Also In This Issue Related stories are available to subscribers only: Interactive Feature: How Speakers Have Fared In Recent History Related Resources On NationalJournal.com National Journal Cover Story: "Fill In The Blanks" (12/16/06) · National Journal: "Controlling Themselves" (4/28/07) · National Journal: "Laying Down A Marker" (1/13/07) · National Journal: "Going Blue" (11/11/06) · National Journal Insider's Poll: Grading Congressional Leaders (3/31/07) · Poll Track: "A Mixed Report Card For The 110th" (3/30/07) · Poll Track: National Polling On Congressional Leaders · PolitiScope: "Nancy vs. Nancy" (11/10/06) · Almanac Profile: "Nancy Pelosi" [an error occurred while processing this directive] Additional Resources On The Web White House: President Bush Meets With Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer (11/9/06) · Speech By Nancy Pelosi On Her Nomination As Speaker (11/16/06) · Speaker's Blog: "The Gavel"

By Richard E. Cohen, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, May 11, 2007

For anyone wondering about the state of relations between President Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a public exchange of digs between the two on March 28 certainly seemed revealing. At a Capitol Hill press conference, Pelosi advised Bush to "calm down with the threats" after he vowed to veto the year's first Iraq funding bill because of its Democratic-crafted timelines for troop withdrawals. "There's a new Congress in town," Pelosi reminded Bush. "I just wish the president would take a deep breath, recognize again that we each have our constitutional role." For good measure, she urged a second time at that same press conference, "Take a deep breath, Mr. President."

That evening, Bush had his turn at the Radio and Television Correspondents' annual dinner at the Washington Hilton. "It's good to see Speaker Pelosi tonight," Bush said from the podium, as she sat nearby at the head table. "Some have wondered how the two of us would get along. Some say she's bossy, she's opinionated, she's not to be crossed." Not to worry, the president told the crowd, which responded with laughter. "Hey," he quipped, "I get along with my mother."

In fact, there's apparently more than just a chill in the air between the Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Several well-placed Republican sources said they sense little, if any, professional working relationship between Pelosi and Bush.

In an interview with National Journal, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said that after sitting between the two of them during four years of meetings in the White House Cabinet Room, he concluded, "There is no meshing on personalities." Likewise, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, noted, "As best as I can judge, [cooperation is] not there, publicly."

A senior Republican source went even further, contending that Pelosi "is a partisan and tends to assign the worst motives to everything we do." Talk like that is a bit of a stretch, though, because in the six months since the Democrats' electoral victory in November, the new speaker has carefully -- and shrewdly -- managed her public image and messages to try to demonstrate anything but partisanship.

From the start, Pelosi has seemed on high alert to avoid overreaching and handing ammunition to GOP critics who are eager to portray her as a shrill San Francisco liberal. It's almost as if she's got a poster of former Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., hanging in her office as a reminder that bombast and bluster can land a speaker in hot water -- and lead to unfavorable ratings in the 60 percent range, not to mention coup attempts by party colleagues.

After winning an election by recruiting moderate candidates and pushing a middle-of-the-road agenda, Pelosi, the voice and the face of the new majority, has strictly adhered to that path. The week that she was sworn in as speaker, she carefully orchestrated a series of events to play up her everywoman biography as a mother of five and grandmother of six from an Italian-American Baltimore family. Since then, she has used forceful rhetoric and issued firm warnings when battling Republicans, but often through a tight smile that manifests her poise and polish. And although she has deep differences -- and, by many accounts, bad chemistry -- with Bush, she usually bends over backward to sound reasonable, polite, and respectful when she discusses the president.

The Pelosispeak was on full display when she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., met with reporters outside the White House on April 18 to describe their meeting with Bush about the ultimately vetoed Iraq funding bill. It was evident that the session accomplished nothing, yet Pelosi was upbeat. "We extended a hand of friendship," she said. "I think we left the room with the president understanding that we came in friendship; we want to respect his role and him to respect ours."

When the looser-lipped Reid began to sound a more strident, discordant note -- "We told [Bush] some things today that he needed to hear" -- Pelosi interjected emphatically, "With great respect."

