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on to the main event we have a portrait from her volleyball, the political correspondent with exquisite interviews to track her career from 1987 through accomplishments such as universal healthcare to -- joining with the chief correspondent from new york magazine and the danger times. welcome. >> thank you. so i guess we are on. we have a lot of people here,

428 people. on the other hand, thank you president and missus obama and clinton and carter and bush. thank you for asking me to do this and for being here. this is a great book and i will tell you i've read it the last couple of days it took me may be a day and a half it will be one of those things if you want to learn about the centuries of our politically, you will have a document that will tell you everything you need to know about nancy pelosi.

i have a million questions and i know that you do, tomac. we are going to talk for about a half an hour and then we will turn over to you all. there is a way to ask questions they can figure out. do you want to say something off the top or do you want me to jump right in with a question? >> i appreciate you doing this. why don't you fire away and let's do the dialogue. >> you've never written a book before and this is the first. i assume you have heard some of the horror stories of what it's like to write a book or you've heard all of these triumphant stories of how great the process is. what was it like and is it something that he would recommend to someone that has

never done it before? would they not meet expectations? >> i was totally miserable. i would not recommend it. it definitely reminded me of childbirth in the sense people tell you how excruciating it is going to be and you go sure, a lot of pain, but you do not really internalize it until you go through it yourself and you are like this is really hard. people have done much harder things, and i don't feel sorry for myself tha but yes it is hao write a book. given that it's a wonderful characteristic of my subject and it's interesting to people, but it means she kept making it difficult to finish the book when i was in the process of

interviewing people. we thought that was going to be the big story of the 2020 cycle and it looks like maybe not. but it was a challenge but definitely fulfilling. not only did i learn a lot from it, but did you know when you report on politics day in and day out there are themes that you develop and you start to feel like your understanding and a lot of dimensions about the politics so for me this was a way to bring a lot of that together through the years of reporting and writing about women in politics and the way the political system works and you write more words than they are willing to put in the

magazine for 300 pages. >> what was concerning is the one that would be worthy of however long this took. >> honestly, all of the political figures i have written about, she was the one that felt big enough and significant enough i could take that deep of a dive as i write about in the book i was assigned to profile her when i started working there in 2017. and at first, i sort of wasn't thrilled. i didn't think she was that interesting quite frankly and it was once i got in there and started learning about her and thinking about her and thinking about all of again the themes and characteristics of her career i started to think there were a lot of layers to unpack and just some people didn't know

about her, i didn't. and i had a conversation with david marinus a few years ago when i was trying to come up with a book to write and i couldn't come up with anything. i said how did you know you had to something that was worthy of the book rather than a long article and he you jus you juste obsessed with it. >> david marinus is always a great person for inspiration and to put you in the right headspace. you mentioned in the text or may be part of this was implied she is not a great interview, i mean, she doesn't make it fun or easy. she doesn't speak off-the-cuff that much. she's also a private person.

how did you separate how difficult she is to crack with the ambition to not crack it enough to write it interestingly in the magazine story or book? >> so much of politics is about communication and i don't think she will be considered one of the great political orators. she isn't someone that engages in the public intersection. you have to sort of figure her out and i think that is part of

it, tomac. it was kind of an occasion for me to reflect on the role of communication and perception in politics and studying her and thinking about what is the relationship to how a politician is perceived and what they actually do and how much of that are they responsible for and how much is our sort of society responsible for.

the other thing as a communicator i would say i think the thing you will get to understand is everything is about results and what she's going to get out of the interaction. whether it's being on television, giving a speech at a fundraiser. so she is much more interested in driving the message home than making you like her, making herself feel good or making the audience applauded. it's about what is it i am trying to communicate here and how many times do i have to repeat it for you to get the message. >> that is a great point. a couple of days ago i interviewed for the first time alexandria because io cortez who was a bit of a shadow to nancy pelosi in some ways it was a

very progressive sort of insurgents in the house that nancy pelosi runs. she is very, as she said in a quote, up in her feelings sometimes. she's vulnerable, open, very millennial in that way. i wonder if you've ever had any occasion to see nancy pelosi do vulnerability at all and i wonder if she ever let herself -- i just wonder what it feels like in some ways if she would let you see what it's like to be attacked the way she is and targeted the way she is, mischaracterized the way she is. >> i wouldn't say that i got a sense of vulnerability. i did get the sense that she let her guard down enough to get a little snippy with me which was nice. she finally felt -- i think

