Rahm Emanuel

Mr. Mayor, when she asks you to come work for her, what was your impression of Nancy Pelosi?

Well, I mean, I kind of knew—before I was a congressman, I knew her from my Clinton days. But my impression of her was always the same impression as I—when President Obama first met her and I told him, I said, "Just one thing you need to know about Nancy"—and I tell her this, so it's not like I'm speaking out of school—I said, "Nancy is more D'Alesandro than she is Pelosi." And she's always her father's daughter, always, father and mother's daughter.

But, you know, she had a great heart, and she is a warm person. Always when we're talking on the phone, as recently as Tuesday, starts off: "How's Amy? How are the kids?," etc. And then—but in the end of the day, when you're in politics, she's D'Alesandro. But she's in it for all the right reasons.

When I asked David Axelrod about it, he said one of her great attributes was bluntness. I think he said she doesn't mind delivering tough messages to anyone, from the president of the United States to a member of her caucus, and certainly to the other side.

… there's no doubt that she has that, but that's not who she is. I would not say Nancy's just a blunt person, although when she needs to be, she will be unambiguously clear. On the other hand—and that's a strength. But she knows—she's gracious. She's compassionate. I mean, there's a lot of qualities to Nancy. But when things need to—

I mean, I know Nancy on a personal level as much as on a professional level, and in many different ways: from being a freshman congressman to being asked by her to take on the task in 2004, the D triple C, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. I know her from—I know her as mayor. I know her in a lot of different postures. But I know her also, as I kind of jokingly said when I—the caucus chair introduces the next speaker. This is also a mother and a grandmother, and she knows something about temper tantrums and how to deal with it.

So I know I’m not saying other people don't know all those aspects, but I—I would not describe—that would be a word or a characteristic, but it would not be the characteristic. I actually think, if anything, it's the magnanimous part of her heart that describes Nancy.

Why do you think she wanted to be leader?

To move an agenda. I mean, Nancy knows—there's a few people, and I think I can say this, having worked for two presidents, having worked opposite a president—and I don't mean opposite, in the sense I'm opposition, but in the House leadership. Nancy understood that you aggregate or collect or take power to exercise it on behalf of your politics and policy.

And I don't think it was about the oil painting at the end. I don't think it was about—about being the first woman speaker, although she knew it and would be aware that that would be historic, as did I when I took on the role, at her request, of the D triple C chairmanship. And one of the reasons I did that is knowing full well that that would be part, like working for President Obama, working for Bill Clinton, after President Clinton, after the 12-year run of the Reagan and Bush administration.

You know, Democrats, if you look historically, post-Lyndon Johnson, have this type of aversion to power for a whole host of reasons. And there's a few people in the party, and I would put Nancy in that—and I say this complimentary—other people who are Democrats that may watch this would probably—because of the history with—does not have, and I would also argue successful Democrats are ones that understand you get power so you can exercise it on behalf of what you're trying to do, policywise or politically.

And Nancy, in my view, the reason she wanted to do that is because she wanted to see major, major change that she's committed to. And those changes are, you know, I mean, without running down a laundry list of policies, but that would be—you know, her agenda, which is the Democratic Party, what animates—what it means to be a Democrat, in the sense of helping people achieve the middle class and American dream, and making sure more—not just for them, but it's also attainable for their children.

And that, to me—why did Nancy want to go into politics? Well, she got weaned on it. But it was more about making sure the things that Democrats cared about became the law of the land and part of our political, cultural, social frame. And then b, she rose up because she knew to do that you had to get not only a title, but all the authority—probably "authority" may be the better word than "power"—to use it. I say the aggregation of power is to use it, not to sit there and put it in a safety deposit, as if it's going to collect 2% interest or something like that.

She becomes leader at a moment when the country's starting to divide. …

I refer to her as Sam Rayburn with [stilettos].

I love that. That's great. What does Rayburn mean to you? Why Rayburn?

Rayburn was—I mean, I do think this. And I say this. I mean, Nancy Pelosi will go down—and I say this with all the love of being a friend of hers and all the passion of also being an admirer of hers as somebody in the practitioner of politics—she will go down as one, two or three of the most powerful speakers we've had. And "powerful" I use as a translation for "effective." And we, based on this interview timing, just saw it.

I think when you look at it, the amount of accomplishments, coming back from not only winning it the first time, in which I think I was—I mean, helped to do, but also the second time; staying, keeping her caucus together, etc., the perseverance there. So whether it's Henry Clay—I mean, as a student of U.S. politics, I mean, the times are different and stuff like that, but you have Henry Clay, Sam Rayburn, Nancy Pelosi. There's obviously others that you would put on that list, but she's in the top three to four speakers in American history.

