Shades of Gingrich in Pelosi's fumble

WASHINGTON -- Nancy Pelosi is in a position shared by only one other person in more than a half-century. The other person is Newt Gingrich, and the position is that of a House minority leader who later becomes speaker and must deliver a new agenda.

There are huge impediments. The speaker works best as a gavel-wielding moderator, nursing along legislation while remaining somewhat above the fray. The task of twisting arms and keeping party members in line is better performed by the majority leader.

For most of the past eight years, majority leaders Dick Armey and Tom DeLay pushed partisan legislation through the House, while former schoolteacher J. Dennis Hastert presided as speaker with a walrus-like equilibrium.

Pelosi, after less than a week as speaker-elect, will have no such luxury. She won't have a close ally as majority leader, since her favored candidate, Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, lost the job to Pelosi's former rival, Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland. And it would be hard to reinvent herself as a Hastert-like moderator: The public already sees her as the leader of the Democratic revolution, and expects results.

Pelosi reportedly has studied Gingrich's reign, but it's unclear whether she sees him as a positive or a negative role model. One could make a case for either.

Gingrich himself has seized on the Republicans' recent loss to suggest that the party strayed too far from his Contract With America, which he presents as a virtual founding document of the modern GOP. Gingrich, who told Fortune magazine that he hopes to be elected president in 2008, is eager to portray his tenure as speaker, from 1995 to 1998, as an era of great accomplishment.

Gingrich recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the welfare reform bill, which was signed by President Bill Clinton. The bill is viewed by many as a big success, dramatically stripping down welfare rolls while giving millions of recipients strong incentives to seek work. Gingrich also touts his role as architect of budget plans that -- again with Clinton's assent -- soon yielded a surplus, ending decades of deficits.

But Gingrich's tenure as speaker also ushered in the intense partisanship that has soured debate in Washington. And, perhaps more alarming to Pelosi, Gingrich's speakership was a failure for his party: Gingrich gave Clinton a priceless foil -- a rival whose petulance made Clinton seem steady and presidential.

Gingrich's shutdown of the government in a budget dispute, and his politically tone-deaf complaints about being asked to exit Air Force One from the rear door, suggested an ego out of control. And as Gingrich's popularity plunged, Clinton's rose and he cruised to an easy re election.

So one lesson for Pelosi is that the House speaker isn't the president, and shouldn't try to present himself or herself as the president's equal. (Gingrich, in another politically disastrous move, asked for network television time to deliver his own State-of-the-Union-type address.)

No matter how distrustful people are of the president, they still recognize that he is the nation's chief executive. No speaker -- elected by a majority of the House -- can compete with the president's nationally elected mandate, and no speaker can take away the president's platform for presenting his agenda.

During the Carter, Reagan, and first Bush administrations, Democratic speakers Carl Albert, Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill Jr., Jim Wright, and Thomas S. Foley were effective only when they stayed out of the spotlight.

O'Neill was beloved in New England and in House lore for his personal charm, but he could not match any president, especially Reagan, as a communicator.

O'Neill seemed more comfortable in front of a poker table than a lectern.

Some of his awkwardness was due to the job, not the person. A House leader is by nature a dealmaker, and dealmakers don't come across favorably with the public. Recent House history is full of leaders who thrived in smoke-filled rooms and faltered in the light of day.

A partial list would include Wright, Foley, DeLay, Hastert, longtime Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski and, of course, Gingrich.

Pelosi is, by House standards, an appealing personality and a winning politician. But the House doesn't fully prepare its members for national leadership. So Pelosi must be aggressive in delivering on her agenda -- but modest in her approach -- and disdainful of the national spotlight.

She should strive to keep her members in line, but not be seen as a bully. Last week's rebuke by her fellow Democrats for trying to promote Murtha should be a learning experience: The speaker who governs best is the speaker who's seen as governing the least.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.