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Nancy Pelosi was the first of her kind and perhaps the last of the powerhouse speakers able to bend the increasingly fractious and Balkanized House to their will to achieve big things. Ms. Pelosi, who broke the House’s glass ceiling after learning rough-and-tumble politics in the D’Alesandro family business in Baltimore, always counseled her troops to “know their why” — their true motivation for entering politics and government. Ms. Pelosi definitely knew hers: She wanted to win. When faced with a challenge, such as enacting the Affordable Care Act after Senate Democrats lost their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in 2010 or passing the Biden administration’s huge climate change and social policy bill in 2022, she beat down internal resistance. Few fellow Democrats were willing to defy Ms. Pelosi when she leaned on them in her extremely determined way and insisted that she needed their vote. “As I told President-elect Obama before his first meeting with Speaker Pelosi, she is 99 percent D'Alesandro and 1 percent Pelosi,” said Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and Pelosi lieutenant who helped secure the first female speakership for her in 2006 by overseeing the successful campaign for the majority. “She does politics like we do in Chicago." Once the domain of towering legends such as Joe Cannon, Sam Rayburn and Tip O’Neill, the speakership has declined in value and cachet in recent years as more power has shifted to the White House. Some House speakers, such as Newt Gingrich and Jim Wright, were rocked by scandal and forced out. Speaker Tom Foley, a Democrat, suffered the almost unimaginable ignominy of being tossed out by his voters in the Republican tsunami of 1994, as they turned on the man holding the most important post in the House. Republicans in particular have churned through speakers in the past decade, including the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy by a handful of rebels in 2023, after he had held the gavel for just nine months. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
