AOL's Andrea Stone reports that Nancy Pelosi may be moving out of her spacious office in the Capitol, but the woman who broke the marble ceiling to become the first female speaker of the House has already moved into the ranks of the most effective legislators in history. "While right now she is overshadowed by this thumping, she's going to rank quite high in the pantheon of modern speakers" of the last 100 years, said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Only Texas Democrat Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving speaker in history, whose parliamentary maneuvers cleared the way for passage of civil rights and social legislation in the 1960s, ranks higher. Yet historians and nonpartisan political observers who take the long view say that Pelosi stands out among the 52 lawmakers who have held the job set forth in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution. And not just because all the others were men. "The last Congress in particular has been remarkable in its productivity — in both the number of bills enacted and their scope — and Pelosi shares much of the credit," said Matthew Green, a political scientist at Catholic University of America and author of The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership. This is great information to be getting post-election. Regardless of how you feel about what Pelosi and President Obama accomplished during such a short period of time, the level of productivity is unparalleled.
Read more at AOL News.