Pelosi's Power: Eugene Robinson (interview) | FRONTLINE

gene let's let's start with nancy pelosi on the evening of january 6th and then a couple of days afterwards she and mcconnell as well came back realizing that they needed to accomplish their tasks their constitutional tasks that they had set out to do on that day and to show the writers that they hadn't won how do you view how she dealt with the realities of what happened on january 6th and what that said about her her leadership uh what that said about her views towards what had taken place well speaker pelosi was genuinely horrified um uh horrified and and frightened for the future of our democracy and that sounds grandiose but it's true uh if you remember that day it was it was so shocking it was something we'd never seen and it and the aim was to stop uh a constitutional responsibility to stop congress from certifying the results of the election and i think the reaction you saw from speaker pelosi was genuine and number one it was determination she was determined as was leader mcconnell that that evening they would indeed finish certifying the election results they would do what the constitution required them to do and they would not be deterred by this uh this this violent mob um and she was also um i think she had a larger worry about president trump about what he might still do between january 6 and january 20 when he when he left office and i and others in glimpses saw the evolution of her attitudes toward president trump you know there's opposition um she was flabbergasted for a while she was disgusted for a while remember when she tore up the state of the union speech um but this was something different this was genuine fear that he might do something just not just outrageous but something really dangerous to the united states between january 6th and january 20 inauguration day and so i think that's what you saw her express in that phone call with general milly um in the way she called uh the president crazy uh in in um in everything she did i think it was genuine concern that we were in trouble will history look at it as her overstepping her bounds or will history look at her as somebody who was doing her constitutional duty well i i think the latter i think history will look at that as a speaker of the house doing what she saw as her constitutional duty to protect the republic to protect the constitution those were those were crazy days when we thought the impossible was indeed possible because we had just seen it happen and we didn't know what else would happen and i think she was she will be seen as having taken reasonable and responsible steps to try to prevent some sort of catastrophe from everything we know about her life and sort of her role in congress and the history of her her role in congress and what she represents who is this nancy pelosi at this point at the point of january 6th how does that define uh that nancy pelosi who came from baltimore and there was a little girl didn't get to washington until her late 40s how does that show nancy pelosi coming to full fruition well i think you really have to start with who she is i mean you have to start with the fact that she's nancy d'alessandro she's not some effete uh san francisco um liberal uh who grew up drinking uh you know chablis at uh at twee um uh pacific heights parties i mean she grew up in the rough and tumble of baltimore politics uh where her father was mayor in a milieu where elbows were thrown and arms were twisted so so she's a very down-to-earth politician um she came up through the house uh as as an appropriator where the rubber really meets the road where and she often reminds people of that where actual dollars are appropriated that um that that help actual people uh and um uh so um she she's she's not she's very much not i think uh a lot of people's image of what they think the san francisco liberal is um and uh she's a very tough um she's a very tough leader um she's very pragmatic in a lot of ways the way she leads her caucus she seeks consensus she talks to everybody she's kind of indefatigable but she's very determined and when she's when she sees an objective it's it's very hard to deter her from that objective even though it might take her a while to get there she she can be patient and she'll get there uh and i think all of those things all those characteristics are what you saw on and after january 6 you saw you know the real nancy pelosi so let's go back in time to start with the chronology that we that we'll go through for our film when she first enters the democratic leadership when she's he she's the whig in 2001 um it's the push administration she writes in the past about the fact that she she realized that she was the first woman to be there that after all these years of america she was in the meetings in the white house where the decisions were being made on the direction that the government would take to lead america and that was a pretty special moment for her talk to me a little bit about about her about that moment why nancy pelosi uh female nancy pelosi rises to that level the importance of what that moment was for america well it was really important uh to her and i think to the country for a woman to rise to that level in the u.s congress it is shocking in retrospect that it had never happened before but she was the first and she had to break all these barriers um eventually becoming the first woman to be speaker of the house it's something she's very proud of at the same time like many pioneers one of the things she's determined to do is make sure she's not the last and so she's always been conscious of of cultivating and advancing other women and