certainly you are right that there is something generational about that. the generation she comes from being born in 1940, she's now 80-years-old and comes from a more formal era particularly for women, and i think you have eluded it to thi to this as welu cannot separate her the way she carries herself from how she has been treated and turned into this bogeyman and punching bag where they made a an attack ad like she's stomping on people. i'm not saying any of that is necessarily unfair but when you are the subject of that kind of onslaught you build yourself a suit of armor. she said you put on a suit of

armor and go into a battle. she very much sees politics as combat and she's renowned for her toughness, her discipline and a lot of that comes from just refusing to be vulnerable in public and refusing to let anyone ever see her sweat. >> do you have a sense of that there is any element of today's republican party -- >> she certainly likes some of the republican governors. she's been dealing directly with a lot of the popular blue state governors who've been on the front lines of the response. i recently profiled larry hogan

and he's gotten to know nancy pelosi a little bit. i think that she is one of these and you hear this a lot i miss the old republican party when they were nice and gentle and you could deal with them. she was literally born into the democratic party. there has been no doubt about her loyalty and she described her upbringing that way. she said it was the catholic church and the democratic party where she came from and there's an amazing anecdote early in the book where she just moved to california with her husband who was in the finance. they had four young children, soon having another and moved from san francisco where she knows nobody. she is staying with her mother-in-law which is not

pleasant for everybody involved. i don't think anybody wants to live with their mother-in-law for a long time and they are trying to find a house for this long growing family of theirs. it's got a yard and swing set and it's perfect for their family. as they are about to sign the papers, she literally turns and says why are you renting out your house and the owner said we are moving to washington. my husband is accepting a job in the nixon administration. she turns and says we are not taking it. i refuse to live in a house made available by the election of richard nixon. ..

and then understanding with other set is coming from and then trying to find a way to meet somewhere in the middle. that satisfies both parties and it is and about can she go you know get a drink with john weiner. can she go smooch with mitch mcconnell, i don't think she's a politician like chuck schumer the democratic winner in this senates. it's more about a schmoozing relationship in affection between human beings and i think that's not the way her policy works. she is much poorer count counting and enjoying the deal. >> what's your sense about what she cares about right now. in this ongoing stimulus negotiation? i mean, strikes me as the democrats are talking all the time about book by mail, election protection, and sort

of making sure that whatever happened in november is safe on the level that stays in the level. and yet you don't see these things in the leverage that nancy pelosi now has ever come out. what sense do think these next rounds of note of negotiations might go? given how important those tuition issues might be. yes it's been interesting to watch. she always is sort of. >> it is a high wire act for her. you have the left saying she's not pulling out enough against the republicans, and then the republicans calling her an obstructionist for not immediately given them everything that they want. so she's got to balance those competing demands, and i think what you see is that she recognizes the urgency of his moments. she knows that action has to happen fast enough hard in a congress that is gridlocked and acrimonious as this one.

but she also feels the american people put the democrats in that charge of the house of representatives for a reason. and therefore they deserve a seat at the table. so therefore in the early rounds of similes negotiations towards these massive bills it and trying to pass, there was an attempt to try to go around her and cut her out. mitch mcconnell originally did not agree to her demands, to have four corner negotiations between republican and democratic leaders the senate is in the white house. and she said look, i need to be at that table, i need to be part of this discussion and am willing to be reasonable and to give up of my initial demands, but i need to be that table. i think that's what she is trying to balance going forward as well. some of the things that you reference, something like funding for state and local governments that is something that a lot of republicans and democratic leaders out there

are squawking about right now. i think she calculate in the last one negotiations, that it would become politically impossible for republicans to continue to deny that funding. and so we do not see initially mitch mcconnell, they were going to fill out the states because it was sort of the states prominent problem for not being physically responsible for putting billions and billions of dollars aside for once in a century pandemic. and i think she realized that we're soon happen, that is became politically untenable for the republicans is now even the republicans some senators and members are saying, look my state needs this. we just can't say no to this. >> do have a sense of her power if it was ever truly friend threatened within the caucus? i guess probably the last time would've been 2017 right? tim ryan, of ohio, he ever actually run against her?