And probably the factor you contribute is the accomplishments and the degree of severity of those—it's one thing to accomplish something when you have a 100-seat majority. To accomplish something when you have a three-seat majority, now that's—now you're graded on wind shear against you, and that's pretty impressive.

When she takes over, the country's—it's the moment when the divide really starts to happen. The gap between the red and the blue is growing. How does her decision to be the leader fit into that moment? [Did she] recognize the division?

Are you talking about this now or the second—

Back then, back when you guys—

'06?

—were riding—when you were riding wingman for her. Do you think she recognized that it was happening in the country at the time? Did the two of you, did certain Democrats say: "Hey, man, it's different here. The temperature is different here. The Republicans are approaching it in a different way now, the population is—." Because we're about to go, in this interview, to the financial crisis. A lot of this is—it may be Nancy Pelosi's history, but it's also the Democratic Party's history and the country's history and the Republican Party's history, because we're going to watch them peel off and head in another direction.

Yeah, the simple answer is yes and no. Let me do this in a sequential, if I could. Look, I mean, when Nancy tapped me, right after the election of '04 for '06, we were not sitting there having a philosophical discussion about the division in mayor—I mean, in the country, rather. Our conversations are not about those divisions. It's about winning and what does it take to win, etc. And I was—

So let me actually go a little farther back. In '04, she and I and about two other members participated in a small group of prayer and politics that met with an ecumenical group, etc. She knew about how important—that's why when you said—I mean, I would say probably the thing I left off the list about Nancy was her Catholicism and coming out of that social-action part of the Catholic Church, which is maybe a little bizarre for a Jewish kid to talk about, but—and she knew, every Friday night, Amy and I and the kids had our Shabbat dinner and that my faith was important to me. Our real kind of—we knew of each other, we knew each other, but our real bonding came in this process of prayer and politics. We met on Wednesday mornings, ecumenical group. Could be four to seven members. That's where we really got to know each other.

So anyway, then she asked me. And our discussions right after the loss by John Kerry in '04 wasn't really about the divisions in America. It was about the winning a majority. And I was upfront with her about, "Look, this is going to"—I mean, I'm a sophomore; I'm not—usually these assignments go to other people. And she talked about what she thought I could bring to the table, and I said, "Well, OK," I said, "here's what I would like," and I said, "I want to be clear." I said, "To push"—you know, we had just lost 2000. We had lost in 2002. We had lost in 2004. I said, "To do this, I'm going to have to push in a way that is going to ruffle a lot of people." And I said: "You know, I've got to know that you're with me; otherwise we can't recruit. We can't do what we've got to do. I don't want to use timid or whatever, but we can't do it the way it's been done, because the last three cycles taught you it ain't going to work."

She goes, "That's why I'm selecting you." I said, "OK, I won't surprise you, but I need, you know—we're partners in this." And I said, "This is going to—I'm going to push members in a way that they haven't—I'm going to engage them, but—" etc.

And there was also, if you ever talk to her, it was like there was our class, Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), myself, etc. There was this younger class coming up of younger people, and she was—and one of the things that may not get into your show, etc., Nancy was always about making sure—reaching beyond the title to the people by skill. You wouldn't normally pick a sophomore. And I had worked there in the '80s, etc., so she knew I knew—and I worked on two presidentials, etc.

So anyway, that was kind of—but our conversation, Michael, to be fair, wasn't really about—we have had those conversations, but at that time she called me, I remember I was in our house in Michigan with Amy and the kids, etc., and her staff person, who's a good friend of mine from Chicago, George Kundanis, said, "You're going to get a call from the speaker." I said, "About what?" Or, "From the leader." He said, "Well, it's for her to talk to you about." I kind of knew what was coming. If I didn't know what was coming, I shouldn't be in this business, so to say.

So—and we had an upfront conversation. And that was what we were talking about: how to win, etc., and why to win, etc. And remember, it's also '04, is in the height of kind of the debacle around the Iraq War, etc.

So that's really—now, our closeness, real—our friendship and the bonds of our friendship got tested in a mettle in that, through '04, '05 and '06; '04 wasn't much left. It was already like a month and a half left, etc. So it was really those two years where, I mean, as you said, I was her wingman about—and it was about winning. That was what we were about. It was about taking the majority and winning. … Now … by '0, end of '0—by the dealing with TARP [Troubled Assets Relief Program] and the financial, and I would not just say the TARP, the TARP. … there is no doubt that you could start to see the—and I always date this back to the Iraq War, but the fissures that were dividing—that were coming across that had—divisions in America have always existed; it's whether the events exacerbate them or ameliorate them. And you could start to see the war, who was fighting the war, who wasn't fighting the war, who was benefiting from the war financially, the financial scandal, etc.

