The FRONTLINE Interviews

Matt Bai

Columnist, The Washington Post

Matt Bai is a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and served as a national political columnist for Yahoo! News from 2014 to 2019. He was previously a political correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of All the Truth Is Out and The Argument: Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics.

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on Oct. 27, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Pelosi’s Power

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January 6 and the Aftermath

Let's talk about Jan. 6 and the role that Speaker Pelosi plays.… What [do] her actions in those days tell us about her?What it seems to be doing is to some extent, she's deciding she has a role here to fill a breach or run the government because there's nobody else seemingly running the government at that point. …

The speaker of the House is a funny job, you know.In a way, it's one of those things, because we don't really teach civics anymore, it sort of surprises people.But, you know, you have this person, whoever's holding the job, who's been elected to serve by a small number of people in a district somewhere, right?I mean, you know, when Newt Gingrich was speaker, he was the most powerful Republican in the country, and he'd been elected by a tiny district in Georgia, right?

And yet, you know, the Constitution gives that person a tremendous amount of power.And when you have someone like Nancy Pelosi in that job at the end of the Trump administration, she is constitutionally and in reality the most powerful Democrat in office in the country.

So, you know, it's an oddly situated job, particularly Speaker Pelosi, who's become almost a cultural figure and a divisive figure, almost a political celebrity, really.People don't think of her necessarily as—she's not been an executive, people don't think of her as a master lawmaker in a sense.But she has in that situation, she is the second in line to the presidency, behind the president, and she is the leading Democrat in the country, and she is in many ways in that role the caretaker of the democracy and the defender of Congress and that building.

So I think she took on the role that circumstance and the governmental system requires her to take on.And, you know, I think people forget what a powerful and pivotal job that is.

The call to Pence and the idea to invoke the 25th Amendment: Some Republicans will say that this was a coup, an attempted coup in some regards, which is kind of funny to hear.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know.What was the coup?Was the coup trying to invoke the 25th Amendment, or was the coup having armed mobs storming the Capitol?And there are some events where you're in them in the moment, and they seem almost plausible but surprising, and they take up—they dominate the news cycle for a while.And then when you can pull back after some time passes, through a lens of history, you can see what you went through or what you witnessed was actually quite historically significant.It can be hard in the moment, especially in our moment, to discern between historical events and events that dominate the news cycle for a while.

This was a historic event.This was an event that will be remembered and talked about and taught and dissected for a very long time.And I think she attempted drastic action because probably drastic action was warranted, or at least needed to be contemplated.And, you know, if it was—if it was an attempt to do something radical that had not been done before to a leadership of the country, it was only in response to a very radical, disruptive series of events.

The mood of the Democrats at that point?There's talk that in the bunkers they were already talking about impeachment.

Well, they did impeach him, right, so—

Yeah, they would move forward with it.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.I wrote about both impeachments skeptically.Basically, Democrats were in the mood to impeach Donald Trump the entire Trump presidency, and for much of the Trump presidency probably had some reason to want to impeach Donald Trump.You know, I felt in that case, for what it's worth, that it probably was not advisable, if legal, to impeach a president who was already leaving office as the result of an election, because I think impeachment is the method by which the public will can be expressed if there's buyer's remorse, right?If there had been such transformative events that the public simply can't wait till the next election to undo what it has done, it will let you know.You will see that in public opinion.And it is a vehicle for the public to remove a president, you know, because keeping that president in office is simply untenable.

And I think once the president was leaving office, impeachment, to my mind, wasn't the appropriate action.

… A lot of Democrats see an existential threat that was going on during these days, and that's why Pelosi made the decisions she made.And I guess the question here is, does this threat dissipate once those 13 days are gone and President Biden becomes president?

No.No, I think in some ways Jan. 6 was not the resolution of something.It was not the culmination of something.It was the beginning of something, or at least a beginning of an awareness of something, right?That—and something, you know, to their credit a lot of Democrats had been talking about throughout the Trump years, which is this wasn't simply a, you know, an attempt to dominate political outcomes or gain power.This was an attempt to undo the entire American system of government.I mean, this was a complete reckless disregard for the rules of the democracy.And I think we live with that still; we're going to live with it for a long time.It's created a new set of possibilities, frightening possibilities in the American political landscape.

And I think, to her credit, Speaker Pelosi saw that very quickly after the event and acted on it.

… Who is Nancy Pelosi at this moment, and what parts of her are coming to fruition from a history, a very long history in Washington, a very long history of being the most powerful woman politician in Washington?What are we seeing come to fruition?

