A new book by the former speaker details her clashes with the former president, but it was written before her most recent exercise of political might: helping persuade President Biden to end his re-election bid.
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Capitol in November 2022, after announcing that she would step down from her leadership position. Her new book, “The Art of Power,” is her retelling of major moments of critical decision-making.
To hear Representative Nancy Pelosi tell it, her quiet but firm push to get President Biden to withdraw from the 2024 race was a simple matter of the ruthless political math that she has spent decades honing a talent for on Capitol Hill.
“My goal is defeat Donald Trump,” Ms. Pelosi, the former speaker, said in a recent interview before the release this week of a book on her years in Congress. “And when you make a decision to defeat somebody, you make every decision in favor of that. You don’t mess around with it, OK? What is in furtherance of reaching that goal? I thought we had to have a better campaign.”
To the former speaker, the imperative to end Mr. Trump’s political career far outweighed the need for any deference to Mr. Biden, particularly since Democrats were at grave risk of losing the House and Senate if the president remained on the ticket. She seemed willing to accept the consequences of anger from Mr. Biden and his inner circle considering what was at stake.
The book, titled “The Art of Power,” is Ms. Pelosi’s retelling of major moments of critical decision-making during the Iraq War, a catastrophic financial meltdown, the passage of the Affordable Care Act and multiple clashes with former President Donald J. Trump, among other events.
But it may be her most recent deft exercise of political finesse and muscle — one that took place well after the book was written — that will stand as a final testament to Ms. Pelosi’s stature as the Democratic Party’s premiere powerhouse of recent decades. In a formidable display of her enduring clout, she helped persuade the incumbent president to abandon his re-election bid to give her party a better chance of holding the White House in November.
ImageMs. Pelosi after a vote on an article of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump in January 2021.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
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Source: nytimes.com