But Pelosi isn't always on message. Republicans and political satirists lampooned her, for example, when she fumbled some of the legislative details in unveiling the Democrats' war funding bill on March 8.

If polls are a measure of who is winning the public-relations war, Pelosi comes out on top. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted April 12-15, Pelosi had a favorable rating of 53 percent. In a May 2-3 Newsweek poll, Bush's approval rating was 28 percent, a record low for him in that survey; 62 percent of respondents said they believed that the president's recent actions regarding Iraq show that he is "stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes."

Interactive Graphic: How Speakers Have Fared Over History A look at the ebbs and flows of the public-approval ratings of House speakers from the past 30 years: Tip O'Neill, Jim Wright, Tom Foley, Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi.

Moreover, body-language experts say that Pelosi conveys self-confidence and control. "She is formidable and confident, and exhibits signs of being a leader. She comes across as powerful," said Lillian Glass of Los Angeles, an oft-quoted communication psychologist who has authored numerous books and privately advised many world leaders. "She looks directly at people. Her movements are not tentative. She is secure."

Tonya Reiman, who is based in New York and appears regularly on the Fox News Channel, likewise said that Pelosi comes across as secure. "She elevates her chin a bit and uses small chopping gestures," Reiman said. "That shows confidence."

Republican adversaries grumble that Pelosi's "stilted" sound bites seem "scripted," and contend that it's difficult to engage her in conversation that goes beyond talking points. She has inappropriately challenged presidential prerogatives, they say, and has disrespected the "leader of the free world."

The speaker's Democratic allies brush aside such criticism. They are thrilled with the image that she is projecting. In an interview with NJ, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., said that Pelosi is overcoming long-standing gender barriers. "Especially with the first woman speaker, there will always be people who qualify what they say [in dealing with her]. It's the nature of the beast," Clyburn said. "Women are not often seen as tenacious. More often, they are seen as dainty. She is feminine but tenacious."

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that Pelosi "is standing up as a responsible leader of Congress to hold the president accountable. She is doing what the Framers of the Constitution intended." And Martin Frost, the former House Democratic Caucus chairman who lost his seat in 2004, said that she "has taken on Bush pretty hard. The country, especially people voting for Democrats, wants change, and they want Democrats to stand up to this administration." Some Democrats even suggest that Pelosi could go to court against Bush on Iraq.

Within the House, Pelosi has exhibited a bold leadership style. She has made clear what she wants and, with a few exceptions, she has gotten it. Allies embrace what they describe as her "hands-on" approach.

"She knows each and every [Democratic] member. And she knows that unity is essential to creating progress," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., a close Pelosi friend for more than 30 years. "So much of her work is one-on-one with members, in identifying what is troubling to them and what is important to their constituents.... She uses 'Pelosi Power,' and does that gracefully, knowingly, and masterfully."

It's already clear, however, that Pelosi Power has its limitations. The speaker ushered the Democrats' "Six for '06" campaign agenda through the House in early January, but none of those bills has been sent to the president. The standoff over the Iraq war has overshadowed domestic issues, and in the wake of the Bush veto, the Democrats struggled to determine their next steps. In the same April Post/ABC poll in which respondents gave Pelosi high approval ratings, only 26 percent said that Congress has accomplished "a great deal" or "a good amount."

"Nancy Pelosi as speaker has done a good job in defining issues that Democrats stand for and [in] moving bills through the House," said Leon Panetta, who was a House member from California and a close friend of Pelosi's before he became budget director and later chief of staff to President Clinton. "She has yet to prove whether she can govern and whether she can get things done."

"The problem is that [Washington] has endured trench warfare for 10 to 12 years. It's difficult to get out of those trenches," Panetta said. "That is a two-way street.... I have a feeling that there is plenty of blame to go around."

Hastert agreed that the president and the new speaker must produce legislative results. "It's important for them to sit down in the same room and have a civil conversation -- and throw out the staff," he said. "The American people want positive action."

