Revolution on Pelosi’s mind when talking impeachment
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has read her Thomas Paine.
The Revolutionary Warera author has been a frequent presence in the San Francisco Democrat’s public appearances of late. She has quoted Paine multiple times over the past year as saying, “The times have found us,” a phrase she turned to again as she announced a historic impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
“In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote: ‘The times have found us,’ ” Pelosi said. “The times found them to fight for and establish our democracy. The times have found us today, not to place ourselves in the same category of greatness as our founders, but to place us in the urgency of protecting and defending our Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. In the words of Ben Franklin, to keep our republic.”
It’s not Paine’s bestknown quote. That would probably be the opening to his essay “American Crisis,” written in 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
In fact, internet searches of the quote cited by Pelosi mostly produced Pelosi’s quoting of Paine. Three academics who have written about Paine, queried by The Chronicle, did not recall the quote offhand.
But Pelosi got it right, with a bit of translation to 21st century English.
The quote comes from Paine’s seminal pamphlet “Common Sense,” published in early 1776, which sold thousands of copies. The essay on American independence, written to be accessible to common citizens, is credited with being one of the critical works that helped cement the idea that America should declare its freedom from Britain.
In Chapter IV of the work, Paine mused on America’s warfighting capabilities. But he began by noting: “I have never met with a man, either in England or America, who hath not confessed his opinion, that a separation between the countries, would take place one time or other.”
He continued that it would be wise to figure out when that time might be.
“But we need not go far,” he wrote. “The inquiry ceases at once, for, the time hath found us” (emphasis Paine’s).
The quote has been on Pelosi’s mind for much of the year. At a March news conference in St. Louis touting the first major bill with Democrats in control of the House, a voting and ethics package, Pelosi cited Paine’s words and said Democrats must “protect our Constitution.” She used the quote again in a floor speech later that month, twice again in April and in speeches in May. She spoke the words on the House floor at a June vote to hold administration officials in contempt of Congress and wrote them in a July 3 “dear colleague” letter.
The references continued into October, when Pelosi used them to defend her decision to move forward with impeachment as inevitable.
“Not that we place ourselves in the category of greatness of our founders, but we do place ourselves in a time of urgency on the threat to the Constitution, a system of checks and balances, that is being made,” she said. “We see the actions of this president being an assault on the Constitution. Once we had his even admission to that, we had no choice but to go forward.”
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay history Professor Harvey Kaye was one of the academics who at first could not recall the Paine quote. With the help of colleagues, he later found it. He said it was “always exciting” for a politician to cite Paine by name, noting that the Revolutionary author has most often been cited by progressive movement leaders and rarely by presidents.
One exception was Ronald Reagan, who quoted Paine at the Republican National Convention in 1980: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” His citing of Paine drew a rebuke from conservative writer George Will, who called the quote a “stupendously dumb statement” and “the most unconservative statement that ever issued from human lips.”
Kaye noted that former President Barack Obama quoted Paine in his first inaugural address as he described Americans “in the depth of winter” during the Revolution, rising to the task at hand. But Obama did not cite Paine by name.
“That (Pelosi) used Paine tells me first of all, that she must figure that the name Paine will resonate with Americans,” Kaye said. “And that’s important, because for 200 years, conservatives did everything they could to suppress Paine’s memory, and it was the progressive groups in American history, the feminists, the socialists, Martin Luther King, who would reach back and use Paine’s memory.”
Kaye wondered how Pelosi latched on to Paine’s words. Her office did not respond to a request for more background, other than providing the citation for the quote.
“Maybe (Democrats are) starting to feel that Americans themselves can feel a sort of radical impulse,” Kaye said.
Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan