Barack Obama would bring a new spirit of bipartisanship to Congress and address health care, energy and economic concerns in the first 100 days of his presidency, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday morning.
Pelosi was the featured guest at a breakfast event on the roof of the Denver Athletic Club hosted by Yahoo!, Politico and the Denver Post. Jim VandeHei, Politico executive editor, and Susan Greene, Post metro columnist, peppered the Democratic Speaker with questions about the campaign and what an Obama presidency might look like.
“You would see a different spirit,” Pelosi said.
In the first 100 days of an Obama presidency, she said, Democrats would work to pass bills that have been stymied by President Bush and Republicans in Congress, including measures that would expand the state Children’s Health Insurance Program, fund stem cell research and implement tax credits for renewable energy.
“Science, science, science, science,” she said would be the key to boosting the nation’s ailing economy.
Asked why Democrats haven’t been tougher on President Bush since retaking the majority in Congress, Pelosi said leaders decided to focus on accomplishing change instead of a divisive process to impeach the president.
“We decided to focus on the needs of the people,” she said.
Pelosi didn’t take the bait when Greene asked which celebrity she would compare Republican presumptive presidential nominee U.S. Sen. John McCain to. McCain’s campaign has likened Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
“I’ll leave that to the public culture folks,” she said.
But she did take the opportunity to fire back at one of McCain’s main criticisms of Obama, that he doesn’t have as much experience.
“When they talk about John McCain’s experience, he has the experience of being wrong,” she said.
Despite recent polls showing that Obama and McCain are in a statistical dead heat, Pelosi said she was confident the Illinois Senator would win Nov. 4.
New voters, she said, will propel him to victory.
Michele Lawonn, a Denver Democratic activist, said she liked what Pelosi had to say about the party’s priorities, especially plans to improve access to quality health care. And she agreed that an Obama presidency would be better than another Republican administration.
As a U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton supporter, though, she was disappointed that Pelosi didn’t talk about what Obama needs to do to win over the former Fist Lady’s 18 million primary election voters.
The unity that party leaders keep talking about, Lawonn said, isn’t developing.
“They need to talk to people in the trenches, not just party leadership,” Lawonn said.
Even though she thinks a Democratic president would be better for America, she said, she is still unsure about what she will do when she walks into the voting booth Nov. 4.
“I’m truly in a quandary,” she said. “I’ve never considered not voting in a presidential election.”
