Pelosi's damaging competence

Washington Post by Eugene Robinson | Nov. 5, 2010 (Opinion)

Amid the wreckage of Tuesday's GOP rampage, there's one person for whom I feel awful: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She's losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well.
...Some of the votes she won looked impossible.

Pelosi would never ask for, or even accept, my sympathy - that's not her style. Her place in history was secure the moment she became the first woman to take possession of the speaker's gavel. Still, ... Full Story »

Posted by Barry Grossheim

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Michael Shaver
3.9
 by Michael Shaver - Nov. 5, 2010

Every once in a while I come across a piece of writing that is just a pleasure to read. Eugene Robinson's piece on Nancy Pelosi is an affectionate tribute to the first woman speaker of the house. It is biased but it is also honest and he makes it clear that he is speaking of Nancy as a person and as someone who is a lot like the rest of us, just ordinary people trying to do the best we can with what we've been given.

I like this particular piece not because I'm a fan of Nancy Pelosi, I really don't have an opinion of her, but because I am a fan of good writing with a sense of moral integrity. I may not like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Bill O'Reilly but I will extend the courtesy of allowing them to be human and recognize that in spite of our intentions and best efforts we are just like all other humans, flawed.

I regret that the nation has never come to know the actual Nancy Pelosi. Most Americans are probably familiar only with the caricature that her political opponents sketched – the effete “San Francisco liberal” who knew nothing of America outside her mink-lined cocoon, where the taps ran with chablis and nourishment consisted of unpronounceable French cheeses, served on silver platters by waiters who were certainly gay, and quite possibly married.

I like well used cynicism, it gives the author chance to present what others are thinking while remaining mildly dismissive.

I was at the Capitol that day when the House passed the landmark health-care bill. Tea Party groups were protesting outside, egged on by Republican members of Congress who came out onto a balcony and led the catcalls

This quote brought back memories I still have the picture of the House Republicans standing on the balcony holding up their sign that read “KILL THE BILL”.

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