Somewhere, beneath the tinkling of champagne glasses and the crooning of Tony Bennett at the new year “inauguration” of Nancy Pelosi, will be heard the sound of knives being sharpened.

The four days of celebrations surrounding her swearing-in as the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives on January 4 have been carefully designed to introduce her properly to the American people.

Republican strategists are in little doubt that the scale of these events, perhaps more usually associated with the arrival of a new president, will help them to paint Ms Pelosi and the victorious Congressional Democrats as arrogant.

One suggested that it would serve as a reminder of the high-partying celebrity-fuelled Clinton era — “and the kind of Washington we would see if Hillary is elected president in ’08”.

The festivities will begin on January 2 with a civic lunch in Baltimore, the home town of Ms Pelosi, where a street will be named after her. She will then join an extended family dinner at an Italian restaurant.

The next day she will attend Mass at Trinity College in Washington, a tea for 400 women politicians and activists, and a dinner at the Italian Embassy. There, she is scheduled to be serenaded by Tony Bennett singing I Left My heart in San Francisco — a reference to her Congressional district.

Ms Pelosi will attend a non-denominational service at St Peter’s Catholic Church on Capitol Hill on January 4, and then eat brunch with hundreds of supporters at the Cannon House Office Building and the Library of Congress.

At noon the House will convene to elect her as the Speaker. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will then hold a fundraising dinner at the Building Museum, where 1,200 guests will pay $1,000 (£500) each to salute her between performances by Jimmy Buffett, Carole King and Mickey Hart. Finally, on January 5, she will hold an invitation-only “People’s House” at her offices.

All the events, with the exception of the fundraising dinner, are being paid for by the Pelosi campaign war chest.

Brendan Daly, her spokesman, said that the scale of the celebrations werewas fitting for a historic moment. “We’ve never had a woman speaker before. This is a big deal,” he said.

The programme is intended to reflect her personality, which supporters claim has been caricatured by opponents as that of a wealthy San Francisco liberal.

The events will emphasise her blue-collar Baltimore background, her Italian-American ethnicity and her faith. There are suggestions that it will restore some of the tarnished lustre of the Democrats as a party hospitable to families, working-class Catholics and women.

Since the Democrats won control of Congress in the midterm elections last month, public interest in — and scrutiny of — Ms Pelosi has risen sharply. Replicas of her pearl necklace are selling for $6,000 in Los Angeles.

She has suffered criticism for aggressively backing an unsuccessful bid by John Murtha to oust her deputy, Steny Hoyer, and for pursuing a public feud with fellow Californian Congresswoman Jane Harman, who was refused the post of Intelligence Committee chairman.

Mike Murphy, a Republican political consultant, did little to conceal his contempt for the celebrations, telling the Washington Post: “What? No fireworks? I’m glad they cancelled the tickertape parade. They probably couldn’t find biodegradable tickertape and a hybrid convertible.

“She has every right to throw a new-Speaker celebration, but it’s 500 per cent from what is normal. It’s an aggressive act to grab the spotlight.”

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