Move over, Hillary, its Nancy's turn to take center stage.
This past Monday, Nancy Pelosi was all over your television set, penetrating as many American living rooms as she could with her new message: Girl Power Forever -- aka "Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters."
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most powerful woman of all?
Nancy Pelosi showed the Republicans who's boss of the Hill recently. After promising "fairness and open debate," according to David Rogers at Politico.com, Pelosi resorted to hard-knuckle politics to shut down the GOP's chance to offer any policy alternatives to the Dems' official party line. She's not exactly apologetic about it.
Rogers reports: "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."
The thing about liberal Democrats is that they are so much better than Republicans, when they have the power of using such power ruthlessly. They have no qualms about process. There are good guys and there are bad guys, and, well, Pelosi is the biggest good guy of them all.
Obama -- in front of 200,000 screaming Germans -- anointed himself the one to save the planet. But Nancy Pelosi is not going to let him get away with stealing all the limelight.
"I respect the office that I hold," she said to Rogers. "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."
Fair play, respect for the rights of the minority -- all fall before the sweeping lese majesty of the elevants Nancy Pelosi. Does it matter that public support for Congress is headed toward single digits?
Liberal Democrats' respect for democratic process has never been weaker. As John Fund points out in The Wall Street Journal, organized liberalism has taken dead aim at Ward Connerly's efforts to take the issue of racial quotas directly to the American people. Boycotts, intimidation, arcane legal maneuvers -- anything to keep that issue out of the people's hands is fine.
New alliances are forming around Pelosi the Magnificent. T. Boone Pickens, who funded the "Swift Boat" campaign against John Kerry in 2004, has suddenly had a vision: Saving the planet requires a stream of government funding into companies that he owns.
Why not? The Republicans proved unable to lift restrictions on drilling, and as they say in Iraq, people prefer a strong horse to a weak horse any day.
For intellectual refreshment, Madame Speaker Pelosi turns to Umberto Eco or Pope Benedict's "Jesus of Nazareth."
"It's like reading, but it's also almost a meditation," she says
And its far more refreshing to the spirit of the nation's highest-ranking Catholic politician than, say, Pope Benedict's repeated calls to support marriage as the union of husband and wife or to respect human life from the first moment of conception.
Duh.
With "Know your Power," Nancy Pelosi is casting herself in the role of role model for all the little girls in the country -- and perhaps their aging mothers, who were shell-shocked that Hillary Clinton is never going to be president of the United States.
"The goal," she told Rogers, "is to give an answer to people who all over the country say to me, 'How did you go from the kitchen to the Congress, being a housewife to the House speaker?' And it was just a short little story of that."
Next year, if Democrats control both houses of Congress and the presidency, Nancy Pelosi may find the task of governing less easy than that of inspirational autobiographer.
The verdict on her effectiveness as speaker is still out.
But, no matter.
So far, everything's coming up Nancy.
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