Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who led House Democrats for 20 years until she stepped back from her leadership role in 2023, details her rise to power and her years on Capitol Hill in her autobiography published this week.
Her book, “The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House,” includes the California Democrat’s take on events ranging from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the passage of the Affordable Care Act and then-President Donald Trump’s two House impeachments.
Pelosi’s autobiography does not delve into the details of the 2009 Waxman-Markey climate law that passed in the House but died in the Senate. It does, however, praise the climate law enacted under President Joe Biden.
The book also includes anecdotes about energy and environmental issues, including how she wound up with a stuffed bald eagle and how she negotiated with the National Park Service to display a symbolic quilt without killing the grass on the National Mall.
Here are six takeaways from her book:
1. ‘Sparky’ the bald eagle
When former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) left office in 2015, he gave Pelosi a stuffed bald eagle that had occupied his office.
“I asked, ‘Harry, how did you get an endangered species?’” Pelosi wrote. “He replied, ‘It was not captured or shot, but rather killed by being caught in electrical wires. Hence his name: Sparky.’”
With Reid’s permission, Pelosi wrote, “I changed the national symbol’s name, appropriately, to Harry — a great American patriot and symbol.”
2. Bob Dole helped her set up a San Francisco park
Early in her House career, Pelosi was eager to establish a public park in the Presidio in San Francisco, a former military base.
By late 1994, the House had passed legislation to do so, Pelosi wrote, but Democrats lost control of the House and the Senate during the 1994 “Republican Revolution.”
Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) had told Pelosi that when Congress returned, “I will help you get this done.”
Dole, who took over as Senate majority leader in 1995, “was true to his word,” Pelosi wrote. And in 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law.
3. She negotiated with the park service to save grass
In the 1980s, San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones wanted Pelosi to help create and display a massive quilt, with each panel dedicated to someone who had died of HIV/AIDS.
Jones persuaded Pelosi to sew two panels, she wrote: one for Susie Piracci Roggio, who had been a flower girl at Pelosi’s wedding, and another for Scott Douglass, Pelosi’s dear friend.
Jones wanted to spread the quilt on the National Mall, but the National Park Service had told him no, proposing instead that they display a few panels on a nearby corner, Pelosi wrote.
“With the arrogance of a junior member [of Congress], I met with the Park Service with Cleve,” she wrote. “I told them I spoke for the House Democrats — not all, I said with a smile, but most — and we wanted the quilt and its thousands of panels to be spread out on the Mall.”
The National Park Service objected and said the quilt would kill the Mall’s grass if it rested on the ground for more than 20 minutes, she wrote.
“No problem, we said. With Cleve’s leadership, we promised hundreds of volunteers would lift the quilt every twenty minutes,” Pelosi wrote.
4. ‘Energy independence’ helped Dems retake the House
Pelosi assumed the House speakership on Jan. 4, 2007, after her party had spent 12 years in the minority.
Energy independence was part of the agenda that got them there, she wrote.
“We ran on a positive agenda: ‘Six for ‘06,’ emphasizing an increase in the minimum wage, health care for all and lower prescription drug costs, redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq, protecting Social Security, college access, and energy independence,” she wrote.
5. She thinks Biden’s big laws are ‘under assault’
Pelosi called the Inflation Reduction Act, the massive climate and health care law enacted under the Biden administration, “a fitting capstone to President Biden’s first two years in office” and “the most consequential climate action in human history.”
But, “more remains to be done,” Pelosi wrote, criticizing the Senate for only agreeing to pass a “watered-down version of the original House bill.”
And, Pelosi wrote, “the victories that President Biden signed into law are under assault — by Big Pharma, by Big Oil, by the gun lobby, by extreme Republicans, and by Donald Trump.”
6. She welcomes climate advocacy
Maneuvering inside Congress “can only take us so far,” Pelosi wrote. As her daughter Christine insists, Pelosi added, “it is the outside mobilization that makes all the difference.”
On every issue, she wrote, “from health care to climate to LGBTQ+ equality and more — the relentless, persistent advocacy of everyday Americans has made change possible.”
