Let’s just do what is right for the American people. And those of us who are involved in politics and government know that our responsibility is to the American people, that we have a responsibility to find our common ground, to seek it and to find it.

Pelosi frames public service as a fiduciary duty owed to citizens rather than to parties, factions, or donors. The repeated emphasis on “responsibility” underscores an ethical claim: legitimacy in democratic governance comes from acting in the public interest. Her call to “find our common ground” positions compromise not as weakness but as an obligation—an active practice (“seek it and…find it”) required to translate pluralism into workable policy. The quote also functions rhetorically as a rebuke to partisan brinkmanship: it implies that political actors already “know” their duty, so failure to cooperate is a choice, not an inevitability.