All Blog Posts from Public Eye

CBS White House correspondent Jim Axelrod – you might remember him as the fellow labeled "defeatist" by then-White House press secretary Tony Snow – was involved in another tense exchange last week, this time with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

According to the Examiner article "Pelosi, Reid Take On Reporter":

CBS White House reporter Jim Axelrod mentioned to Pelosi that, come November 2008, the number of American troops in Iraq likely will be the same as in November 2006, when Democrats were swept into power. Then, he asked, “How do you view your stewardship of Congress as anything other than a failure to make the president change course?”

Pelosi was instantly taken aback. “What a lovely objective question on the part of the press!” she remarked.

And the blog world exploded with headlines like "Pelosi Shocked by CBS's 'Failure' Hardball from the Left ..." and "Nancy Pelosi Accuses Reporter of Bias"

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The "Evening News" was the only nightly newscast to cover the Pelosi plane dustup last night. You can watch the story by clicking in the video box at left.

It's hard to get a sense yet of how big the story will turn out to be. The gist is this: House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi is being criticized for requesting an airplane larger and fancier than that used by her predecessor, Dennis Hastert. Pelosi says that she only wants an airplane that can fly between her home state of California and the District of Columbia without refueling, and that the size of the plane doesn't matter. Here's ABC's Jake Tapper's fairly comprehensive rundown of the issues at hand.

The story has been pushed hard by the conservative Washington Times, which got it through leaks from officials within the Bush administration, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. It has slowly worked its way into the mainstream media: It got some play on the morning shows today, and it made the front page of the Los Angeles Times this morning.

National Review Online's David Frum writes that he has "an uneasy feeling that the conservative press may have overhyped this story about Nancy Pelosi's airplane request."

The problem, he writes, is that we don't yet know what Pelosi requested. "If she really and truly did ask for her own personal Boeing 757, as many stories and much radio commentary have implied, well yes obviously that would be a huge scandal. But I keep being struck by the exact phrase in these articles: that she asked for 'access' to a transcontinental plane. If she asked only that she get similar transport to that which was provided to Speaker Hastert, but with larger fuel capacity that could take her nonstop across the continent…then that's a very different matter."

Interestingly, White House spokesman Tony Snow had this to say: “This is a silly story and I think it’s been unfair to the speaker.” Pelosi told Fox News that the Department of Defense is distorting the story to get back at her for her opposition to the war and her criticism of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. She also said that she would fly commercial if necessary.

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Let's just get this point out of the way: Nancy Pelosi is probably getting more positive coverage than she otherwise would because she is a woman. You think she'd get all those flattering profiles if she wasn't the first female speaker of the House of Representatives? It's sure hard to imagine. Just ask Newt.

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.

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The Skinny Today: Story of Marines charged in connection with Haditha killings crowds front pages. Plus, Nancy Pelosi congratulates herself, nation's Governors do the same, and Democrats save their at-risk members. Also, Denver and London are shrouded in travel woes. The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web.

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Last night, "60 Minutes" ran a profile of Representative Nancy Pelosi. If the Democrats take control of the House in the midterm elections, Pelosi will likely become Speaker, the first woman to do so.

Karen Sughrue, who produced the Pelosi profile, says her team started working on the story in August, when a Democratic takeover of the House looked less likely than it does now. "Even though every year the Democrats have predicted they’ll take the House, and we never believe it, this year we believed it was looking doable," she says.

As the Democrats gained momentum, that hunch looked inspired. But the decision to do the story now left "60 Minutes" open to the charge that it was propping up a political party. "The show was very conscious of not wanting to run this any closer to the election than last Sunday," Sughrue says.

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