Who is Nancy Pelosi? The most powerful woman in US politics

From the War in Iraq to playing critical role in combating the 2008 economic crisis, to handholding Barack Obama during passage of Obamacare bill, through becoming the face of the Democrat's resistance against Donald Trump, Pelosi has been Democratic Party’s bedrock.

It took a 110-year-long US Air Force Boeing C-40 C aircraft to land at Taipei to remind the world that there is still only one superpower left and that’s clearly not China. And driving that message all the way from Washington DC was not the president or the vice-president of the United States but arguably the most powerful US woman politician—Nancy Pelosi. The leader of the Democratic Party and the speaker of the House of Representatives has a long political career packed with important milestones. From the War in Iraq to playing a critical role in combating the 2008 economic crisis, to handholding Barack Obama during passage of Obamacare bill, through becoming the face of the Democrat's resistance against Donald Trump, Pelosi has been her party’s bedrock.

While Pelosi often maintains that she never intended to run for public office, she comes from a family of significant political footings. Her father, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., served as Mayor of Baltimore and represented the city for five terms in Congress. Her brother, Thomas D'Alesandro III, also served as Mayor of Baltimore. Mother of five children and grandmother of nine, Pelosi used to participate in her father’s campaigns and has always been known to be the best at one thing; counting votes. So when David Azelrod, former Chief Strategist of Obama campaign once asked her about what she would learn from her father, Pelosi’s response was straight. She said, “I learnt how to count. I was trained at the ward level about how to count votes, how to get votes and how to produce results,” Azelrod once told Frontline PBS.

When Pelosi was first elected to the House in 1987, there were only 23 women representatives in the 435 members House. In January 2007, Pelosi became the first woman speaker of the house. “I have been waiting over 200 years for this” she famously told reporters during a press conference back then. Unlike India, the house speaker usually plays an active partisan role in the US tasked with holding together party’s votes and even taking on the White House when it comes to legislation. By this time, the Democrats had lost six consecutive congressional elections. Pelosi was up for the fight and used her fire-for-fire style to bring the Democratic votes together and ensured that the representatives voted as one block. Lawmakers who visited her office would see two things right in front of them, a table with chocolates and a stack of baseball bats. The message from the whip office could not have been clearer.

Once asked about being accused of calling her opponent Republicans immoral, corrupt and running a criminal enterprise, she responded “actually I was being gentle; there are much worse things I could have said about them”. She took the bold step of taking a position against the war in Iraq. “The president has dug us into a deep hole in Iraq, it is time for him to stop digging” she took on George W. Bush directly on the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Soon she became the main target of nonstop personal attacks from the right-wing opposition. Over the decades, she has been at the receiving end of some of the most aggressive Republican advertisements.

Republican congressional candidate @ElizabethHeng released an ad slamming her Democratic opponent for walking in Nancy Pelosi’s shoes literally pic.twitter.com/qlvLcl24Xn

HANDHOLDING OBAMA