Just this morning, Representative Nancy Pelosi announced that she will not be seeking re-election. After 39 years in Congress, she leaves behind a powerful legacy—most remarkably as the first and only woman elected to serve as Speaker of the House.
Today, Jen is joined by journalist and author Susan Page, who published Pelosi’s biography Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power, to take a look back through her career. The pair highlight the passage of the Affordable Care Act through Congress (which would not have been possible without Barack Obama and Pelosi’s teamwork), the impact of Pelosi’s parents on her values and work ethics, and the impressive nature of rising to political power as a woman in the 80s.
Susan Page is the Washington Bureau chief of USA TODAY. She’s covered 12 presidential campaigns and seven White House administrations, and she’s interviewed the past 10 presidents (three of them after they left office, and one before he moved in). She is also a best-selling author.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I am delighted to have with us Susan Page, who is a veteran Washington reporter. She is also the author of what I think is the best biography of now-retiring Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Welcome, Susan, so good to see you.
Susan Page
Jen, it’s great to see you too.
Jen Rubin
Well, Nancy Pelosi, there are so many firsts. First woman speaker, first, woman in a constitutional role, she led through the January 6th ordeal, she led the January 6th committee, she passed the ACA, she held on to the ACA, she passed Biden’s agenda. In all of that, was there a single high point, do you think? Was there a signature moment or two that stand out for you?
Susan Page
You know, I think for her, her signature achievement is passage of the Affordable Care Act. It wouldn’t have happened without President Obama, absolutely. He campaigned on that in his first presidential campaign, and then moved to deliver on it. But it wouldn’t have passed without Nancy Pelosi either. You’ll remember that there were White House aides who wanted to go small, not big, because going big was so hard. And there were any number of people, including Democrats, who never thought that this massive groundbreaking bill was gonna get through Congress, and she got it through.
Jen Rubin
And it was one of the most, obviously influential and really historic pieces of legislation from the modern era. She also took an interest in things that didn’t have an immediate political payback, and I think of Tibet, and her quest of human rights in China. Where did that come from, and why did she, whether it was a Republican or a Democratic president, she gave them a hard time about it, and sometimes went up against her own party on that issue. Where did that come from, in her background?
Susan Page
You know, I think it came from her father, Tommy the Elder D’Alessandro, the legendary three-term mayor of Baltimore. He was an FDR supporter at a time when big city mayors really made a difference, but he defied FDR on the issue of Jews who were trying to flee Germany during World War II. He stood up for Jewish refugees at a time not many politicians in our country or the world were doing so, and she was really proud of that part of her father’s legacy. And then, of course, she goes to her adopted city of San Francisco, big Asian influence there, you know, China, Tibet, that part of the world is closer to the West Coast than it is to the rest, the rest of the continental United States. And so that fed her interest there. That was an issue on which she was happy to defy Republican presidents and Democratic ones.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And you mentioned her father. How big an influence, was he? You talk about how she literally learned watching him with his note cards in the living room, talking to constituents, talking to fellow lawmakers. What influence did he play, in her life and in her career?
Susan Page
Well, everything. And not just her father, also her mother. Big Nancy D’Alessandro was her husband’s political strategist and organizer, and Nancy grew up sitting beside her mother at a table in their main room of the row house they lived in in Little Italy, Baltimore. And constituents would line up at the door and come through and need a favor, need help with an immigration issue, need help with getting housing, or getting a son out of jail, or all kinds of things. Big Nancy would consider what they could do, how they could help, take down a chit, and later cash in the chit. On election days, if you got a favor done by the mayor, you were expected to turn out and vote for him, of course.
But also, if you could help somebody down the line. So can you imagine a better way to learn how to understand how politics works, especially legislative politics, which is so dependent on the personal relationships between the leader and the individual members?
Jen Rubin
That seemed to be her real strength. She didn’t bully people like LBJ, she didn’t fawn and kind of ingratiate herself. She knew her members, she knew what each one of them needed, she knew the district better than they do, so she could tell them, well.
You don’t need that, and you’re not getting that, but this is what you really need, and this is what you’re gonna get. And to do that, and to have that encyclopedic memory of her entire caucus really was a remarkable skill that she had.
