Pelosi never faltered as U.S. House Speaker

In March 2010, Barack Obama was facing the greatest challenge of his embattled presidency: persuading Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act, establishing universal health care in the United States.

While the Democrats had majorities in both House and Senate, the party had, shockingly, lost the late Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts in a special election. They were now one short of the 60 votes in the Senate needed to thwart a Republican filibuster that would kill the bill.

“The verdict in Washington was swift and unforgiving,” Obama wrote in his memoir, A Promised Land. “Obamacare was dead.”

It felt that way. Obama was considering a less expensive, less ambitious bill.

But soon, a new strategy emerged: Ask the House to pass the original bill, without changes, which the Senate already had passed. Then, invoke “budget reconciliation” in the Senate to make improvements in a separate bill, which could pass with 51 votes, followed by another vote in the House.

The problem was asking House Democrats to approve a bill without reforms they wanted, such as a public option and weaker support for abortion. But Obama had faith in Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, to pull it off. He called her “tough,” “pragmatic” and “a master” of her divided caucus.

Pelosi was a consummate legislator in the mould of the legendary Lyndon Johnson. She was prepared to coax, cajole, press, petition and threaten to pass the bill, the greatest piece of social legislation since Congress established Medicare in 1965 and Social Security in 1935.

And she did. On March 21, the House approved the Affordable Care Act by seven votes. It was the hallmark of her extraordinary career. Molly Ball, her biographer, called it “the fulfilment of a century of liberal aspirations and the pinnacle of Pelosi's legislative craft.”

As Pelosi leaves the stage — with the Democrats in minority, she will no longer be speaker, and will not return as House minority leader — she has been called the most important speaker in history. Or, says her admiring predecessor, Newt Gingrich, “the strongest speaker in history. She has shown more capacity to organize and muscle.”

Consider the numbers: Pelosi is the second-longest-serving woman in the history of the House; the leader of the Democrats in 10 congresses; the fifth-longest serving speaker. And she raised more than $1 billion for Democrats.

Her record includes protecting gay people in the military, saving the American economy in the crisis of 2008-09, funding robust anti-COVID measures, fighting climate change, and twice impeaching Donald Trump.

Most striking, though, is her equanimity in the storm: gritty, tenacious, unfazed and unbroken. See her standing up to Trump in the Oval Office, as he tries to bully her. See her seated behind him on the podium at the State of the Union Address, when she tears up a copy of his speech, a manifesto of falsehoods, she sniffed .

In Washington's coven of cowards, Nancy Pelosi showed the meaning of courage, independence and decency.

Amid it all, she never flinched or faltered. She's an inspiration, a voice of the voiceless, an authentic reformer. She's America's heroine.