I'm going to give you one other anecdote from this.

Wait, wait, wait. Don't move too far down the road, because I—

I'm not.

OK.

I'm not. This anecdote I think drives this.

Go, go. Go ahead.

So, Nancy was in her speaker office, and [Secretary of the Treasury] Hank Paulson was in another office. Now, as you remember, this is at a critical juncture in the negotiations around TARP. And Barney [Frank; D-Mass.] and I were the House members. And that was again a take—Barney was head of the Financial Services Committee. I was on the leadership, but given my background and familiarity, at least, with the issues, relied it—or one of the final issues was in the TARP dealing with compensation for bankers. And Nancy's was, "I'm not—I'm not approving this without explicit etc., etc." So Barney and I were sent back to go in our Henry Kissinger-like shuttle diplomacy back to Hank Paulson, who was somewhere else in the Capitol, and he was like—the idea that we would tap or even speak about compensation, and Nancy understood that without that—not that that—I say TARP, the assistance to the financial industry, to stabilize it, to put a floor under its collapse. She knew it was important, but she also knew the politics, difficulty around this, and getting something that would somewhat put some foam on the runway when the plane's landing here. That's, I mean, to me, this is—that moment—and I say this—

I know you guys are FRONTLINE, and if you talk politics, oh, my God, people don't like it. But Nancy knew a, this had to get done; b, we're two—and people don't appreciate this—we're two months before the election not only for a new president, a new Senate, new House; if we wanted to, we could have just thrown this at George Bush. But the bottom was going to come out, and the picking up the pieces for president—a Democratic president, if we were lucky to win it—would have been really much more difficult than if the floor had been somewhat created.

But she also knew, to do it, you were going to—it was not good politics. If you were just doing something politically, let it collapse on George Bush's watch. It's two months before the election. George Bush is a Republican. Let it go, seriously. She knew that it was not good for the country, number one, not good for the next president; hopefully it would be Obama, not John McCain. And third, if we are going to do it, we want something on compensation.

And this was also my animation in the White House about where I had pushed doing financial regulation; first, because I believed in Old Testament justice. The public needed it to deal with this rupture that you're talking about in the body politic.

And so I give her, you know—and we were on the same wavelength. And I said, yeah, I mean—and Barney was, which is, you need us to help you; help us help you help us help you. And that is, this is a bad vote. This is not a good vote, and we need—and Nancy drove—I'm doing this by memory, so I could be off, but I think it was like—I went back and forth; Barney and I went back and forth to Hank Paulson like three, four times, that she wasn't budging on this.

At the end of the day we had an agreement, as you know the history. Then it collapsed, because Republicans didn't vote for it. Then the stock market took a dive. And then we came back, I think, two days later, three days later? But in short order, and then passed it. Four days?

Yeah, four days.

OK, yeah, I think, you know, but—that to me was the person that knew the policy, the politics and the public affairs piece of this, and blended them correctly. And it still didn't—if you were trying to ameliorate the rupture, you couldn't ameliorate it. You could postpone it, at best.

… Let me back up just for a minute, because there's a couple of way stations along the way I'd like to at least talk a little bit about. How hard was it for her to go after the president of the United States, George [W.] Bush, who'd had such high ratings, to take on the war … ? That's a big leap for the first woman who's sitting in the chair. That's a big thing. She catches a lot of grief for it, too, by the way, from [Rush] Limbaugh and everybody else. So talk a little bit about what drives her to do that.

Well, it's what she believes. I mean, look, Nancy Pelosi took on President Clinton about China and the WTO [World Trade Organization]. She took on—I mean, I'd say that, you know—when she took on President Bush about the war, because she didn't believe it was the right thing to do. I mean, so, you know. And she stood up in a Cabinet meeting or a leadership meeting and talked to Donald Trump about "All roads lead to Russia with you."

So, I mean, she is not—it can be—I mean, as an admirer, it's honest. Maybe as the receiver of it, it can be confrontational. It all depends on where you're sitting in the room. So, I mean, I don't—you know. Where does it come from? It comes from she thought it was a mistake, and a costly mistake, not just like another—not just a run-of-the-mill, "Well, that wasn't a good day." I mean, this is a war and America's reputation, etc., and she had beliefs. So when you say where does it come from, you know, she was going to tell—and anyway, that's where it comes from.

