Don't Mess with Nancy Pelosi

By By Perry Bacon Jr.

Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House, portrays herself as a polite, grandmotherly lady. She constantly discusses her five grandchildren, makes sure her office is stocked with Ghirardelli chocolates, perpetually smiles and never swears in a business in which almost everyone else does. She even has a few cute quirks she and her staff would love to tell you about: a diet consisting mostly of chocolate and chocolate ice cream, and so much energy, she rarely sleeps. Just the other night, she will tell you, she was up watching MTV after midnight.

Don't believe it for a second. Would your grandmother ever say, "If people are ripping your face off, you have to rip their face off" (Pelosi's approach to handling attacks from Republicans)? How about "If you take the knife off the table, it's not very frightening anymore" (her explanation for why she won't let voters forget George W. Bush's unpopular Social Security proposal from last year)?

The 66-year-old San Francisco lawmaker is an aggressive, hyperpartisan liberal pol who is the Democrats' version of Tom DeLay, minus the ethical and legal problems of the former Republican House leader. To condition Democrats for this fall's midterm elections, she has employed tactics straight out of DeLay's playbook: insisting other House Democrats vote the party line on everything, avoiding compromise with Republicans at all cost and mandating that members spend much of their time raising money for colleagues in close races. And she has been effective. House Democrats have been more unified in their voting than at any other time in the past quarter-century, with members on average voting the party line 88% of the time in 2005, according to Congressional Quarterly. That cohesion enabled Democrats to hasten President Bush's slide in the polls when they blocked his plan to reform Social Security by allowing retirees to eschew guaranteed benefits in favor of private accounts. Bush's approval rating remains depressed--38% in a TIME poll last week--and the Democrats are in their best position to win the House since Republicans took control of it in 1994.

If Democrats are successful in November, it will be mostly the result of Americans' increasing frustration with the Iraq war and with the perception that Bush and congressional Republicans have bungled everything from Terri Schiavo to Hurricane Katrina. But Pelosi has made sure Democrats didn't break the Republicans' fall. And if Democrats win back the 15 seats they need to form a majority, Pelosi will be richly rewarded. She would almost certainly become the first woman to be House Speaker.

That would be sweet vindication for a leader many moderate Democrats castigated as an out-of-touch liberal who would take the party perilously to the left when she became the top House Democrat in 2002. It would also mark a rapid rise for a politician who didn't run for office until she was 47. Pelosi grew up in a prominent political family in Baltimore, Md. Her father was the mayor for almost her entire childhood. After college, Pelosi and her husband Paul moved to New York City and then to San Francisco, where she became a leading Democratic fund raiser, then chairwoman of the party in California. But she waited until the youngest of her five children was a high school senior before she ran for Congress in 1987.

Among Democrats in Washington, Pelosi became popular for her prodigious fund raising on behalf of colleagues and her gracious manners; she's often the first person to send flowers if a member's spouse is sick. Staffers also enjoy her largesse. After a lavish meal, she will sometimes say, "Thank God for Paul Pelosi," her investment-banker husband, whose real estate holdings make up much of the couple's $16 million in assets.

Once in Congress, she was embraced especially by liberal Democrats. She opposed the Gulf War and in a 1996 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle said, "I pride myself in being called a liberal" and "I don't consider myself a moderate." In 2001, on the strength of the votes of party progressives, Pelosi won an intense battle with Maryland's Steny Hoyer, who is more centrist, to be the No. 2 Democrat in the House. A year later she defeated another moderate, Martin Frost of Texas, to become the party's leader in the chamber.

In both contests her opponents argued that Pelosi was too liberal, and she hasn't forgotten. Her relationship with Hoyer is tense, and when Pennsylvania Representative John Murtha said he would run against Hoyer for House majority leader if Democrats won this fall, Pelosi did little to dissuade him. When Frost, who is now out of Congress, unsuccessfully ran for chair of the Democratic National Committee last year, Pelosi repeatedly rebuffed his attempts to get her support. While she declines to discuss those conflicts, Pelosi told TIME, "Anybody who's ever dealt with me knows not to mess with me." Pelosi carries a chip on her shoulder, believing that fellow Democrats and media elites have constantly underestimated her political ability, dating back to her unsuccessful effort to become head of the Democratic National Committee in 1985, when she was called an "airhead" by a labor-union official. She will talk about those political battles only vaguely but told me the Democratic establishment in Washington "couldn't control me, so they needed to take me down" and "They can't even believe the fact that I'm going to become Speaker, but they're getting used to it."

