Pelosi Takes The Heat

'If I were not effective they wouldn't care about me'

With one week left in the campaign, the Speaker of the House talks to Politics Daily about what's at stake in the election

The first time I got Nancy Pelosi on the phone, 15 years ago, she struck me as one driven sister. I had only been in Washington for a few months, and had called her for a story I was working on about a House colleague of hers. Even the most junior New York Times reporters tend to get their calls returned, but Pelosi's press person phoned me back to say I shouldn't expect to hear from the congresswoman that day because she was out of pocket, attending to her mother's funeral. Mortified — I had no idea her mother had died — I apologized and put the phone down, only to be surprised shortly thereafter by a call from Pelosi, who was working her way through her call list all the same. Of course I had no idea how far the inability to take a day off would take her, but one criticism you never hear about the Speaker of the House of Representatives is this year's most popular put-down; no one would dream of telling Nancy Pelosi to cowgirl up.

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