people of color and in the in the democratic caucus not just to membership in the caucus but to leadership positions in the caucus um because i think she understands that as a duty as a duty of someone who goes first you talked a little bit about her history let's talk just a little bit more for a second i mean she she now um certainly to in some of the eyes of some of the younger progressives that are in congress now and to a lot of people she embodies the establishment in a lot of ways even though she's very proud of her progressive roots and she's always been very very progressive throughout her career so describe that woman and what it means for her to be the one in in this leadership role in congress well you know she's always been a democrat um she's never been a democrat who was unaware of the existence of republicans or unaware of the existence of people who who might think differently about issues than she does and in fact she has over the years had very warm relationships with people on the other side of the aisle and i've heard you know i over the years um uh talked to many republicans uh who will denounce her in uh in public and will say private lady i really kind of like nancy you know she's a little she's a lot of fun she can be very very funny and she knows how to talk to politicians and how to kind of push push their buttons and make them relax and make them laugh and and um she had a she had a very friendly relationship with uh uh with george w bush actually when he was in the white house i mean they got along fine they disagreed on almost everything but they but they got along personally fine and that's what i think um that's i think that's how she sees uh a politician's role as to um to disagree um fiercely um but not necessarily be disagreeable unless it's necessary right and and um and and so donald trump was was a bridge too far for her um uh and she was not uh able to to um to have those sorts of relationships with with trump or his team um but with prior republicans uh in uh in the white house and in congress um she was able to to talk and laugh and wheel and deal in a sort of way that was at times delightful to watch um she uh uh she deals with her caucus in kind of the the same way i once asked her you know how do you herd uh these you know this this uh this disparate and sometimes disputatious caucus uh and she explained how uh you know on a weekly or certainly regular basis she meets with everybody she'll meet with the progressives and she'll meet with the congressional black house she'll meet with the moderates and she'll meet with the hispanic caucus and she you know and she meets with with everybody so that everyone is is included everyone's voice is heard everyone doesn't get their way all the time but she she works very hard at sort of um sort of including the entire democratic caucus and having no one feel left out by the same token i once asked her if on a specific bill and i forget what it was but but whether she would give some members for whom it might be a tough vote a pass on this one because she was going to get it through anyhow and she said i never give a pass and so she you know she she expected that once um everybody understood uh everybody's voice had been heard and a consensus and a decision had been made that everybody was gonna stick with her i mean she's she's renowned for being unbelievable in the way that she's been able to hold that caucus together she and i guess she also uses you know the harder edge sometimes she has a harder edge towards them as well i mean she uses uh the carrot and the stick yes but how phenomenal is that and what one of those tools becomes most important to her well i think you know i think it's i think it's what she does is incredibly difficult and it takes a special kind of person and a special kind of politician number one it takes an incredible amount of energy because it does require hearing everybody out no matter how long it takes and i never heard of her sort of dismissing um members of her caucus um without uh hearing their point of view trying to understand their point of view trying to engage with it um so she's very careful to do that by the same token she lets them know that she was chosen as speaker she's the leader and um and that when the time comes she expects them to be there with her you know we've seen her during the biden administration um delay and delay on on votes on the social spending package really because it wasn't there yet the the cake wasn't baked yet she didn't have that uh consensus and she's renowned for not bringing things to the floor unless she's unless she has the votes and she knows she's an excellent vote counter one of the best we've ever had and she so she she wants to know at all times where everybody is how many votes she has and if she doesn't have them then she's got more work to do to get them you talked about her relationships with bush which are on you know on a social level very good i mean they seem to like each other but she was also fierce with him oh she when iraq came around i mean she was the she was very early in denouncing uh the the policies on iraq the idea of the invasion and such and she went after bush i mean there's a famous article in the chronicle out in san francisco you know where she basically said the guy was over his head he uh he was his actions had killed soldiers uh because of uh the lies that that had come out um so he's she also is uses the partisan weapon or the when the gop looks at this and and and how she came at the the bush administration they saw it as a manipulation of the events to win votes and to use it in in in coming elections and such what's what's your