What the Speakers said
The new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is exalting in the power, and has been at celebratory events all this week.
“We will not just break through a glass ceiling, we will break through a marble ceiling,” she said. “In more than 200 years of history, there was an established pecking order — and I cut in line.”
After calling herself “the most powerful woman in America,” Mrs. Pelosi flexed her right muscle like a weight lifter to much applause at an event yesterday titled a “women’s tea.”Â
“All right, let’s hear it for the power,” she screamed as the jubilant applause continued.
Meanwhile, her predecessor was unceremoniously moving boxes to a new and more obscure office.
Denny Hastert, the hulking former Speaker of the House, shuffled jovially through the halls, no longer second in line for the presidency, with a sharply diminished security staff of one rather short bodyguard. “That’s life, you adjust,” he said.
There can be great wisdom in brevity. And power in humility.