She catches just unbelievable amounts of grief from the Republicans. There's a lot of misogyny probably in this as well, but they aim for her right away. Limbaugh and others, they just, they—O'Reilly—they all just work her over. How does Nancy Pelosi feel about that, take that, do that? What is her reaction?

This is a family show. It's not really appropriate for me to say how she really—oh, I always tease her about, you know, like she's, "oh, well that's like dog poo on your shoe." I go, "Come on, Nancy, we can use the word; it's only us." So she is—look, she's very respectful. She knows that it's the president of the United States. She—if anything you want to say about Nancy, while she can be very strong in telling a person, a president, where she disagrees, where she agrees, she has incredible reverence for that office, and she has incredible reverence for a member of Congress who's elected. She is an institutionalist, in the best sense of the word.

So if she's going to tell a president of the United States, from her party or from the other party, where she disagrees, it never crosses a line as it relates to the office and title which that person has.

Now, what she'll say in the privacy of a phone call or in a meeting, as you're walking from one, from a hearing, from a meeting in her office to the floor to vote? She has her own personal views. Who wouldn't? Whether you're the speaker or the leader or whatever, who doesn't?

But never forget: Nancy—like, I remember she did a—I started a podcast when I was mayor; it was called Chicago Stories, etc., and I interviewed her when she was in Chicago. This is the speaker. This is on the second go-round. And you know, this is all—she—I was the mayor of the city of Chicago. She grew up—her dad's the mayor of Baltimore—a reverence for that office, for that position, that title, that authority and the headaches that come with it, etc.

Yeah. She did, of course, say some pretty tough stuff about him, because—

About Bush, President Bush?

Yeah, yeah, but—

I don't think—I don't know if you're interviewing President Bush, but I don't think for a—I mean, I don't—what do I know? I think he would have, based on what I know about President Bush, based on my relationship, he would have nothing but respect for her: her toughness, her capacity, her strength, her effectiveness. And because, even while they didn't agree about something, I don't think she ever crossed a line, and I don't think he ever felt like she crossed a line.

Now, some things sting harder than others. But I would be shocked, given what I know about President Bush and given what I know since I was in a lot of meetings with her with him—not all of them—I'd be shocked that he didn't have respect. …

But I could be wrong.

Let's go to the TARP vote.

Do we have to?

I know. She doesn't—but from what I've read and what people have said to us, she doesn't believe that [then-House Minority Leader John] Boehner [R-Ohio] really has it, as you've already talked about, she realizes: "I've got to do this. We've just got to do it. I don't want to do it. My people aren't going to like it, bailing out big banks, making bankers"—blah, blah, blah, all the stuff that you know. She's worried about it, but she believes that bipartisanship is the thing, so she's going to have to do it. … And now they're watching the vote that day, that Friday. I don't know if you remember, but it was. Take me there, will you?

… We get told, as the leadership, that Chairman [of the Federal Reserve Ben] Bernanke, Secretary—Treasurer Hank Paulson and [Christopher] Cox from the SEC, Securities and Exchange, need to come up and brief the leadership, both chambers, House and Senate, D's and R's, majority and minority. And everybody had to be there at 7 o'clock. It was the first time I think—I'm doing this by memory—but I remember this, so it must have been I was surprised by it.

It's a stupid detail, but all our phones were taken. That became obviously a regular practice inside the White House when I worked for President Obama, etc. But it was the first—and obviously for leaks and etc.

I remember [Roy] Blunt [R-Mo.], Barney, me, whoever the ranking member on finance, financial services for Barney was also there on the Republican side. Anyway, we were on this side. It's a long table; it's in the speaker's room. Opposite is Nancy, [Sen.] Harry Reid [D-Nev.], [Sen. Chuck] Schumer [D-N.Y.], [Sen. Dick] Durbin [D-Ill.]. Opposite, Bernanke is in the middle, and then Hank Paulson and Chairman Cox of the Securities are on either side of him.

I mean, I'll never forget this. They said to us we had 48 to 72 hours before the economy and the financial markets throughout the globe and the United States were going to collapse.

I don't think there was a chuckle, but there was like this—I mean, I think everybody was trying to pinch themselves or get the cobwebs out of their eyes, make sure that wax isn't—"What'd you say?" And Bernanke, I mean, you've got to hear the tone of his voice, which has this kind of—and this is not a criticism—this monotone. Nobody on your show's going to appreciate. It's the sound of a cantor before he sings at a synagogue. But it's this very low—and he goes—not low and quiet, but low and it's—he goes, "Yeah, the—we're at a moment in time that if we don't take a step forward from the public side, the entire financial system of the globe will collapse, and it will make—and it will mirror, if not worse, than 1929."

