Pelosi's Values

Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias writes approvingly of Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Yglesias » Pelosi: No Regrets

You don’t get to be Speaker without being a shrewd political thinker, but a big part of her shrewdness was not overdoing the political thinking. She always kept her values front and center and made the political thinking subordinate to her substantive mission in politics. The politics, in other words, was a means to an end and the ends she served were important. We need more people like that in DC, not fewer.

I don't disagree that Pelosi kept her values front and center, the problem is that her values don't match mine, or much of the rest of the country for that matter.  They may be perfectly aligned with the voters of her California congressional district, but beyond that I'm not so sure.

I will say that I agree we need more people who are willing to stick with their values.  Candidates have a hand in this, to be sure, but voters are largely responsible for finding and then electing politicians whose values they agree with and that have made a convincing case that they can stick with those values.  For many of us, we appear to have fulfilled the first half of that formula with Tuesday's election.  Now it remains to be seen if we were right about the second half.