If you saw my face, I’d be smiling ear to ear,” Nancy Pelosi tells THE WEEK, lighting up the evening sky in India, which is still taking in the euphoria over the chances of Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the next president of the United States.
It is 7:15 in the morning on the American west coast (7:45pm in India) as Pelosi, former speaker of the US House of Representatives and one of the leading power centres in the Democratic Party, settles in for an exclusive conversation. Her infectious enthusiasm easily breaks the gap of time, cultures and civilisation as she bonds over shared experiences of Gandhian philosophy that she marvelled at as a little girl and of imbibing the Dalai Lama’s message of peace.
Pelosi’s arena of public service spans continents and hearts, making her one of the most popular world leaders. “Be yourself. Be ready. And know your power,” writes the 84-year-old leader in her new book, The Art of Power, as she prepares to pass on the baton of being a “mother” of her country’s children to her long-time friend Harris. “I look forward to not being the most powerful woman in politics in America when she will become president of the United States,” says the first woman speaker of the house. And as potential president, Harris is unique. “She happens to be a woman. She happens to be black. She happens to be an Indian-American,” says Pelosi. A gush of joy comes through her words.
When Pelosi was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1987, she was one of just 23 women among its 435 members. Most older male members on the Capitol Hill dismissed her as a wealthy housewife from San Francisco, but by hard work and sheer force of personality she rose to the senior leadership of the house Democrats, which had been a male preserve. Her role models were Lindy Boggs, the legendary Congresswoman from Louisiana, and Sala Burton, another formidable Congresswoman from San Francisco. Burton mentored her and asked her to run for her house seat in San Francisco in 1987 after being diagnosed with cancer.
Pelosi has several creditable achievements as speaker. She kept the divided Democrats together to pass the first major health care bill in generations (the Affordable Care Act, 2010); enact groundbreaking reforms on the Wall Street (the Dodd-Frank Act, 2010); she worked with president Obama for a major stimulus package after the 2008 recession (Recovery Act, 2009) and with President Biden for the American Rescue Plan (2021) after the pandemic. Her tenure as speaker included two separate periods―from 2007 to 2011 and from 2019 to 2023. She was the only speaker since the mid-20th century to return to the position.
More important, Pelosi has carried the dream of the American women whose voices continue to echo in her thoughts. “As late as 2001, no woman had ever served in the top leadership of either party in the house,” she writes in The Art of Power. “This fact hit me when I arrived at the White House for my first meeting with President George W. Bush as part of the Democratic leadership. It was a true first. While other women, who had been appointed as cabinet secretaries, had also been seated at the table as full participants, I was there because I had been selected by my colleagues to represent the house Democratic caucus and reflect their views. I was serving at the will of the house Democrats, not at the pleasure of the president.”
Today, in the loving companionship of her husband and children and well-wishers across geographies, Pelosi has fulfilled the dream of the early suffragists by having a seat at the high table of American politics, and has played a key role in transforming the country’s political landscape. She opposed the Iraq War launched by George W. Bush, earned the China-baiter tag by fighting for human rights and led epic struggles to respond to the 2008 financial crisis, to combat AIDS, to ensure LGBTQIA+ rights and to make affordable health care every citizen’s right.
“There is a spark of divinity in every person that needs to be respected,” she writes, quoting the late John Lewis, legendary civil rights leader and Congressman. And if we ever wondered what Pelosi’s favourite word is, she simply says it is “the Word”, which represents Christ. “Christ participating in our humanity enabled us to participate in His divinity―hence the spark.” Pelosi says its essence has shaped her journey into public service and continues to define her bold decisions and fighting spirit.
The fighting spirit was clearly on display when she weighed in on the candidacy of President Joe Biden for a second term and convinced him to stand down. On July 5, Biden gave an interview to George Stephanopoulos of ABC, primarily to address concerns about his disastrous debate on June 27. The president was categorical that he was not bowing out of the race. “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out. But the Lord Almighty is not coming down,” said Biden.
Bouncing back: Pelosi with her husband, Paul, at the NBA basketball playoffs in San Francisco in April 2023 | AP
Less than a week later, the president felt the full force of the Democratic establishment hit him, in the form of Pelosi―not quite the Almighty, but in the Democratic Party, it was really close. Once she was convinced that Biden was unlikely to defeat Trump, and that his presence on top of the ticket could sink vulnerable house and senate candidates, Pelosi felt that it was time for Biden to go. On July 10, she appeared on Morning Joe, the MSNBC talk show that Biden watches regularly, and said that his candidacy was not a settled issue. And she said the president needed to make a decision quickly.
Biden resisted as long as he could, but Pelosi continued to work behind the scenes to persuade the president to quit, but she remained respectful, never once publicly offending him. He finally took the hint and quit on July 21.
Pelosi says she will not speak about any conversations she had with the president on the issue. She loves and admires Biden, Pelosi adds, but winning matters the most. “You make a decision to win and you make every decision in favour of winning. And I wanted the decision to be as strong as possible,” she says about Biden stepping down. Pelosi, meanwhile, is hopeful that the chain of events has not had an impact over her four-decade-long friendship with Biden. “I hope it has not had an effect on our relationship,” she says. “I love him very much.”
After remaining silent for three weeks, Biden opened up about his decision to quit in an interview with CBS News on August 11, and he named Pelosi as a decisive influence. “A number of my Democratic colleagues in the house and senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races,” he said. “And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic. You’d be interviewing me about ‘Why did Nancy Pelosi say…’ ‘Why did so-and-so…’ And I thought it’d be a real distraction.”
