It's A Speaker! It's A Plane! It's A…Scandal?
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.
Video: 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.
Regardless of how the story plays out, the damage to Pelosi's reputation may already be done. On "Good Morning America," Chris Cuomo said this to Tapper: "Jake, is this about security or ego? Sounds like a case of jet envy."
And here's Matt Lauer's comment to David Gregory on the "Today" show:
"Hey David, before I let you go, let's talk about the, the size of the plane that Nancy Pelosi has requested from the Pentagon. Depending on the spin you want to believe here. Either, either the Speaker says it's to travel efficiently back and forth to her home district. The Republicans are saying it's an abuse of power. Either way does it just look bad from a PR standpoint?"
Gregory responded that he did think it was "a problem."