Nancy Pelosi is probably the most progressive congressional leader Democrats have had in either chamber of Congress for at least two decades. Here DW-Nominate score of neagtive 0.5 puts her solidly in the left-wing of the caucus, even if she has been sliding rightward ever so slightly during her career. As a point of comparison, Richard Gephardt started his career with a score in the mid negative 0.3 range (the lower the score, the more liberal), and only moved to Pelosi's range when he took over the caucus leadership (caucus leaders invariably vote the party line, and thus receive extreme scores on these measures). So, Gephardt had to move noticeably to the left to become Democratic leader, while Pelosi has actually had to move to the right.
It is likely that we won't see someone more progressive than Nancy Pelosi as Speaker for quite some time. As such, it behooves progressives to defend the Speaker when she becomes the target of the right-wing media attack machine. Daily Kos polling shows that she has taken a hit to her favorable rating as a result of this flap, even if other polling suggests the public is split on whether she, or the CIA, is telling the truth on the matter.
The problem is that the defense must be carried out entirely in the media realm. This is a he said / she said story if there ever was one. There won't be a truth commission to clear the matter up, given that President Obama is not going to push for one and that the Senate would probably block it anyway. So, the story will rage as long as Republican leaders keep calling Pelosi a liar since, as we have all learned, when Newt Gingrich criticizes a Democrat, for some reason it is automatically news. Given that the party of no has little else to do these days, they could keep up such criticisms indefinitely.
That is, Republicans can keep up these calls indefinitely unless President Obama forces the media narrative to look at something else. In this light, there is one card President Obama could play that would push any discussion of Nancy Pelosi out of the news cycle for a while: nominate the next Supreme Court justice. Such a nomination would render discussion of Nancy Pelosi to an irrelevant footnote immediately. Even Republicans wouldn't care anymore, since there are few areas of congressional business that interest them more than judicial nominations. It would barely be rushing the nomination at all, given that there already is a short list, and Obama apparently intends to make the nomination by the end of the month anyway.
If President Obama isn't going to push for a truth commission, then he could at least back up Speaker Pelosi by making his Supreme Court nomination later this week. Such a move would push the Pelosi vs. CIA flap out of the media pretty much forever, given both the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, and the extremely busy congressional calendar this summer. Defend Pelosi by pushing the he said vs. she said off the media radar altogether.
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