Review of “The Art of Power” by Nancy Pelosi – Politics with principles | Politics books

TTo use the hot political word of the moment, Nancy Pelosi’s The Art of Power is a pretty strange It’s a kind of memoir, neither fish nor fowl. It would take another book, she tells us in her acknowledgments, to chronicle her astonishing rise from “housewife (and mother of five) to House Representative to Speaker of the House,” her long journey “from Baltimore to San Francisco.” In this volume, with an eye on posterity, she looks above all at the role she played in major political events during her more than two decades at the helm of the Democratic Party. But don’t worry: it’s all (a little) less dry than it sounds. If I struggled to stay awake during her meticulous description of the struggle to pass the Affordable Care Act of 2010—ask me later!—I was riveted by her hour-by-hour account of the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021.

Who would have thought that on that shocking day, some lawmakers were so sure they were close to death that they called their families to say goodbye? That those with military training were making skewers out of the wooden stands that held anti-Covid hand sanitizer in case they needed to physically defend themselves? Pelosi is Catholic, and the riot, she notes, occurred on Epiphany, which celebrates the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus. But for Republicans, there were no revelations. Over time, Donald Trump, for many something of a puppet master of the riot, became the party’s presidential candidate, despite what some of them had seen with their own eyes on January 6: the “breathtaking” violence that reigned everywhere; the fact that politicians had to make use of the gas masks that have been kept under the seats in the two chambers of the Capitol since September 11; the lasting memory, when it was all over, that the building stank to high heaven of human excrement.

Pelosi’s book was, of course, written long before Joe Biden stepped down as the Democratic candidate, a decision in which she is said to have played a crucial role. In some ways it seems belated and untimely; to British readers in particular, the amount devoted to the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), launched by the US Treasury after the 2008 financial crisis, will seem somewhat irrelevant, given that all our interest at the moment is in Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and how much they can provoke Trump.

But if I may indulge in such a brutal analogy, Nancy nonetheless throws a few hand grenades in the direction of the election. First, she blames Trump and his supporters for the horrific attack on her husband, Paul. (In 2022, a far-right conspiracy theorist, David DePape, broke into the couple’s San Francisco home while Nancy, his target, was in Washington; Paul suffered three hammer blows to the head of such force that DePape later expressed surprise at his survival.) In recent years, she says, Republicans have spent millions of dollars on ads attacking her personally, while after the attack, Donald Trump Jr. shared a meme of a hammer on social media with the caption, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”

Second, she makes no secret of the fact that she considers Trump Sr. to be dangerous and unstable. Her book begins with a description of her religious beliefs: she was raised as a nun by her mother, she writes; she looks for the “spark of divinity” in everyone she meets. But in Trump’s case, the pilot flame of numinosity, if it ever existed, went out a long, long time ago. Expectations of him, she writes, can never be low enough. When she first met him after his election as president, he served Senator Chuck Schumer sausages in a dressing gown and blithely assured him that they were kosher.

She viewed the whiny and “stupid” Trump throughout his time in office as “an imposter—and on some level he knew it.” He had a tendency to “secretly” listen in on meetings she had with his staff. When he was present in person, he often stormed out. At a funeral for a respected doctor she knew, numerous medical professionals told her, unprompted, “that they were deeply concerned…that his mental and psychological health was deteriorating.” Much later, on January 8, 2021 (two days after the Capitol insurrection), she was so concerned about Trump’s erratic behavior—impeachment was imminent; she feared for the Constitution if he was allowed to remain in office—that she called the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, apparently seeking reassurance that if the military received orders from the president to launch an attack abroad, including a nuclear strike, it “would not do anything illegal or crazy.”

It may be true that Pelosi, as some American critics have noted, has little interest in self-criticism; nor does her book even begin to explain how an 84-year-old woman can continue to exert such influence over the Democratic Party (in addition to what she told the ailing Biden, she is also said to have lobbied for Walz, the governor of Minnesota, to be Harris’s running mate). Like all politicians everywhere, she resorts to sophistry at best and willful blindness at worst when it suits her. To the British, she looks slightly parodic, with her blow-dried helmet and her taut, waxen face, which now gives her an air of permanent surprise.

But The Art of Power, so sober and detailed, has made me reevaluate her. Her early campaign work on AIDS; her opposition to George Bush’s war in Iraq (“the most destabilizing event in recent U.S. history”); even her ability to recognize what Vice President Mike Pence did right and what he did wrong (he preferred to cower in a loading bay on the day of the Capitol riot rather than be seen leaving the building). She is so impressive and, in certain circumstances, principled. What happens next remains to be seen. Even if Trump loses his mind – as I write this, he is indulging in wild fantasies online about Biden trying to reclaim the nomination – he still has a powerful electoral position. He could still win. But if not, Pelosi will surely be able to claim at least some of the credit.