America, Meet Nancy.
And Pelosi, ever the politician, knows as much. Remember the scene at her swearing in, when Pelosi surrounded herself with kids? The photo-op wasn't an accident – it was designed to reinforce the idea that the new speaker is a mother and grandmother. (As a friend of mine noted, the House chamber that day looked a bit like romper room.) The fact is, the press corps loves these kinds of breaking-the-glass-ceiling stories, and Pelosi is going to milk that fact for all its worth.
After all, we're now at the moment where many Americans are deciding what they think of Pelosi, and their initial impressions are likely to stick. Republicans want people to think of Pelosi as a "San Francisco liberal," not a sympathetic grandmother, but they haven't been able to get much traction – yet. Not that the Democrats have either. According to a CBS News poll released yesterday,
"[m]ore than seven in 10 Americans are undecided or haven't heard enough about Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and the first woman Speaker of the House, to have an opinion of her." Pelosi will be one of the leading faces of the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future, and both sides are desperate to define her before people make up their minds about Pelosi and, by extension, her party.
The question for members of the media is whether or not they have a responsibility to resist their urge to portray Pelosi positively because of her status as a pioneer. It's hard to find fault with the media's impulse to elevate Pelosi for making America's leadership look more like America. At the same time, the press has a responsibility to cover politicians from both parties equally, at least if it wants to maintain some claim to the tarnished mantle of objectivity.
So far, reporters have mostly given Pelosi a fair shake once they've gotten the "this is a historic time" stuff out of the way – Bob Schieffer wasn't pitching softballs in that "Face The Nation" interview yesterday, for example. Democrats have been smart to exploit the media's sympathy for Pelosi's ascendancy, something Republicans, who passed on a chance to elevate someone like Deborah Pryce, have largely failed to do. It'll be interesting to watch how Pelosi coverage plays out as the business of the 110th Congress begins in earnest. Yesterday on CNN's "Reliable Sources," David Frum suggested the negative stories were coming. When it comes to the press, he said, "you pay them now or you pay them later."