I mean, I think in some ways, ironically, from where she started out, she's become the ultimate pragmatist in the political system, the ultimate maneuverer, and I think a very, very consequential speaker who will be remembered for a long time.

Pelosi and Bush

… Let's go back to Bush and Iraq.So 2001, Pelosi is now whip, soon after 9/11.Talk about her willingness to stoke the partisan angers over issues, and is that tied to Iraq?Besides her hatred of the idea of what Iraq is and what's going on, is there also an understanding of the political realities of what she is stoking?Even though it's a very dangerous game to be playing at that point, it's a very interesting decision to make, but what we know by 2006 is that it pays off, because the country catches up to where Nancy Pelosi is. …

I mean, I can only give you my personal recollections.I met and interviewed Nancy Pelosi for the first time right around those years, just after the Iraq War, and she always struck me at that time, I think—I now think erroneously—as simply reflexively partisan and not particularly thoughtfully partisan.There was very little on policy.It was always talking points; you always got this sort of—you always got the sense that you were just getting the preprogrammed responses.She didn't seem to be thinking too much or—or willing to acknowledge points in the opposition or willing to find compromise.It was just always this San Francisco liberal version of the universe, and I think it's what most of the country saw.I found it very difficult to penetrate at that time.

And that opinion changed.

Yeah.

Did she change, or did your opinion of her change?

I remember, you know—that's a good—that's a big question.You know, I just remember all the sloganeering.It was like 2006, and I spent a bunch of time talking to her, and it was always, you know, the "Six for 2006."And it always, you know, the things she wanted to achieve were always really issues and not things at all: We want health care; we want jobs—like anybody didn't.It just seemed to me a really slogan-y way to deal with complex national issues, and I didn't find it very impressive.

But I think I misjudged who she was in some way and learned this later.I came to see her as ultimately very pragmatic.And I think understanding more about where she came from, right, knowing that she came through that political upbringing in Baltimore, knowing how she climbed through the ranks of the Democratic Party in Washington very quickly, you know, I think you—I think that informs who she is.

And I think what Nancy Pelosi is really singularly talented at is being what her party needs her to be at the moment.I think she is really focused on winning, and strategically.

And so, you know, when I sort of caught up with her during the Bush years, when the party had done all of this compromising and the base was furious and they had backed the war and they had made compromises on tax cuts, the left of the party was about to erupt, and I think she very much saw it as her role to be that spokesperson, to channel that passion, to be that voice at the table in the party, to keep it from going so far toward the center that it would split apart.

And I felt like later, when the party was drifting so reflexively left, you know, she, and particularly during the impeachment, first impeachment of Donald Trump—I thought this was quite interesting—she understood that no, we need to keep this thing on track.We need Independents.This party, in order for the party to win, to take advantage of the opportunity it had been given politically, she needed to rein in the left flank of her party, and she was willing to do that.

I think her ideology is to win.And I don't say that pejoratively, because I think she's good at it, and much better at it than I thought initially.

And then the Republican point of view about Iraq, saying that she's all about divisive politics, the attacks on Bush that were pretty vigorous, calling him a numbskull basically and stuff, what's the response to that and how she used it?And she used it later in the election; it became a major reason for the success in 2006.…

Well, look, they used each other.I mean, that was a very mutually beneficial relationship, if you can call it that, between Nancy Pelosi and George W. Bush, right?Yes, she was incredibly vocal about the war, and she did give voice to a fury on the left that you can't underestimate.It was a—it was a rupture in the party, and she did give voice to that.

But they used her for all their fundraising and all their messaging.They ran against her, you know.Nancy Pelosi was the bogeyman that Bush and the Republicans put out to try and stave off their own losses.

So, you know, it was an interesting relationship.I think they did pretty well demonizing each other over that period of time.

She's now whip, so she's invited to the White House for the Gang of Eight meetings, and she writes about the fact that she finds herself at this meeting, at the White House, and she's the first woman to ever be in that seat.In the history of America, she's the first woman to sit in on these initial heady discussions about the path forward for America.What's the significance of that moment?

We don't know what that's like, is the thing.You know, I'm not a big identity-politics guy.I don't think it's particularly healthy.So, you know, to me, Nancy Pelosi, her generation always sort of, and she in particular, stood in for this boomer generation that was always so interested in creating silos and enclaves and in sort of propagating a politics of grievance.

