Masterclass: Nancy Pelosi on Power

Nancy Pelosi didn’t write a memoir. Instead, she has delivered a masterclass on how to govern the House of Representatives. Her book, The Art of Power is subtitled “My Story as the First Woman Speaker of the House.” 

During her 20 years serving either as Speaker of the House or heading its Democratic minority, Pelosi worked with presidents from Bush to Biden. During those years, she engineered many legislative victories, most prominent among them: her herculean fight on behalf of the Affordable Care Act. Initially she had assigned the ACA to three powerful House committees. Those committees succeeded and – thanks to Pelosi’s considerable arm twisting and persuasion – assembled enough votes to pass final legislation on March 21, 2010. President Obama officially signed the ACA into law three days later.

But Pelosi’s task wasn’t over. When Donald Trump, who had vowed to “repeal and replace” the ACA, won in 2016, Pelosi changed her mind about maybe leaving Congress. She says she had to stay “to keep the other side from making America sick again.” Despite those who urged Democratic leaders to cut a deal and save what they could, they united and worked with “Protect Our Care” to march, rally, and mobilize across the country.

Trying for repeal, Speaker Paul Ryan came up short. He couldn’t rally enough votes for a hodgepodge substitute that would have stripped health care from 24 million Americans. Rather than lose, Ryan pulled his own bill. Pelosi points out, “One lesson in successful legislating: the Speaker should only bring a bill to the floor when he has the votes.” Ryan was forced to go the White House and explain to President Trump that he was unable to pass the repeal.

Nevertheless House Republicans kept trying, even having a Rose Garden celebration while introducing another substitute proposal. That summer, Senate Republicans advanced a measure to repeal ACA with no replacement. It was, according to Pelosi, “a gift to the health care industry and a cruel swipe at America’s working families.”

On the day of the vote, Pelosi talked with Senator John McCain, R-Arizona. They’d become friends — and sometimes foes — over the years. As she tells it, “I wanted Sen. McCain to be aware of some of the dirty tactics being employed by the House GOP. He said, ‘Nancy I don’t need you to tell me that.’” He said, under the circumstances, his vote would be no.

Pelosi kept his comment a secret. That night, she gathered with a crowd of ACA supporters outside the Capitol. She told the crowd, “Let’s believe we can succeed.” Hours later she watched as McCain, ever a person of his word, turned thumbs down during the Senate vote. It was his vote (“the thumbs-down heard ‘round the world”) that sank the repeal.

Pelosi details the outcome. Since its enactment, the ACA has meant that “more than 40 million Americans have gained insurance, nearly 130 million can no longer be denied because of preexisting conditions, and women can no longer be denied – or charged higher premiums than men – simply because they are women.”

The ACA fight is perhaps the most momentous of Pelosi’s eight years, on and off, as the House’s “most powerful leader in modern times.” That includes her work during the Biden years. When Joe Biden took office, the situation was dire: 18 million Americans unemployed, 24 million going hungry, 40 million could not pay their rent. It was Speaker Pelosi who shepherded through Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Bill, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act and its slash in the cost of prescription drugs for seniors.

The most riveting accounts in Pelosi’s book are not the nitty gritty of enacting bills, but her the story about the vicious attack on her beloved husband, Paul Pelosi, and her vivid description of the tense hours she and other leaders spent during the January 6 assault on the Capitol.

Pelosi’s encounters with Donald Trump supply many of the book’s anecdotes, some previously untold. She speaks of seeing Trump’s mental unbalance up close: his penchant for repeatedly stomping out of meetings, his foul mouth, his temper tantrums, disrespect of the nation’s patriots, and ridiculous insistence that he was the greatest of all time. She recalls Trump’s 2020 state of the union speech and how she began marking each page where he told lies, finally giving up and tearing the speech in two. She tells of his midnight phone calls and how Trump secretly listened in on private meetings. Her experiences convinced her that he must — never again — be allowed to occupy the White House.

Pelosi has much to say about the importance of the speaker’s role. She terms it “the most challenging in government.” The speaker has to address the same array of issues as the president, but without the president’s much larger staff and bully pulpit. How did Pelosi manage years of triumphs? The secret she says can be summed up in one word: “respect.” She believes power comes from the bottom up and legislators of whatever background need and deserve the leader’s sincere respect.

There’s another important word Pelosi lives by: “credit.” She is quick to share victories with those who worked to make them happen. On ACA, there’s Sen. John McCain (“I wish he were still here”); Harry Reid, leading Democrats in the Senate; Health and Human Services director Kathleen Sebelius; Congressman John Dingell, and the many others who twisted arms and counted votes.

Often asked why she never ran for higher office, Pelosi says, “I did not regard my role as steppingstone to another office and that’s why members trusted that I didn’t have a personal political agenda.” She confesses a deep love for the House of Representatives  that she’s served for 37 years, and her love for colleagues who must stand for election every two years. More than senators with six-year terms and presidents with four, members of the House are closest to the people they represent.

In addition to her allegiance to the House, Pelosi relies on her religious background for support. She cites a prayer from the wall of a Sierra Leone hospital: “When I die and meet my Creator, He will ask me to show Him my wounds. If I tell him I have no wounds, my Creator will ask; Was nothing worth fighting for?” Pelosi says she’s proud of her wounds: “for the children.”