In biography, Pelosi dishes on AOC and ‘Moscow Mitch’
It’s difficult to write a fresh-sounding biography of a woman who has been in Washington longer than some members of Congress have been alive.
But even longtime watchers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will learn something new about the most powerful woman in the country — and how she got that way — from USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page’s new biography, “Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power.”
Page notes the potential pitfalls in exploring such a known quantity, noting Pelosi’s tendency to recite the same quotes by Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, even Ronald Reagan; her ability to stay relentlessly on message; and her unwillingness to dish to reporters.
Some well-trod anecdotes make their way into the book, but Page’s unprecedented access to the two-time speaker opens windows into Pelosi’s working style and relationship with colleagues that few other profiles or biographies can match.
There are juicy tidbits of topical interest, especially in chapters toward the end of the book: how Pelosi canceled plans to retire because Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, as well as the real reason she tore up her copy of Trump’s 2020 State of the Union speech.
Then there are Pelosi’s frank comments about colleagues, unusual even for a powerful veteran already well-known for her candor. Pressed by Page on how she felt about the “Squad” of four newly elected progressives, including New York Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a 2019 interview, Pelosi appeared to swipe at their social media savvy.
“Some people come here, as (former House Appropriations Chair) Dave Obey would have said, to pose for holy pictures,” Pelosi said. Then, she raised her pitch to mimic a child, “See how perfect I am and how pure?”
“OK, there’s the group that’s going to go pose for holy pictures,” continued Pelosi. “Now let’s legislate over here.”
Page also details for the first time the disagreement between Pelosi and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., about whether to allow the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda following her death last year.
Ginsburg did become the first woman to lie in state at the Capitol, but she was in Statuary Hall on the House side of the building after McConnell said there was no precedent for having a justice recognized by lying in the rotunda.
Page adds that Pelosi calls McConnell “Moscow Mitch” because she knows it gets under his skin.
But Page spends the majority of her book on earlier days, providing fresh details of Pelosi’s childhood in the public eye as the only daughter of Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, including a lengthy section on how the family survived a potentially career-ending scandal — the trial and acquittal of Pelosi’s brother Roosie D’Alesandro on charges of raping a 13-year-old girl.
Pelosi is well known on Capitol Hill for her ability to determine what a lawmaker’s underlying need is behind a situation and for knowing them and their districts better than they do themselves, but the kinds of minutiae that prove it are usually too granular to make their way into news articles. Page has the room, and in many places in the book, it’s the smallest, best-chosen details that tell the biggest stories about Pelosi as a master legislator.
For but one example, while whipping votes for the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama invited undecided Indiana Democrat Joe Donnelly to the Oval Office to try to sway his vote. Donnelly left still undecided.
Pelosi, meanwhile, turned to Donnelly’s religious mentor, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, president emeritus of Notre Dame — a man Donnelly referred to as a second father — and asked Hesburgh to help her pass the bill by calling the congressman.
By the end of their phone call, Donnelly agreed to support the legislation.