Respect Where Due ─ Nancy Pelosi, the Competent Grown-Up Most Everyone Loves to (Pretend) to Hate

© 2010 Peter Free

 

05 November 2010

 

The President’s transfer of his proper role to Congress highlighted the Speaker’s contrasting competence in hers

 

I’ve been critical of the President for abandoning the visionary and directive leadership that the nation needs to Congress ─ an institution that is incapable of finding its way even to the restroom ─ but his lack of spine-strong performance in his role highlighted Speaker Pelosi’s in hers.

 

Professionally competent, determined, and honorable people are the root-stock of a nation’s greatness

 

I value people who bring determination and exceptional competence to their roles in life.  Even when they obviously disagree with much of what I think is valuable or necessary.

 

Nancy Pelosi did that.  She did it in a way that appeared to me, as a political centrist and an outsider to Washington, to put he own ego aside for the good of her professional role and mission.

 

She has been an admirable grownup in a city filled with mostly narcissistic children.

 

Unlike the President, whose role should have been to describe and motivate a constructive vision for this country, the Speaker’s professional role was to carry out the agenda of her party in the overly loose form the President had set.

 

She did that so competently that her achievements as Congress’ cat-herder will make history.  Few Speakers of the House have done the job as effectively, faced with so many obstacles, as she has.

 

Her achievement is especially telling because she had to run the Congressional branch of a political party noted mostly for:

 

(a) its lack of discipline

 

and

 

(b) an inclusivity so wide that it defies intelligent categorization.

 

Certainly a triumph for the first female Speaker of the House.

 

In fact, I suspect that Nancy Pelosi’s tough, group-comes-first femininity had something to do with her ability to corral so many egos into going in roughly one direction.

 

When probable Speaker-to-be John Boehner takes charge, he will have an orders of magnitude simpler job than Speaker Pelosi faced.  The Republican Party is much more disciplined and much less philosophically fragmented that the Democrats.

 

Eugene Robinson’s (05 November 2010) column is a deserved tribute to her

 

Eugene Robinson, Nancy Pelosi, undone by her own success, Washington Post (05 November 2010)

 

Worth reading, whether conservative or liberal

 

Whatever your political stripe, Robinson’s tribute to Speaker Pelosi wrote is worth reading.

 

If only to remind us that highly competent service to the nation stands for something respect-worthy, even when we disagree with its underlying political philosophy.

 

When we lose sight of personal and professional excellence, wherever it is found, our future is dimmer.  Simply because we have devalued the spark that keeps humanity shining.