sort of overview of that well she is a politician um and uh and i think one of her modus operandi is is basically that you can't do anything unless you win elections right you have to have the power in order to exercise the power so she's certainly not uh above being a partisan democrat and and using whatever political advantage she has given in order to further the cause of the democratic party so she will do that i think her uh opposition to um to the war in iraq to many of the policies of the bush administration including the torture and all the other policies we we now know about the the spying uh domestic spying and so forth i think that was genuine i think she was genuinely outraged about those things in general genuinely opposed to them but if that was politically good for her and the democratic party then that's a bonus so when the 2006 midterms were coming up and and she realized that a big part of the progressive base was very mad at both bush but also mad at the democrats because the democrats the democratic leadership and a lot of them had gone along with a lot of the the policies of the bush people and so when she's looking at that and she realizes that in fact she comes down against hope very strongly she understands that that's a winning uh recipe for the the elections i think she understands that's a winning recipe but i think that also reflects um her evolution and the evolution of a lot of the democratic leadership you remember there was a time when um if the if the president went to congress and said you know this is a this is a um a a dire threat to the united states to our national security and we need to go to war um congress has to take that seriously and has to um and and and in the sort of post-9 11 context um i think it was not just politics but also sort of genuine um um i guess deference could be the uh right word to the presidency and to the to the to and to the president um that led a lot of the democratic leadership um to at least acquiesce in the war if not if not really um uh support the iraq war but um it was fairly clear even to those who did not oppose it initially fairly soon that this had been a bad idea and that we had had a plan to get in but we had no plan to get out and that in in the process we were um uh we were just doing things that were unacceptable um uh for the united states of america uh and as you recall you know much of the country sort of reached that that same conclusion so talk a little bit about her amazingly fast rise to the top of leadership in the democratic party certainly the iraq war being on the right side of it helped a lot in the politics of it uh certainly her ability to see her amazing ability to raise money for other can for democratic candidates all the way through her career was was very important and a strength of personality or whatever it is what did you see why did she rise so quickly so that by 2008 um she's she's the speaker she's the speaker well um i i think it's a rare combination of uh of qualities and abilities she is as you said a prodigious fundraiser and has been for a long time and that really helps you in in politics if you want to rise in uh in congressional leadership um it's also the relationships that she cultivated i mean and and the fact that she was able to uh have good relationships with all sort of ideological factions of the democratic caucus those more progressive than she and those more moderate than she she's clearly on the progressive side certainly when she was coming up um through the ranks on the progressive side of the party um and in part it's it's you know i think force of ben strength of personality uh has something to do do with it too i mean she she can she can be very um magnetic and and the sort of uh sort of person you just sort of naturally perceive as a leader and um and that people are willing to follow the financial crisis the in 2008 it seems that every every time she she goes up another rung in the leadership there's another crisis to deal with in in some way or another a lot of people say that that was a big turning point for her and the way she viewed her role it starts out with the when paulson and bernanke sort of defined to both sides you know the the threat to the country she went against what her normal politics were which was you know partisan and only you know working with the democratic agenda and she agrees with the republicans with boehner and other leadership to hold hands and basically jump off the bridge at the same time and pass this thing to sort of safeguard things what does that say about her and and i guess the thing that follows after this is that when it fails she learns some lessons from that the financial cri crisis probably was um seminal in her development as a leader i think you saw um that when the secretary of the treasury and and and um the head of the fed and others came and said look this is a crisis the economy is going to going to collapse we we must act uh and even though there were republicans i think she understood the gravity of the crisis and um and saw it as a matter of of duty really um and and responsibility that transcended partisan politics um i think uh as um you know when um it was turned out to be difficult to to actually get all that money uh passed i think she learned the importance of reading the room of of knowing where um every vote is knowing um what every caucus thinks um and laying the groundwork before you go for a go to a big vote and so since then she's always laid the groundwork for every big fight but the thing was and that is is that she pulled enough votes out of her caucus in fact more than the number of ones that she had promised boehner on