South by Southwest: "Madam Speaker"

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

"Madam Speaker"

Has a nice ring to it.
Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA) will become the Speaker of the House of Representatives for the upcoming 110th Congress, convening January 4, 2007.

How could this happen? It is unprecedented. She is the first woman to hold the post. A very interesting (11/21/06) article prompted today's post. Titled, "Positions of Power- How female ambition is shaped," I Clipmarked it from Slate.com. I quote,

According to the October issue of Fortune, which highlights "The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business," women account for 35 percent of MBAs but only 2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Women now make up 16 percent of congressional seats—and 0 percent of U.S. presidents. So, what happens to the grand ambitions of girlhood?. . . (Shelley Correll) found that, in the presence of a stereotype that men are better, women tend to underrate their own performance, while men overrate their own, regardless of demonstrated ability. "We find that if you compare boys and girls, or men and women, with the same grades in math classes, and the exact same scores on standardized math tests, boys think they are better than girls," she notes.
. . . ambition can blossom at any time. When individuals experience a burst of achievement or recognition later in life, the full force of childhood ambition seems to return.

Why did Nancy Pelosi have the confidence to believe in herself? There are some clues in Rep. Pelosi's background. She grew up with politics. Both her father and her brother were elected to multiple terms as mayors of Baltimore, Md., and her mother was a feminist.
And as an adult she had powerful San Francisco mentors in Rep. Phil and Sala Burton. It was Sala Burton who was elected to the House following her husband's death. When she herself realized she was gravely ill, she believed in Pelosi enough to "annoint" her candidacy for the U.S. House.
But it was Pelosi's talent as the volunteer chair of the California Democratic Party, her incredible skill as a fundraiser and her learning under Phil Burton that led to her to be elected. As always politicians have to "have the goods." Pelosi rose to the occasion. She won the special election following Sala Burton's death. And she has been steadily on the rise ever since.

One of the marks of Minority Leader Pelosi is her connection to younger people. Note that it was the "Thirty Something Working Group" who stood with her as she raised her arm in triumph shortly after the November elections.

And there it is - her very own YouTube site:
NancyPelosi Channel
age: "66"
location: "Washington, D.C."
hometown: "San Francisco, CA"

Name: "Nancy"
Member since: "six months ago"
Videos watched: "463"
Last logged in: "3 days ago"
Website: http://democraticleader.house.gov/

Pelosi's path will absolutely not be easy. She stays in the news both for good and for ill - One of the stories that made the news earlier in the year was Ms. Pelosi's position on whether to try to impeach our current president (OCP). The San Francisco Chronicle reported in May that she does not favor impeachment. To quote,

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco has told her caucus that the idea of impeaching President Bush isn't in the cards if the party takes over the House in November's elections.
Pelosi, who Republicans have charged intends to lead an impeachment effort, dismissed the idea when she spoke Wednesday morning at a closed-door caucus of the House's 201 Democrats. Pelosi also restated her opposition to the idea of censuring Bush over his decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.

Speaker to be Pelosi has been in the news much more often since November 7. Pelosi will "win some and lose some." Her decision to back Representative Jack Murtha (D-PA) for majority leader was not supported by the majority, who voted for Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) instead.

Speculation about who will chair the powerful House Intelligence Committee made the news for several weeks. Facing an almost no-win situation, Pelosi finally picked Rep. Sylvestre Reyes (D-TX) over Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL).

More recently, the reelection of William Jefferson (D-LA) means that the Speaker will now have to decide what to do with him. The Washington Post writers Charles Babbington and Allan Lengel speculate about her decision in an article today. To quote,

Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), poised to be the next speaker, stripped Jefferson of his seat on the influential Ways and Means Committee in June and has hinted that she may place him on no committee when the 110th Congress convenes next month. But a source close to Pelosi said yesterday that she is more likely to place him on a lower-profile committee and hope the controversy dies down.
. . . The source familiar with Pelosi's thinking said that the incoming speaker wants to distance herself and her caucus from Jefferson and legal problems but that she thinks she cannot ignore that voters returned him to office when details of the investigation were well known.

Pelosi promises to protect pages - After the pre-election Mark Foley scandal, the Speaker will try to upgrade the House's protections for their young people. To quote Jim Abrams, AP writer for Yahoo!News,

Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi said Monday she will take legislative steps to better protect House pages after the scandal involving a congressman sending salacious e-mails to former male pages.
Pelosi, D-Calif., said legislation would be introduced early in the new Congress to increase oversight of the page program, require regular meetings of the page board and add a parent of a current and a former page on that board.
"The Page School is a national treasure, and the young people who attend it and work in the Congress are our special trust," she said in a statement. "We must do all we can to protect them."

It is an an exciting time for the women in Congress. Each will make occasional mistakes along the way. But it does not mean that they are not as good as men. In my opinion "Madam Speaker" will do a good job of leading the way for both women and men.
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