California’s Rep. Nancy Pelosi is once again the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and that should prove interesting. Say what you want abut Pelosi, and everybody has plenty to say, but there’s no denying she’s been a formidable force and intriguing in recent American history.
Pelosi is both a stereotypical and literal San Francisco liberal, whose two previous terms as Speaker saw massive deficits and pork-laden stimulus spending and the convoluted health care reform called Obamacare, and she’s hated with a rate red-hot passion by the right. Grainy and unflattering black-and-white photographs have been a staple of Republican campaign attack ads for years, the mention of her name prompts boos and hisses at Trump rallies and on conservative talk radio, and she’s once again an effective fundraising bogey-woman for the Grand Old Party.
Much of the left doesn’t much like her, either, for reasons of its own. As crazy left as Pelosi seems to anyone even slightly right of center, much of the Democratic rank and file and nseveral of the newly installed Democratic members of the House regard her as too accommodating to the center and insufficiently sufficiently socialist, which is a scary thought for such old-fashioned establishment Republicans as ourselves to contemplate. On the other hand, much of the right now reviles such old-fashioned establishments as former House Speaker Paul Ryan and current current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as too accommodating to the center and insufficiently loyal to whatever President Donald Trump is “tweeting” about on any given day, and we have to admit that’s pretty scary, too.
Despite Pelosi’s unpopularity she won the speakership with a few votes to spare, having fended off a futile challenge from the impatient-for-socialist-utopia youngsters on the leftmost edges of the party, and we’d advise Trump and his Republican allies in Congress not to underestimate her political skills. In the same way we regard LeBron James, we don’t root for the team she’s playing for but have to admit she’s damned good at the game. She was an effective thorn in the side of President George W. Bush for the last two years of his presidency, but blocked the far left’s demand for his impeachment and then joined with him and a bipartisan group of centrist Democrats and Republicans to negotiate the Troubled Asset Relief Program that was reviled by both the left and right but in retrospect probably prevented the great recession of ’08 from becoming another great depression, and she effectively did all sorts of mischief during the first two years of President Barack Obama’s administration.
Pelosi is the daughter of Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., who was a a famously ruthless Maryland congressman and Baltimore mayor, and while Trump was learning from his father how to bribe politicians Pelosi was learning how to strong arm unprincipled building contractors in need of a building permit. She easily rose through the ranks of California’s hippy-dippy Democratic party, just as easily clawed her way to the leadership of the congressional Democrats, and is clearly unintimidated by the likes of Trump. Pelosi’s daughter is a well respected documentary filmmaker in her own right, and has recently described that her beloved mom as someone who”will cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re bleeding,” and Trump and the rest of the Republicans should heed the warning. For now she has the better political hand to play, what with Trump having preemptively claimed responsibility for an unpopular partial government shutdown to get funding his unpopular border wall idea, and we expect she’ll play her cards better than the failed casino mogul she’s up against.
We still can’t stand the woman, and don’t see her second speakership turning out well for anyone, but we figure it could have been worse. The Democratic party has many members even crazier than Pelosi, as we shudder to realize, and there’s hope she’s pragmatic enough to reach some compromises on some essential matters with the saner members of the Republican party. Although Pelosi is once again resisting calls for impeachment she’ll no doubt go at Trump with all the subpoena power her Democratic majority in the House can muster, but that’s all right with us, and we’re still hoping the center will somehow hold.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 