>> he did in 2016 but not in 2018. >> specially lately, some younger people have. do you have a sense that going back between the majority in the minority that she was ever threads of them said the caucus? >> yeah there was a fair amount of anger about her leadership when she was in the minority. which were really thankless in the democratic party. a lot of democrats really frustrated that the same leaders for 13, 15, seven years. in that these leaders were now in their upper 70s and early 80s a lot of people felt it was time for a fresh face. for reasons of perception, mostly. feeling like information's ambition and though of democrats had a turn to move the ladder and because it was kind of froze in place of the top leadership that sort of was not there to a lot of members with great potential

for leadership. and then also, because she had also been the separate of some the attacks, because republicans have spent hundreds of millions of dollars i think at this .turning her into this bogeyman. that she had become sort of politically toxic for democrats and sort of republican leaning districts, who needed to keep their seats to keep the majority. and so the feeling was if she worked there to be the subject of those attacks it would be better politics for the democrats. but you didn't really hear was i ink that somebody else could actually do a better job of managing the house. somebody could actually do a better job of shaping these complex peaches of legislation. that was never the appeal of some monica a tim ryan in 2016, or set molten and some others who did not run against her, but tried to oust her from the speakership in 2018. it was really never about what

she never wrote sees as her job. which is legislating. >> do you think of things go well for democrats in november, democrats if they keep the house, is it conceivable that they could keep the same leadership team going forward? if biden wins they can have someone of equal age in the white house and just keep the status quo? or do you think again, i guess is the crystal ball thing, but is it easy to say that is it probably the last hurrah in some way for this team? >> i don't know and i have a firm policy against making prediction. one bit of pressure reporting in the books properly and i don't think it was reported previously, back in 2018 there was that leadership raid where she worked very hard to defuse the situation. she was going are supposed to lose 10% of the caucus vote in

order to be elected speaker again so she really had to win over almost everyone in that large, unruly, it illogically democratically diverse caucus. and so one of the conditions that she finally excepted it to make the sort of final deal to get those votes was she agreed to a term lit. that would enforce down then in 2022 their center of astor ghana, but basically it said that she could serve no more than two more terms. the current to the next one. and she walked in i was really giving anything away, because only plan to stay for one term anyway. and who knows if that is been changed since then but it does reveal that at least at the time, and this also by the way, i learned a lot about negotiating tactics from studying nancy pelosi. this is one that her greatest

tactics is this great confession, but to pretend that it's terribly painful to give something up but you and i giving something up at all because you either didn't mind giving up or you didn't when in the first place. his various points in the books where you see her in his negotiating postures were she pretends she's giving up something terribly painful, and actually she's not. >> watching this this master negotiator and studying her is there in her being a parent of three young kids is this affected her? >> i think that you know a lot of these negotiating tactics came from her experience as a mother, as someone who had five children and six years, and who by all accounts ran a very extremely disciplined household. there's a friend of nancy pelosi that once said, she knew she was destined for political success because she had five young children folding their own laundry. which that is the major mongol in a not there yet with my own

three kids, but if you think about it toddlers and politicians have a lot in common. they are both basically narcissistic, unrealistic maniacs. but if you can make them feel like their egos are being seduced, you can get them to do what you want. and so i do feel like some of these negotiating tactics that i learned from watching nancy pelosi, do come in handy when you're dealing with children. the fake concessions, and another one that i like is the name your price, right? where you say to someone what a way have to do to get you to give me x, and they name a price that they think is outlandish or impossible. well sure, we don't want to let you put the a's called on the national mall, but if you could find a way to lift up the quilt every 20 minutes to the grass can breathe then you can do it.

and then she says okay fine, and she gets the volunteers to stand on the side of the quilt and then every 20 minutes they left the quilt grass can breathe. at that.the park service has no choice to say well we didn't think that you could satisfy this condition so you did and we have to give you what you want. >> so this is an interesting, and speaking of this dimension, she represented san francisco san francisco and that was an issue that was very, very close to her given what she represents. a lot of people she knows, and has been around for a while and is doing it since the 80s, do you think she and i mean mitch mcconnell has actually talked in some ways about covert outbreak and sort of reminding him of his own experience having polio during the polio outbreak. are there any echoes all between what were living through now, and also just sort of the uncertainty and