the other hand had a very split party at that point the tea party had come in and there was a the party was divisive within itself did she also learn that if if you can and you have the votes you do it within your own party and you you pass bills that therefore contain more of your agenda rather than their agenda and that negotiating sometimes with the republicans is not always the smartest way to go to get what you need i think she watched the evolution of the republican caucus and watched uh as from her point of view uh it became more difficult to deal with um uh and and less tethered to again from her point of view less tethered to the reality of a given situation and more willing to grandstand you know for the republican base and she had very little patience for that she also had very little patience for um for boehner not that she didn't get along with him it's that um she didn't think he was he knew what he was doing she didn't think he'd do the basics of how to how to uh how to get his caucus uh on board bills that had to be passed um like raising the debt ceiling and stuff like that and he would you know just struggle mightily to try to get republican votes for that even though he knew it had to happen and so she would she would talk about how early in her term as speaker she had to pass funding for the war remember that that the bush administration had basically funded the war off the books right and um uh and there came a time when the when the troops had to be um uh you know there had to be funding for the war um and by then her caucus was almost unanimous in opposition to the war they didn't want to vote for that uh and so um she found a way to to like split the funding measure into three pieces so that uh so that those who were opposed to the war you know could express their opposition um but in another chunk of it she could actually get enough votes to pass funding that had to be passed because you couldn't not fund the troops that are over there and she thought this was kind of being speaker 101 and and was was shocked when um when when others couldn't figure out figure figure this out uh and and frustrated that she'd go uh and and say look just do it this way you know i i did it you can do it this way and they wouldn't do it whether they were really able to or not does this define a progressive with a practical side uh which seems like a contradiction uh to many but in some how somehow is ingrained in in in her no she's she's very much a progressive with a with a practical pragmatic side um she is uh you know she believes that bismarck was right that politics is the art of the possible she wants to expand the range of the possible in the progressive direction but ultimately you do what you have the votes to do and you try to figure out how you can you can get those votes and if you don't have the votes you can't do it uh and um i think she's um she's very pragmatic that's frustrating to some members of the progressive caucus including um especially some of the newer members um but that is that is very much the way she is so when obama comes in she was very happy of course um with the fact that that they now had a unified government government with with majorities in the house and the senate and a new black president which he was also very proud of but they were very different in their ways of viewing how one uses power on how one does politics he was much more driven by a bipartisan direction to take as he had defined in the election talk a little bit about how different they they were and and how that but yet the ability for them to work together right well i you know the there are there are a lot of differences between nancy pelosi and barack obama they're very different people they're very different politicians um and i'm sure that at various times each was a bit frustrating to the other um but uh they knew they were in uh rare almost sort of unique situation right they had um especially in the first years of the obama administration they had control of of congress they had the white house they had the ability to do transformational things and um so they both recognized that ability each would have done the other's job differently yeah i think but but ultimately uh i think very quickly they realized that they had to work together if they were for example going to get the affordable care act passed and um and so um so they coexisted but but they're very different people and they both have a good sense of humor in a in a funny way and i often wondered whether in in private encounters uh they didn't sort of bond that way and and get along on a on a human level perhaps in a way that you wouldn't think given their differences as politicians but on aca i know obamacare which was for both of them you know the the prime project for for that very long period of time that they're both most proud of talk a little bit about that that frustration that she evidently uh felt i mean there's a story about um you know at some point her having a conversation with rahm emanuel and sort of talking about the fact that obama kept on wanting to woo the republicans time after time it wasn't sort of working but he she kept on going back and at some point she says to rob doesn't he get it doesn't he understand how things work here i mean what was the frustrations that she had um about the way that obama dealt with the republicans his under he what i think some people say his misunderstanding yeah i think her frustration with obama was that his um his instinct was basically to start with what he thought was a reasonable sort of republican-friendly position that would that would attract some republican support which did not come