Pelosi is confident that Harris is the best person to take on Trump, although many senior Democrats, including herself, had initially favoured an open process to select the new candidate. She says Harris proved to be politically astute, quickly sewing up the Democratic race.
THE WEEK’s conversation with Pelosi revealed that the urge to replace Biden with a more winnable candidate also flowed from her desire to protect the children and the people from the misadventures of Trump. “We made a decision that we would not elect that other guy to the White House,” she says. And, some of it comes from her first-hand experience of the political violence on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 that left “scars of trauma” on her country. For instance, The Art of Power speaks about the attack on her home and husband by a deranged Trump supporter months later. What has perhaps troubled her even more was the fact that Trump continues to trivialise the near-fatal attack.
On the policy front, Pelosi is convinced that Trump is clueless and ignorant, and that he did not believe in science or governance. She recollects a conversation she had with him when he was president. Trump told her that he was proud about shutting down the federal government during a showdown with the Pelosi-led house. She says the threat was beyond silly, and also quite dangerous. During the height of the pandemic, Trump was in denial, leading to the loss of more than a million lives. She says his job creation record as president was the worst since the time of Herbert Hoover, who was president during the Great Depression.
“I knew Donald Trump’s mental imbalance. I had seen it up close,” she writes. “His denial and then delays when the Covid pandemic struck, his penchant for repeatedly stomping out of meetings, his foul mouth, his pounding on tables, his temper tantrums, his disrespect for our nation’s patriots, and his total separation from reality and actual events. His repeated, ridiculous insistence that he was the greatest of all time.” No wonder The Art of Power has more than 150 references to Trump, all of them unflattering.
With America facing a make-or-break election, the role of the Congress will come under increased scrutiny, and Pelosi, with her vision and experience could guide the legislative agenda. “When people ask me, ‘What are the three most important issues facing Congress?’ I always answer: our children, our children, our children,” she writes. Children’s health, their education, economic security of their families and a safe environment, including protection from gun violence, dominate her concerns. Not to forget the political violence of which she and her family have been victims.
Her grit and gumption has not been for America alone. When she climbed on board the US Air Force C-40C aircraft, code-named SPAR19, along with five other Congress members on August 2, 2022, to Taiwan, she made history in more ways than one. At one instant, 7,08,000 people were watching her flight, making it one of the most tracked flights in history. China had been raining rockets over Taiwan in the previous days.
Pelosi went ahead with the visit ignoring what she calls “President Xi Jinping’s tantrums” (China sent warships and fighter jets over the Taiwan strait), revelling in the warm welcome offered by thousands of people packing the streets of Taipei. “The city’s tallest building was bathed in light, beaming messages of welcome. I could see the letters U-S-A glowing against the glass as we passed,” recalls Pelosi. China hoped to stare her down, but to no avail.
At the same time, she does not mince words criticising the US habit of ignoring the Chinese government’s religious and ethnic persecution inside its borders, and how Beijing has destabilised other parts of the world. Addressing a major security concern flagged by India, Pelosi writes that China’s sale of missiles and technology to Pakistan and rogue states is a real concern. “When we challenged the executive branch to end that threat to our security, we were told that they punish the buyer of the goods and military equipment, not the seller.” She says the US allowed these violations to happen because they were beholden to corporate America.
A rare global leader to dwell on moral dilemmas, Pelosi confesses her position has often put her at odds with the White House, both under Republicans and Democrats. At times, it has even aligned her with staunch Republicans. “Indeed, one of the strongest expressions of support for my 2022 bipartisan trip to Taiwan came from senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and 25 other senate Republicans, who immediately issued a statement strongly backing the visit when our plane landed in Taipei,” she writes. “If we as Americans do not speak about human rights in China because of commercial interests, then we lose all moral authority to speak about human rights abuses in any other country in the world.”
While her relationship with China has never been smooth, Pelosi speaks warmly about India and is upbeat about flourishing ties under a possible Harris administration, especially on mutually beneficial areas like security. She acknowledges there are also differences, but says that she wants to be respectful while prioritising their resolution. “And that’s what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been about―respect,” she says. “Not condescension, but cooperation and collaboration.”
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has maintained that India-US relations are proofed against political volatility. But Pelosi’s moral compass can set the tone for the next government in Washington to smoothen out any rough edges with New Delhi as the two countries work together on key priorities of diversifying production, creating new supply chains, collaborating on high-end technology and ensuring peace and stability in the region.
Despite the influence she has wielded over a broad swathe of policy, her superlative fundraising networks and abiding popularity among members of the Congress as well as grassroots Democrats, Pelosi has never considered running for higher office, or accepted a presidential appointment. She says she loves the Congress: “The house of representatives―known as the People’s House―was designed to be close to the people.”
But the speaker emerita has another reason, too. “One of the reasons I love serving the house is that I have the privilege of representing San Francisco. The song of our city’s patron saint, St Francis of Assisi, is our anthem. Make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love...” Pelosi definitely knows her ‘why’.
On August 11, she welcomed Harris back to California at a fundraiser, saying she brings joy and hope to the American people. “Kamala is a person of great strength,” Pelosi tells THE WEEK. “She is a person of great faith. She knows her policy. She knows the strategy. And she is a fighter for the people. I always say it is important to know your why. Kamala knows her why.”
The Art of Power
By Nancy Pelosi
Published by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd
Price Rs999; pages 337