House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says she is just trying to save the planet. 

From the Politico.

Just call her Nancy the Navigator.

“I have always loved longitude,” Nancy Pelosi says before breaking into laughter. “I love latitude; it’s in the stars. But longitude, it’s about time. … Time and clocks and all the rest of that have always been a fascination for me.”

“The Geographer,” Jan Vermeer’s portrait of a Dutch mapmaker staring out a window with a sea chart before him, is a favorite of the House speaker. But mostly, Pelosi is drawn to the explorers of the Age of Discovery — Balboa, Magellan, Vasco da Gama — all struggling at sea without an accurate way to measure East-West progress. And she is fascinated by the historic melding of science and politics in the race to find a solution, the modern chronometer — much as today’s world seeks answers such as an electric car battery in the energy debate that now consumes both Pelosi and Congress.

“Whoever makes that discovery, rules,” she says.

Eighteen months after taking power, the California Democrat will need to summon all her own navigation skills for the waters ahead.

She hit the national television circuit Monday with her new book, “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters.” Next month, she’ll chair the convention in Denver that will nominate Barack Obama — “the next president of the United States. I feel very certain of that,” Pelosi says.

From Medicare to housing to the new GI Bill, her Democrats have driven the legislative train more than the White House has in recent months. And even when the Democratic Party gave ground to the White House on terrorism surveillance, Pelosi’s credentials were such that Obama felt safer embracing the deal — after she did so first publicly.

Yet with this success comes new danger — like explorers lost at sea without longitude. Until now, Pelosi has been perceived as a counterweight to President Bush. But after the Democratic convention in Denver, and going into November, voters will take a closer measure of her performance — and fairness — since Democrats could very well be the new ruling party, controlling Congress and the White House in January.

At the same time, the wave of change her party has ridden could come crashing down. The pressures facing the nation — troubled financial markets, falling housing prices and rising energy and food costs — are genuinely historic. The next president will inherit a projected deficit of close to $500 billion, and Democrats admit privately that they were caught off guard by the spike in gasoline prices and the hardship it has imposed on middle-income and working-class voters.

With fewer than 20 legislative days before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the entire appropriations process has largely ground to a halt because of the ham-handed fighting that followed Republican attempts to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration. And after promising fairness and open debate, Pelosi has resorted to hard-nosed parliamentary devices that effectively bar any chance for Republicans to offer policy alternatives.

“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

“I respect the office that I hold,” she says. “And when you win the election, you win the majority, and what is the power of the speaker? To set the agenda, the power of recognition, and I am not giving the gavel away to anyone.”

The planet needs saving alright, from liberals like Pelosi who are leading this country in the wrong direction.

 

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