Stimulus battle puts Pelosi in spotlight

The drama over President Obama's stimulus package has put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at center stage. When the curtain comes down on the final plan, the reviews may come to this: Did she play the uniter or the divider?

Pelosi, D-Calif., who has consistently talked about working across the aisle, led the charge last week as the initial $819 billion version of the stimulus package, formally the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, emerged from the House, approved without a single Republican vote.

Republicans managed what some had thought impossible: a show of unity and resistance to the speaker little more than a week after the popular Democratic president took the oath of office.

Fired up by a Rush Limbaugh-led charge against what Republican leaders called a "Pelosi-Reid" pork-laden package, they took to the airwaves and the blogs to lambaste items such as $335 million for education against sexually transmitted diseases and a makeover of the National Mall.

They talked up the need for more tax relief, which they said would bolster the economy, and howled that they had been shut out of the process.

"The Republicans who seemed so lost and so in disarray all of a sudden grasped the upper hand," said research fellow Bill Whalen of the conservative Hoover Institution. "They've managed to change the focus from what the package will do to what's in the package: waste and pork."

With new Gallup polls showing only 38 percent of Americans support the plan without major changes and that nearly 80 percent think the plan will not stimulate the economy enough, it appears the president "is slowly losing the high ground on this," Whalen said.

GOP strategist Patrick Dorinson agreed, saying, "Speaker Pelosi lost round one in the message war. She misread the election results. They were overwhelming for Barack Obama, but Congress is still languishing with a 27 percent approval rating."

Dorinson said Pelosi appeared to take Obama's approval as a signal her party could "make a grab bag of Democratic wish lists" and add them to the package. "Republicans rightly pointed out the hypocrisy."

Jon Fleischman, publisher of the popular FlashReport.org GOP Web site, said, "The message that is getting out there is that you can put the label stimulus on anything you want, but the devil is in the details. With Republicans unanimously opposing the plan, it made everyone step back and say: 'What was so egregious that you couldn't get one Republican on board?' "

Thanks to Pelosi, "the president is off to a rough start," GOP strategist Rob Stutzman said. "The Republicans are in great shape to sit back and watch to see if Obama can translate his organizational oomph to this effort," he said.

With the president engaged in a high-profile push for backing from voters and legislators, Pelosi will be at the forefront of a counterstrike to sell any compromise effort.

Her missives this week touted that "growing bipartisan support" includes 13 governors — including Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger of California — who have endorsed the deal.

Political observers, some of whom have wondered aloud if Pelosi and Obama are engaged in a "good guy, bad guy" routine — one that might result in a more modest proposal with additional tax-relief measures to mollify the GOP — said that now is crunchtime and that much is riding on the deal for Pelosi, her president and her party.

"She hasn't lost it yet, but she runs the risk of it if she and the president can't get some of the (GOP members) to back it," said Barbara O'Connor, professor of political communication at California State University, Sacramento.

With the bill being revised by the Senate and headed to a conference committee, "she will get one more shot to prove she can lead her House as a bipartisan leader and do what she's supposed to do," O'Connor said.

She said Pelosi's challenge from the start was enormous: trying to persuade elated Democratic House members after the election to curb their enthusiasm and their ambitions while getting conservative Republicans to reach across the aisle.

"All politics are local," O'Connor said. She noted that in budget-battered states, where the pressure is on to get infrastructure funding, the mood among Democrats is: "If we won this election, why shouldn't we get some stuff?"

Pelosi, she said, understands those tensions and "she'll get through it."

Some Democrats said that with Americans concerned about the recession and its economic impacts, Pelosi has a message that will win the day.

"At this stage, with the economy in a ditch, action matters," said Peter Ragone, a Democratic strategist from San Francisco. "And getting something done will carry the day.

"Anyone who's viewed as an obstructionist in this environment is going to pay a steep price, and the Republicans are really playing with fire by coming off as obstructionist."