being out of controlled mists of having this new scary disease that can be very fatal sort of taking over everything. again, i haven't form that is sent to a question but i wonder if this is something that you've ever heard her talk about, or see any parables off. >> i haven't heard her make the comparison, i haven't heard everything she said in the past few weeks. but i do think there are some parallels, one of the parallels frankly that republican president at the time was very slow to acknowledge the extent of the crisis. and that something that we have seen play out abundantly, and the current situation, and at this time it took years for president reagan to even say the word hiv or aids. and so a big part of what she was a part of, working with advocates for the gay community, working for members who cared about the issue, she wasn't alone. but one of the things she really had to do first before

she could get help for the victims of the crisis, was to a raise awareness of the crisis and convince everybody on both ends of the clinical spectrum that it was a problem that had to be dealt with. that the federal government had to grapple with. and so one of the things that she did early on was to mail a booklet to every constituent in her district of the surgeon general's sort of information about aids. you know, it's just to bust myths about the disease. let people know you can get it from hugging, you can get it from toilet seats or whatever, and just to get the information out there. and then the federal government ended up doing the same thing, shortly thereafter, sending hundreds of millions of households information packets periods that people understood the disease, and then the state could put procedure respond to it. >> so this could be in a category, not going to ask you to make a prediction at all,

speculative and then i'm going to present the hypothetical and have you sort of take a swing at it. in november, if dimmed cracks keep the house nancy pelosi stays on the speaker, and donald trumpet is reelected. do you and let's say the senate ghosts 5050 and so technically pens would have or the vice president would have the deciding vote. do you see anything salvageable in the pens trunk or the closely trumpet patient shift that could actually make that sort of those two most powerful figures in washington if that scenario arose. is there anything that can be done do think they could do of each other? do think there is little ground there? do you think that they are in a political position that they're about to get reelected do you see anything happening potentially? between the two of them knowing what you know about

them. >> i doubt it only because only because of the personal relationship. they haven't spoken in months because mostly trump is mad at her for impeaching him. she is much more cold-blooded about these things, she really doesn't let her personal feelings aside the fact whether she's going to do with someone on policy, and she does have a firm set up policy convictions. which i think is fair to say that factually the president is not. so you know she has spent a lot of time trying to negotiate with him at infrastructure, this is something that one donald trump talked about building roads and bridges he kind of something a democrat. he wants to have the money and build lots of stuff, and she kept coming to that negotiating table until he walked away. he was the one to slam his hands down in the middle of it infrastructure negotiation and they can't talk to your lungs' witchhunt is going on. so he was willing to deal, and continue those policy

negotiations even as impeachments and investigations were underway. but the president was not. so as long as the president's going to be upset with her there's something she can do about that. but i think she's willing to, and she also as you know as matter of politics and electoral politics, is obsessed with trying to show the american people that democrats are interested in government. to the house is passing all of these bills, hundreds of them which are sitting on mitch mcconnell's desk. because she does want people to know that she wants to send that message, that they can trust the democrats if parked in charge of things to be responsible in the end. so that the partisan or gridlock would not run out of control, or the left ring of the party would not in their desires. that they can be sensible and get things done. so i think, this is part of why she continues to say, and i don't think she's lying, we could do a bill in infrastructure, we would do a

bill on prescription drugs, there are some areas of commonality at least in rhetoric. but then the negotiations i think are fair to say they're not ongoing. >> writes, so now i see a picture of you, i don't see the live version and i don't know if on the only one you can view this but anyway i can hear you so i'm going to proceed. i can still see and hear everyone fine. >> yeah i can to but i'm getting couple of things the feedback is all. sorry everybody to haul the conversation but will have it back up and running really quickly. >> so you mentioned impeachments. so what is your sense of nancy pelosi getting to impeachments? there was a holdup for a while there was definitely some more progressive members pretty early on winning impeachment.

