Nancy Pelosi Totally Pushed the Mute Button on a Call With Barack Obama, Allegedly

By Katie J.M. Baker  |  September 24, 2012 | 5:05pm
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The nation is still abuzz about Romney’s “47%” secret video fiasco, so it’s only natural that the Romney-Ryan campaign would yearn to release their own super confidential political discussion. But it seems like they couldn’t find one and thus went with a rather lackluster Plan B by dramatizing an anecdote from Bob Woodward’s new book, The Price of Politics, in which Nancy Pelosi allegedly put Obama on mute during a discussion about the stimulus package that took place last summer. This is kind of like the time in 8th grade when Shana called Ali while I was on three-way, i.e., clearly of immense political importance.

Sure, the video’s message is strong — “If he cannot lead his own party, how can he lead America?” is the takeaway — and it’ll likely resonate with voters who already think Obama’s an inadequate POTUS. But it’s pretty pathetic that the Romney-Ryan campaign resorted to reenacting an incident that Woodward heard about from an anonymous official, an event Pelosi denied to Politico:

“[T]hat didn’t happen. … First of all, whatever friendship you may have with an individual, when the president of the United States is having a conversation with the Speaker of the House and the leader in the Senate, … it’s a formal situation; it’s history. Every call is history. … [M]ostly, I clear the room when I’m talking to the president. I don’t want anybody hearing one side of a [conversation]. I clear the room and then I take notes …
“[T]he president is not a person who’s long on the phone … [I]f we’re going to have a small-talk conversation, that will be another conversation. But [if] there is an official purpose, … when he’s finished, it’s over. [Laughter.] So, I don’t even have any idea of where they could ever have gotten that … [It would have been so] disrespectful and … I viewed every one of those calls … as history. It wasn’t Nancy and Barack. It was the president of the United States and the Speaker of the House.”

Pelosi also said she “didn’t think about [Woodward] a lot.” Burn.

Woodward, who is apparently not so kind to Obama in his book, stands by his story.

WOODWARD V. PELOSI [Politico]

 
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