Can They Get Along?
When Hastert took over as speaker from the ousted Gingrich in 1999, he, like Pelosi, faced the task of working with a president of the other party who was in his seventh year amid a bitterly partisan national climate. In Hastert's case, the president was Clinton, who had been impeached by the House.

"I had to show contrasts to Newt, who was confrontational," Hastert recounted. "My [House GOP] constituency wanted a different style, somebody who was more conciliatory." So, despite conflicts with Clinton on many issues, Hastert identified two items on which they soon found common ground: an initiative to upgrade inner cities, and a plan to stem the flow of illegal drugs from Colombia.

The Clinton-Hastert cooperation was possible, Panetta added, because Clinton was willing to go to the negotiating table. "It takes two to tango," Panetta said. "I don't know if President Bush can do that."

With the nation having struggled for four years with an increasingly unpopular war, Bush faces some obvious disadvantages compared with Clinton. During Bush's first six years as president, moreover, he was not known for hands-on legislative dealings with Congress. With Bush now a lame duck, and Pelosi eager to make her mark, the NRCC's Cole argued that she should be especially interested in conciliation. "The speaker needs victories more than does the president," he said. "She needs to think about her legacy."

At this point, there is no evidence that potential conciliators have made serious attempts to bring the two together. "They both want to get things done, and I would do anything I could to help," said Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., who has been a friend of Bush's since each ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1978 and has worked with Pelosi for two decades on many home-state issues. "But I don't think that they have much of a relationship."

GOP sources who have dealt regularly with Bush offer similar assessments of the relationship. "It's not much yet," a White House adviser said. "In the interest of the country, the president would like one."

Former Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence before he resigned in 2004 to head the CIA, had a more nuanced recollection of Pelosi's interaction with Bush at White House meetings. "I did see some instances where they were together and discussed important issues. Mrs. Pelosi handled herself professionally," Goss said in an interview. "She was in command of her material."

Some Democrats hold out more hope for future Bush-Pelosi collaboration. A few of them maintain that the relationship isn't all that bad to begin with. They point, for example, to the president's acceptance of the speaker's invitation to speak at the House Democrats' annual retreat in February.

"That showed that she wants to work with him.... She is trying to have cooperation," said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly. "Speaker Pelosi has said that she wants to find common ground. We believe that's a possibility." Daly cited her support for Bush's goal of comprehensive immigration reform, and said that she has urged the president in private discussions to secure GOP support for such legislation.

"They are friendly to each other, but each has a job to do," Daly added. "They are not [close] friends."

As kids, Pelosi and Bush each grew up with politics, and both are skilled at the give-and-take. "I think that [Bush] respects Nancy Pelosi enormously," Eshoo said. "He welcomes her to the White House and is gracious socially to her. They both understand that they are professionals and each has a job to do. They communicate, though the cloud of Iraq hangs over everything."

Some insiders note that one opening could come through the close professional relationship that Pelosi's youngest daughter, Alexandra, developed with Bush when she was an NBC News producer during the 2000 presidential campaign. She later produced a "video diary" for HBO about her experience, called "Journeys With George."

In a column published in Time a week after November's election, Alexandra Pelosi wrote that her mother and the president appeared to be "the best of 'frenemies' -- campaign-trailspeak for politicians who keep their friends close and their enemies closer." Alexandra said that Bush had lunch with her parents during a California campaign stop in 2000, and he later told her, "You ought to be proud of your mom." The younger Pelosi concluded that her mother and Bush were "two seasoned professionals ... with skin so much thicker than the rest of us" that "they couldn't care less" about the noise surrounding them.

Adjusting to the New Speaker
So far, Pelosi's strong speakership style seems closer to that of Gingrich -- who centralized power, instilled rigid party discipline, and tightly controlled the committee chairmen -- than to that of her mostly laissez-faire Democratic predecessors, such as Reps. Tom Foley, D-Wash., and Tip O'Neill, D-Mass.

Pelosi spokesman Daly rejects the comparison, however. "Gingrich was trying to take down the institution," he said. "She wants to make the institution stronger." Still, there are some similarities between the early speakerships of Pelosi and Gingrich. Both were preceded by tidal-wave elections that emboldened the new majority, significantly weakened the president, and raised questions about how the two sides would get along. And, in each case, the new speaker offered an explicit agenda to assert partisan prerogatives.

