Pelosi: Another step back for Dems

I’m of two minds when it comes to the news that Nancy Pelosi has been re-elected to serve as the leader of Democrats in the House of Representatives, as minority leader now that the party has lost its majority spot in the body.

OK, I get it – she was a solid leader in the walkup to 2006 and 2008 when Democrats were first in the minority in Congress and then were working to take back the White House.

But – and this is a big but – what about her horrific turn as House speaker?

She was more Newt Gingrich than she was anything like Tip O’Neill to the general public, which is to say, her political opponents were able to use her as a wedge to get voters to see things their way more than she was anything resembling a respected, revered statesman.

Part of that is a sign of the times, agreed. John Boehner is the next future ex-speaker, and like Pelosi, he was great as a minority leader, great at fundraising, great at keeping everybody in line and pointed toward the goal line.

Like Gingrich, like Vance Wilkins, the architect of the Republican revolution in the Virginia General Assembly in the 1990s, both Pelosi and Boehner are much better in the minority than in the ultimate seat of power in the majority.

Ask me, and the most effective House speaker wasn’t even Tip O’Neill, but whoever it was that served as House speaker post-Gingrich.

(Oh, yeah. Dennis Hastert.)

I don’t remember Democrats running anti-Dennis Hastert campaigns. Certainly they wouldn’t have done so successfully. Hastert was like a good baseball umpire – you don’t know his name, which means he was doing his job.

Which brings me to my second mind. I said I think Pelosi was better in the minority than she was in the majority, so … now that she’s back in the minority, naturally she should be back in a key leadership role. Right?

Imagine the disgraced Gingrich back in power. (Imagine the guy running for president. What’s that all about?)

She’s damaged goods – a brand name with a tarnish that not only turns off new customers but isn’t particularly appealing to the loyalists anymore.

I hear the argument that based on her record of having built up the party once as minority leader she is the perfect person to know how to get that job done a second time. I argue back that she could just as easily do so from behind the scenes without having to have the title and the attention.

That she even put her name out for consideration after the 2010 midterms suggests to me that it’s all about the trappings of power. Which is unfortunate for her cause, because her clinginess makes it less likely that Democrats will have anything to hold onto post-2012.