Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2019. (John Harrington, www. speaker. gov)
One of my most cherished memories is watching late-night movies of the 1930s and 1940s with my mother. There were a couple of great TV programs that broadcast movies long after they had left the movie theaters: Million Dollar Movie and The Fabulous 52. After all my other siblings had retired for the night, my mother would get me out of bed (knowing I wasn’t asleep!) to watch Ginger Rogers gracefully and (apparently) effortlessly match Fred Astaire step for step across the screen. As many have noted, Ginger had to make the same moves as Fred while dancing backward and on heels, looking glamorous and unfazed. Nancy Pelosi is the political equivalent of Ginger Rogers, except that Pelosi took the lead—twice in her lifetime!
Regardless of our political affiliations or whether we agree with her policy stands, we cannot fail to acknowledge that Pelosi is the most impactful political woman of our time. Not to minimize the achievements of the first woman to win the popular vote for president, Hillary Clinton, or the first woman to be elected vice president, Kamala Harris, or a woman who relinquished her congressional leadership role to stand up for democracy over partisanship, Liz Cheney—and their many groundbreaking predecessors and contemporaries—Pelosi, for sheer staying power and long-term impact, will go down as a historic Speaker of the House and perhaps the most influential woman to wield a gavel in the history of our federal government.
Under Pelosi’s leadership, significant pieces of legislation were passed, legislation that has touched nearly every person living in the United States today. Among these laws are the Affordable Care Act and the American Rescue Plan. Moreover, Pelosi held her politically diverse and wide-ranging caucus together through several contentious negotiations. We will remember her striding across the hallowed halls of Congress in her high heels, while holding the equally important titles of wife, mother, and grandmother, well into her eighth decade. The traits that made her exceptional in these roles—strength, intellect, discipline, and courage—combined to make her superior in her government role as second in line to the presidency. She will be missed—and cherished for her ongoing accessibility to a new generation of leaders.
—Martha Zavala
