Nancy Pelosi objects to Mitt Romney

Nancy Pelosi has a starring role in a new ad for the Romney campaign -- and the House minority leader doesn't like it at all. The new 30-second ad, titled "Mute Button," uses an anecdote from the new Bob Woodward book "The Price of Politics" that shows Pelosi muting President Barack Obama while he was on a speaker phone during negotiations for the economic stimulus package in the early days of Obama's term.

Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "went on with their meeting, ignoring the president, not even listening to what he had to say," the ad's narrator says. "If he cannot lead his own party, how can he lead America?"
 In a statement Sunday, Pelosi called the ad "clearly ... an act of desperation" and denied that she ever muted Obama. "As speaker and as Democratic leader, any call from the president would be treated with great formality and respect," Pelosi said. "There was absolutely no situation in which either President Bush or President Obama were cut off from speaking. I respect the office of the President and the office of the Speaker, including the historic nature of any communication between these two offices."
Pelosi had a similar response when asked about it at the Democratic National Convention at a POLITICO event. "That didn't happen. ... First of all, whatever friendship you may have with an individual, when the president of the United States is having a conversation with the Speaker of the House and the leader in the Senate, ... it's a formal situation; it's history," Pelosi said in Charlotte. "Every call is history. ... Mostly, I clear the room when I'm talking to the president. I don't want anybody hearing one side of a [conversation]. I clear the room and then I take notes. "So, I don't even have any idea of where they could ever have gotten that ... [It would have been so] disrespectful and ... I viewed every one of those calls ... as history," she continued. "It wasn't Nancy and Barack. It was the president of the United States and the Speaker of the House."

Woodward has stood by his reporting of the episode.