right and which was not going to come and i think she understood uh that he wasn't going to woo republicans that way and would have preferred that he start with a purer progressive vision for the affordable care act um one with the public option with you know with with at the very least and then you know sort of retreat as necessary that would have been more of her strategy and uh and she would have gone into it expecting um that in the end we're not going to get many of any republican votes and that's the way it's going to be they're not going to just put they're not going to play kumbaya here and you know obama had a certain appeal that went beyond party lines that's certainly true especially at the beginning when his approval ratings were sky high but um that that that really never extended um to republicans in congress um it never extended um uh to the point where he was actually going to get um republicans to to sign on to this sort of reasonable almost centrist approach uh to health care that he proposed i mean and to that point i mean the thing is that that some people have said this frustrated her to death was the fact that they had the votes they had all the votes they needed they could have designed anything they wanted and as you said if they had started negotiating in a different fashion yeah they might have gotten more of what the progressives would have would have wanted they might have they might have i mean i think if if if obama were here i think he would argue um that you had to not just try to bring along congress but you had to try to bring along the country as well and that by starting where he started um with less than a pure progressive vision he was trying to to get wider public support for what was really a big change right i mean the affordable care act was a very very big deal now if if that is what obama believed he was wrong because uh if in fact um republicans managed to bring the republican base to a position of of you know fervent opposition uh to the aca no matter what it looked like no matter how much democrats gave or tried to include republicans and so um uh if that if if that was his assessment it was a wrong assessment it is only now years later that yes the aca is is pretty widely popular and uh and republicans attempt to to get rid of it have all failed and uh will continue to fail i think um you can't get rid of something like that once you've once you've established it and people have come to depend on it and then on a snowy cold night in boston scott brown wins kennedy's sleep right and people back down in she basically says um no we go big we go big we go quick we go big um and and mr president your man rom is undercutting me in the in the uh in my house and you can't do that and i got to tell you also that if you want to go big i will be behind you and i will make it happen i will deliver the house and we will do it but if you go small count me out and puts and puts obama in a bit of a box i mean i know obama wanted it and obama eventually does sign up with what she she wants to do but talk about that moment and what that says about her well um she knew she had the votes she knew she had the votes for something big and she's very determined she was very determined she thought it was the right thing to do and realized that if democrats backed down at that point and went small they might never get a chance to to do it again or it might be years before they really got a chance uh to do something meaningful on on health insurance on health care and um and everybody knew what a huge huge problem that was and is it it remains a big problem uh in this country but um but less of a problem than it was before the affordable care act and so so she was um you know she dug in and she said uh no we're we're we're going big and i'm there with you you be there with me let's talk about trump um her relations with trump got off to a very uneasy start when the first meeting of uh leadership in the white house he brings everybody down and um he starts you know being jovial and showing his lighter side with them and uh and she's you know a lowly minority leader at this point and uh trump does what he does he starts talking about the fact that that uh he had won the popular vote and that uh the crowds that were at the inauguration were larger than than they were and and uh bashing others in the media probably and everybody else and at some point she goes no no mr president uh those are not the correct facts uh the on the popular vote that's that's not that's not what what that's not what happened so she stands up to him in a very sort of direct manner on that first meeting what how does that portend sort of what's to come and when what what that does what does that say about the beginning of that relationship well i think she'd never seen anything like that right um she never you know she had met a lot of presidents she had never met a a a president who would just lie and who seemed to inhabit this sort of fantasy world that he he either you know really believed in or or or didn't believe in but was trying to sell or whatever um i think and i think she was just genuinely appalled by trump uh and uh from that first meeting i mean it it started pretty low and it went downhill from there you know and uh she just found him uh an impossible person to deal with and and he didn't bring people into his white house who were from her point of view um easier to deal with or more reasonable to deal with and um and i think it was very um unsettling and and odd for her to have so little of a relationship uh at all between uh the speaker of the house and and the president of the united states so by the the time