The Latest from the Prospect
 ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌


View this email in your browser
<[link removed]>

 

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Meyerson on TAP

**The Greatest-Ever Speaker of the House**

Nancy Pelosi steps down.

When Speakers of the House of Representatives cease to be Speakers, they
almost immediately fall down the nation's memory hole, never to
emerge. Only one Speaker went on to the presidency: James K. Polk, whose
chief achievement when in the White House was to foment our war on
Mexico. As Speaker, Henry Clay led the charge to begin the War of 1812,
and did play a key role in the pre-Civil War sectional compromises
between North and South. Since the Civil War, however, Speakers have
almost never played a leading role, even in those times when landmark
legislation was enacted.

The House went through three Democratic Speakers during the years of
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, none of whom were primarily responsible
for drafting or steering to passage any major bills, and only one of
whom is remembered at all, and that's because he was the uncle of the
actress Tallulah Bankhead. The historic civil rights and safety-net
legislation of the Great Society passed when John McCormack was Speaker,
but McCormack rates no more than a footnote, if that, in the story.
Until the past decade, the Speaker with the most substantive lawmaking
record was Democrat Sam Rayburn, who presided over the House in the
1940s and '50s. But Rayburn's chief contributions-legislation that
regulated Wall Street-came in the 1930s, when he merely chaired a
House committee.

Which brings us to Nancy Pelosi, who announced today that she'd step
down from the Speakership that she held during the last two years of
George W. Bush's presidency and the first two years of Barack
Obama's, and again during the last two years (let's hope) of Donald
Trump's presidency and the first two years of Joe Biden's. When the
current lame-duck session expires, she'll have been the Democrats'
House leader for two decades, tying Rayburn's record for party leader
longevity.

Pelosi's tenure as Democratic leader was situated entirely within a
period when the gulf between Democrats and Republicans has been too wide
for compromise, and the parties' electoral strength was evenly matched
(at least at the legislative level, where the clustering of Democrats in
cities and more precise, computer-generated gerrymandering created
districts that offset the Democrats' popular-vote majorities). Within
those constraints, she worked incessantly to win Democratic majorities,
and played a decisive role in the enactment of nearly every significant
piece of legislation passed during the Obama and Biden presidencies.

Most importantly, it was Pelosi, overriding the let's-give-up counsel
of Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who pushed the Affordable Care Act
through Congress. With the razor-thin majority of the past two years,
she was able to win the assent of the entire caucus for much of
Biden's program, albeit coming up short on the core of the Build Back
Better proposal. As minority leader, her most important legislative
achievement was assembling and leading a decisive majority within the
divided Democratic caucus to oppose the authorization of the Iraq War,
and cleaning Bush's clock in 2005 when he attempted to use the
political capital from his re-election to establish private Wall Street
accounts for Social Security.

We Can't Do This Without You
<[link removed]>

She had her shortcomings, to be sure. Until the advent of COVID, she
stuck to the benighted fiscal orthodoxy of PAYGO, a de facto obeisance
to the gods of budget balancing. She never groomed a successor, and
Democrats saw a lot of talent move on as they tired of her control.
(Even now, while she is stepping down from leadership she is not leaving
Congress, instead serving as counsel emerita to presumptive incoming
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.) As a public speaker, she never got
beyond verbalizing bumper-sticker messages, reiterating slogans never
longer than five words. Then again, public speaking was never a major
component of the Speaker's job until the tenure of Newt Gingrich,
whose proto-Trumpian calumnies drew unprecedented media coverage for a
Speaker.

By the standards of today's progressives, Pelosi often seemed a
creature of the Democrats'

**ancien régime**, with a gulf both ideological and chronological
separating her from, say, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That said, she was
clearly the most liberal leader House Democrats have ever had, and as
the ideological sorting between the two parties grew more pronounced,
she moved somewhat leftward herself.

Once Obama left office, she no longer invited the Robert Rubin types
(including Robert Rubin himself) to give economic briefings to the party
caucus. Moreover, Pelosi's synthesis of liberalism and
"operationalism"-her ability to cobble together majority support for
legislation against the odds-was a model of principled legislative
leadership. (When I profiled Pelosi
<[link removed]> for the

**Prospect** back in 2004, several House Democratic old-timers marveled
at how "operational" she was.) Her refusal to back impeachment
proceedings against Trump for his political idiocies, but pushing it
through for his abuse of power in dealing with Ukraine and fomenting the
insurrection, showed a characteristically keen sense of what was legally
and politically impeachable and what was not.

More than Hillary Clinton or the all-but-invisible Kamala Harris, it was
Pelosi who broke the glass ceiling for women as political leaders. No
recent figure in American politics has come across as a consummate and
exemplary political professional like Pelosi has (well, maybe Mitch
McConnell has, but his icy demeanor and partisanship-über-alles make
him much more a factional fanatic in the mold of John C. Calhoun than a
legitimately national figure). Unlike McConnell, Pelosi also showed it
was possible to be a consummate political professional without
surrendering human qualities. Demonized for decades by a Republican
Party that dived gleefully into sexist, fantastical, and deeply ugly
attacks well before Donald Trump came along, Pelosi never responded with
anything even remotely personal.

One of the debts we owe the January 6th Committee was its airing of
behind-the-scenes footage of legislative leaders during that day's
insurrection. Keeping cool, making specific requests to authorities who
could provide police reinforcements, determined to resume the
announcement of the Electoral College votes, Pelosi stood out as the one
leader in the Capitol, let alone the White House, who knew what had to
be done and how to do it. That encapsulated her strengths as party
leader and Speaker; it stands now as her valedictory.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>

[link removed]

[link removed]
Still Democracy's Death Watch
<[link removed]>
Saving democracy does not resonate when the forces of reaction are
gearing up for the next offensive. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY

We Already Have Laws to Stop Crypto Fraud
<[link removed]>
Forget Washington's urgency to design a regulatory regime for crypto.
It's better to treat it like any other illegal operation. BY DAVID
DAYEN

The Enduring Corporate Entrenchment in China
<[link removed]>
Contrary to Thomas Friedman, Wall Street still makes a killing from
China at the expense of workers. BY RAMONA LI & MICHAEL HAACK

[link removed]

 

To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to
subscribe.  <[link removed]>

Click to Share this Newsletter

[link removed]


 

[link removed]


 

[link removed]


 

[link removed]


 

[link removed]

YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
<[link removed]>

The American Prospect, Inc.
1225 I Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC xxxxxx
United States
Copyright (c) 2022 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.

To opt out of American Prospect membership messaging, click here
<[link removed]>.

To manage your newsletter preferences, click here
<[link removed]>.

To unsubscribe from all American Prospect emails, including newsletters,
click here
<[link removed]>.