In 1995, of course, the Gingrich revolution largely ground to a halt when Clinton vetoed GOP spending cuts that he effectively painted as draconian and mean-spirited. That veto sparked an extended budget standoff between the White House and congressional GOP leaders that included a shutdown of the federal government. Amid the crisis, Gingrich flew with Clinton aboard Air Force One after the funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Gingrich wanted to meet with Clinton during that flight, but the president snubbed him; even more galling to the speaker, he was seated in what he regarded as the plane's steerage section. An irritated Gingrich complained to reporters, winning him a front-page headline in the New York Daily News: "Cry Baby." In the end, Clinton was widely viewed as having gotten the better of Gingrich.

In terms of putting an imprint on the House, Pelosi seems to have been at least as successful as Gingrich was at the beginning of his speakership. At every turn, she has exercised command-and-control -- in carefully managing the first-100-hours legislative drive, for example, and in showing the committee chairmen that she won't hesitate to pull them back. Clyburn described her as "the quarterback who calls the plays," and added that she is "the dominant force" among Democratic leaders, including serving as "the go-to person in the whip team."

Since January, Clyburn said, Pelosi has grown "more comfortable and confident" every day. Likewise, Daly said that she "feels a real serenity and has confidence in herself." He added that running the House is "not easy ... but she is prepared."

During recent key House votes, Pelosi could be seen circulating more informally and visibly on the floor than her two GOP predecessors typically did. Her movements and interactions with other Democratic leaders and with rank-and-file members suggest a confidence in the outcome and in the majority party's performance. The chemistry on the leadership team -- which was assembled after a bitter contest in November in which Pelosi backed Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., over Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., for majority leader -- also seems better these days.

Although Pelosi and the leadership mostly set the early agenda, Clyburn said that in recent weeks, committee chairmen have increasingly been moving their own legislation, albeit with more party coordination than during the Democrats' previous reign. Meanwhile, the diverse Democratic factions remain as spirited as ever, and they have often made their views known on major proposals. But Democratic divisions have not jeopardized legislation so far.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., chairwoman of the New Democrat Coalition, gave credit to Pelosi. "She has empowered members and caucuses. She has brought regular order to committees so that members can work on legislation. We have a strong hand.... We feel informed and listened to," said Tauscher, who has had differences with Pelosi in the past. "The result is a complete package. She is the real thing for our country at this time."

Pelosi has been careful to tend to the 41-member House Democratic freshman class, known internally as the "majority makers." She hosts the entire group at a weekly Wednesday breakfast in her conference room in the Capitol. "The speaker has been extraordinarily generous in her time with the freshmen," said Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., the class president. The sessions foster an "open dialogue" in which Pelosi and other leaders convey their legislative and political concerns to the first-termers, and "the freshmen reflect back to the speaker what we hear from our constituents," he continued. "She is completely engaged."

For their part, Republicans have found plenty to criticize in the operation of the House as well as in the meager legislative accomplishments thus far. "There is an abysmal contrast between what they have promised and what they have delivered," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. Democrats will face a more difficult time in maintaining party unity in the weeks and months ahead, he predicted. "I think that they don't have a clue."

House Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam, R-Fla., gave Pelosi credit for "a remarkable job of keeping her troops together" in the early months. But he forecast "tremendous strains in their caucus, between [Pelosi's] Left and her majority makers, who ran as diet Republicans and can't swallow what the Left demands."

In the future, Putnam added, Pelosi will need to put more trust in her committee chairmen. "The micromanagement at some point catches up with you," he said. Other Republican adversaries also criticized the speaker's top-down style, contending that it excludes from the power loop most members who are not part of her narrow cabal of allies, many of whom are from Northern California. "Everything goes through her office, and they can only do one thing at a time" is a commonly voiced theme in House GOP leadership circles.

