Nancy Pelosi is very close to be the first woman to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. She will be the highest ranking woman, ever, in American politics. She comes to a job which has been held, until this point, by Hastert the Unspeakerable, whose malignant neglect has let a thicket of weeds and poisonous plants grow up. She is not as theatrical as Harry Reid, nor as colourful as some previous Speakers. However colorful is not going to be helpful in the labor she has set for her - mucking out the Augean stables.

For this this kind of steady task, different qualities are required. Qualities such as determination, level headedness, and the ability to reach consensus among very diverse points of view. Nancy Pelosi must then errect a big tent in the House, which will create the ability of the Democratic caucus to move bills without losing either the urban core of her party, or the vital votes that stream out past the center of American politics and towards the right. Right now the House is a jungle, and that must be fixed before it can become a circus.

One reason why Harry Reid jumped out to more visibility, both in the old media and on the internet is that he filled the need for a public face for the Democratic Party. In an environment where major news organizations have hired people specifically to act as ambassadors to the right wing, and have trooped to do hard right radio interviews, Reid embodied the Carvillesque "had enough?" fiestiness.

Nancy Pelosi is not that kind of public figure. But then, the House is not the Senate.

Pelosi's job is to create party unity in the House, which she has done an excellent job of - there have been fewer defections, and more caucus unity than in decades - the Democratic Caucus is starting to vote party line at levels comparable to the Repbulican Caucus. More over, there are fewer maverick moments from the Blue Dog Democrats, and in general, very little kick the base rhetoric. Pelosi has, and will have, very little room for error. This means that caution, rather than daring, is going to continue to be the hallmark of her tenure.

Reid's job is to put a good face on what the members of his caucus are going to do, with or without his permission. They have the power to push their own agendas, and as long as a member can command the support of 40 senators in backing his holds, has a range of weapons to deny or delay legislation that the Speaker can do little about. Senators have unlimited debate, and far higher national profile. Lieberman is going to get to the Senate having bucked the party's voters, and yet, he is going to be welcome back in, with full seniority. Or else.

In the House however, the Speaker can exercise very real terrors over members who stray. Between the Speaker's office, the Rules Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee - it is possible to cut off the oxygen from a member who goes to far. Conversely, the Speaker has a much larger basket of carrots to hand out. A speaker, by making some individual legislator the point man on some issue, can make him or her a star almost overnight. Murtha went from an almost unknown congressman, one with a reputation for log rolling and pork, to being the hero of the House Democratic Caucus in an instant.

Thus a Senator can throw a trial balloon against the wall, and wait to see if it can get consensus, command a majority, or gather a fillibuster, or support a hold. In the House, disagreement and discussion happen first, and in private. This means that Speaker Pelosi will, well, speak less. But the words are going to mean a great deal more, because they will generally be backed by the weight of the entire caucus, or close to the entire caucus. Pelosi will never be just shooting from the lip. Contrast this with the Senate, which, on occasion, has been Halfgaffe-istan.

The most important qualities, then, are the ability to hand out, rather than take, credit, and the ability to coordinate the powerful procedural tools of the House Speakership with the entire caucus. The Senate favorites stunts and showmanship, the House favors a Speaker who can lay siege to an issue, or even a President. This is how Tip O'Neill gave a human heart to Reaganism, and moved much of the crucial legislation to keep the middle class and working class from dying why Volcker's disinflationary cure worked its way through the economic system. For example, this bill

The key to this was the long fight over Social Security. Under pressure to scale back or even phase out the program, O'Neill's House fought back - which began with Mo Udall's report and culminated with a host of legislation. Even Reagan, could not stand up to the steam roller of a House that had made up its mind, and a Speaker who wasn't going to make enemies, but wasn't going to make many concessions either. Look at the list - one could not tell there was the Great Republican Communicator signing these into law, and a Republican Senate as the other chamber.

Pelosi is, over the next two years, going to be facing a very similar situation, with either a Republican Senate, or a Democratic Senate caucus that will run from a disgruntled Leiberman and a nearly Republican Ben Nelson on the right, to Bernie Sanders on the left. She is going to have to move legislation that will have rock solid support from her caucus, and she will not have O'Neill's capacious majority to do it with. To get anything done is going to require a consensus in the public mind much wider than the Democratic Party. This means that the House is going to have to look at the long list of complaints of Democratic leaning independents, and see how to serve up bills that almost defy the Republicans in the Senate to block them, or Bush to veto them. It might not be the stuff of grand vision, but it is going to be a steady diet that will purge the body politic of the casual corruption that has been usual under Hastert and DeLay.

If the stuff of "Revises the intrastate allocation formula to disregard a reduction in a local government's adjusted taxes if: (1) the reduction is caused by a specific economic dislocation; and (2) the reduction would mean a decrease of 20 percent or more in the government's allocation." (Again from the 98th Congress on the revenue sharing) isn't the kind of thing that gets bloggers cheering or sunday morning talk show hosts chattering, it is the kind of thing that we are going to see out of the House under Pelosi - targetted, specific, into the weeds, and with real net effect. Read the legislative-ese again, it says that areas hit hard by the then just recently ended recession would not have revenue sharing funds reduced, and it made it so that areas that were about to get hammered under the existing formula would not get wiped out. That may not mean much in slogan terms, but for a small burg in somewhere Michigan, or a neighborhood in Boston, it means the difference between a police officer or doctor still being on the job, and not being there.

While not all politics is local, in the end it manifests itself on the local level. While some would like a Speaker who sounds like a proto-President, the reality is that we are about to have several proto-presidents running around, and we will hear a great deal from them. While this process called "2008" is going on, someone is going to have to peer down through the layers of government and the interlocking rules that hold those layers together, and find ways of reaching down to the bottom, where people actually live.

That person will be Speaker Nancy Pelosi.