Tuesday, November 16, 2010

A tale of leadership

So it turns out that Paul Ryan has had precisely one more conversation with Nancy Pelosi than I have:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, suggested Republicans get along best with [Steny] Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat who will stay in the No. 2 position in the next Congress."

I get along pretty well with Steny. He's the only one we really talk to," Ryan said Monday morning on CNBC. "I don't know Nancy Pelosi. I had a 30-second conversation with her about six years ago, and that's about it."

That's pretty astonishing if you think about it. Ryan isn't a backbencher; of all the younger Republicans who have emerged in the last decade, he might be the most impressive of the lot. You would think that Pelosi would at least have wanted a little insight into what someone like Ryan is thinking.

I remain convinced that hubris had a lot to do with what happened to the Democrats in this cycle. Nancy Pelosi has long been able to operate without any effective opposition -- she represents an utterly safe congressional district and because of the institutional setup of the House, she could operate however she pleased. Lord Acton warned about this sort of thing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Why would you need to deal with members of the loyal opposition when your plan is to as they say in Spinal Tap "Shove it right down their throat?" Pelosi can now enjoy life on the other side of the rainbow. She treated everyone as if they were irrelevant, and now she gets to be irrelevant. I hope she has fun flying commercial!