of the the 2018 midterms her strategy was don't attack trump uh when you're out campaigning he's already destroying himself by just his actions yeah um talk about health care talk about the things that the programs that we're going to bring to people so that election what does it say about their strategy how successful they were and sort of where uh nancy pelosi and and the rest of the democrats were in regards to trump in in a very different position at this point because of winning the majority right i mean you can measure the strategy by its success i mean you know you know democrats did so well um won the majority and nancy pelosi became speaker again that certainly um ratified the the strategy that she did pursue um raising all that money recruiting all those women candidates um energizing voters by talking about democratic issues and democratic agenda and she was right you know when your opponent in politics is destroying himself you know permit him and that's what she did with trump despite the role that she had and proving once one more time that she was really good at her job and really good at bringing back the victory that she had promised for for so many years um there was a there was a moderate faction within her own caucus that uh disagreed and and decided that her time was over and she just shouldn't be um she shouldn't be speaker so there was a small period of time where her leadership was up for up for grabs um was that surprising or or did it show a division in the party that was not understood um no i thought it reflected political ambition more than anything else and you know some people thought she could be taken down she couldn't be taken down it turned out she had the continued um support of the majority of her of her caucus and i don't know that she ever thought her position was seriously in jeopardy during that during that time i think she figured that she had the upper hand and she would you know she wanted to consider a speaker and that she would coming into 2019 there's a couple of things going on within the caucus which is causing a divide and of course she needs to deal with it one of them though is the fact that the squad is now sort of coming after her to some extent and um they have power but in in a very different way and it's very interesting because it's sort of the dynamics of you know what power is in the modern age is it the same as the power in nancy's time i mean nancy uses hard power aoc has um you know over five million uh twitter uh fans right exactly um but which which nancy discounts what's the difference between these the dynamics and how interesting is that they come to head to head there well you know i think that's an interesting relationship um in so far as you can really observe the relationship on on the one hand it has to at times be inconvenient for speaker pelosi to be sort of pushed from the left by um alexandria ocasio-corte cortez and the rest of the of the squad and the other you know it can also be useful because pelosi's views are are basically progressive uh it can be useful to have pressure uh from the left to demonstrate to the rest of the caucus that um uh that that's where the weight of opinion is in the democratic caucus ocasio-cortez has the five million twitter followers or whatever and uh and this huge public profile but she's been very smart in the way she has uh uh not challenged pelosi directly uh you know in a way that um that would force pelosi to respond uh and that could damage both of them um so she so she she pushes publicly but when votes have been needed um and when push has come to shove she's been there and the progressives including the squad you know the final analysis despite rhetoric and despite twitter um to this point have been really quite pragmatic um uh in in going along with the agenda even though uh it hasn't gone as far uh as they would like at this time also the other big thing is is that the progressives are are pushing for impeachment and nancy pelosi is in the odd position of being the one that sort of is uh pushing back on the idea of impeachment right um and that's that's causing a a bit of a division as well the i mean i mean she's coming from the point of the view of again this practicality side yeah that she wants to get rid of them yeah of course because that's she kind of can't stand the guy but she thinks this is the wrong way it's not going to do the job anyway what you're going to do is you're going to hurt your moderates you're going to you're going to hurt them in the next elections you're going to you're going to make it impossible to win over uh in some of the districts that trump had won in yeah i think she i think she believed for a long time that impeachment would be sort of a pointless exercise because you'd never get a conviction in the senate and so what would be the point of it politically uh if she felt it wouldn't be helpful uh it might be harmful but what would you know what would be the point until it reached a point with with the ukraine phone call and everything that she simply thought there was no choice that that this was uh an outrageous act for a president to commit that it was um a high crime uh and or misdemeanor and that um there was no choice but to go to impeachment and i think that when she got to that point she you know then there was there was just no choice and what that decision did was in some ways it was trump again doing something which helped mend her problems within the the caucus that that unified the caucus yeah right because the caucus had been um somewhat at odds over that that impeachment question and and and there were many members who who thought you know trump did