what was it that wanted and brought her around? was of the facts of the ukraine case or was it something else, or did she feel like she had no choice given where the caucus was? >> yeah i think it was both. i think she felt it had to be done on merits, and that it was also the position of the caucus particularly the vulnerable members of the caucus politically, had moved to she does not like the suggestion that she caved. right that she was following rather than meeting the caucus. but do you think it's fair to say that she always sought as a sort of pointless endeavor. and you have to remember, she lived through the clinton impeachment, which sheet that was a joke. that's the word that she always used for it. to that was basically a political persecution of part of the republican party that really for class reasons did not see bill clinton as legitimate president. and then when she first became speaker in 2007, she faced a

constant drumbeat of a call from the left to teach president bush. so she had code pink protesters running the hall congress every day and camped in her yard in san francisco. in the antiwar activists actually ran against her and her primary over to impeach president bush. so what did as lot of the drumbeat as we have had. but that was another experience that informed her to say, i didn't given to it then because i thought it would be divisive and pointless. i think she felt the same way, i think she still feels the same way. and she looks at impeachment in the rearview mirror now and says, well we had to do it to the president forced us to do because of his conduct. but what did it accomplish? and if you're nancy pelosi in you care about results above everything, you really don't see the.of this, because you know it's not going to remove the president, you know it's not doing to achieve anything

tangible, choices of politics you have to know your wife. in her why is the children the children the children. so, she always is going to look at any particular political problem and say well, how does this feed a hungry child or improve the lives of the workers somewhere? human rights around the world? all impeachment did in her view, was put on this divisive show that didn't actually accomplish anything. she was say and i think she does feel that the one thing it did accomplish was put a sort of * next to president trump's name in the history books. you always say he has been impeached and he can't do anything to change that. but other than that, i think she will lose kind of pointless. >> do think she is regret about this? >> she's not a person who has regrets. quite literally, you can ask her and i've asked her many

times. do you regret. she says i don't do that. i don't have and i don't do regrets. choosing to regret choosing to fear. is there anything, she always had a certain personal i don't know fondness, president bush was someone that she likes to college and toil the time. she still does. they had some moments that she remembers and they seemed to have something if not to with a relationship at the time readily some kind of war or not there's anything about donald that she has any use for? any respect for? no. i don't think so. i do think assuming, and i don't speak for her and i don't want to or pretend to, but when i've asked her a sort of a version of the question, she's was careful to say she does not disrespectful of the people who voted for him. she does not want to be caught in the sort of basket of deplorable moments. the metaphor she uses which i

find tremendously entertaining is, did you ever know someone who was dating a jerk? and you tell that person that they're dating a jerk or just being friends with. we just sort of had a wait them out and then try to subtly show them what he is doing to them. so she says i hope these people will realize what the president is doing to them as she puts it. but i don't blame them. for being involved with him. >> that's interesting when you look at it like that. so, do have a new sense of how, have your of the book or anybody read the book? what was the last sort of round of fact checking? do any sense that they have or know within the question mark. >> they have had the book since it came out and galleys pill you're doing to be perfectly clear that the speaker and her staff had no editorial will control over the book. is my book it is my characterization, she was helpful in terms of giving me interviews and allowing me to

interview a lot of people around her. but, this is not authorized in the sense that she signed off on the content. >> this she or has she ever did authorized biography? >> she has written a memoir with the cowriter. and there's a lot of good material in there that i do on in the book. but, so this had the book in since it was in galleys and from what i understand they like it. whether she's had an actual chance to look through it i don't know, but they're aware of what is in there. they continue to report on her. so i continue to interact with her staff. >> so i don't need to focus on something acidic, but the cover is great and i also love the lack of subtitle. there is like this whole subtitle industrial complex and political books where to

have your title and then okay let's get the whole game away and give it away in the next subtitle. but what made you decide, i know this is not your thing and there's other people and other graphics people, but what made you decide to very confidently call it pelosi with nothing else? and that graphic you use? >> well first of all i have to shout out to my publisher, he holds the designers came up with that and i never would have come up with something so hip and stylish. actually love the cover i think it so i catching that i think it really captures her, captures the tone of the book, captures a lot of what i've been talking about. about a way that sort of a culture has caught up to her brand of femininity after many years of sort of abuse. but also, i think everyone knows who it's about. from the title.

