In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Emanuel noted his appreciation for the realpolitik approach that she brought to making legislative change.
“She doesn’t just talk ideas,” he said. “She knows that winning elections is the only way you can enact those ideas. And sometimes a lot of people in our activist wing don’t understand that winning elections is the route to enacting your policy goals.”
In recent decades, other House speakers from both parties have been ousted, humiliated or pushed out for one reason or another. Her tenure was certainly not flawless, but as she retires after nearly four decades in Congress, Emanuel explains why Pelosi is seen as standing alone in the modern era.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What should Nancy Pelosi be remembered for?
I don’t think it’s a singular thing. Going back to when she first became speaker, 20 years to date, there isn’t a major policy that doesn’t have her thumbprint on it. Minimum wage, ACA, financial reform and regulation, infrastructure, climate investments. There’s just nothing major that doesn’t have — not just that she passed it — but her imprint on what she passed.
I’ll tell you one story. President-elect Obama is about to meet Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, and he looks at me, he goes, “Just tell me about her.” And I said, “Well, what you have to know, Mr. President, is that she’s 99 percent D’Alesandro, her maiden name, and 1 percent Pelosi. She is her father’s daughter. And for those of us from Chicago, Mr. President, we know how to talk to her, and she knows how to talk to us.” And that proved how she understood power. She understood why you accumulate power, why you win elections, and then how you execute.
Virtually every other House speaker in the modern era, from both parties, had an embarrassing downfall — from Jim Wright to Newt Gingrich to Kevin McCarthy. She’s the exception and will go down as a master of the institution. Why?
She had a great deal of respect. We were once having a conversation, and I said, “My mystery about you is: Your father’s mayor of Baltimore for years, your brother’s mayor and when you decide to run for Congress, the mayorship of San Francisco was open. Why did you pick Congress over mayor given everything about your family, because both were open simultaneously? But she saw it as a place where she could make a difference, cut her own way, have her own identity, not live in the shadow. And she saw all the potential.
Then the second question. I said once to President [Bill] Clinton, if we knew in the first year of the first term what we knew by the first year of the second term, we would all be geniuses.
Nancy Pelosi — the first [time as] speaker that pushes the cap-and-trade climate legislation, passes the House with no prospect in the Senate — is not Nancy Pelosi the speaker of the second time. She understands where the majority comes from. She understands the politics, even when the party is moving or some elements of the party are moving farther to the left. She doesn’t just talk ideas. She knows that winning elections are the only way you can enact those ideas. And sometimes a lot of people in our activist wing don’t understand that winning elections is the route to enacting your policy goals.
Why was she able to hang on after the 2010 losses?
I think people understood that she had a capacity, that she understood the electoral part of politics. Coming back out of the desert in 2010, people knew that she knew how to win elections, raise money, recruit candidates, put together an electoral team, which eight years later bore out in 2018.
Did you ever think after 2010, or at any point after that, she should have stepped aside earlier as party leader?
No. And the reason I say no: Not only does she help the Democrats come back and recruit candidates in 2018 etc, but you get a forceful voice countering Donald Trump.
You get the historic investments in infrastructure, the CHIPS Act, and investments in alternative renewable energy at historic levels [under the Biden administration]. And I don’t think anybody could have replicated that effort.
There were a whole lot of stories written about how you and she clashed over the ACA when it was coming together. She wanted to forge ahead, you were in the Obama White House and sometimes felt differently. What did that episode say about her?
I mean, look, I don’t have any problem. I worked for the president. She wanted me to still be caucus chair.
There were different periods. One is we’re in this very dark place, we can’t get the bill out of the Senate Finance Committee. And the president and I were talking and you have financial reform over in Barney Frank’s committee and then you had your cap-and-trade legislation. And I said, “Look, if you want to try to get to all three of these, we’ve got to figure out some movement in the joints here.” And I did what the president wanted to do now at the end of the day.
Then the second piece was the House having to pass the Senate bill rather than going to conference. And then third was a lot of the Democrats did not want to do what the president did, which is, as it relates to Medicare, reforms that are in that bill that saved a lot of money and didn’t adversely affect health care.
And so my job was to do what the president wanted as chief of staff, and we had our differences. I did what the president wanted. She wanted me to be, correctly, as a former House member, very loyal as a former House member. I worked for the president and gave the president the advice that he asked me to give him, and that’s what I did. Nancy and I disagreed, and were strong about it. I mean, I talked to her just the other day last week. We talk all the time. It doesn’t affect our relationship.
Does that say something about how she was able to govern as a leader? You had these disagreements, but it didn’t affect your relationship in the long run?
Correct. I mean, I don’t know if that’s true for everybody. [laughs] We had our relationship. But when I was thinking about running for mayor, she was one of the people I sought for advice.
I’ll tell you another anecdote about Nancy. Beyond helping me get votes for my ambassadorship [to Japan under Biden]. Amy, [my wife], and I are back in Chicago, 1:30 in the morning or whatever, when the Senate is voting. We got up and stupidly, or neurotically, turned on C-SPAN. I wasn’t really in doubt, but whatever.
And as the gavel comes down, literally, my cell phone rings, and it’s Nancy Pelosi. She said, “I was watching the vote.” I said, “Thank you, Madam Speaker.” I always called her Madam Speaker, and I still do. I don’t call her Nancy. But that tells you, she’s got a ton of things to worry about, and it’s 1:30, so out by her it’s 10:30 at night. She knew I was up because I’m neurotic, and she was up watching it because she’s neurotic. We’re both obsessive that way. Neurotic, both obsessive. First phone call. I mean, before the person starts reading the vote total after the gavel, she was calling. I had her on speaker, and we end the conversation always the same way. “I say, give Paul a kiss and hug and the kids.” She says, “Tell Amy, I love her and all the little kids.” Now, my kids are all grown up, but that’s how she remembers them.
She’s been a big part of Republican advertising for decades. The NRCC had its “Fire Pelosi” banner. She has very high name recognition. Mike Johnson barely has that level of name recognition. Do you think there will ever be another House leader with that level of ubiquity?
I don’t get into the prediction game around that one. I don’t know. Maybe, possibly. I think the idea, what’s the exact term, where Kevin McCarthy changed the law so the speaker can be [ousted], what’s the term?
The motion to vacate?
As a speaker. Pelosi was against it. I’m against it. I think they fundamentally weakened an institutional office that has a few levers, and to take that lever away was a mistake, especially if you’re trying to do big and tough things. So will a speaker in the future have that? I don’t know. I think it was a mistake then.
She was so powerful, so strong, that she had to be a target of the Republicans, and that’s part of her persona. So I don’t know in the future, I can’t answer that, but you know, as I said, once, she’s “Sam Rayburn in stilettos.”