I think everybody realized that they were not saying it for—they were saying it both for impact, but not to—but to have—to wake us to the great—I think Nancy, I mean, we huddled afterwards and knew that this—you know, that we were at a point. It wasn't a vote on this, or we're going to push rather than do this. We're going to—something I had pushed, which is we're going to deal with children's health insurance, you know. This was different; this was—

And once it became elevated of the ramifications, the consequences, the level—and remember, I put all this because I don't think some of the others today in politics—you know, this is two months before a presidential, and the House and Senate are up. I mean, if you really wanted to just not think of America but think of your party's advantage, it wasn't on our watch.

And she knew we had to act, and then, therefore, what was the price of acting? I never doubted when I was, or Barney and I were, going back and forth between Hank's office or where he was holed up in Nancy's speaker office that she was going to be—get to a yes. But she was going to make sure she got not her pound of flesh, but she knew, was aware that, you know, never in the history of 220 years is bailing out bankers popular, OK? You want to kick them where it hurts; that's popular. …

Let's talk about the Obama administration. Now you're on the president's team, not with Nancy. The president and the speaker are very different people, in terms of their orientation to the Republicans and bipartisanship and lots of other things. At that moment, at least from the things we watch and the people we've talked to, there's a sense that the president is—let's just talk about the [Affordable Care Act], and we'll leave it at the ACA, even though we could talk stimulus, too. But the president, let's get [Sen. Max] Baucus [D-Mont.] working with [Sen. Chuck] Grassley [R-Iowa]; let's deal with the Republicans. Let's get some Republican buy-in on this. Pelosi doesn't seem to be there at all, ever, in that process. A very big difference of opinion. Can you talk about that worldview and the difference between the two … ?

… The president did believe going in—and he's not wrong. I think Nancy was alert to that this was a different Republican Party, and I think the president was alert to the way history—and then, two, if it's not going to happen, I want to get caught trying; that if you wanted to pass social policy, it's better that it's bipartisan.

Nancy was of the view—is—these are not—that's history; this is now. This is, we're dealing with something different. Not what Nancy's view was as recently as 10 years ago or five years ago. She comes to this view also in her own time frame, her own history. It's not where Nancy started. I don't think it is.

Well, it's not where the Republicans were—

It's a difference. And remember, he also—you've got to appreciate where he'd come—I mean, he came out of Springfield, where he had done certain things with certain Republicans. They appeared in a TV ad for him when he's running in the Democratic primary, etc., so it's just different experiences. It ain't that complicated.

And I would say Nancy didn't start there, and Nancy realized over the last, you know, as leader, etc., watching what was going on, that this was starting to not also be what it was when she was an intern on the Hill, OK? This is a different thing we're dealing with.

Here we go on ACA. So it's [Sen.] Scott Brown [R-Mass.] gets elected. Suddenly the supermajority, it's an academic argument now. Now it's down to: This thing is dead. A lot of people we've talked to said, that night, everybody thought: We're going to have to cut it up in pieces; we're going to have to get any way we can get it. And the way the story goes—and you can clean this up—she said: "Let's go. Let's go big. Let's get it done. Let's go as fast as we can." He was on the fence, and you were on the other side of your former—

No, I—well, so there's a famous—well, let me also say one other thing. We had a famous meeting. It's two weeks before the Massachusetts special, and we're in the Cabinet Room. It's late at night. It's all the House leadership and Senate leadership, Senate leadership, and we're kind of—if there was a conference committee, that would have been it. And we're hammering it out. And there was a big piece about Medicare, etc. And the president left, I think, around 11:30. We stayed there till 2 o'clock. As the chief of staff, I was kind of representing the administration or speaking for it. But anyway, we were all, besides doing the policies and all that and proposals, and we're trying to work out the technical. We were getting polling data about 10 days out, and everybody knew—in fact, they were coming out of the field with a tracker, because I remember getting new polling data in there. It was pretty clear that Brown was going to win, and this was going to get materially harder. But we were so far in, there was no other option. I mean, this was, failure's not an option because the consequences—because like on this recent stuff, I always knew you were going to get it, because the price between failure versus success is: Failure's more costly than success, so you're going to take success.

