she remains in their company or takes sole position of the title of worst speaker.
