What Everybody Gets Wrong About Nancy Pelosi (Review #2)

Pelosi. By Molly Ball. Henry Holt & Co. 2020. 345 pages.

Score out of 100: 82

(This post was updated Dec. 26).

I used to cover Rep. Nancy Pelosi. As a stringer for the San Francisco Examiner, one of two major papers in her congressional district, from 1998 to 2000 I reported on the congresswoman’s dealings as they affected the city, or The City to use the newspaper’s preferred term. You could see even then as a backbencher, before she became House Speaker, Ms. Pelosi took pride in her professionalism and competence.

Her spokespeople responded to your phone calls right away consistently; not for them delays of a day or two. Ms. Pelosi dressed like Audrey Hepburn might have if she had been a congresswoman, with pearl necklaces and deep blue, red, or green dresses. She made herself available to reporters and while her answers might be unimaginative, she gave you quotes for your story.

The Republicans Who Respected Pelosi

The Republicans Who Respected Pelosi

I wasn’t alone in my high opinion of Ms. Pelosi’s professionalism. Take John Boehner, the former Republican House Speaker. In his autobiography On the House, Boehner noted that in 2008 she orchestrated the appointment of Rep. Henry Waxman, a Los Angeles progressive Democrat, as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee at the expense of Rep. John Dingell, a legendary Detroit-area liberal.

Or take Donald Trump. According to Time national political correspondent Molly Ball in Pelosi, after the 2016 election, the Republican president told the House Minority Leader they could work together: “I know what you do,” Trump said. “You’re somebody that gets things done. Better than anybody.”

Few politicians view humility as a virtue. When English leader Winston Churchill was reminded Prime Minister Clement Attlee was a modest person, he agreed and added Mr. Atlee was “a modest man with a good deal to be modest about.” Unlike Mr. Atlee, as a Democrat Ms. Pelosi has a good deal to be proud of, and not just her distinction as the first female House Speaker in U.S. history. (She will relinquish the job in January after House Republicans regain majority control of the chamber).

An “Operational Democrat”

Getting Things Done

As Ms. Ball notes, during Ms. Pelosi’s long tenure as House Speaker from 2007 to 2011 and from 2019 to the present House Democrats have done the following:

• impeached Mr. Trump in 2020 and 2021

• prevented Republicans from overturning the Obamacare health plan and from privatizing Social Security partially in 2005
• passed the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 that overhauled the federal government’s oversight of Wall Street and passed the Troubled Assets Relief program which most Americans hated but which has been an unqualified financial success

• helped turn Americans against the Iraq War

• retook the House of Representatives from Republicans not only in 2006 but also 2018

 Those achievements are no accident. As Ms. Ball shows, Ms. Pelosi views herself as an “operational Democrat,” a pol who, like one of her mentors, Rep. Phil Burton of San Francisco, gets things done. She excels at the art of “hard power”—negotiation, legislating, and fundraising. This is the quotidian side of politics that bores activists and ordinary voters but requires more fortitude than tweeting or making the rounds of cable TV shows in the manner of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York.

Pelosi’s Inner and Outer Strengths

Ms. Pelosi, too, takes pride in her physical and mental stamina. In 2018, to support the children of people who entered the country illegally Ms. Pelosi stood on the House floor for eight hours, in four-inch-high heels no less, at the age of 77.

Her show of physical strength was no anomaly. According to Ms. Ball, Ms. Pelosi sleeps four to five hours a night and travels constantly. She is the mother of five children, none of whom has embarrassed her as those of other politicians have. You figure that Speaker Pelosi might have been spooked on Jan. 6, 2021, when an estimated 500 Trump supporters broke into the Capitol, with some asking, “Where’s Nancy?”, but refused to be intimidated.

Ms. Pelosi comes from tough stock. She is the youngest child of a big Baltimore political dynasty. Her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, was a member of Congress for five terms from 1939 to 1947 and the city’s mayor from 1947 to 1959; her brother, Thomas III, followed in his dad’s footsteps as Baltimore mayor from 1967 to 1971.

Ms. Pelosi takes pride not only in her family but also being a Democrat. In the late 1960s, while shopping for a house to rent in San Francisco, she rejected a deal her husband had made with a real estate agent because the house’s owner was a Nixon administration official.

Ms. Pelosi, too, is proud of being a pioneering female leader. She has withstood many acts of sexism and misogyny to reach the pinnacle of American politics.

Ms. Pelosi’s pride in being a pragmatic partisan politician is her defining characteristic. It’s funny, then, that conventional wisdom ignores this quality completely. Conservative activists view her as a wealthy ditz, the author of the comment “We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.” Progressive activists see her as a hack who couldn’t pass legislation to create single-payer healthcare.

Proud Nancy

Ms. Ball, too, fails to come to grips with Ms. Pelosi’s pride. She sees her through a political lens. The book’s epigraph comes courtesy of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat: “If you think a woman can’t beat Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi does it every single day.”

If you are a Democrat, viewing Ms. Pelosi through a partisan lens is reasonable. Any fair-minded progressive should want to read a detailed account of Ms. Pelosi’s long record in politics. For everyone else, Pelosi comes up short.

The book fails to come to grips with the downside of Ms. Pelosi’s pride. Her power has, at times, made her arrogant.

“Insignificant People”

Ms. Pelosi has dismissed and denigrated less powerful people.

When liberal activists criticized her in the 1970s, she told a political friend, “Someday they will realize just how insignificant they are.” In 2014, after a House Republican, Tom Marino of Pennsylvania, criticized Ms. Pelosi on the House floor for failing to do her homework on Central American migrants entering the United States illegally, Ms. Ball reports that Ms. Pelosi ran up to him and wagged a finger his face. “You are an insignificant person!” she said repeatedly.

Ms. Pelosi dismisses her archbishop on a key Church teaching.

She continues to support abortion rights despite San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s pleas and warnings to renounce her position. In May, the archbishop announced she was no longer eligible to receive Holy Communion, the most sacred act in Catholicism, in her own diocese.

To be sure, Ms. Ball reports Ms. Pelosi feared being denied Communion and worried her devout mother might hear her speak in favor of abortion rights. Clearly, Ms. Pelosi’ position bothers her conscience. How does this affect her? Does she worry about her soul? Why does she believe gays are God’s children but not the unborn? Ms. Ball fails to raise those questions.

Ms. Pelosi’s marriage to her husband Paul is ignored largely. To be sure, no one can really know what goes on in a marriage. Yet I think Pelosi would have benefited from an acknowledgment that a demanding, high-profile job imposes costs on a marriage and family. How do Ms. Pelosi and her husband negotiate the long periods when they are alone? Unfortunately, Pelosi hints at the personal toll her job takes rather than describing or exploring it.

Worst of all, Ms. Ball claims to be non-partisan. “I am not a Democrat or a liberal (nor am I a Republican or a conservative),” she said. Given what came before, this is not a credible statement. She writes Republican voters warmed to Trump because they wanted “anger, nostalgia, and racism,” a partisan and clumsy interpretation that only a Democrat would make. And Ms. Ball portrays Ms. Pelosi’s legislative successes as an unqualified good rather than acknowledging they involve trade-offs.

The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim criticized Pelosi as “cloyingly adulatory.” I think the charge is unfair, as Ms. Ball criticizes Ms. Pelosi’s stilted and overly formal speeches and describes her legislative setbacks, the biggest of which was forcing House Democrats in 2010 to vote for a cap-and-trade energy bill without a guarantee the Senate would vote on the legislation. Yet Ms. Ball’s partisan lens made her book more salable but less compelling than it might have been.

What does everybody else think?

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