A Toast to a Remarkable Leader: Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Robert L. Borosage
HuffPost
Speaker Nancy Pelosi will relinquish the gavel to the perpetually tanned, lachrymose Republican leader John Boehner when the new Congress convenes next January. It will be four years after that January 4, 2007 day when she "broke the marble ceiling" and became the first woman Speaker in the two century history of the House.
At the time, Republican pundits mocked Democrats for the choice of a "San Francisco liberal" woman as Speaker, suggesting she'd be a weak leader, unable to control the conservatives in the ever disputatious Democratic party, and easy to burlesque in campaigns across the country.
But this was Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi, raised in a tough Baltimore Italian political family, who imbibed politics with her mother's milk. Republicans soon discovered that Democrats had chosen not just the most progressive, but also the most effective and powerful Speaker in memory.
She was disciplined, shepherding her flock of progressives, Blue Dogs, New Dems, blacks, Latinos, women and good old boys, to focus on core issues -- the kitchen table concerns that Americans worry over every night at home, the challenge to George Bush's disastrous wars abroad. She was tireless, intent on consolidating her majority and helping Democrats to take the White House. She was practical, raising record sums of money in fundraisers across the country, the necessary coin of America's debauched politics. She was tough, getting members to take votes they wanted to duck, forging the majorities she need to overcome unified Republican opposition. And she was, for better and worse, independent, willing to block the left's efforts to impeach the president or end funding for the war that she thought would be damaging electorally.
(Original here.)
HuffPost
Speaker Nancy Pelosi will relinquish the gavel to the perpetually tanned, lachrymose Republican leader John Boehner when the new Congress convenes next January. It will be four years after that January 4, 2007 day when she "broke the marble ceiling" and became the first woman Speaker in the two century history of the House.
At the time, Republican pundits mocked Democrats for the choice of a "San Francisco liberal" woman as Speaker, suggesting she'd be a weak leader, unable to control the conservatives in the ever disputatious Democratic party, and easy to burlesque in campaigns across the country.
But this was Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi, raised in a tough Baltimore Italian political family, who imbibed politics with her mother's milk. Republicans soon discovered that Democrats had chosen not just the most progressive, but also the most effective and powerful Speaker in memory.
She was disciplined, shepherding her flock of progressives, Blue Dogs, New Dems, blacks, Latinos, women and good old boys, to focus on core issues -- the kitchen table concerns that Americans worry over every night at home, the challenge to George Bush's disastrous wars abroad. She was tireless, intent on consolidating her majority and helping Democrats to take the White House. She was practical, raising record sums of money in fundraisers across the country, the necessary coin of America's debauched politics. She was tough, getting members to take votes they wanted to duck, forging the majorities she need to overcome unified Republican opposition. And she was, for better and worse, independent, willing to block the left's efforts to impeach the president or end funding for the war that she thought would be damaging electorally.
(Original here.)
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