something every week that deserved impeachment and a lot of others who said yeah maybe you're probably right but it's not going to go anywhere it's not practical let's um you know let's just beat him in the next election let's just um uh but ukraine thing just made it impossible to say let's just let it pass it couldn't be let past and that's something that the democratic caucus could agree on so the state of the union in in in february of 2020 which you talked a little bit about before um talk a little bit about that event i mean so he comes in and he's it's he it's it's at the point where he is emboldened take us to that evening and talk about the significance of what is happening there and um and the end result well i think it was clear to pelosi that trump came into that state of the union with the intent of of putting on a show at her expense so yes he came in and wouldn't shake her hand and yes he gave the medal of freedom then and there to rush limbaugh uh who had just been vicious toward pelosi over the years um and he was sort of despoiling her house as a as a as a way of of getting at her uh and so i think she decided she would put on a show of her own and at the end uh when he finished um uh his state of the union speech he made a very big display of holding it up and ripping it uh into which i had never seen a speaker do i don't think anybody has ever seen a speaker of the house do but it was her way i think of saying um this is my house and um and i can put on a show too how should one look at at pelosi's adding to the this divide in washington this partisan nature that is just so damaging to democracy you could argue that there was a tit-for-tat escalation between democrats and republicans in partisanship you could you could argue that i i think you could um uh you could certainly argue there was more of that on the republican side than on the democratic side but you probably couldn't argue that there was none on the democratic side right that um that there was no um no partisanship i think um you know one thing that um nancy pelosi has never been accused of is like bringing a knife to a gunfight and and so um if the game is um everybody to their corners and we're gonna be um you know party is everything and and that's where we're going to be then we're going to play that game and we're going to win that game maybe it looked the same from the republican side maybe there were people on the republican side who said look see she's you know she's playing to win so we have to play to win so we can't um co-sign with democrats so that you know that sort of thing but um look we are where we are i mean um uh it's it congress is a very different place from what it used to be um we shouldn't remember the past through classes that are too rose-colored right and the house has always been a pretty partisan place where most members sort of do what the leadership requires them to do and votes are more along parting lines the fact that the center senate has become um as partisan as it has and it's sharply divided along partisan lines there's a bigger change i would argue than what's happened in the house and both together uh creates a both together creates gridlock it creates uh it makes it impossible and and and gridlock on things like you know raising the debt ceiling which has to be done like basic technical improvements to to to legislation that's already been passed that could and should be made and everybody knows good and should be made yet can't be done because nobody can cooperate with anybody else when you look back at all that nancy pelosi has learned over the years and and what she's experienced and all these crises that she's gone through and and survived and how does it all shape how she views you know what she will be doing with biden nancy pelosi at the beginning of the biden administration and we're still at the beginning of the biden administration he's got three more years plus to be in office but i think she's defined by a number of forces that sometimes work against each other number one i think she and president biden do both understand uh that this is a time to go big a time to do very big and important things progressive things that the opportunity might not come again for a long time and that there is a real need it's not just an opportunity but there is a real need for progressive legislation i think they see the opportunity um to sort of turn the ocean liner um which has been sort of sailing in the direction of trickle down since the reagan years really since reagan moved the political spectrum far to the right and made trickle-down economics which was once um uh you know exotic and weird and and goofy um uh into um orthodox dogma uh in washington and and basically the underlying assumption um here for 40 years and and i think they see the opportunity to to sort of move it a bit move it back um somewhat and i think they both understand uh that this is a a historic opportunity and and one that the country is ready for on the other hand um she's got a much smaller majority and the senate is 50 50 and so um both she and president biden are have absolutely no margin for error and so they're trying to do big things with tiny majorities now these are big things that have a lot of popular support so they have that going for them but they have tiny majorities and they can't lose anybody i mean that's that's that's why getting the social spending package has been such a difficult proposition because pelosi can't afford to lose more than what two or three votes in the house and chuck schumer can't afford to lose a single vote in the senate and so as president biden said everybody's a president everybody