Katie Allison Granju, knoxnews.comLet me go on the record today with an opinion I've held for a while, but hadn't yet expressed publicly: Nancy Pelosi needs to go as Speaker of the House.
Some Republicans suggested yesterday that her highly partisan speech just before the bailout vote was the reason the bill failed - because it offended some GOP members so much that they switched their "yes" votes to "no." This is absurd, of course, as no one was going to base a decision on this historic, monumentally important issue at a moment of national crisis on whether Nancy Pelosi had irritated them that day. Pelosi's speech had nothing to do with the ultimate outcome of the bill.
However, the speech was incredibly inappropriate. At a moment when the Speaker should have been rallying the entire membership of the House to pull together as Americans and solve the crisis before them, Pelosi chose instead to use her pulpit to lay blame and point fingers. There is certainly plenty of blame to go around, and some finger pointing is going to have to occur as we decide what specific mistakes were made and how we can avoid repeating them. But yesterday was not the time.
Yesterday was a time for statesmanship and gravitas, qualities that are critical in the individual who is only a few degrees away from the presidency, and who is vested with representing the entire body of the House of Representatives. In our two party system, there is no way to leave partisan politics out of the Speaker's role, but Pelosi acts more like a House majority or minority leader, or a whip - or even like the DNC Chair - than she does like the great Speakers of yore, like Sam Rayburn and Tip O'Neill. . . .
It demeans the role of Speaker for Pelosi to use her position to take every possible opportunity to aggressively bash the GOP, no matter how inappropriate the setting or context. And I say this as a voter who likely agrees with Pelosi on specific policy issues 95% of the time.
If Americans really want change in Washington, and improvement in the mean-spirited and debilitating partisan malaise that seems to have settled over our Congress, then we need to start with working to get rid of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Our House of Representatives - and we - deserve better.