This recent article from The Economist magazine sums Nancy Pelosi up perfectly:
Nancy Pelosi's challenge
The House speaker is not popular with voters. But she can count noses
Mar 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
WHEN Nancy Pelosi moved to San Francisco, she struggled to find somewhere to live. For months, and with four small children, she lodged with her mother-in-law. So she was relieved when she found a perfect home to rent: big, childproof and with swings in the garden. She was about to seal the deal when she discovered that the owner’s husband was heading east to join the Nixon administration. “We won’t be able to live here,” she said. “I could never live anyplace that was made available because of the election of Richard Nixon.”
If this story were told by a Republican, Lexington would dismiss it as apocryphal. It confirms too neatly the caricature of Mrs Pelosi as a petty and tribal partisan. But the source is Mrs Pelosi’s autobiography, “Know Your Power: a Message to America’s Daughters”. And in case you think it out of character, she adds that her daughter Alexandra “often says to me that she knows everything she needs to know about me by hearing that story.”
As health-care reform hangs in the balance, nearly everything depends on the House of Representatives. To simplify a gruesomely complex process: if House Democrats approve a health bill the Senate passed last year (plus a few tweaks), America will have something close to universal health insurance. The left’s fondest ambition will become law, and Barack Obama will suddenly look like a successful president. A vote is expected within days, but only if Mrs Pelosi, the House speaker, can hold her party together. Is she up to the job?
Mrs Pelosi is arguably the most powerful woman in American history. There have been female governors, secretaries of state and Supreme Court justices, but only one female speaker. When she won the gavel, after the Democratic landslide of 2006, many saw it as a sign that the “marble ceiling” in American politics was cracking. Mrs Pelosi called it “a pivotal moment for all women”. But others saw it as depressing evidence of the lingering power of political dynasties. Mrs Pelosi’s family are not quite Democratic royalty, like the Kennedys or the Clintons, but they are certainly aristocrats. Her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, was a congressman and mayor of Baltimore. Her brother was also mayor of Baltimore. She made her first public speech when she was seven, at her father’s swearing-in.
Despite her hyper-political upbringing, she is a mediocre orator. Harold Meyerson, a friendly journalist, likens her rhetoric to “a compendium of bumper-stickers”. Unlike, say, Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker, she has few interesting thoughts about policy. Her autobiography contains less substance than Sarah Palin’s, which is saying something. And although she has no trouble getting re-elected in San Francisco, she is unpopular in the country as a whole. A recent Daily Kos poll found that only 22% of independents and 7% of Republicans view her favourably. But an effective speaker need not be loved, or think original thoughts. Her job is to round up votes. And at this, Mrs Pelosi excels.
She learned the family business by watching her father dole out jobs and her mother keep a file of favours owed. As a little girl, she answered the phone and told supplicants whom to call to get on welfare or into the city hospital. Six decades later, she is a master of horse-trading. Although she is on her party’s left, centrist Democrats find her a good listener. She is far more disciplined than the House Democrats’ previous leader, Dick Gephardt, and does a better job of keeping her fractious party united.
Which is just as well, because health care is a tough sell. Not one Republican will touch it, so she needs 85% of her party’s votes for a bare majority. Some pro-life Democrats, such as Bart Stupak of Michigan, bridle because they think the Senate bill would use public funds to pay for abortions. Some Hispanic Democrats, such as Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, are angry that it bars illegal immigrants from buying insurance through government-sponsored exchanges. Some left-wingers remain aloof because it does not include a government-run insurer, though one leader of the half-a-loaf-is-worse-than-none faction, Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, recanted two days after sharing a stage with Barack Obama and being urged by the crowd to vote yes. And a bevy of fiscally conservative Democrats, many of them from swing districts, fret that a costly new entitlement will shatter both the budget and their chances of re-election. A new poll in 35 swing districts found that, by a two-to-one margin, voters there want their representatives to scrap the current bill.
The smiling finger-breaker
So Mrs Pelosi is coaxing waverers, calling in favours, breaking fingers and pulling toenails. The Democratic Party controls the White House and has big majorities in both arms of Congress. If it can’t enact universal health care now, when can it? If Obamacare flops at the finish line, Democrats will look hopelessly incompetent. Their opponents will be enthused; their supporters, despondent. “Our kids cannot wait another moment for us to act,” says Mrs Pelosi, in bumper-sticker mode.
She may not see it this way, but the Republicans have done a skilful job of blocking health reform by using the same tactics that she once used against them. When the Democrats were in opposition, her style was to demonise Republican proposals without offering an alternative. It worked. In 2005, for example, when George Bush suggested allowing workers to divert some of their Social Security payments into private accounts, Mrs Pelosi portrayed this as a plan to unravel public pensions. Voters were spooked, and the plan died. Today, Republicans decry Obamacare in similarly hysterical terms, and voters are once again spooked. It will take all the speaker’s skill—and some ugly parliamentary manoeuvres—to enact health reform. But if Mrs Pelosi succeeds, she will take her place in the Democratic pantheon.