But then, you know, you see her when she initially became—when she was in leadership as a Democrat and then later as speaker when she's in those meetings at the White House, sitting in that chair at the State of the Union address, right, you know, I don't think anybody knows what that's—what's that like?And this is something that was denied women in American politics forever.And she's broken enormous barriers.Everybody talked about Hillary Clinton because she'd break the glass ceiling.Well, Nancy Pelosi had already done it.And I can imagine it was both thrilling and probably frustrating, and you're probably treated differently, but it's, you know, it's something in a sense she trained for her entire career.

Pelosi as a Trailblazer

… She's somebody who now is seen as the embodiment of the establishment in the Democratic Party, and that she plays this old-style Baltimore politics where she never—she comes from Baltimore politics and then San Francisco, where the Republican Party really had no power whatsoever.Did that define her?And she's this progressive woman.She's a contradiction upon a contradiction.

Yeah, she is.I mean, I always tell writers about profiles.I always say, "Tell me a person's a series of contradictions, and it's like telling me they have a nose."To be human is to be contradictory.And the question is how and why, right?

You know, I think she is the establishment.And, you know, I think she was always the establishment.And she would say, how can that be?You know, you're a woman outside.That's true, you know.Women were outsiders in the political system when she got involved, and she, you know, blew that away and blazed trails; that's true.So I guess that makes her an outsider in some way.There have been periods where the party was very much a centrist party, the Clinton—you know, the Clintonian thing during the '90s, and I guess maybe she felt outside the establishment.

But to me, as a political observer, you know, having had that training in a political machine in Baltimore, having gone to San Francisco where liberals ruled in a way that's foreign to most of the country, having been part—having been part of a delegation in Washington, then a leader in the caucus where, you know, you still had mostly older, mostly baby-boomer generation, mostly classically liberal representatives that made up that caucus, you know, I think she is an inside operator.And I don't—again, I don't say it pejoratively.I think she's really, really good at it.

But I do not think of Nancy Pelosi as having ever been anti-establishment.And she probably sees it differently, but I just don't.

What makes her good at what she does?

Well, in a way I'd be limited to know that because I always just got sort of the public face.… This is not your question, but this just popped into my mind.I remember walking with her through the Capitol once during the Bush years, thinking I was doing an interview, which had moved from her office to the hallway, but realizing about halfway through that I was actually just a human shield, that she was being besieged by reporters and she had brought me along—she wasn't giving me any answers at all; she just seemed to be engrossed in a conversation that enabled her not to have to answer anybody else.I thought, oh, that's a neat trick; I like that.

You know why she's good?What I've always heard about her, and I think it's true, is that she's obviously a very good vote counter, you know.She's good at the machinations of politics, but she's a very good listener, I think, which you don't get as a reporter, actually.If you go in and do a typical interview with Nancy Pelosi, you don't get the sense that you're getting anything but the playback button.She's very cautious.She's a cautious politician, and she's cautious with the media.

But what I always heard from members and staff was that she's a very astute listener, which is a super-underrated skill in politics and in life and in journalism; that, you know, she understands what people are looking for, what they need.She files it away and remembers.And that's kind of the currency that keeps a caucus together, is because you have to manage members individually.And despite her reputation for being very strident and very ideologically dug in, she has always in the end displayed an ability to know her members well enough to get to the numbers she needs to get to, or to know that she can't get to the numbers she needs to get to.

How does she so rise quickly, as you mentioned?By 2006 midterms, she's raising millions of dollars; she's always been really good at raising money.But she's also brought to bear the attacks on Bush and the fact that Iraq, the issue of Iraq became so important in 2006, and she was ahead of the game on that.Some people say that that was one of the major reasons, because she took the positions that she did, she was able to rise to the top as quickly as she did. …

She's a great politician, and she's a better politician than a lot of us gave her credit for, and a better politician than most, virtually all of her colleagues in the House over the years.I mean, that's—you know, part of it is she's extremely methodical and cautious and keeps things close to the vest, but she's a, you know, she's a lifelong and extremely skilled politician.

She also, you know, rises through the party at a moment when women, always underrepresented in both parties in the political becoming a huge part of the Democratic Party, and a huge need for the Democratic Party, right?The gender gap that opens in the 1990s is critical to winning elections.And yeah, you have the Year of the Woman and all of this.

The makeup of the Democratic Party overall is now skewing much more toward—toward suburban moms and women voters in the cities, and the makeup in Congress is growing more diverse as a result.

And so she was not only the best politician of the bunch, but she was there to fill a role that, you know, that was long overdue and needed to be filled.

Pelosi, Obama, and the Affordable Care Act

… So Obama is elected.She's now got a Democratic partner in the White House.But they're very different in their perspective on power, on bipartisanship, on the way to move forward on big things.Talk a little bit about the two of them and the partnership that they make and the differences.