I had told the president before that meeting, I said, "We're going to get this bill; there's no doubt about it." He says, "How can you be so sure?" And I said, "Because if you go around the room—Nancy, [Rep.] Steny [Hoyer; D-N.Y.], [Rep.] Charlie Rangel [D-N.Y.], [Rep. John] Dingell [D-Mich.], John, Henry—the average age is 77." Could have been 74, but whatever. But it was—and I said, "They know, in the end of the day, Mr. President, this is the last train." One of the beneficiaries for him—let me stop myself—was every one of those people had experienced the failure for President Clinton, and they knew that if this wasn't a success, they would never, ever be able to do social policy. This was the last train and the last five seats on the train leaving the station.

So in the end of the—and this was relevant because it was a particular fight among—and I said, Nancy, Steny, Harry and Dick Durbin are all appropriators, and it was a deal about the Medicare and reforms, etc., and the commission and stuff. Anyway, I said—he says, "Well, it's a real—they don't want to give it up." And I said—and this is the piece of it that also went to the court—I said: "Mr. President, they're not going to let you fail. They're going to fight you to the last letter and period and comma, [but they're] not going to let you fail, because this is important to them also, and they knew, having all experienced what happened last time, they can't—this is the last train. There's not another train. This is it."

And Nancy was right, that—I mean, and I was—we were in now, and my argument from early on about doing, sequencing this so we were dealing with bankers first before we moved the pharmaceutical and the healthcare industry on this side of the table, we were in. So we had to get this over the top, because there was no other option, because failure wasn't the choice.

The story that they tell, a lot of people tell us that she says: "Rahm is throwing me under the bus. He's calling the members of my own caucus." True?

No. You know, I don't know where you're—first of all, as you know, Nancy and I are dear friends. If that was the case, she wouldn't have been the first person to put a press release out when I found I was ambassador. We're the dearest of friends and talk all the time.

So my job was to get the president's healthcare bill done. I left my son's bar mitzvah to get the final set of votes. He was done with the haftarah, and I was out the door. So I said to the president, four weeks before the vote, I said, I asked him one favor: This is not on Zach's bar mitzvah. He says, "Deal." And it was exactly on Zach's bar mitzvah. And I said, "No."

I mean, I gave the president, which is what my job is, when he asked me: "Here are the politics; here is the policy; these are the choices, and here is"—you know, to quote President Kennedy, "To govern is to choose between bad and worse." And I said to him, I said: "You've got to get this done now. We don't have a choice."

Now, early on, in this year/15-month process, I had advocated for doing healthcare before financial services. I had lost that internal discussion. I gave my reasons, and the president made his choice. There was no looking back. He asked me, because I said: "Look, you ran in the campaign for a mandate for kids. Hillary was for universal mandate. I said, 'Can we do the Obama plan, please?'" And remember, I'm responsible for getting him his financial services, his cap and trade, etc. He wanted all three of his children to pass, OK?

So my point was, if you're—you're not going to come out of this with political capital. You're draining the bank, OK? You're not—and I said my job was to give him advice. I said: "If you're going to do this, your original plan was something different than what we're doing right now. And we're just draining the bank account of all political capital, and you have two other—I don't know if you remember this, Mr. President; you've assigned me two other big things."

You know, I have in my office, as my going-away gift, he has a little card—not bad—which is a picture of him and me on our daily walk that Michelle used to go, "OK, the boys are going for a walk," with my to-do list that he gave me, and we would go over it every day. It had 22 items on it. And I said to him, I said, which is what a chief of staff should do: "You're endangering the other two things, and, you know, I'm not going to—you know what I wanted to do. We're past that. If we're going to do this, this would a, get it done; and b, preserve your political power to get the other things that you need to get done." Because you remember climate change. Not only does cap and trade not happen, but it's not—you know, it's the Paris Agreement that doesn't get held. So I'm just—my job is to give—and I said, then, I mean, I came off as—fast-forward the day of the deal, we're doing not only Zach's. I leave Zach's bar mitzvah, but [Rep.] Bart Stupak [D-Mich.] and I, a little earlier, to get the last 13, which were the, I call them "Catholic Democrats," that had a problem on the birth control piece. We—Bart and I worked out at the House gym together, and so we talked, and then I had [White House Counsel] Bob Bauer come into my office with Bart Stupak, and we worked on the side agreement letter that got us the last 13 votes for the healthcare plan.

So my job was to do—I was wearing the chief of staff jersey. Now, did Nancy want me to wear the caucus chair jersey? Sure. But I'm wearing the Obama jersey, and I've got to give the president my unvarnished opinion. And in the end of the day, I leave my son's bar mitzvah and get us—you know, the discussion with Bart Stupak and Bob Bauer happened in my office about how to get the last 13 votes to secure the passage.

