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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stops mid-sentence as the C-SPAN screen that she’s had one eye on captures her full attention.
The interview is momentarily on hold as she asks her aides about the next vote.
“I always need to watch the floor,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) explains. The Speaker traditionally doesn’t vote, but she’s always there to see her “people.”
The lower chamber is commonly called the People’s House, but the first female Speaker has made it clear throughout her reign that it is also Pelosi’s House.
As a mother of five and grandmother of seven, Pelosi knows how to multitask, and she has her hands in everything: committee assignments, the formulation of legislation, campaign strategies and the resolution of internal Democratic disputes.
Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), a leader of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, said, “I’ve never seen a Speaker as hands-on as Nancy Pelosi.”
Ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Pelosi’s predecessor, routinely deferred to his committee chairmen. Pelosi has taken a very different approach.
One of her first actions was to establish a global warming committee, infringing on Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell’s (D-Mich.) turf. Dingell, who called the new committee as useful as “feathers on a fish,” subsequently struck a deal with Pelosi that the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming would expire this October.
But asked during last week’s interview if the global warming panel will exist in the next Congress, Pelosi responded, “I just talked to [Rep. Michael] Capuano [D-Mass.] as I left the floor to say we really have to get ready our rules for next year and see what we want to do. I haven’t even gone to that place. But I am proud of the work that the committee has done. The hearings have enlightened the Congress …”
Pelosi is close to many of her committee chairmen, but they moved up the ranks amid the “old-boy politics,” when “cigarette and cigar smoke choked the air,” according to the Speaker’s new book. Pelosi banned smoking in the Capitol last year — signaling to her chairmen that, at times, she would be treading on their territory.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Pelosi’s longtime friend, said, “She has consolidated her power in the caucus. That’s very, very important. And she’s not a white-knuckle leader. She makes a decision, and then executes it.”
Boyd said he and other Blue Dogs respect how Pelosi handles the diverse caucus, claiming she has led more down the middle compared to when she was minority leader in the last Congress.
“I was not always, but I am now, a Nancy Pelosi fan,” Boyd said.
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