I think their relationship was genuinely very good, very strong, and there's a genuine affection there.And I think in some ways it's informed by both of their political sensibilities, where both of them came from, because Obama is partly forged by the idea that he doesn't want to be Bill Clinton.He doesn't want to be the centrist triangulating Democrat who pushes off of his friends on the left, right?He never wants to throw the left under the bus, sometimes to a fault.So he approaches Pelosi, as the leader of that faction of the party and the leader in Congress, as someone he genuinely wants to respect and honor.I think it was important to him that she not feel tossed aside or used in some way, because that's—that had been the story before.

And she, you know, as—I think as the quintessential baby-boomer Democrat and a strong believer in social justice, you know, I think she was genuinely awed and thrilled with the idea of the first African American president.And even though he didn't come with a ton of experience or a very demonstrable worldview, I think she felt she could influence him.

So, you know, I think there was just, both—I think for different reasons they were both very motivated to show a great deal of deference to the other, and of course had their tough times, their intense times and difficult moments, but I think it's—I think it was a very genuinely strong relationship.

There's another side of that which says that she felt he was naïve in the way that he dealt, for instance, on health care and ACA, that he misread the Republican Party and that she was constantly saying, "You've got to go big; you've got to go fast."And she believed that the Republican Party basically promised everything or kept stalling and never, ever gave an inch, and that for whatever reason … there was this naïveté of Obama.

But they came from different philosophical places, right, because she's always—your House caucus in particular in Congress, it's a trench warfare situation, right?There hasn't been trust between the two parties in the House of Representatives for, what, since the early '90s at least.So it's been a long time.And she comes out of those wars, right?He obviously campaigned on purple states and believed that some level of cooperation was possible.

So those two things were always going to collide.Was she right, or was he right?That's a chicken-and-egg thing that I've always found pretty complicated.I mean, sure, did he believe that Republicans were capable of compromising, and then was he embarrassed?Yes.On the other hand, under pressure from Pelosi and some of his own aides, did he give up too soon?Did he take it too personally?You know, I've had Democratic governors who have said to me, "You can't—you don't give up on that after two months.That's a two-year effort, to try and build some cooperation and some common trust."And they basically, you know, felt burned and locked the gates.

So, you know, I think it's complicated as to who was right about that dynamic, but ultimately he could not do what he had hoped to do.

Republicans Campaign Against Pelosi

… The 2010 election, it's fascinating how the Republicans use her.You talked a little bit about it already.By 2010, they decide they're going to go after Nancy Pelosi; they're not going to go after the president, a Black president.And they spend like $70 million—

And a popular, still a relatively popular president.

And they spend $70 million on an unbelievable number of ads.They have a bus going around the country with Nancy's picture on the side saying "Dump Nancy."Why that decision?And why are they so successful at using her?

Yeah.Well, it was the only decision.I mean, it was really quite interesting, but it was the only decision.I mean, at that time, President Obama had lost a lot of the luster, but he's still this galvanizing figure.He's still independent, still—even though they've left him quite a bit, they still have just elected him two years earlier, right?He's not—he's a hard guy to run against.He's a great politician.And he's African American, so you have to be a little more careful running against him if you're the Republicans.

She was the perfect foil.Everybody hates Congress, and most American voters are pretty suspicious of sort of your California coastal liberal from, you know, from the '60s.And, you know, she presents kind of an easy target because she's very sort of opaque when she speaks and very practiced and rehearsed, and you get the feeling that she's just kind of sloganeering.You're not sure how much is really going on there.

So, you know, she just—she was a perfect foil for them with their base and with Independent voters.She was—she's the—she was the face of a Congress they were growing to detest, and it was the obvious choice for them.

The fascinating thing is, so she raised millions and millions of dollars … for every election to help elect her caucus.And the Republicans raised millions and millions of dollars off of the way that they defined her.She enlivens, she activates all this energy on both sides.What's the irony of that?

Well, in a sense, they were playing out the same partisan fight that had been going on since the 1960s.This is the same old boomer fight, except everybody's a lot older, and she's the most powerful, most recognizable figure on the left.So it's a cultural fight, not a political fight.It's not about—that's not about policy.That's not about legislation.That's really a cultural fight that's been brewing for decades in the country between San Francisco and the, you know, the supposed rural heartland of the country.

…And, you know, she was the perfect foil. …It's hard to get your head around how much abuse Nancy Pelosi took, because, you know, we just kind of assume politicians are used to it.I kind of assume journalists are used to it at this point.And, you know, they have to have thick skins, and we get that.But, you know, she took a tremendous amount of very personal vitriol during that period, when she was a lightning rod for the Republican Party.

