Carol Platt Liebau reflects on Speaker Pelosi’s accomplishment, while putting the matter in perspective. The irony of Pelosi’s flexing her muscles is that she actually sells herself short. Liebau explains:
“Ultimately, the most frustrating part of Pelosi’s fixation on the “first woman” angle is that it actually results in her selling herself short. She didn’t win the post of Speaker of the House because of her sex or despite it. She won because of her hard work, her fundraising, her long tenure in the House and her political skills — plus her ability to garner more support than the well-qualified man who had run against her. In other words, she won her post in the same way and for the same reasons any man would have. Her sex was simply incidental — as it should have been.
Notwithstanding Nancy Pelosi’s exuberant bicep-flexing in front of the Speaker’s chair last Thursday, her election isn’t significant because it marks the destruction of some “marble ceiling.” It’s significant for a less romantic but more important reason. It demonstrates that even Democrats are occasionally willing to do what other Americans do on a regular basis: Support the person they believe is best for a particular job – regardless of gender.”
Her whole piece is a worthy analysis.