The Pelosi Era Comes to a Close

WASHINGTON — With a preferred Democratic president within the White Home and large Democratic majorities in Congress, an emboldened Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2009 pushed via a serious local weather change measure regardless of warnings of a political backlash.

“We handed transformational laws which takes us into the longer term,” Ms. Pelosi exulted after the Home narrowly authorized laws to chop emissions following her signature wheeling and dealing to corral reluctant Democrats.

It was a uncommon miscalculation. Her instant future turned out to be within the minority as Democrats had been crushed within the 2010 midterm elections by a public recoil to the local weather invoice, which died within the Senate, and a well being care invoice that was signed into legislation.

Ms. Pelosi refused to throw within the towel and step apart. She remained head of the defeated Home Democrats and rose once more in 2019 as a extra pragmatic speaker, one who had discovered from each her failures and successes and would preside over a interval of exceptional legislative productiveness. Within the course of, she sealed a legacy as probably the most highly effective girl in American politics thus far.

What can arguably be referred to as the Pelosi period in Washington got here to an in depth on Tuesday, with Ms. Pelosi retreating to the rank and file of a brand new Congress the place, she insists, she doesn’t intend to be a meddling mother-in-law providing unsolicited recommendation.

However her presence will likely be felt for years within the local weather, well being care, public works and social laws she ushered via to signatures by two Democratic presidents, in addition to the massive moments of her tenure capped off by the electrifying invitation to Volodymyr Zelensky to handle Congress simply days earlier than she misplaced the gavel.

The brand new management of each events will discover it formidable to attempt to match her efficiency and political attain, no matter their view of her coverage agenda. Ms. Pelosi, the primary feminine speaker, carved a singular path.

Her time in management was bracketed by the terrorist assaults of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, two seminal occasions that examined her talents but in addition confirmed a willingness to rise above political variations at occasions of disaster.

In between was a warfare in Iraq that she opposed, a harrowing monetary disaster that she helped curb, the rise of the Tea Occasion motion that unseated her, the Trump presidency that she combated with two impeachments, a pandemic that threw Congress and the nation into turmoil, and eventually a triumphant legislative push in the course of the first two years of President Biden’s time period. Whereas her objectives had been massive, she additionally devoted herself to — and appeared to relish — the trivia of vote counting, selecting off Democrats one after the other till she reached the magic variety of 218, often with a couple of extra tucked away in her purse simply in case.

“The actual fact of the matter is not any different speaker within the trendy period, Republican or Democrat, has wielded the gavel with such authority or such constant outcomes,” John A. Boehner, the Ohio Republican who dueled with Ms. Pelosi in his roles as minority chief and speaker, stated in the course of the dedication of her official portrait final month. “Let me simply say you’re one powerful cookie.”

And a partisan one. Because the Home confronted a dangerous vote on a financial institution bailout whereas the economic system teetered in September 2008, Ms. Pelosi coupled her attraction for passage of the laws with an assault on Republican financial insurance policies that brought about the disaster. Some Republicans cited the tone of her assault as their excuse for opposing the package deal, an end result that despatched monetary markets reeling when their get together didn’t ship the promised votes and the invoice went down.

Ms. Pelosi then led the Bush administration and members of each events in Congress in regrouping and discovering a bipartisan approach out of the financial meltdown. Her function was captured throughout a now-famous second within the West Wing of the White Home, when the Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, received down on bended knee pleading for Ms. Pelosi’s assist.

“Hank, I didn’t know you had been Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi, a religious member of that religion, dryly informed the beseeching Mr. Paulson.

However it’s the approval of the Reasonably priced Care Act in 2010 that Ms. Pelosi regards as her best accomplishment, one which required all of the legislative talent she might muster. In the long run, she needed to persuade Home Democrats to swallow a Senate invoice that many discovered objectionable however couldn’t change after Senate Democrats misplaced their essential sixtieth vote with the dying of Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. It required navigating the various objections of each conservative and progressive Democrats to ship the win.