You're not the president of the United States, but to have that ad campaign and that rhetoric and that constant drumbeat of attack thrown at you day after day and week after week, it's what you sign up for in a sense, but I think in her case it was—it was of a magnitude that most legislators certainly will never see.And to my knowledge, she never really showed any vulnerability toward it, which is kind of amazing.

What is that about her, the fact she doesn't seem to care?

I have to believe she cares because she's a human being and a thoughtful person.I just think she—and this probably goes back to the political upbringing in Baltimore—she is really able to separate her public face from whatever's going on inside.I don't think there's anybody who thinks Nancy Pelosi doesn't have a lot of wheels turning all the time, like nobody could seriously look at her and say this is a person who's not thinking deeply.But she rarely betrays a whole lot of deep thoughts—certainly no doubt, certainly very little vulnerability.

She's somebody who, you know, who sort of repeats slogans and talking points with the best of them.She's an incredibly frustrating interview.She can come off very poorly.But I just think she is practiced in, probably in a lifelong way, at having a public persona and a private persona.And I think whatever she felt about the vitriol directed at her—and I don't know what it was, but I can imagine—she's a human being, and there had to be moments where that was difficult.You know, that's something she would never show publicly.

Pelosi and Trump

So they lose, a lot.And she loses her speakership.And lo and behold, we end up with a President Trump coming to office, eventually.And so let's talk about Trump and Pelosi.The first meeting, very interesting meeting—

… Look, she did not respect him.And so I think it would be hard for her.I think that she certainly respected the office, but she did not feel—you know, she was only willing to curb her feelings so much.

It's funny, because as a journalist, a reporter who interviewed her, you know, many times over the years, I certainly never associated Nancy Pelosi with, you know, standing up for truth and accuracy.She had a political message, right?I did not go to her office expecting to get the unvarnished truth or, you know, or thinking that she wouldn't use the facts in whatever way was necessary.I'm just being honest about it.

But when she emerged as that person early in the administration who will say to his face and to the country, "These are lies, these things are not true, and my respect for the office isn't going to stop me from saying that," I admired that.That meant something, because the truth was under—was under assault from the beginning.And it's something I believe strongly in and, you know, a lot of people who do what I do believe strongly in.And I thought it was ironic in a way that it was Nancy Pelosi who—who stood up and said, "No, some things are true, and some things are not, and I'm not just going to sit here and pretend they are."

Division in the Democratic Party

… [In the 2018 midterms, the Democrats retake the House.] But despite her role of being very important in the success in that election of the Democrats, after that there's a lot of folks, moderates, a group of moderates especially, who sort of say her time is over.She's old; she's tarnished because of all the publicity and what the Republicans did.

I said it, yeah.

And it's time for somebody else.It puts her into a perilous position to some extent.What's the—number one, why?Why that?Some people say it was the five angry white guys who were involved.

… I mean, I'm not going to be a hypocrite about this.I—I wrote for years, both at <i>The New York Times</i> and later writing for Yahoo!, that Nancy Pelosi and that entire generation of Democratic politicians need a succession plan, and fast.And I think I was right.I mean, it's an incredibly old leadership.It's all based in the fights of the boomer eras.It reflects nothing of the evolving demographics generationally of the party.I mean, that party has needed, and needs, a succession plan, if not an immediate succession.It is generationally out of touch, and the refusal of the boomers, particularly in the Democratic Party, to simply step aside and—and say thank you and have had their day and rest on their accomplishments, it just has always boggled my mind.They want to govern until, you know, they want to govern until they're gone, and then they're hoping cryogenics will allow them to govern for another X number of years.

But having said that, you know, there came a point where I—I didn't change my mind, but there came a point where I thought she was actually the best speaker for the moment with Donald Trump.She was actually the right person.She understood what the party needed to do to win.She was a serious political operator.She understood the danger he posed to the country.And I think she made the wise, very wise decision to let him, as I say, self-destruct rather than, you know, rather than tangle with him and risk getting in the way, you know, to sort of keep the focus on him and not on herself.And I thought she was extremely deft in opposing him. …

And then you have that wonderful meeting in the Oval Office with the red coat and the sunglasses, Dec. 11, 2018, and Trump lets her have it.He keeps the cameras rolling with [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer and Pelosi in the room, the meeting over immigration.

Yeah, I remember that now.That was crazy.He films the whole thing.

He films the whole thing.

It's like a reality-show meeting.That was nuts, yeah.

