Stewart asks smart, probing questions on a variety of subjects. Questions that journalists should have been asking for years, if we still had real journalists.
And Pelosi pretty much dodges every single one. All she had to do was essentially say,
"Yes, lobbying and money in the system are screwing everything up. Too many Democrats have succumbed to that, too, but it's really hard because the system is broken and it takes money to get elected. The Volcker rule is a great idea, but we're having trouble passing it in the form it should be passed because the banks have a lot of power in Congress. Yeah, America has a deficit problem and now there's a commission to deal with it. But all we really need to do is end the Bush tax cuts for the rich and reduce our commitments overseas while cutting corporate welfare at home--but guess what, the Republicans will hold anything and everything hostage to stop us from doing that. So we're sort of deadlocked. We got a lot of good stuff done between 2009 and November 2010, but we didn't get a chance to do enough and we had to deal with the horrible economy Bush left us. And I think that if Americans give us the opportunity to get things done again, we need to focus on making changes to the system so that it isn't as easy to corrupt the system as it is now."
That would be so easy to say. It wouldn't even be terribly controversial, nor would it even obligate her to act. But she couldn't say it. And Nancy Pelosi is one of the better legislators out there, one of the most liberal Democrats in Congress.