What's it like to be on the wrong side of Nancy Pelosi?

I mean, I don't know. I mean—well, let me say this. You'd know it. There's no subtlety to it. But it's not like, Nancy doesn't, you know—I mean, I don't know where you get this thing from, Mike, but what I would say to you is, I mean—Nancy and I are like the dearest of friends, and the mutual—I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I think I know where I stand with her from a political standpoint, a colleague standpoint, a peer standpoint and a friend standpoint.

So I would just say to you, is—I don't know how she is—she has her position, and that's her job. And her job is to pass a bill. I mean, in this case, to represent her members, to represent the institution and to be a forceful advocate.

My job was chief of staff and to represent the president of the United States and make sure his agenda got done and also help him manage the policy, the politics and everything else he has to do. And sometimes they're in parallel; sometimes they're slightly in tension. And—but it's never—I mean, at least for me, even when we disagreed, it was never personal. … Nancy is—I say this: Nancy is a force of nature. And she's also—she uses her graciousness to incredible effect. She's really self-aware. And I always, you know, like I use this joke about—I tell her the joke, I say, "You're Sam Rayburn in a bunch of stilettos, but can you—can you put the strap up, so they don't—the shoes don't fall off?" You know, she never wears her straps on the back, so I always tease her about that.

But she knows she's—I mean, first of all, she is gracious, but she's also aware that it's a very effective tool. And you also know when you're on her outs, but it doesn't last very long, or it hasn't with me, or if she's disappointed or upset.

So I don't know, yeah. She's a pro.

What's it like to be a member of the caucus and have her say, around the ACA, "You've got to take a hard vote; this—you've just got to do it"? …

… It's not easy. Look, the one thing, if you're in the House, the one thing, if you want to get organized—say the Senate opposes it. It's the one thing that will get Democrats and Republicans in the House together is: Say something of ill will about the Senate. I used to joke sometimes that the Senate was a constitutional mistake.

… So a hard part for Nancy after all this work was knowing that, in the end of the day, the House was going to deal with the Senate healthcare bill. Now, there was a lot of overlap: I don't know, 80%, 85%, whatever. There were significant policy differences, not so much in the sense that they were so significant that you didn't want to do the bill, but things that you would do this piece. I don't know, there was no public option. …

There's a scene where Obama has signed—the president has signed it, I think in the East Room, and then he says, "Nancy, Nancy; come on down, Nancy," and he gives her credit. But it seems to be, like, the last moment of credit. I know that she tells people she never felt that she got the credit for the ACA. Do you feel that?

Listen, I don't know about—if she felt that way, she never expressed it to me. I do know this, and I know that you can interview the president yourself, but I can say from the White House perspective, there would not have been a bill with the president's signature if Nancy Pelosi wasn't the speaker of the House.

And I don't think I'm the only—I mean, I'm the chief of staff, but there is no—and I'm going out on a limb. I don't usually want to say I'm speaking for the president. I'm pretty confident I'm speaking for the president of the—I know from a staff level, as the chief of staff, there would not be healthcare today if Nancy Pelosi was in any other position besides speaker of the House.

… This piece of legislation is at the heart of the division in the country. … She says it was also TARP, and I agree with her, that TARP and this together, for what they did to the Republicans, for what will happen to her in 2010, as she sits in the wilderness for a while, watching that Tea Party/Freedom Caucus/rise of Trump, that at the heart of it was this stuff. How do you think she feels about that?

Well, wait a second. I'm going to—so I want to—because this gets to a core question. ACA is, you can't—you can't pull this apart, meaning, you have the bailout of the ungrateful bankers. You have this stimulus bill that has cash for clunkers, and it looks like it's bailing out the auto industry, I mean, and all that. You basically have an America, a bunch of people that are responsible for all the problems, and we're sitting there writing hot checks for them. That's—forget whether—you say it's ACA. ACA was, you know, as you know, the material benefits, whether it's the exchange in the Medicaid on the coverage piece, it's very hard to convince people—you know, it doesn't really come into life until somebody wants to take away preexisting condition. It's hard to say to somebody on the next day, "Well, you've got a preexisting condition we'll cover," you know. This thing has time before you feel it at the kitchen table."

So—but you just say ACA. I would just—I mean, the ruptured America, in my view, was the combination of a war with no end and a bailout of titans of industry who were having their ass kissed on the cover of magazines, and they had to get bailed out and then felt no humility, no sense of ownership of what happened.

