Suppose someone with as little prior knowledge of American politics as Guinea or Belize had traveled to the United States this month. Such a person could have just thought that not Joe Biden but Nancy Pelosi was the sitting president of this country. Such a person had turned on the TV in the hotel room and heard about “the Pelosi regime” in opposition party commercials. Such a person had heard of “Crazy Nancy,” “Nervous Nancy,” and “Nancy Antoinette.” Such a person had just picked up that pithy characterization from Mark Levin on Fox News: “A nasty old bitch, that’s what she is, a vicious will-o’-the-wisp.” Such a person could have believed Fox rumors that Pelosi was dealing LSD in 1967. Such a person had been briefed on Pelosi’s “leading role in the plot against the American people.” Whether such a person would have believed that Pelosi drinks blood from children and is actually a reptile remains to be seen. Such a person would certainly have been surprised to learn that Nancy Pelosi is really ‘just’ the outgoing Speaker of the House of Representatives.
In the number of times Pelosi was berated by Republican candidates, she far surpassed the incumbent president. Biden could not match the intensity of the disgust either. That was already the case on the illustrious date of January 6, 2021. After the storming of the Capitol ended, a peer of Pelosi told anyone who would listen, “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the goddamn brain. But we didn’t find her.’
At 2 a.m. on October 28, 2022, a man showed up at her San Francisco home asking about “Nancy.” When he learned she wasn’t there, the man hit Paul Pelosi, Nancy’s husband since 1963, on the head with a hammer. Republicans condemned the attack in lackluster terms and with considerable reluctance. In the weeks that followed, candidates denounced “the Pelosi regime” as if nothing had happened.
Nancy Pelosi turns 83. She was already at the ball celebrating John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961. By the amount of beatings she’s taken since she first took office in 2003 as leader of the Democrats in the House of Deputies, not even Hillary Clinton could match. Donald Trump is the auctor intellectualis of the term “Crazy Nancy,” but Pelosi hatred existed long before his political rise. There are people who rationalize this phenomenon, who say: a woman who has been at the top of politics for so long, who is so visible, and rich and powerful, she will inevitably have to deal with negative attention.
But if there is an aversion to this intensity, you cannot avoid also looking at irrational aspects. Three years ago, this newspaper published an insightful reflection on women who do well with the radical right: ‘The female face of the radical right is pretty, young, blonde and considers contemporary feminism a great danger (…)’. This type of woman either looks at male leaders in admiration or is very vocal in her words of support.
Pelosi is the exact opposite: old, feminist, assertive, not blonde, unimpressive. The latter in particular fueled the hatred in the Trump era. A woman who sweeps the floor with the discourse of a bully is one thing – that such a bully cannot intimidate such a woman even a little makes her intolerable. The wish was father to the thought in fake news portraying Pelosi as unstable and nervous. That’s exactly what she isn’t. That’s probably what gets the most hate: that the real Pelosi is tough, that it wouldn’t budge despite all the threats, that it just kept going.