Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Breakfast with Speaker Pelosi
Even in the crazy world of Washington bloggers, I've had quite a twelve hour run. First, late last night I received word that the BlogPAC award was announced (you can read about it in the next post down). Then, this morning I found myself in the conference room of Speaker Pelosi's office with other bloggers and reporters talking about the war, impeachment, health care, the ban on gays in the military and a lot more. It was quite exciting to sit just two three seats away from the Speaker for an hour. The fact that it was the first woman speaker -- one who happens to represent San Francisco's Castro district -- made it all the better.Naturally, the question of impeaching the criminal-in-chief came up. Basically, the Speaker said she would support impeachment if she wasn't Speaker. Pelosi's argument against it is compelling. Washington is a power game. Those who have it want to hold it...and she clearly felt that impeachment would not help the Democrats retain control of Congress and win the White House. The outcomes of other goals is more predictable, she said.
Pelosi spoke about the art of politics and about keeping a caucus together on the issues. The Speaker seems to have a plan... she explained that it's her hope to that once the caucus is strong, she can lead them to more progressive positions. Her positions on most issues are great (although I have personally heard enough from politicians who seem to care about health insurance, but only for kids and seniors).
At the end of the session, she looked down the table and noted that it's "fabulous" to be Speaker, "absolutely fabulous."
After the program ended, I introduced myself to the Speaker and told her that in addition to the news responsibilities for PageOneQ that brought me to the event that I was also the blogger who was reporting on anti-gay closet cases in Congress. What the Speaker said to me in response was most definitely off the record so it will have to remain private. I will tell you I left the event feeling great.
The audio of the session will be posted. I'll link to it when it's up.
A special thanks to Politics TV and Talk Radio News Service for pulling this together.
By: Michael Rogers
|