Saturday, March 27, 2010 Pelosi's Passing Healthcare Reform Puts Her at Top of House Speakers Constantly reviled
as the Wicked Witch of the West by Republicans, Pelosi, as a member of
the Obama and Reid Triumvirate is now looked upon with stunned admiration.
Pelosi is without peer. No speaker in the past century has played such
a key role in enacting major reforms. No speaker since Henry Clay, who
wielded the gavel in the 1810s and '20s, has had so great an effect on
American life.
Nancy Pelosi -- it's Her House Pelosi's role in passing healthcare reform puts her in the top rank of House speakers. Los Angeles Times; By Harold Meyerson; March 26, 2010 Anyone who has heard Nancy Pelosi speak knows she is not a great speaker. Her favorite rhetorical device is to seize on a word and club her listeners over the head with it. When she spoke from the floor of the House on Sunday in support of the healthcare reform bill, the word she wielded was "opportunity." Her point -- that the bill would enable Americans to leave their jobs to start up new ventures without fear of not being able to get health insurance in their new gig -- was altogether valid and perfectly good, but she insisted on repeating the word "opportunity" so many times that she left listeners (this listener, anyway) a little woozy. But when it comes to being a speaker
-- the presiding officer of the House of Representatives and the leader
of its majority party -- Pelosi is without peer. No speaker in the past
century has played such a key role in enacting major reforms. No speaker
since Henry Clay, who wielded the gavel in the 1810s and '20s, has had
so great an effect on American life.
Since Pelosi's speakership coincides
with a period of ideological and partisan polarization in Congress (chiefly
the result of the extinction of liberal and moderate Republicanism), her
triumphs are necessarily those of a party leader. In 2006 and 2008, she
led House Democrats to sweeping electoral victories, in good measure the
result of her fundraising, targeting and candidate recruitment prowess.
In the months since the upset victory of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown cost the Democrats their Senate supermajority, Pelosi played two crucial roles in pushing healthcare reform to enactment. First, when President Obama was receiving
advice to jettison the bill and settle for much smaller, incremental legislation,
Pelosi argued that major reform and major victory were still possible,
and that anything less would depress the Democratic base and amount to
a missed opportunity of historic proportions. In time, Obama agreed.
Pelosi is also the daughter of Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., a New Deal-era congressman who became mayor of Baltimore. D'Alesandro was an old-style ethnic machine pol with liberal values, and Pelosi's own rise through the ranks of the House Democratic caucus was greatly aided by support from similarly old-style, tough, deal-making Democrats such as David R. Obey and the late John P. Murtha, who found in her a deal-making ability to equal their own. San Francisco and Baltimore, West Coast liberal and New Deal boss -- you can see all these in Pelosi's passion, her charm, her toughness, her smarts. You can see them in the battle she waged: Waxman and Miller were the key authors of the House bill, and she put tough-as-nails Obey in the chair Sunday night to guard against Republican obstruction as the House finally voted on the contentious legislation. On Friday -- though she surely doesn't look it -- Nancy Pelosi turns 70. Not a bad couple of weeks' work, Madame Speaker. Happy birthday. Harold Meyerson is an Op-Ed columnist
for the Washington Post and editor at large of the American Prospect.
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