Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has suffered one of the most difficult weeks in her short tenure as House speaker after being forced to backtrack on two measures relating to foreign policy and national security.
Republicans, political analysts and some of her own rank and file say Pelosi often misreads shifts in the House, a weakness they find surprising given her legislative experience and upbringing in the old-school politics of Baltimore.
Pelosi on Wednesday was forced to abandon consideration of a major bill that would update the law governing wiretapping. She retreated after the Democratic majority splintered and as Republicans prepared to introduce an amendment that would have made the bill even more difficult to pass.
A day earlier, Pelosi gave up on a plan to label as genocide the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire nine decades ago. The Bush administration was able to undercut the bill by arguing that present-day Turkey, which was established after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, was crucial to supplying U.S. troops in Iraq and to facilitating their eventual withdrawal.
Some House Democrats say they are worried about Pelosi’s ability to predict Republican attempts to derail legislation with amendments that put Democratic lawmakers on the spot.
Just before a vote on the wiretapping bill, Republicans drafted an amendment that would have essentially gutted the legislation by stipulating that it could not interfere with efforts to capture Osama bin Laden.
“That type of language is something we should have seen coming our way,” one veteran House Democrat said. “Clearly the Democratic leadership has to be more cognizant of the political gamesmanship.”
Pelosi had to temporarily yank another bill from the floor earlier this year after Republicans added an amendment on gun rights that would have completely divided the Democrats.
Some political analysts say Pelosi’s difficulties go far beyond GOP attacks and in fact extend to the management of her party.
“There is an ongoing tension within the Democratic House caucus between the more mature liberal members and their moderate wing, many of whom are freshmen,” said Michael Franc, a political scholar with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “They have different needs and a different radar. This is a reoccurring thing, and it is going to happen again and again.”
Pelosi said her decision to pull the two bills was simply part of the process.
Former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., agreed.
“I learned that sometimes things happen with legislation, and you have to step back and make changes,” Hastert said.