i cut people out of slack we need a subtitle to communicate why the topic they're writing about is significant. right? if i were writing about some lesser known figure i would need to subtitle to sort of tell you this is the man who detonated the atomic bone that will mars or whatever. but you know what i'm saying everyone knows who she is. when you say pelosi there's only one person you're talking about and for all of his wonderful qualities, it is not her husband paul. so i think that was i like the simplicity of it, i like the simplicity of the cover design, but i also think it sort of speaks for itself and that she is a figure who is already plenty famous enough. people are going to the who she is when they pick up the book. >> you don't have to sell the

subject which is nice. what made you decide to have such unintrusive voice in the book. because there are a lot of people who do profiles and interviews, like you and i do, and you have a sense of what it's like in the room with them. what it's like to talk to them. the authors voice you know comes through. you can talk a little bit about your own experience. you really stand back, i'm wondering how you decided to sort of right and the voice that you did and if you had to develop this over time as you were sort of getting into the narrative? >> yet you know i'm not sure. if it was really even a conscious decisio decision. i do as a profile writer, or a feature writer. i do often right in the first person i think it brings a reader into the story. in this case i just wanted to tell her story almost in a

novelistic fashion right. i wanted it to file the work of storytelling more than a work of reporting. so, there's not a lot of direct quotes in the book. this sort of contemporaneous. there's not a lot of people that i've interviewed looking back and reflecting on things that happens because i sort of wanted to keep it in the moment. i wanted people to feel like they were experiencing this sort of as it happened. but you know, is tricky i've never written a book before, i've never done a biography before, and it is really interesting problem that all biographers confront. a sort of wanting to be inside and outside of your subject at the same time, right? wanting to see things through their eyes but also wanting to be able to have a little bit of objectivity. and to be somewhat skeptical of the stories they tell themselves which they all do.

look people will judge, of whether or not i did that successfully but that's i was trying to achieve. >> would you like to be moved to q&a. okay moving to q&a when i get a chance. so were to turn this over to our audience and were going to take questions and let's see. is there some way you can ask questions, i'm just sort of now throwing myself at the mercy of technology and hoping that at some.in the very near future there will be questions and appear before me and you ask them in some way. all right, so i will pick which one here okay here's a good one. for martina asks what is the

most surprising thing you've learned about speaker pelosi? steve hard to say disappointed but, i think that one of the things that really surprised me about her was her, her progress in and assertiveness. her boldness. she came up at a time when it was not really culturally acceptable for women to be strong and assertive and aggressive. but she is a real risk taker. she's a gambler in some ways. she is willing to put herself out there, she's always been willing to get into people's faces so i think this is now familiar to people by ripping up trumps speech and chasing down reporters who accused her of hating the president saying don't mess with me. but this was all the way back to the earliest days of her career. she's always been sort of willing to get into people's faces and stick up for herself. and i think it comes from her

sort of sense of feminism that she always and so able to advocate for herself. but one of my favorite lesser known from her career that is in the book is about her activism on human rights in china. and she, you know this is someone who in 1991 traveled to beijing with some of her colleagues and then the last day of their state sanctioned trip they told the chinese authorities that they were too tired to do on their tour of the great wall. they snuck out the back of their hotel and took a taxi to and one of the congressman she was with played on the dukes of hazard and became a democratic congressman. who is smuggled a banner in his underwear from hong kong and they pulled it out and unfurled it and the said this

is for those who died for democracy in china. they were immediately attacked by the china police who to some of the squared actually detained some of the journalists who were covering this. you can still's the video of this incident. so she quite literally had bodily harm in order to stage this very bold demonstration for what she believed in. and politically as well. back in 2003 when a lot of the top democrats, including the democratic house leader at the time, including people like hillary clinton and john kerry, thought that it would be best politics to oppose the iraq war. she came out against it and she incurred her colleagues to be against it in sort of went against the war resolution against her own leadership. because she believes so strongly that the war was the wrong thing to do. and as the top democrat on the

intelligent committee, she had seen the case for the war that they ministration was presenting and she didn't think that it stood up to scrutiny. so i think, she's known for her toughness, she's known for her sort of stealing this, but that kind of boldness powered her to her she is today. the boldness to run for leadership when literally no woman had ever had a tap leadership position in either house of congress. she still the only woman to lead her party in the house of congress, and she has to take on the male-dominated establishment to do that. they're only 23 woman in the house representatives. when she got there in 1987 out of 435 members. so she was and when she said she wanted to take a leadership position what she heard through the grapevine was at the sort of men in power were saying was well who said she could run? she's always been someone who said i don't need your permission. i'm going to do this because i believe i can do it.

