Word: pelosi
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...just so happens that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be launching her career as Democratic House leader the same week that the District hosted memorial service for Gerald Ford. That small twist of fate points up one of the capitol's cardinal rules: in Washington, you never run out of chances to make a first impression...
...Nancy Pelosi knows, that is the more powerful position - at least, it traditionally has been. The speaker's power comes not from public pomp or grand acts of statesmanship, but from hundreds of small ones, usually far beneath the radar of the general public. When Americans notice who the Speaker of the House is, it's usually because they've done something wrong - unless, like Tip O'Neill, they've been in office longer than any of the Presidents they served. Newt Gingrich's notoriety was a rare exception - and his steep fall from grace a cautionary example...
...begrudge Pelosi her four-day "coronation," as right-wing wags have dubbed it? The events themselves are hardly ostentatious: there's a mass, a tea, and prayer service. The most raucous thing on the schedule is a concert by Tony Bennett. Add a tote bag and it'd be a PBS telethon. Indeed, the demographic-pleasing tenor of the events reeks of a self-conscious desire to highlight all soft-focus interest groups that come with the Pelosi package: Italian, female, Catholic, grandmother. With so many facets illuminated, perhaps Pelosi's people are hoping no one notices what's been...
...Pelosi's first challenge is similar to Ford's, and may provide the same kind of disappointment: To succeed, she needs to provide a solid counterpoint to the corruption and arrogance that doomed the G.O.P. Yet the Democrats' "100-hour agenda" already entails suspending the gauzy promise of bipartisan civility that moderate Democrats ran on. Rather, the Democrats will use House rules to prohibit opposition measures - the exact sort of "tyranny of the majority" that the former minority party has been railing against for years. Whatever the stage set (tea or Mass), the week ahead will likely be less...
...strings for that war - and with that power comes a new measure of responsibility. The Pentagon will come to Congress next month with a request for an additional $99.7 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan until September, which marks the end of the fiscal year. Pelosi and Reid will have to decide if they want to alter Administration war strategy through funding cuts or by attaching conditions to the funding...