… At some point he says, "Understanding that Nancy's in a position where she maybe can't really talk right now," basically saying that Nancy's weak right now because the caucus is turning against her, and she starts pointing at him and started saying, "Do not underestimate the strength that I bring for my party to this White House."And she stands up to him.And eventually then, when they go outside to the microphones, she and Schumer, she has this bright red coat on, and she puts these sunglasses on, and she's got this little smile.

She's like a rock star.

… The significance of that meeting and again standing up to Trump in his own playground with his own game that he's playing, this TV expert.What's the significance of that event?

I mean, you know, Trump is a singular character, but I have to believe that in some way Nancy Pelosi's seen guys like this her whole life, right?He's bullying, and he's particularly demeaning to women, and doesn't—you know, cuts people off.And I think it made her angry.And she doesn't like being bullied.I think it made her angry, and in making her angry it made her more human, because I think that's something she'd struggled with in her political persona going back, you know, to the Bush years or before, was this sort of plastic sheen that came over; that she was somehow preprogrammed; that there wasn't always a lot of humanity in her public persona.And it worked to her adversaries' benefit at times.

The side of herself she shows when he legitimately makes her angry I think is sort of galvanizing for Democrats, and also sort of just refreshing for the rest of us.There's somebody in there, and she's angry, too.And—and she's going to go to the mat for this.And I think it was—I think it was in some ways an uncomfortable moment for her, but a great moment for her.

… Is this a case where something very powerful happens despite her denial of the fact that image is ever necessary and that she doesn't need to stand out and that she's all about the business of votes, and that's all she's doing?What's going on here?

That's an interesting question.I don't know.I mean, it's funny to think that you could soften your image by getting angry.That's not necessarily how we think about it.But when you've been that calculated and that measured with your words and actions for as long as she has publicly, I think there was something softening in the moment; there was something humanizing about it.And, you know, I think it was genuine.I mean, I don't think she has a realization where she thinks, "I need to step forward and become a Democratic rock star," or, "This party needs an image, and I'm going to present an image."I think she was genuinely angry.

I think at bottom—look, I think at bottom, as much as anyone alive, Nancy Pelosi cares about the system, cares about politics, believes it can be brought to positive ends, and has respect for the institutions of the country.That's who she is.She's an institutional, maneuvering politician, a very, very good one.And for people who have devoted their lives, literally in her case, her life, to the—to the sanctity of that system, to moving that system to certain ends, whether they're the right ends or the wrong ends, there is something galling about this president in Donald Trump who has respect for none of it and sees it all as just a game, and sees it all as something that can be destroyed.

And I think it made her genuinely angry. …

So 2019, there's a division in the party.… Number one, there is a difference also between Pelosi's hard power sort of style and someone like AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], who comes along with soft power.So that got 5 million people—

I kind of love this.I'm sorry, I don't mean to cut you off; you haven't asked your question.But it's like, I think is where you're going anyway, but it's—I kind of love it. …I sort of love, like, sort of after years of watching Nancy Pelosi be this sort of kneejerk voice for the left in the San Francisco coastal elite part of the party, I sort of loved seeing this new generation of leftist activist women come in, came in who clearly irritated her, and clearly meant to take her on.And, you know, it sort of exposed the core thing about her.She is an institutionalist.She is a—she is an establishment politician, right?

I think it was probably galling to her that "Here you come.You haven't achieved anything yet.You don't know anything about policy.You're basically a—you know, you've basically made a bunch of magazine covers and sent a bunch of tweets, and you're going to come in here and tell me how to run my caucus and remake my caucus when I've spent all of these years learning the institution and learning the policy, learning how to pull the levers."I think it had to be galling and sort of ironic at the end of the day.And yeah, I think it irritated her more than she probably let on.

… And by the summertime, she's holding these two sides together.What's going on there?Now, it's going to break, but first talk about what's going on within the Democratic Party and what Pelosi is trying to do.

Well, she doesn't want to impeach Trump because she wants to get rid of him, and she does—and she sees, ironically sees one thing standing in the way of the other.They're not going to win impeachment.And frankly—at least in my view; I wouldn't speak for her—it wasn't the strongest impeachment case.It was a fairly arcane issue in foreign policy that, you know, that if it rose to the level of high crimes was going to be hard to explain to people.It didn't—the public will was not firmly in any way behind impeachment at that time.

And she's focused—she's got her eyes on the prize, as always, which is, she wants this guy to be a one-term president and she sees impeachment as a pretty good way to put that in jeopardy.So she held the line for as long as she could, and she was right.

