By CARLA MARINUCCI
Thursday, April 12, 2007
During the fall congressional campaigns, Republicans raised the specter of what "San Francisco liberal" Nancy Pelosi would do as speaker should the Democrats win control of the House. Now, after three months in the role, Pelosi has become the marquee player in a nightly passion play _ as the Democrat Republicans most love to hate.
The latest episode in what has become an increasingly vociferous anti-Pelosi firestorm: her public discussion at the side of California Rep. Tom Lantos, Democratic chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who suggested at a press conference Tuesday that a trip to Iran to talk with that nation's vilified president might be in the best interests of American diplomacy.
The White House weighed in Wednesday, calling the mere possibility of a visit to Iran "unproductive and unhelpful."
But Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman, said that Pelosi "has no intention of going to Iran."
"As she said (Tuesday), the president of Iran's statements about the destruction of Israel and denial of the Holocaust are repulsive and outside the circle of civilized human behavior," Daly said in a statement.
"She has great respect for Mr. Lantos, who is the only Holocaust survivor in the Congress and a staunch supporter of Israel and who would like to go to begin a dialogue there, as the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended."
The discussion, just a week after Pelosi set off a political controversy with her trip to Syria during the congressional recess, set the critics at it again. They raged about everything from her choice of suits to her choice of words, calling her everything from a traitor to a presidential wannabe to just plain crazy.
The onslaught could be having some effect. Despite polls that show a majority of Americans agree with the Democratic position on Iraq, and poll numbers for Congress as a whole have improved, the speaker's personal approval rating has taken a hit. An AP-Ipsos poll taken during Pelosi's Syria trip _ and at the height of the attacks _ showed the speaker's job-approval rating had dropped from 51 percent in January to 46 percent, and her disapproval rating increased from 35 percent to 44 percent.
One conservative nonprofit group, Move America Forward, pumped out fund-raising e-mails soliciting donations because "on a day that Nancy Pelosi considers appeasement of Iran to follow up her dose of appeasement of Syria, we can think of no better time to fight back!"
Conservative commentator Rich Lowry of the National Review told Fox News that Pelosi is "absurdly crazy to want to go on this magical mystery tour of every rogue state in the world," apparently intent on having a dialogue "with the most vicious and dishonest thug regimes on the planet."
The latest flash-fire underscores how Pelosi _ showcasing some skillful political instincts _ has effectively "rattled the Republicans" and the White House on a variety of levels, said Chris Lehane, the Democratic strategist who has advised President Bill Clinton and was spokesman to the 2000 presidential campaign for Vice President Al Gore.
First, "she has been very smart to be conscious of how she looks and sounds," Lehane said. "She has challenged the direction the president and his party are taking the country with a tone that is more in sadness than in anger _ and more as a mom and grandma than as a partisan."
Lehane said Pelosi has been careful to be seen as approaching issues "in a prescriptive way _ looking for solutions and answers and not as merely an obstructionist," and she has "worked to have Congress play the checks-and-balances role for the first time in a long time on issues Americans care about."
It doesn't hurt, he said, that Pelosi "is engaged in a back-and-forth with a president whose numbers are comparable to Dick Nixon's in the depths of Watergate."
But Jon Fleischman, founder of the popular FlashReport.org GOP Internet publication and blog, insisted Pelosi is the gift that keeps on giving to conservative Republicans.
FlashReport gets a huge boost anytime Pelosi makes headlines, he said.
"I'm hearing from more and more people who are just outraged," Fleishman said after Tuesday's speculation about an Iran trip. "The No. 1 sentiment was: When did Air Force One go down with President Bush and Vice President Cheney on board so that Pelosi can rush in and be president?"
Fleischman said that "there's no doubt that the more extreme she gets _ including using her office to tread on the responsibilities of the White House, it increases (Internet) traffic. It's great for my business _ but bad for the country."
(E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.)
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