The Ultimate Operator

A review of Molly Ball’s Pelosi by Lauren D. Woods

One of the most telling moments in Molly Ball’s Pelosi, a new biography of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released in May 2020, is a September 2017 meeting over a debt limit extension. While Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senator Chuck Schumer debated raising the debt limit, Pelosi repeatedly asked: Did the Republicans have the votes? If so, they could do whatever they wanted. If they didn’t, the Republicans had better negotiate. After she repeated herself several times, the men grew quiet as they realized she was right.

This moment typifies Pelosi: her desire not to waste time and her tenacious focus on results. Pelosi’s approach has remained constant throughout her career, endearing her to some, antagonizing others, and catapulting her to the highest and longest political leadership position of any woman in U.S. history.

Molly Ball is a national political correspondent for Time Magazine and a political analyst for CNN. In 2018, Ball wrote a story about the House Speaker that finally put Pelosi on the cover of Time (Pelosi’s first national newsmagazine cover). And Ball realized there was more to the story she wanted to tell.

Since Pelosi was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1987, she has been a fixture of American politics. Her opponents have tried to turn her into a caricature—the shrew, the nag, the San Francisco liberal elitist. To her supporters, she is a beacon of liberalism, an unabashedly talented woman who ignores calls to disappear into the Washington sunset.

Admittedly, I was no particular fan of Pelosi before reading her biography. As inspired as I was by President Obama’s vision, Pelosi struck me as a less inspiring operator, a vote counter, a partisan. As it turns out, she is a vote counter, but in Ball’s biography, an inspiring one, working behind the scenes for the sake of bringing those grand ideas—like healthcare reform—into reality.

 Her personal story also drew me in. Pelosi comes from an Italian-American political family. Her father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., was mayor of Baltimore for 12 years after serving five terms in Congress. Her brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, also served as mayor of Baltimore. Although she sometimes helped with campaign events in her youth, no one expected Nancy—the youngest of seven children, and the only girl, to rise to political prominence.

And at first, it didn’t seem she would. She stayed home for 14 years to raise her children. But those years informed her career. In addition to mastering the art of fundraising, as a mother she learned about personalities. Ball writes, “After so many years spent managing the emotions of toddlers, teenagers, and politicians, the three neediest and most egotistical types of people in existence, she had honed her instinctive grasp of human motivation to a very fine point.”

Others recognized Pelosi’s capabilities before she did. At the urging of California Governor Jerry Brown, Pelosi ran for Democratic party chair for Northern California and won. She didn’t even consider running for Congress until a congresswoman friend, sick with cancer, urged Pelosi to run for her Congressional spot. With four of her five children already in college, Pelosi finally agreed to run for the House of Representatives at the age of 47. She won.

Pelosi joined Congress in 1987, then plunged into organizing after the Republicans swept Congress during the 1994 elections. In 2001, she became the House minority whip—a job focused on supplying votes, and in 2002, won the caucus election for minority leader. In subsequent years, she worked to oppose the Iraq War, and in 2007, after laboring in the minority for years, helped the Democrats take the House and finally became House Speaker.  

Barack Obama, who took the presidency soon after, promised bipartisanship. Pelosi counted votes. As Ball drives home, while others pined for the more cordial days of Congress, Pelosi was operational. “Pelosi saw the new partisan reality for what it was and chose to adapt to it. Romanticizing the good old days was not going to win the next election, get a policy vote onto the floor or feed a hungry child. ... Other Democrats might bring a knife to a gunfight. Pelosi would always come fully armed, and if it got her labeled a strident partisan, so be it.”

This outlook, more than anything, surfaces as Pelosi’s greatest strength and greatest weakness. She is successful because she is so skilled at understanding every working gear of Congress. But this presents a weakness when Pelosi is focused on results and loathe to waste time on her public image until she is forced to.

 At times, the book feels slightly lacking because Pelosi is unwilling to delve deep into her worldview. Pelosi is not given to soul-searching comments. She’s tight-lipped about her personal life. But what’s lacking in introspection, she makes up for with brilliant strategizing.

In 2006, with just months to go before elections, strategists warned Pelosi that Democrats were falling flat. They didn’t know that Pelosi was holding back on the Democratic legislative agenda by design. Pelosi concluded that if the Democrats led too early with their proposals, they would get buried, and when elections came, the agendas would be old news.

Ball writes, “So Pelosi waited, resisting the many urgent pleas that something must be done right now.” In late June, the Democrats finally rolled out their agenda. In the final elections, the Democrats won 31 seats, double what they needed to take the House leadership, and far more than anyone had thought possible. And with that election, Nancy Pelosi became the majority leader and the first woman Speaker of the House. The most powerful woman in elected office in American political history.

Today, it is worth asking: Would the current political climate tolerate such a patient approach? And is Pelosi equipped for the Twitter age? A few days into this year’s Black Lives Matter protests, Twitter was asking already: Where is Nancy Pelosi? It took her a few days to respond, and what followed was a group of Democrats, led by Pelosi, taking a knee while wearing kente cloth—a traditional design from Ghana. This opened Pelosi up to mixed reactions and criticism. Pelosi’s legislative skills may be unparalleled, but image and social media are not her strengths. Her interest and skills are in hard power—votes. But in our current political climate, soft power—hitting the rights notes with the public—matters more than ever.

Due to her leadership position, Pelosi has had to compromise to get legislation passed. That willingness to find middle ground has put her at odds with her own party on multiple occasions. In recent years Pelosi has clashed with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman lawmaker who represents the most progressive wing of the party, and who recently equivocated on whether she would support Pelosi for another term as speaker. The youngest U.S. Representative, Ocasio-Cortez, represents a fresh and media-savvy approach to politics. Like Pelosi, she is a highly skilled woman who has been underestimated, attacked fiercely by detractors, and is impatient to have an impact. That’s a position that Pelosi, whether or not they agree on strategy, can likely understand. How long Pelosi will lead the Democrats is anyone’s guess. But if Ball’s biography is any indication, her competitors would do best to not underestimate her.

Lauren Woods is a DC-area based writer. Her fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in journals including The Antioch Review, Wasafiri, The Offing, The Washington Post, and others.

https://www.onbuy.com/gb/?extra=dctrending