>> so this is a question from charisse did pelosi have a frustration with obama's and obama's cabinets relatives and inexperience. >> yes. i think that is a big thing as some of the chapters in the book about the obama era. was that, she and obama became very close, they have a light of mutual respect and trust and like and so i don't make it seem like there is any sort of grudge between them but it was a sort of theme of congressional coverage. right through the obama years that the democrats in the house and senate never felt like the presidents paid enough attention to them, never thought he was very particular great at negotiating when it came to dealing with the republicans, they always felt like he gave up too much up front. that he was willing to, he was making this promise of bipartisanship and consensus

and hearing the country and bringing people together, and so the republicans was wrath of that, he can't do this if we don't go along with it. we can keep him from fulfilling his promise. and hurt him politically, and i think she relays that a long time before he did. and so she was frustrated that he continued to go to great lengths to try to get republicans to do things with him when she didn't think they were negotiating things and she thought they never had any intention of cooperating. so a lot of the frustration came not dynamic. >> so do you think that experts to vote counting abilities myself, i see the questions that have the most votes that they want me to ask i'm going to ask. i've been very impressed with speaker pelosi's ability to bring together diverse factions of the democratic party, even the most challenging issues. i.e. cash burning ability. what strategy did you identify

and how she is able to do this so effectively? >> that is a great question and is one that i spend a lot of time thinking about. it's is always been her great strength, and when you think about it it stands in great contrast to the republican speaker who preceded her. the house more or less fell apart to wall john banner and paul ryan were in charge of the republican caucus. but they were unable to keep your caucus together and i think a lot of people said their caucus is so diverse, you have those unreasonable freedom caucus people, you've got people from a more liberal district, more conservative districts, more urban districts, more world districts, but the democratic caustic kiss is for more diverse than the republican caucus. i think both demographically and ideologically. and yet there have been some quite fractious disagreements, between different factions of the caucus are you okay can

you still hear me? but she is very good. and you know from the time she became a democratic leader, she has always put a premium on party discipline, changed him of the rules of the caucus, change some of the rules of the house to make a harder and more painful for members to vote against the caucuses position. and she can be very tough in that regard, but i think similar to her other strategies, she wheeled the carrot and the stick very expertly. she's very good of people know that she's not mad if you just dissed are just been appointed. in that feeling of disappointment is very acute if you sort of cross her. you may live to regret it. so you know it comes down to, i mention some of these

negotiating strategies, and there are certain concrete system tricks that you can.to. but what ended up concluding in a larger sense, is that it really is just an incredible understanding of human nature on her part. she has an incredible memory for details and for people. never forget the face, always knows, not only who you are which i can't even tell apart all of the members of the house of representatives, much less remember all of their names and where they come from. but she not only knows that, she does your spouse, your parents, your pets, and what your priorities are and what issues you happen to be interested in, but caucuses you're a member of, what's the make up of your district is in what might to be difficult for you to do politically. she's got all of that in a file in her head, she just knows all of her people, she has and maintains those relationships. she makes everybody feel they've been listen to and

been heard. and a lot of times is all it takes. she seems to have endless time to just listen to people and show kind of wear them out. she's trying to talk someone into something, she will just keep them in the negotiating session until they just kind of give up and relents. because she can outlast them. >> so i want to recognize that we now have over 500 people on our attendance list here, so before i ask the next question i want to thank everyone for coming. and also, the there will be a separate pitch for this but since were all in computers there's going to be a tendency to want to immediately buy this on kindle or something like that. and you are not permitted to do that but you should do it on politics orb and pros are online in some kind of ordering thing they can tell you about. so anyways, thank you all for being here. the next question is, it is actually in sort of follows on what you were just talking about twitches, did you talk

to nancy pelosi about what it was like growing up in a political family in baltimore? and the reason i heard an echo from which you were just answering is that no one faces a names rating think you notes and so forth his sort of old-school and old-school way. and i'm wondering what her and whether she sort of talks about what her political background was like? and how it was applied to running congress. >> yeah absolutely. her father was a congressman from baltimore where she was born. by the time she was seven he had become the owner of baltimore. and this is old-school democratic machine, urban politics, where there is patronage in their saver trading in all of the different demographics in the city have a sort of political box who controls their votes. and you kind of got to pick work to that person. so i definitely think you can see a lot of that old-school political style in the legislative tactics that she uses.

