Time Magazine Profile: Nancy Pelosi - "Anybody Knows Not To Mess With Me"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376213,00.html?internalid=AOT_h_08-27-2006_dont_mess_with



Sunday, Aug. 27, 2006
"Anybody knows not to mess with me"

Nancy Pelosi leads the Democrats with a fiery style that could make her the first woman Speaker of the House

BY PERRY BACON JR.

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The 66-year-old San Francisco lawmaker is an aggressive, hyperpartisan liberal pol who is the Democrats' version of Tom DeLay, minus the ethical and legal problems of the former Republican House leader. To condition Democrats for this fall's midterm elections, she has employed tactics straight out of DeLay's playbook: insisting other House Democrats vote the party line on everything, avoiding compromise with Republicans at all cost and mandating that members spend much of their time raising money for colleagues in close races. And she has been effective. House Democrats have been more unified in their voting than at any other time in the past quarter-century, with members on average voting the party line 88% of the time in 2005, according to Congressional Quarterly. That cohesion enabled Democrats to hasten President Bush's slide in the polls when they blocked his plan to reform Social Security by allowing retirees to eschew guaranteed benefits in favor of private accounts. Bush's approval rating remains depressed--38% in a TIME poll last week--and the Democrats are in their best position to win the House since Republicans took control of it in 1994.

If Democrats are successful in November, it will be mostly the result of Americans' increasing frustration with the Iraq war and with the perception that Bush and congressional Republicans have bungled everything from Terri Schiavo to Hurricane Katrina. But Pelosi has made sure Democrats didn't break the Republicans' fall. And if Democrats win back the 15 seats they need to form a majority, Pelosi will be richly rewarded. She would almost certainly become the first woman to be House Speaker.

That would be sweet vindication for a leader many moderate Democrats castigated as an out-of-touch liberal who would take the party perilously to the left when she became the top House Democrat in 2002. It would also mark a rapid rise for a politician who didn't run for office until she was 47. Pelosi grew up in a prominent political family in Baltimore, Md. Her father was the mayor for almost her entire childhood. After college, Pelosi and her husband Paul moved to New York City and then to San Francisco, where she became a leading Democratic fund raiser, then chairwoman of the party in California. But she waited until the youngest of her five children was a high school senior before she ran for Congress in 1987.

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Meanwhile, at the cost of infuriating parts of her own, progressive base, Pelosi has made a number of pragmatic, tactical moves to better position the Democrats for November. When Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson was found with $90,000 in his freezer from an apparent bribery scheme, Pelosi immediately had him tossed out of his seat on the House Ways and Means Committee. The strongly liberal Congressional Black Caucus was incensed that one of its members had been punished before he had even been indicted. But Pelosi's action helped rebut the G.O.P.'s contention that Democrats had as many corruption problems as Republicans, many of whom are caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

No one among the Democrats has succeeded in solidifying the party around a single position on the Iraq war, but Pelosi has managed to tame the several dozen House members who call themselves the Out of Iraq caucus. They have wanted the Democratic Party to demand the prompt withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But Pelosi has so far convinced them that Murtha, the ex-Marine and veteran lawmaker whose call for a troop withdrawal in November created real debate, should be the party's face for that cause while the others should stay in the background.

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[rusty_parts2001]

1. Lets keep our fingers crossed.....

subpoena power will be great to keep Bush in knots for two years.

[AX10]

2. K and R!

[marmar]

3. Good piece. I'm still not sold on Pelosi as leader...

but there was some interesting insight in the article.

[Kolesar]

4. Trying to back her way into the position of Speaker of the House

...while not taking on the biggest issue of our times:

Pelosi has managed to tame the several dozen House members who call themselves the Out of Iraq caucus