“Nothing in any of the years that I used to be there compares to the Reasonably priced Care Act, increasing well being care to tens of tens of millions extra Individuals, 150 million households having higher advantages, decrease prices and no pre-existing situation risking their entry, and no lifetime limits,” Ms. Pelosi informed reporters in December, including a degree of specific delight to her, a mom of 5: “Being a girl not a pre-existing situation.”

The win was pricey as Ms. Pelosi grew to become the goal of harsh Republican political hits that proceed to today and contributed to a violent assault on her husband, Paul, in October. Democrats fell deep into the minority. Republicans had been capable of put the brakes on the ultimate years of President Barack Obama’s administration at the same time as he was re-elected in 2012 earlier than turning the White Home over to Donald J. Trump — or “what’s his title,” as Ms. Pelosi generally disparages the person who referred to her as “Loopy Nancy.”

Although she had a problem to her return as speaker after Democrats gained again the Home in 2018, Ms. Pelosi solidified energy once more, aided by her fierce and public pushback to Mr. Trump.

From their first encounter, Ms. Pelosi confirmed that she wouldn’t humor Mr. Trump as so many others did. When he falsely claimed to have gained the favored vote throughout his preliminary assembly with congressional leaders on the White Home in January 2017, she pointedly corrected him on the matter. At one other assembly, {a photograph} confirmed her pointing her finger at him, castigating him for his sympathy to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and telling Mr. Trump that “with him, all roads result in Putin.”

Her sarcastic clap at Mr. Trump throughout his 2019 State of the Union handle has grow to be an iconic picture, and her determination to tear up his printed remarks on the conclusion of the identical speech a yr later surpassed even that rebuke.

“He lied on each single web page,” Ms. Pelosi stated in a latest interview, explaining her spontaneous determination to shred the speech. She stated she had seen the handle as disrespectful to the Home of Representatives, notably after Mr. Trump used the event to current an honor to Rush Limbaugh, whom Ms. Pelosi labeled a “thug.”

“Don’t come right here along with your trash and your trash discuss,” Ms. Pelosi stated, describing her ideas at the moment.

In her second go-round as speaker, a problem got here from the left as youthful, extra progressive Democrats noticed Ms. Pelosi as reluctant to push the legislative envelope once they floated the Inexperienced New Deal, an expansive environmental plan that Ms. Pelosi at one level disregarded because the “inexperienced dream.” The extra pragmatic Nancy Pelosi was not able to go there, utilizing her personal credentials as a card-carrying San Francisco liberal to attract a line.

At an October fund-raising reception in Detroit, Ms. Pelosi informed donors that whereas she appreciated the keenness of the brand new members and even shared their progressive views, it was not a “successful message.”

“I had these indicators in my basement from 30 years in the past,” she stated. “However it isn’t what we’re doing proper now.”

Confronted with a stalemate in 2021, Ms. Pelosi agreed to separate an enormous tax and local weather change package deal from a bipartisan public works invoice that progressives had been threatening to carry hostage. The infrastructure measure handed and proved to be a political winner, however a number of the social applications and tax advantages sought by Democrats within the failed companion had been by no means resurrected.

In her ultimate months as speaker, she oversaw a rush of bipartisan laws that, whereas falling wanting what she and different Home Democrats would have most popular, represented actual accomplishment: the largest local weather change measure ever enacted, an surprising gun security invoice, microchip manufacturing laws, new provisions to decrease drug prices for older Individuals and an enormous spending package deal that included cash for Ukraine to hold out its warfare towards Russian aggression. Lastly, there was legislative safety for same-sex marriage, which Ms. Pelosi stated was a becoming capstone to her profession in Congress, the place her first speech after successful a particular election in 1987 was a name to fight AIDS.

There was one final little bit of enterprise for a pacesetter who usually carried out her weightiest duties with no time to spare. With simply days remaining as speaker, she leveled a ultimate barrage at Mr. Trump. First, the particular Jan. 6 committee she created ended its evaluation by referring the previous president to the Justice Division for legal prosecution and releasing reams of testimony exhibiting Mr. Trump’s willpower to overturn the 2020 election he misplaced. Then, on Friday, the Democratic-led Methods and Means Committee launched revenue tax returns that Mr. Trump had fought to maintain secret.

Nancy Pelosi exercised energy till the very finish.