Some Republicans already have begun to think about election opportunities. "As her image becomes more readily known, it will be a real weight, especially on the 61 House Democrats in districts that President Bush won in 2004," predicted Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C. "Their early legislative success does not mean lasting victory. The passage of the war funding bill and budget resolution took great skills by the Democrats. But, in the end, some of their votes will be used against them."

As one of the few Republicans who has dealt extensively with Pelosi on legislation, Goss has a positive recollection of the turbulent years of 2001 and 2002, when he chaired the Intelligence Committee and she was ranking member. "I appreciated her commitment to the committee. She put in a lot of homework," he said. "She is a pleasant person and makes things work.... When she disagreed, she was very direct." Goss added that although Pelosi could be "a fierce partisan, she knows when to leave partisanship at the door."

From the Bay Area to Baghdad to Damascus
Pelosi's overwhelming focus on Iraq and foreign policy could eventually pose problems for House Democrats. But interviews with three ideologically diverse Democrats from Pelosi's geographic base illustrate why she radiates confidence in pursuing those issues. (The Bay Area, which includes 13 House districts, is the only large metropolitan area in the nation that does not include a Republican-held district. The GOP member closest in distance is more than 100 miles from Pelosi's San Francisco-based district.)

Rep. Barbara Lee, who represents the Oakland-Berkeley 9th District, co-chairs the Progressive Caucus and has been an outspoken foe of the Iraq war. She was among the seven liberal members who initially voted against the House Democrats' war funding bill, because she believed that it made too many concessions to the Bush administration. "My conscience is that we can't put up more money to fund this war," said Lee, who supports what she calls "a fully funded withdrawal."

Lee has praised Pelosi's handling of the issue. "She did what she could to get the maximum number of votes to begin the end of the war." More broadly, Lee lauded Pelosi's ability to unify Democrats and predicted that she will be "a great speaker."

Rep. Dennis Cardoza, whose more conservative 18th District is based mostly in Stockton and the rural Central Valley, is a leader of the Blue Dog Coalition of moderate-to-conservative Democrats, and he has made his independence from Pelosi clear since he was first elected in 2002. On the war, Cardoza has supported the Democrats' goal of establishing timelines to exit Iraq, but he has worked behind the scenes to secure changes in the legislative language. "A number of us felt that the original plan would have micromanaged the military," he said. "We relayed our concerns to the leadership, and we helped to form the consensus for timelines."

Cardoza, who spent six years in the state Assembly, praised Pelosi as "a member's speaker" in the mold of the renowned former California Speaker (and later San Francisco Mayor) Willie Brown. "She keeps her word. She tries to accommodate members," Cardoza said. "The House speaker has 435 chirping chicks in the nest, and all want to be fed. As the mama bird, [Pelosi] decides who gets fed. So far, it's working."

Rep. Tom Lantos, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee and whose 12th District is adjacent to Pelosi's on the peninsula south of San Francisco, played a key role in perhaps her most controversial action as speaker: her leadership of a delegation of seven House members, including Lantos, on an early-April Mideast tour that stopped in Damascus, Syria. Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, has made more than a dozen trips to Damascus in the past half-century.

The State Department opposed the group's visit to Syria, but Lantos said that the discussions there were constructive and that they fully supported the administration and what Lantos has termed "the bipartisan foreign policy" of the United States. "Nancy's performance in our formal meeting with President Assad was an 11 on a scale of 10," he said. "With her charm and confidence, she hit it out of the ballpark."

Congressional Republicans and administration allies harshly attacked Pelosi's visit. In interviews for this story, GOP sources said that "her overreach gave credibility to Assad," that she "didn't appreciate the nuances of the situation," and that "the visit was a poke in the eye to the president." Asked about the criticism, Lantos called it "outrageous," adding, "The notion that we should not have gone to Damascus was absurd.... Nancy significantly strengthened the U.S. position in Damascus by making clear that it was bipartisan."

Later in April, Pelosi and her delegation briefed Bush at the White House on their Mideast visit. And on May 3, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with the Syrian foreign minister in Egypt. A State Department aide said that before Rice's trip, the secretary had spoken with Pelosi about her visit to Damascus. It was another example in which the administration disagreed with Pelosi -- but could not ignore her.

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