Like DeLay, who was also known for bruising rivalries within his party, Pelosi has embraced hard-knuckle partisanship, even if it means standing still. When Bush announced his Social Security plan last year, Pelosi told House Democrats they could never beat him in a straight-ahead, policy-against-policy debate because he had the megaphone of the presidency and was just coming off re-election. So the Democrats would thunderously attack Bush and argue there was no Social Security crisis and therefore no need for them to put out their own proposal. Some members were leery, concerned that Pelosi would make the Democrats look like the Party of No. As the spring of 2005 wore on, some pestered her every week, asking when they were going to release a rival plan. "Never. Is never good enough for you?" Pelosi defiantly said to one member. When Florida Democrat Robert Wexler publicly suggested raising Social Security taxes as the solution, Pelosi immediately chewed him out over the phone. Only one other Democrat signed on to his plan.

The Democrats won the Social Security battle Pelosi's way. That earned her credit with her colleagues, who have embraced her overall strategy. Throughout the past year, Pelosi has demanded that Democrats unanimously oppose G.O.P. bills. By denying the G.O.P votes from across the aisle, Democrats have forced moderate Republicans to back bills like those cutting Medicaid and other social programs that fiscally conservative Republicans have insisted on, votes for which Democrats have then attacked moderate Republicans in television ads. Pelosi has also ordered Democrats not to work on bills or even hold press conferences with Republicans whom the party is trying to defeat in November.

Meanwhile, at the cost of infuriating parts of her own, progressive base, Pelosi has made a number of pragmatic, tactical moves to better position the Democrats for November. When Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson was found with $90,000 in his freezer from an apparent bribery scheme, Pelosi immediately had him tossed out of his seat on the House Ways and Means Committee. The strongly liberal Congressional Black Caucus was incensed that one of its members had been punished before he had even been indicted. But Pelosi's action helped rebut the G.O.P.'s contention that Democrats had as many corruption problems as Republicans, many of whom are caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

No one among the Democrats has succeeded in solidifying the party around a single position on the Iraq war, but Pelosi has managed to tame the several dozen House members who call themselves the Out of Iraq caucus. They have wanted the Democratic Party to demand the prompt withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But Pelosi has so far convinced them that Murtha, the ex-Marine and veteran lawmaker whose call for a troop withdrawal in November created real debate, should be the party's face for that cause while the others should stay in the background.

Still, some Democrats think Pelosi's leftward tilt, combined with her strident attacks on Bush, undercuts her strength as a party leader. A number of Democratic candidates have distanced themselves from her. "We hope she campaigns in as many districts as possible," said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for Dennis Hastert, the Republican Speaker of the House. "She comes across as very liberal."

That's not the only issue with Pelosi. Even her supporters acknowledge she's not the ideal spokeswoman for the Democrats in public. When she's not making clumsy remarks, like bragging earlier this year that one of the biggest benefits of a Democratic takeover of Congress would be "subpoena power," she's mind-numbingly repeating whatever talking points the party has agreed on that week or indulging her love of alliteration: "People, politics, policy" and "Money, message, mobilization." The charitable view of her often disjointed speaking style is that she's someone who thinks faster than she talks. The uncharitable view is that "she's Teresa Heinz without the accent," as one Democratic activist said.

But Democrats aren't counting on Pelosi to be their poster girl for November. Her most important role is behind the scenes. If the Democrats take the House, that will change, since Speaker Pelosi would become the face of the Democrats and second in the line of succession to the presidency, after Vice President Dick Cheney. It would also be a test of Pelosi's skills: she has unified the Democrats in opposition, but it would be much more difficult to keep Democratic members in line if they took control. "They listen to no one," says Pelosi. "They don't listen to each other." But so far, the Democrats have listened to their leader, and if she keeps guiding them smartly, Nancy Pelosi could make President Bush's final two years even more vexing than the past two.