Susan Page
You know, you said she didn’t bully. That’s not, I think, 100% correct.
Jen Rubin
That’s true!
Susan Page
She could exert political pressure when needed. She could do it by, persuasion, but if she needed to, she could do it by reading The Fear of God into members of Congress who might dare, Democrats who might dare be thinking about defying her on an issue where she really wanted to win. She could be an intimidating interview, too, you know, she would.
Jen Rubin
Oh, absolutely. Very tough.
Susan Page
I know you’ve interviewed her, it’s hard to get her off her talking points, and if you get her mad, she’ll let you know.
Jen Rubin
Exactly, exactly. Now, one of the most fascinating aspects of her, I think, was her Catholicism. She was a devoted Catholic and yet, she went to war very frequently with the American bishops, who were quite conservative, and gave her the worst time over her support of abortion rights. Talk to us a little bit about that dynamic, which I found so interesting and so unique to her as a personality.
Susan Page
Now, of course, she grew up in Catholic schools, Catholic Girls School in Baltimore, and then went to Catholic college here in Washington. D.C, and she was, she was, she was a devoted Catholic. And she had, she was at war with the bishops, but she made allies with the nuns. You know, in the Affordable Care Act, when the bishops were opposing it, because of the funding of, reproductive rights and reproductive services, she had the Catholic nuns on her side, so that was very interesting to watch.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and I do remember when the American bishops were not giving her a communion. I do believe at some point she went to the Vatican and got the communion from the Pope, so it was just like her to go over people’s heads. She obviously had a different relationship with each president, but there was something about Donald Trump that just she could not abide by. She had her differences with President Bush, she had her differences with other presidents, but with Donald Trump, there was something, or some things, that she could simply not abide. She recently made that clear, saying he was a vile creature. What was it specifically, you think, about Trump? There’s so many reasons to dislike him, but what was it about him that got under her skin?
Susan Page
She was a tough partisan. She, for a while, called George W. Bush the worst president in American history, although not since Trump got elected did she make that statement. I think what offended her about Trump was the idea that he didn’t follow democratic norms. And it’s one thing to disagree on what the federal government’s role is in providing healthcare, or even, should the U.S. invade Iraq, a point of real contention between her and George W. Bush. It’s of a different scale entirely to feel that the president’s trying to undermine the democracy itself, and I think that’s what so inflamed her views of Donald Trump.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. One of the things that she did do, as we talked at the beginning, was help promote women. She had a national security background because she chose to be on the Intelligence Committee, and she did help nurture careers, and she also had great friendships with some of the women legislators. Tell us a little bit about her relationship, both as a mentor and also as a friend, with the people that she’s served with.
Susan Page
Yeah, she saw this as part of her core agenda, and it wasn’t because, she got help, so much help from women who came before her, because really no one had come before her in the job she wanted to have. But she was, she, you know, part of it was, she kind of led by example. She… she would not… there were… she got sexist treatment, I think, early on when she was in Congress, but once she beat Stenny Hoyer to become Democratic Quip, which is really the critical election of her career.
Democrats, I think, and even Republicans stopped treating her in sexist ways, and that provided an example for how women are supposed to be treated in Congress and elsewhere in the world. And she was an ally of women outside of Congress. She was close to Madeline Albright, for instance. And to Hillary Clinton, as well. So she formed these alliances in that kind of pragmatic, matter-of-fact way she had. She was not someone given to, flowery language or, you know, reading poems. She was all about the business of getting things done, and enlisting the power and the potential of women was part of that.
Jen Rubin
One of the most unique, aspects of her career was the decision to put Liz Cheney, also Adam Kinzinger, on the January 6th commission. And there was no one who she probably disagreed with more in Congress on policy issues than Liz Cheney, who, among other things, of course, was a big backer of the Iraq War. And, of course, Liz just lost her father, so we send our condolences. But they developed, I think, if not a friendship, at least a mutual respect as patriots and as enforcers of the Constitution. How did she come to that decision, and what was the nature of their relationship after Liz was appointed to the January 6th Commission?