at the same time, a lot of what i have tried to do in the early chapters of this book, sort of way focus attention on her mother. because i think it's so natural to soothe applicable heritage and her father, because of course she went into the family business. but she is always taken pains to say that she was shaped equally by the influence of her mother. and she talks very openly which i think is interesting, about how her mother felt stifled in her life. about how her mother was unable never able to achieve her dreams and goals because she was a woman. and about how her mother wanted to be an auctioneer, wanted to go to law school, wanted to market and sell broody products that she's invented and patented, and her husband would not give her his signature in order and women needed at the time in order to do things like that. so she was very shaped by, and not to be stereotypical about it, but her mother was a sort of very strong and assertive italian-american lady also not afraid to get up in people's

faces. there's a story once she punched a coworker in the face who she was mad at. and she ran a lot of the political operations for her husband. she never got the credit, she wasn't the one or whose name was on the ballot. but she was the one running the women's democratic club out of the basement. reading that can situate service operations call the favor file out of the family parlor. where they could take people's names and write them on a pad and help refer people for services that they needed to get into housing project, or to the hospital, or a job or whatever. so her mother was a big part of that work. in the last thing i'd say about her clinical heritage is that it's very ground-level. it's very good what grassroots right. if you're an urban politician, you've got to know every block you've got to know every precinct, you can't run a campaign with just a bunch of expensive television ads. you really have got to get out there and pound pavement, and

do the work. the so that is still the advice that she gives to candidates that she recruits to run for office. and it still the way she thinks about electoral politics, is precinct by precinct, block by block, down there at the ground level. her older brother, who also later became mayor of baltimore, who was a great friend and mentor to her called it human nature in the rock. and i love that description. of ground-level politics anyway. >> so i think we have time for a couple of more. you can text me if we should wrap it up. but anyway, let's see this question has a lot to court from the voters. from jessica lovering or whatever, has has nancy pelosi ever been interested in running for president or the senate? do you think that makes her more pal from the house? >> no and yes to those two questions.

she has never, there was a time when she was sort of up-and-coming and politics when she was newish to the house, where every once in a while should be on somebody's long list of potential vice president. but she always said she wasn't interested. she never dangled any hints that she might be interested in any higher office. and you know every politician said this rate it sort of the part of the repertoire that if somebody asked if you're just looking at the next round? no no of course i'm focusing on the house of the people the great great district. but i think she has been saying that for long enough that become believable. and is a big part of her power, a very smart observation by jessica, thank you jessica, her members know that she isn't trying to make a name for herself.

she isn't and her predecessor as leader of the democrats, knew that he wanted to be president. he wanted to be present before and he was going to run for president again in 2004, and so everyone knew that as much as he was guarding their interest and running caucus in the house he also had his eye on the next thing. and he had a personal ambition and steak and what was going on that sort of diverted his focus. and she's never had that. no member of her caucus ever thinks that she's trying to pat her resume so she can go to the next rung on the latter. so that gives her a lot of credibility and tanker members that she is focused on issues. >> so i've been told by text this is the last question and i'm just gonna go with majority rules here. hi molly what kind of access did you get to the speaker?

>> she made me a series of interviews and i've been covering her since before sir reading the book so i had entered her previously prior to starting work on the biography. i would not say that we became friends. she never invited me in there should be around her house, or introduce me to her family or any of that kind of thing. there's a formality to her. there's a sense of remove that she has. and she has good relationships with the capitol hill press corps, but she isn't the sort of chummy books he politician that really strikes your quarters is colorful and entertaining. and i talked about this little bit in the book, i do sort of break the fourth wall afterward and talk about my personal feelings and reflections about the reporting process. and i did never feel like i

really got inside her head in that aspect. i felt like i observed her very closely and i got to understand the way she works operates. but because she isn't someone who engages in public introspection, i think she's a fundamentally private person and i was not fully able to penetrate that. >> will i'll say it again it's a great book. thank you all for being here i know you're all learning that and appreciate you. >> but also everyone by the book, buy it through pmp which is a national treasure. or used to be. and thank you for watching us. and i guess we can sign off or can i sent off? >> yes you can go right ahead, i will say before we close

tonight that again, we think you all so much for being here and in the audience. and thank you so much molly for a really lovely conversation about a personal favorite figure of mine at least. and thank you so much, i do encourage the audience to buy the book from politics and prose. your patronage is what allows us to stay up and running right now. this book sales are really crucial, and also are offering you the option tonight to donate to our organization and we are accepting donations and we really appreciate everyone who comes in. but definitely definitely purchase pelosi tonight. we have a lot of other great events coming up. down the pipeline and i need you to click on the logo