Molly Ball - Pelosi

It was sometime around 5 a.m. when Nancy Pelosi decided she might as well just give up.

January 3, 2019, was a day she had been looking forward to for a long time, the day she would, for the second time, become Speaker of the House. The previous day had been a whirlwind of ceremonial and official duties: a meeting at the White House about the ongoing government shutdown, a tea in honor of the women of Congress, a celebratory dinner at the Italian embassy, where Bill and Hillary Clinton toasted her and Tony Bennett sang. And then she went home, to her airy penthouse apartment overlooking the Georgetown waterfront, to put the finishing touches on the rules package, the sixty-page document that sets out the changes to how Congress governs itself.

Most of the package had already been agreed to, but Pelosi wanted it to be perfect. She had been up until 2 a.m., calling colleagues, tweaking this clause and that, refreshing herself as she did so with a watermelon-lime seltzer. At seventy-eight, she found her preternatural energy undiminished. She never drank alcohol, rarely had caffeine that wasnt from her beloved dark chocolate and didnt need more than a few hours sleep per night. But there must have been something in the seltzer she sipped, because when she finally lay down to sleep, Pelositwo-time Speaker of the House, second in the line of succession for the presidency, the most powerful woman in American political historywas wide awake.

She lay there for three hours, until the dull sun began to stream through the windows and melt the dirty clumps of snow on the ground. She tried to put the time to productive use, organizing her thoughts for the big day ahead. It was impossible not to feel a glimmer of excitement. Not trepidationfear was one of the emotions she never allowed herself to experience. (She liked to say it was not in her vocabulary.) But as dark gave way to dawn and she realized she might as well just get up, she felt a spark of glee. Time and again, shed been counted out, insulted, dismissed. But she was still here, and she was back on top.

For years, pundits, the press and even some members of her own party had treated her as little more than an inconvenience. They fretted about her age and her polarizing public persona. They argued that, however skilled her leadership, she was a liability for the Democrats, and some called her selfish for clinging to her position in the party leadership rather than making way for a fresher face. When she pointed out that she was good at her jobI am a master legislator, she didnt mind saying, because nobody else wouldshe only earned more ridicule: arrogant, delusional, tone-deaf, out of touch. Even after she helped engineer a landslide victory in the November 2018 midterm elections, the grumbling continued, and some Democrats tried to deny her the speakership.

But what happened on December 11, 2018, changed everything. That morning, Pelosi walked into the Oval Office to meet with President Donald Trump, along with Vice President Mike Pence and the leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer. She was expecting a routine, private negotiation on government funding; as was often the case throughout her career, she was the only woman in the talks. But Trump liked to humiliate people and keep them off balance. He invited the press to stay and record the discussion, then began to harangue the two Democrats about his desire for a border wall. As they spoke up to contradict him, the president, unaccustomed to being challenged, especially by a woman, became infuriated. And then Trump insulted her, attempting to undermine her very leadership position by implying she was hamstrung by her partys divisions, saying, Nancy is in a situation where its not easy for her to talk right now.

At that, Pelosi drew on the experience of a lifetime of refusing to let men speak for her, interrupting them if necessary. Mr. President, she said icily, please dont characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats.

By the end of the meeting, Washingtons balance of power had shifted. Pelosi and Schumer had gotten Trump to take sole responsibility, on camera, for the tremendously unpopular action of shutting down the government. (I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down, he said.) They had told the president to his face that he was a liar and that even his own party didnt want his stupid wall. Not for the first time, by asking the cameras to stay, Trump had humiliated no one but himself. When the meeting turned spectacle was over, Pelosi collected her coat, a knee-length rust-red overcoat with a funnel neck. She then strode out of the White House smiling and, smoothly, with both hands, affixed a pair of large, round tortoiseshell sunglasses to her face.

The image was indelible. You come at the queen, you best not miss, one Twitter user captioned it. The internet immediately seized upon the moment, citing Pelosi as the epitome of a poised and competent woman who knew how to put men in their place. Another tweeter described her expression as that look when you just got finished man-handling a man baby on the big stage. Others Photoshopped mushroom clouds or smoking rubble into the shots background. Before long, Pelosis coat had two parody Twitter accounts to speak for it@NancyCoat touted its Big Coat Energyand Pelosis image was on T-shirts, cell phone cases and even greeting cards sold at a hip DC bar. The coat hadnt been on the market in years, but the designer, Max Mara, announced it would be reissued, citing demand. This is diplomacy in motion, soft power wielded like a machete, the Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins declared.

It wasnt just that Pelosi looked cool walking out of that meeting. After two years of Trump running roughshod over every institution, norm and cherished ideal in America, he had come to seem unstoppable, even almighty. In a single interaction, Pelosi had stopped him coldand it wouldnt be the last time. All she needed was a little bit of leverage, her favorite word, and she would proceed to run rings around this amateur president as the political world watched in awe. Trump seemed positively flummoxed. She walked into the White House that day under a cloud of conflict and controversy, but she walked out an icon.

When she first set foot in the Capitols marble hallways, she was six-year-old Nancy DAlesandro, a little girl from Baltimore, watching her father get sworn in for his fifth term as a member of Congress. She was never supposed to follow in Daddys footsteps, no more than her mother had been allowed to fulfill her dream of going to law school in the 1930s. Nancys father became the mayor, boss of the city, while her mother had to settle for being her husbands unseen, uncredited political brain. Nancy, too, was expected to one day fulfill her role as a behind-the-scenes helpmeet to the men who did the worlds important work. Her five brothers were groomed to follow their father into the family vocation; she was groomed to be a nun. Women didnt have power. Women had responsibilities.