Susan Page
So before Trump, they were not friends and allies. They were partisans on opposite sides of the fence, and but it was really Donald Trump who brought them together, and she put Liz Cheney on that committee because she had very few options of Republicans who were willing to serve. And she turned out to be, of course, quite valiant and courageous, and it cost her her House seat. It cost her a position in the leadership, Republican leadership, where there was a day when there was a time when Liz Cheney was seen as a potential Republican speaker down the road. Liz Cheney gave up that, and eventually lost even her House seat in Wyoming, the one her father had held, to a Trump-backed challenger.
Jen Rubin
For Nancy Pelosi, I think one of the aspects that is perhaps underlooked is what a hard worker she was. She was indefatigable. She would be the last one there, you know, at the hotel in the evening, you know, talking buttonholing members. She had an energy and a drive that was really amazing. Not all politicians have that, but she had that energy and that drive. It was something to see.
Susan Page
You know, I think it’s from her interesting diet, because… do you know what she had for lunch every day on the Hill?
Jen Rubin
What?
Susan Page
A hot dog.
Jen Rubin
And you know the only food that she routinely had in her refrigerator at her apartment?
Susan Page
Chocolate ice cream. So apparently, that is the secret of being really energetic.
Jen Rubin
Exactly, exactly. And, you know, she had also a certain style, we were talking about that before, that iconic moment when she came out of the White House, put on her sunglasses wearing her reddish-orangish coat. You can always see her, you know, dressed to the nines in her pantsuit or her dress. She had a style and a presence that she really had to create, because as you said, there was no role model for it. She kind of came up with a persona and a look that was part of her, I think, talent in really embracing power. And maybe that’s where we should take this. She owned her power, and in a way that we hadn’t seen women do before, and that we now see her proteges, do routinely.
How did she develop that? Was that natural to her? And also, thinking back you know, she entered politics later in life, after she had her kits, and in fact, she went to her kids and said, I don’t know if I should do this, and they said, get over it, Mom, you know, go run for office. Talk to us about those two aspects, that she had been a mother, she entered politics late in life, and yet she figured out how to own power in a way that we hadn’t seen in a female leader before.
Susan Page
Not just a female leader. I think Nancy Pelosi was more comfortable with and sophisticated about the exercise of power than any other politician I’ve ever covered. And I think that’s because she grew up with it. I mean, think about this. She’s born in 1940. The next day, one of the Baltimore newspapers has on its front page a picture of her in her mother’s arms, surrounded by her father and her five older brothers, who are gazing at her with adoration. That’s her start in life. She was political royalty in Baltimore, so she grew up in a household that was exercising power in the way that big city mayors could exercise it then. This was not foreign to her the way it’s… it was more natural to her than to anyone except maybe the heir to the British throne, because she grew up with it. But she did not think of herself as someone who would run for elective office. She was a political organizer and a fundraiser, she was chair of the California Democratic Party.
She didn’t run for office till she was 47. And one of her friends and allies died in office before her death, on her deathbed, urged Nancy Pelosi to run. She ran a very tough race, and one of the interesting things about that first special election that she won in 1987, she lost the Democratic vote. There was a strong Democratic, she lost the Democratic vote. She got a lot of Democratic votes, but another candidate, a rival, got more. She won it with the help of some Republican votes. She campaigned with Republicans in San Francisco, saying, I am going to be less intolerable to you than this other guy, who’s even more liberal than I am. And that got her over the finish line in the only really close election she had in San Francisco.
Jen Rubin
And, you know, I think we’ll end on that. It’s funny, the Democrats, you know, of course, adored her. Republicans always castigated her as the San Francisco liberal, some kind of left-wing nut. But in fact, she was extremely practical. She knew exactly what to, push for, what was possible, and if some member came up with some wacky idea, she would say, that’s great, go find the votes! Go find the votes! So there was a pragmatic, aspect to her, again, that comes from her background. What can you do? What can you get done? What matters? And, just an extraordinary figure, and, as nostalgic as some of us are to see her go, it was a delight to cover her, to watch her, and I’m sure writing the book was one of the highlights of your career, and it’s a fabulous biography, it really is. I commend it to everyone.
Susan Page
Hey, thank you, Jen.
Jen Rubin
Take care. Bye-bye.