everybody gets to write the baggage according to their their needs and wants um and um so you know that's that's what's so difficult and those those that opportunity but that difficulty they work against each other and um uh it's now i think this is the kind of moment that nancy pelosi lives for in a in a way i mean she loves her job and she loves legislating and she loves a difficult problem like this uh i think she'd maybe love it more if it weren't quite so difficult but she loves but but she she she relishes uh the opportunity to to to work through this and to and to come out on the other side with legislation uh something that really helps the american people and so that's you know this is nancy pelosi's time what's what's at stake here though i mean a lot of people keep talking about the existential threat that that that still exists the need to to be successful to win back people so that the upcoming elections don't lead them back into the hinterland basically right no i mean the coming midterm election uh could certainly it's very possible that democrats could once again find themselves in the minority in the in the house now that's not inevitable um historically it's probable historically the the party of the newly elected president loses seats in the house in the in the first midterm and pelosi doesn't have many seats to lose before she's no longer a speaker on the other hand who knows what history has to say to the sort of post-trump post-truth post-reality nation and time that we're living through who knows what whether history is a guide right now i think it's a safe bet that democrats are better off have a better chance of keeping the majority if they're able to accomplish big and important things whose benefits people feel before they have to stand again before the voters and they're worse off if they uh if all they can do was tell voters about the stuff they wanted to do but weren't able to accomplish and then you know you kind of let the the chips fall the way they do it's a long time till the midterm it's more in the year so what's a democratic party without nancy pelosi at this point what's the dangers of that well um like a lot of powerful leaders who um especially those who who hold power for a long time and hold the kind of of um it's not absolute power but the the kind of real power that a speaker of the house has like a lot of people like that she has never really wanted to have an heir apparent right so she doesn't really have an heir apparent um and so that's sort of the first issue i mean she is is for the first time really being sort of coy when asked if this is her last term uh and she's not directly answering the question uh and um you know saying something like of course not of course i'm gonna run again or whatever she's not saying that she's saying i'll talk to my family and we'll make a decision and as she um you know completes her eighth decade and you know in in on this earth um i she can't go on forever and so um the big question is who comes after nancy pelosi and what sort of first my first question is what sort of leadership skills does that person bring to the job and then my secondary question is which part of the of the house caucus democratic caucus does that person come from is it one of the progressives is it one of the more moderates is it somebody who tries to straddle both um both camps um and and that person will probably have um some challenges at least at the beginning because everybody in the house now owes something to nancy pelosi she's done something she's she's raised money for them um she's you know made phone calls for them she's she's done something for the district she's done something to help them out every single one and uh and there's nobody else in that position uh in in the house to um and so the next democratic speaker if indeed the next democratic leader is speaker the next democratic leader actually um will still be in the process of of of beginning to form those strong relationships that pelosi has had you know for years and years and years and you can't do that overnight there are house members who would like to be the next speaker and who who seem to be working toward that but none of them is in my view anywhere um has anywhere near the the the network the web that pelosi has in the democratic caucus and the ability to count on on and everybody's vote when they need it have we ever seen anyone like nancy pelosi and and and once she does leave will there ever be a legislator like her a leader in the democratic party like her or is or is she and sort of what she represents something of um you know a past generation there will never be anyone like nancy pelosi um because she's a first right she's the first woman to to hold this job in so there will never be another first uh like that she will there be another speaker as strong and powerful uh and effective as nancy pelosi um i think that's i think that's indeed possible um probably be a while i mean when you look you know look at past democratic speakers and you you know i guess you go back to tip o'neill um who was a very effective and very powerful speaker completely different from nancy pelosi in a lot of ways but um but he was and then you can go to you know um uh there have been legendary speakers all the way back to sam rayburn so we'll have another legendary speaker she is a legendary speaker though she will go down uh as uh as as one of the giants who has held that bad post

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

Views: 31,856

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Id: hjCCCWrb5AQ

Length: 59min 49sec (3589 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 21 2022