Don’t underestimate this speaker

Drinking the first cup of coffee in the morning is, for me, no more important than is reading that day’s New York Times. It’s a daily ritual, alternately enjoyable, informative and infuriating.

How infuriating? Over the years, the Times has written — make that preached — on the need for Republicans to become a more tolerant, “big tent “ political party. How? By including voters and candidate with a “pro-choice” position on the thorny issue of abortion. But I search in vain to hear The New York Times tell Democrats they, too, can be a real “big tent” party by welcoming other Democrats who hold a “pro-life” position on abortion.

But the reality is that without elected pro-life House Democrats in their caucus, Democrats would be exactly what they were between 1995 and 2007: a frustrated and powerless minority. Even absent any editorial encouragement from the Times or the “liberal press,” House Democrats began recruiting, electing and embracing pro-life candidates who could win in culturally conservative congressional districts. That is how you build both a coalition party and a House majority where Democratic members, while not agreeing on every issue, do mostly agree on most issues.

As the Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California was one of the principal architects and engineers of her party’s taking and holding the House in the 2006 and 2008 elections. As the first woman speaker, she has done what none of her male predecessors, including legendary Sam Rayburn and “Tip” O’Neill, had ever been able to do: win House passage of a national health care reform bill.

Let us stipulate that Speaker Pelosi is not a beloved national figure. In the most recent Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, 26 percent of voters registered favorable feelings toward her, while 42 percent expressed negative feelings. But within the halls of the Capitol, Pelosi has shown herself to be Master of the House.

A check of Pelosi’s scheduler’s records over the past 10 months reveals 35 full party caucuses and close to 180 meetings on health care. She has had one-on-one colleague sessions, and meetings with the Black Caucus, with the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats, with anxious rural members, with the Hispanic Caucus, angry at the bill’s treatment of undocumented immigrants, with the liberal Progressive Caucus, with small business Democrats, and with the Pro-Choice Caucus, to name a few. “The Democratic Party,” former Speaker Jim Wright noted, “is a mixture, an amalgam, a mosaic. Call it a fruitcake.”