At the same time, this is causing division, though. …

I loved her statement to the caucus where she comes out one morning and says, "There's some of us here in this room that are making this wonderful pâté, but the reality is, what we're doing here is making sausage.And we're all a family, and we have to work together or else we fail together."It's seems to sort of define—

It's great.I mean, look, this is a new moment.And as I say, this is a new moment.It's not just in Washington; it's in the whole country, right?I mean, Nancy Pelosi may have been the firebrand liberal of her day, or she was certainly among the sort of new cadre of very ideological congresspeople, but it's nothing like what you have now, because they were still, at the end of the day, institutionalists.They were still—they still understood that they had—they still had a common cause with their leadership, which was to pass a set of legislation, serve their districts, serve their members.And they just had different ways of looking at how you were going to do that.

This is an entirely different thing.Now you have people coming to Congress on both sides, routinely, who are basically building brands—lucrative brands, marketable brands.Or maybe if they want to stay in politics, they think they can jump from Congress to the presidency in four or six years.This is—this is like the TikTok culture of politics and—figuratively, if not literally.

And so this is like something we've never seen before in the country or in politics.You know, these are celebrity politicians who have never cast a vote and don't feel like they should have to, you know, bow to any institutional norms.

You know, even a few years ago, when Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, people came into the Senate with this kind of new celebrity, they kept their heads down and tried to stay under the radar and learn the place.That's not happening anymore.

So as speaker, then, Nancy Pelosi has to deal with something no one's ever had to deal with.This is an entirely new political phenomenon.We're just living in a new age.

The 2020 State of the Union Address

… Take us to that moment, the State of the Union in February of 2020.This is just before the Senate comes down with their final decision on impeachment, so Trump is feeling vindicated; he's feeling emboldened.

Is this the one where she tore up the speech?

Yeah.He ends up giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [Rush] Limbaugh during the thing.He takes over, basically, the House, and she's furious sitting behind him. …

Yeah.You know, all the State of the Unions run together to me, so I don't know the specifics of that speech.I don't remember the moment; I just remember that image.I remember watching when he finishes the speech and turns and does his applause, and she just very deliberately and publicly just tore the speech in half.And it was—it was kind of brilliant.It was just a really powerful visual message.It required no explanation.It was—it was courageous and confrontational and I think—I think one of her finer moments. …

Pelosi and Biden

So let's go to Biden and conclude here.So Biden comes in, and how does all of this that we've been talking about, this entire history that she brings with her, she gets now another Democratic president and is telling him, "We've got to go big; we've got to go quick."They come up with the most aggressive legislation in decades.How does all of her history and who she is help define who she is in this moment?

Well, there's a couple things I could say about that.I mean, first of all, when you—when you have a small caucus, when you are in the minority in the House or the Senate, you tend to have ideological unanimity.It's easier to hold the caucus together when it's smaller and in the minority.You haven't won swing districts or swing states.You have generally ideologically aligned members.I'm not saying I could do it, but it's not the hardest thing in American politics.

When your caucus grows, when you win majorities, you obviously pick up a lot of states and districts where the concerns are different and where the voting trends are more mixed, and that naturally creates disunity, and it can be hard to keep—it's much harder to keep a caucus together.

When you win majorities and you have such a narrow majority that the only way to pass anything is to have both of those sides, both the swing districts and states and the reliable members, on the same page, that's damn near impossible.

And so she's handed in one sense with Biden a tremendous opportunity to pass sweeping legislation.There's a crisis in the country.People aren't so concerned about debt.There's—there's a possibility to act in a really transformative way.But the legislative conditions are such that being able to reconcile all the differences is really, you know, it would only be even plausible for a masterful politician; it's a very difficult thing to do.

I would say the other thing, though, is, for their entire lifetime in politics, if you look at the boomer generation by and large, or particularly in Congress, the template has always been the New Deal/the Great Society.Never mind that they're like basically wasn't a federal government at all when Franklin Roosevelt did the New Deal.Never mind that much of the Great Society is objectively a failure—not all of it, but a lot of it, and it certainly requires some scrutiny.You know, leave aside what we've learned about the value of federal spending.Leave aside the fact that FDR passed that agenda over a period of years and reiterated, you know, had to sort of revise all that legislation many times over.

This has always been the thing, is they want their own New Deal before they go.And so when Biden comes in, that's the—immediately, as it was under Obama, the Democratic impulses, but more accentuated now because there's a greater opportunity."We want our New Deal."