And to me, the ACA isn't really what drives it. It's really the other precedents. So I don't buy that, number one. But maybe if somebody says that's what Nancy believes, it was ACA and put her in the wilderness, that could be—that's just a—that's something we would have, she and I, over an Italian dinner and dark chocolate maybe, if she'd let me have one, would have a discussion over.

I, as a practitioner of having lived through it and from a congressional piece, chief of staff piece, etc., a caucus chair piece, I would tell you that the way the war occurred in Iraq—who was fighting, how long it lasted, who was getting contracts, the bailing out of the banks—just went right through the heart of America. And also, I think I would say this in praise for President Obama, it was bad politics. He didn't really demonize the financial industry the way it should have been demonized, if you were just doing world politics. And they're a bunch of babies, whining if he said anything about their pay or their compensation, everything. And they would just whine like they were unappreciated and stuff. And they had no sense of accountability for what happened, not just financially, but politically and culturally in this country. The ACA is at the back end of that. I would not call it—I mean, obviously, I've said it three times, so I put the TARP and the war as the point of the spear.

When it's 2010, Republicans decide to take over, get it, make something happen. They make her the poster child. They spent $70 million on her, 131,000 advertisements. She—they make her a liability in lots of ways to the Democrats. How does she feel about that?

I mean, I think she's of two minds. Nobody likes that. So if they tell you it doesn't hurt, but they keep talking about it, you know, it touches a nerve. On the other hand, she's enough of a pro to know that's part of—I don't want to say the game or the business or whatever; I hate those terms—but she's got a thick skin. So that's what I would say. That's what—you know. I mean, you have all those numbers. I kind of remember President Obama having a pretty significant play in the 2010 advertisements by the other side, too. I'm not asking you to quantify whether she had a bigger—

She did.

She did?

Much bigger. It's funny. They left him alone. They went for her. I'm not sure why. Maybe you could tell me why. But they left him—they didn't leave him completely alone, obviously, but they went for her. She was, as I say, the poster child for the event. It intrigues me—

My guess is—look, I don't—my guess is they'd done some research and figured out what their base vote and swing vote, the currency of that. I mean, look, I mean, who likes it? It's just human. I mean, you don't need my armchair psychology. Look, if it really upset her, so on, so forth, I think I would know. But nobody likes it. But she's enough of a pro. But I will say this. I also know one thing about her: 2018 was its just desserts.

Revenge.

Served cold, brother, served cold.

You've been generous with your time, but I want to wrap it up. But let's spend a little time on Jan. 6. When it happens in her office, when you watch the film I've been watching, Rahm, "Nancy! Nancy!," as they're walking down the hall, hunting her. As much as they're hunting the vice president, they're hunting Nancy Pelosi. We've talked to her staff who were hiding under the tables.

… You know, she grew up in a Catholic home out of the ethnic, immigrant, Rooseveltian coalition that then evolves into this social contract of what the church should do for those that are down on their luck. Both Rooseveltian and Catholicism. She has this immense, immense, not just graciousness, etc., but this incredible reverence for the office, the institution, the responsibilities that come.

And everything that she knows in life, Jan. 6 upended: that a president of the United States, whether directly or indirectly, is responsible for an insurrection; the People's House is ransacked; that people in positions of power could have been aiding, abetting, either directly or indirectly, a violation of the most sacred piece of our government, which is the ability to self-govern and the peaceful transfer of power.

So everything—you're trying to—I understand your question, but I'm not answering it, and I won't answer it, because it's not about Nancy. To her, this cut to the core of who we are as a country. And I would say that your question—don't take this the wrong way, Michael—doesn't really know the subject, because it's not about her. And she would never even get close to that.

First, it was making sure the staff would be OK and safe or whatever. But the first and foremost. She's aghast that everything she had ever known at the feet of her father and mother about America—the uniqueness, the specialness of the House of Representatives; the peaceful transfer of power; the Constitution; the role that we all played on this very, very special day—and that people with titles and responsibilities carrying out their institutional and historic role were in violation of the most sacred of pledges. That is what Nancy is aghast at. That somebody is walking down the hall saying, "Nancy! Nancy!," that's not what gets her. Not close.

And I don't think she ever—if she felt in any way personally threatened, her security—she's never, ever, ever, ever, ever. What has gotten her was the two—the one, what I've said; and then, two, that people that also have titles and responsibilities, with those titles, were violating the most elemental piece of their responsibility and their pledge as Americans.

That is where I—so, I mean, you have to talk to somebody else about how she felt when they were saying that. She never said anything to me. But I know how she feels about what I just said.