Salon -- Invasion of the Pelosi snatchers - Arianna Huffington

Was it "Meet the Press" or the Sci-Fi Channel? Watching Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., make her first Sunday morning TV appearance since being elected House minority leader, I had to check the cable box twice to make sure.

The woman answering Tim Russert's questions might have looked like Pelosi but she sounded like a character from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." What had happened to the congresswoman from California? Gone was the bold, combative, impassioned, progressive politician we've come to know over her 15 years in the House. In her place was a soulless pod person -- an empty shell mouthing the kind of pallid, inoffensive, focus group-tested and cringe-inducing platitudes that have driven two-thirds of the American electorate away from politics -- and a little more than half of the remaining one-third away from the Democratic Party.

The last thing the Democrats need right now is another champion of compromise -- another Dick Gephardt. Why does she think he stepped down in the first place? Because he didn't seek enough consensus?

"She has got her beliefs," Pelosi's communications director, Brendan Daly, helpfully explains. "But we are here to win, and she understands that to do that you need to be in the middle." Well, congratulations. Because based on Pelosi's inaugural appearances as minority leader-elect, yet another soulless middle-of-the-road leader is precisely what the Democrats -- and the country -- are about to get.

What is it about our system that the minute politicians are given a chance to lead, all they want to do is follow the pack?

Hopefully she is still finding her feet as Minority Leader.