Nancy Pelosi just nailed it
Not so long ago, shortly after taking up the Speaker’s gavel for the second time, Nancy Pelosi was denounced for weakness. She received a lot of heat from Democrats for proclaiming that “impeachment is not on the table.” These days many of the reformed Pelosi-bashing Democrats after changing their minds (if not learning their lessons) are the loudest members of her cheering section.
Not merely for the sake of form did Speaker Pelosi resume her rightful place with a bipartisan spirit at the head of Congress. She understood that the first duty of high political office is the good of the people and not to take vengeance on our political enemies. She also understood that one of two things was going to happen. Either the then president was going to behave himself or he was going to screw up. And when he screwed up, Pelosi was there.
The first reason great orchestras are great is because the best musician in the room is also the conductor. That is sometimes true of Congresses, too: the best politician in the room, right now, also happens to be the Speaker of the House. She served notice on an astonished American constituency when, in February of 2020, she publicly tore up Donald Trump’s state of the union address. “I tore up a manifesto of mistruths,” Pelosi said at the time.
Speaking this week at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that “America is back.” She went on to say, “Our president was here, there were many successes that were achieved in collaboration — not in dictation or condescension — but in collaboration with other countries, many of whom were ahead of us because we had the dark period of four years preceding President Biden’s administration.”
The Madame Speaker also reminded the audience that Joe Biden was the first person in Congress to author climate change legislation (the Global Climate Protection Act of 1986). “He tells me and I take him at his word,” she said, reminding a chuckling audience that Trump, by contrast, was wholly untrustworthy. As for President Biden: “This [climate change] is a priority for him — not only a priority but a value.”
Nancy Pelosi is the embodiment of the Greek proverb that says a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit. There is no denying that the Speaker is no longer a young woman, but her spirit and her mind remain as razor-sharp as ever. She was there before Trump and she has outlasted him. I cannot help but take personal delight in the certain knowledge that Nancy Pelosi, basking in the spotlight in Glasgow, deeply wounds and annoys the paper-thin ego of Donald Trump. America is indeed back. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.