And I think it's a fundamentally flawed idea of how to govern because that never happened.First of all, nobody ever passed a giant, sweeping reimagination of the federal economy and the social structure of the country in one bill.That never happened.That's not how the New Deal was done; that's not how the Great Society was done.And by the way, no one ever had this great liberal majority to do all these things.The New Deal only passed on the backs of a compromise with segregationists who voted for it.

So you don't have—nobody's ever had an ideologically pure majority to do all the things you want to do.So it's a little bit of a myth.It's based on a bunch of false assumptions.But it is the thing they always want.And so that's the thing that, you know, as soon as Biden gets there, that's where the focus is: How do we get our New Deal?

So what's at stake for them as far as the bills?They know, Pelosi certainly knows, that the clock is ticking.Midterms are coming up.That's why she was whispering fast and furious to begin with.

Midterms come up 10 minutes after the election nowadays.

So their attitude is, they've got to win, and they've got to win big.

Yeah.I mean, look, everybody knows—Pelosi knows better than anyone, but it's, you know, now pretty well known in Washington—the bigger the thing you want to do, the faster you'd better do it.You've got about a six-month window in the opening of a presidency when you've got both—when you can expect to have both the public support and the unanimity in your caucus, in the moment where you can—in the moment without campaigning where you can try to do something really big.After that, Independents leave you; voters get restless; campaigns start in earnest; caucuses split apart.You know, it used to be—years ago they used to say, "Eh, you get one year, and then the second year you spend campaigning."Now it's more like four to six months, and then the window starts to close. …

But there also is this feeling amongst Democrats of existential disaster looming for democracy along with the Democratic Party.So they've got to pass this legislation because they need to win the midterms, if they can.

I don't know where anybody ever got the idea that passing legislative programs wins you the midterms.I've not seen it in my—all the decades now I've been covering politics, I've not seen Congress rewarded for passing anything by anyone.It's just not—it's not what midterms are about.

But isn't that what Pelosi believes?I mean, that's her job.If they do the job well, they get more votes.

Well, if they do the job well, it ought to benefit people.But I think that's a longer term—I mean, again, you know, their flawed analogy is the Great Society, is rather, you know, the New Deal or the Great Society.Go back to the New Deal.Social Security wasn't Social Security as we know it for many, many years after it was enacted, and it wasn't popular for years after it was enacted.It had to be constantly iterated.It had to be made to include a whole bunch of people who got left out.

You know, students of history understand that legislation is iterative.The bigger the legislation, the more years have to pass, the more times you have to go back at it to get it right.And that's why, despite the current thinking on both sides, bipartisanship is kind of important, because as a senator said to me once, "If you can't get—if you can't get buy-in on both sides for massive legislation, you cannot sustain it."We're seeing that with the health care program, right?You can pass it, but you can't change it; you can't fund it; you can't fix it.And you're going to need to do all of those things with a big piece of legislation. …

So is the view of Speaker Pelosi about politics and power outmoded at this point?

Well, I don't—um.I'm actually—I'm pausing just to think of what I think her view on this is.I'm not sure that I think her view on this is expressly, you know, we'll pass things and we'll win.… I think Nancy Pelosi came to Washington, like a lot of people in her generation, to create big change and pass big legislation.I don't think—I'm not sure she's always had a clear idea of what that change is supposed to look like.But I do think she wants to and has always wanted to do big things.

Does she want to do big things because she thinks it will help her win and grow more numbers?I don't think so.I think she is focused on winning and growing more numbers because she thinks it increases the chances of doing big things.And I think it's the stuff, it's the legislation at the end of the day, that she wants to look back on and say, "That's what I got done."And it's the most elusive thing in modern politics. …

Pelosi’s Legacy

What happens to the Democratic Caucus when Pelosi leaves?One of the things she has been unbelievably successful about is keeping the caucus together.She knows how to do that in a way.And as you said, there are very few people on the horizon that seem to be someone of her ilk.So what happens to the Democratic Party?

That's a great question.That's a great question.I mean, none of us are, you know, great prognosticators.I am, you know, have no idea what will happen or who gains power.But it's entirely possible, maybe likely, that she's kind of the last great pragmatist, the last great political operator.I mean, as I said, I do think she's mostly a pragmatist at heart.She wants to win; she wants to get stuff done.And she can bring her caucus along.I think the trend in politics and in Congress in particular is so ideological and so celebrity- and personality-based that she may be the last speaker who sort of climbs the ranks and does—and does the backroom business.

I think—I think you may be, you know, from this point on, it may be more likely that you're seeing spokespeople, you know, recognizable celebrities, brands, but not necessarily people who know how to legislate.And I don't think that's for the better.

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