The poor schmo who would do anything to follow Nancy Pelosi as House speaker is her opposite in ways that have nothing to do with ideology: In his lack of consistency, lack of discipline and lack of courage, Rep. Kevin McCarthy falls so far short of his fellow Californian’s standards that it feels silly to even compare the two. No wonder he couldn’t bring himself to show up and listen to her gorgeously patriotic Thursday resignation speech.
Pelosi, who at 82 is stepping down from leading the House Democrats after two decades, has all of the traits that our most powerful public servants typically share, including an unusually hardy constitution and work ethic and high tolerance for political pain.
But the first female speaker, and the first speaker to grab the gavel a second time since Sam Rayburn did so in 1955, is also singular: Without her, there would have been no Affordable Care Act. Without her, would there be even one politician who never curses, in either public or private?
President Joe Biden called her “the most consequential speaker in our history.”
Somehow, with only a five-seat majority, she kept her caucus together to push through bills on pandemic aid, infrastructure and the production of semiconductor chips. While wielding power as well as any lawmaker ever has, her work was always for something, and that something was improving our lives.
Under her leadership, Congress finally cut prescription drug costs and passed historic climate legislation. In contrast, what House Republicans hope to achieve with only narrow control is a thorough look into Hunter Biden’s laptop. And into Pelosi’s own supposedly unfair treatment of the pro-Trump mob that wanted to kill her.
Both chronically underestimated and uniquely vilified in cycle after cycle, she stood up to President Donald Trump — tearing up her copy of his 2020 State of the Union address, which she called a “manifesto of mistruths,” and telling him in a White House meeting that with him, “all roads lead to Putin.”
She also stood up to her own party, knowing how hard impeachment would be on the country. As a result, she pursued that option, twice, only when she felt that to do otherwise would be even more damaging.
As insurrectionists trashed what she rightly calls the temple of our democracy on Jan. 6, hoping to find and attack her, she took charge, working to secure both the building and everything that it represents.
Her service, which she’ll continue in Congress but not in a leadership position, has cost her far more than it should have. Yet after her husband was nearly killed by a delusional, Trump-worshiping intruder who broke into their home yelling, “Where’s Nancy?” last month, some Republican colleagues were so lacking in humanity that they joked and invented conspiracy theories about the attack.
Minority Whip Steve Scalise, who remembers how supportive Pelosi was of him when he was shot in 2017, was not among them. He stood up and applauded when Pelosi mentioned her husband in her resignation speech.
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi, of Baltimore, where her father was elected to Congress and then became mayor, grew up in the family business. In San Francisco, she went from homemaking mother of five to fund-raising powerhouse and later, to state Democratic chair and House speaker.
While others saw the imagined “red wave” of GOP dominance in this month’s midterms as inevitable, she held to her usual refusal to “cede one grain of sand” before absolutely necessary. We won’t see her like again, and won’t forget what she achieved.
