i'm excited to welcome my friend. [applause] i'm a proud edgewater resident. susan and i have known each other for a long time because i was hillary clinton's communications director and barack obama's communications director. [applause] >> john edwards. >> john edwards presidential campaign in some ways it's the losses. nancy pelosi would say the same thing. you kind of grow and think about from the losses and the tough situations more than other situations. and the victories so susan and i are very happy. sara asked me if i would moderate and i said susan page? and talking about nancy pelosi this is definitely my will house. i wrote a book about the experiences of working for hillarynd and she proclaims it's not a declaration of war to follow a man's path. and that's what just something about her is about. there's just something about her i don't like it sometimes there's just something about her that's incredible and for nancy pelosi i saw something about her that is incredible and incredibly effective. we talked about this and in her discussion of "madam speaker" to talk to about what makes her so effective. she's incredibly effective and even john boehner her faux house republicans beat your john boehner said she was the best speaker ever. so i thought we'd look at three categories in a multi-q&a with the audience. one isea role models of people o helped her along the way. there was a ceremony at the white house and if you didn't watch the whole thing you didn't watch this. it was her thanking h people who have helped her from the time she was a child family mentor everyone and it's not something you would normally see a leader do. role models and people are helped her along the way and hurt early experiences in motherhood which are important and along the way because i worked for hillary and learned about those experiences will mix in hillary too. >> let's start with her parents. >> i'm so glad to be here and thank you all for coming on this early saturday morning. [applause] after two years ofof this pandec it's such aso relief to be hereo i'm really glad to be in a celebration of people who love books. and talking about my book today. jens book will be available by the way for sale. >> women supporting women friends i'm all about that. >> nancy pelosi really what a person is comfortable with power. i went for a couple of different titles fory my look which is now nancy pelosi and the lessons power and at first it was nancyl pelosi and they arcch of power d people thought it was too much like the art of power sort of like "the art of the deal." we made it nancy pelosi and the test with power but we ended up with nancy pelosi and the lessons power. the thing about nancy pelosi is she learned lessons about power from the day she was born. the day she was born newspaper photographer showed up at her mother's bedside in the hospital taking pictures which then appeared on the front page of theec multiple baltimore papers because her dad was a member of congress, prominent family. the family had five toys in a row and finally had a girl so that's pretty notable. nancy pelosi has been in the news column since her birth. her father won the firstst of three terms to be mayor of all to more and she was the one who held the bible on the stand for his swearing-in. this is someone who grew up with a lot ofol role models of power. some of you might have known his son who was the one term mayor of baltimore alessandro who died about six months ago. the other remarkable role model for nancy pelosi was her mother. her mother was known as big nancy. which is a very apt nickname and it also meant the girl who becomes nancy pelosi was always knownn as little nancy and i think she did not shed that nickname until she went away to college and maybe that's why she wentnt away to college. big nancy alessandro was this remarkablypr smart innovative entrepreneurial woman well ahead of her time.e. pelosi told me where the interviews i did with her for m the book if her mother were born today she would be president. her mother wanted to go to law school but she tried to go to law school after having nancy pelosi so at that point she had six kids at home and that did not work out. shee invented things. there was an actual patents. she got patents for inventions including a device to give you a beautiful complexion which is a metal device with a hole in the top and a coil inside. according to the ads that they ran at the time you would pour the secret oil into the medal tube and you plug it in and you put your face over it to get it steamed and it would give youota beautifulld complexion. i don't know if it would in fact give you a beautiful complexion but when i was doing the book one of my kids found one on e-bay and nancy dela son drove's t deity by vapor machine and bought it for $34. and the plugged it in and still heated up the water. they didn't have the secret oil available. the other thing that's instructive to know about big nancy as she wasak a huge risk-taker she was not hesitant about taking a risk and she loved playing the ponies. she had a special effect. she was in pimlico where she quite a bit of time. if when her husband was mayor he would go to the pokey and pay the debts that his wife had incurred. if you want to know about nancy pelosi's comfort with power w ad areng cover with risk and willingness to attack goals that other people say cannot be reached if this is your book. >> do you think little nancy saw the possibilities? >> when little nancy was born big nancy made a promise to before she was born that only she could have an girl after all these boys she would make the girl and nun. [laughter] big nancy did her best to make little nancy a and non-and at oe point little nancy said she did not want to be a nun but she might be interested in being a priest. [laughter] [applause] >> i think big nancy gave nancy pelosi comfort with doing things and ignoring those who said a woman couldn't do it. you as an italian-american can't do it and it think it made her fearless and she also learned, she also learned from childhood how to manage and motivate. the d'alesandro family had something called the favor file and you don't need it dictionary to understand what a favor file is. big nancy and little nancy would sit at the table in the front room of their homeme in little italy and constituents would lineup up to the sidewalk to go through and seek favors. they might need some help with housing or maybe they had an immigration issue or maybe they had a child in jail and they wanted help from the mayor to get her out of jail. big nancy would listen to the problem and the favor that was needed and write it down the card and figure out what they could do to help. if you've got a favor granted it came with a certain expectation that he would vote for tommy d'alesandro the next time he he was in office or maybe go to rally for him or if it was some future person asking a favor that you were in a position to help with that you are expected to do that and this is the pretty good description of what the speaker of the house does. >> just corralling, the democratic caucus my friendo tht thing is not easy to get your hands around. is that how she engenders that had the loyalty? >> she says the way she learned how to be an effective speaker of thehe house he and leader of the house democratic caucus is by having five children herself. she says the skills you need to run the house as a representative are the same skills you need to manage the house. you need to be comfortable with chaos. you need to be willing to deal with shifting coalitions. [laughter] you need to be able to persuade people to do what you want them to do and convince them it was their idea. >> nancy pelosi has done a lot to recruit women to run for office and often and this is perhaps a little less true today. she had been recruiting women who had been homemakers as opposed to occur outside of the home and often they would say i couldn't run for congress. you should find somebody else more qualified meaning some man who would be more qualified and she would tell the story about her own training and her mother was critical for her being an effective politician. she was 46 before she ran the first time for public office. >> i was in california at the time their member when she was elected. >> she was 47 when she was first sworn in. she had worked to as a political fund-raiseror and worked in the senate office for another junior aide named steny hoyer. >> she didn't have the traditional a experience. she didn't have a law degree and she hadn't worked in the ways the final u.n. to public office. she told me she wasn't sure she was going to let congress and she and her husband agreed maybe she'd serve for five terms and that's what her father had done as a congressman but i think it was an hour and a half of writing into washington she knew she had arrived where she wanted toed be. >> and i think about in describing her background hillary saw a lot of her and her dad. power was not around her growing up up and what was around her growing up was her mom and she had to help raise her sisters and work out of the home at a young age. that was her motivation. >> what reference do you think that makes? these are two of the most powerful women in the history of the country and they both have had tremendous success and how is hillary clinton's understanding use of power different from nancy pelosi's? >> it was not her background she at a motivation to get into public service. she probably never would have gotten into politics had she not met bill clinton who brought her along a different path. so the powers heard of came secondary. it was not something -- it was not her mail you. her mail u.s. policy -- you tel. pelosii approaches a problem thinking about how she -- she's the perfect person for the job howd, she can corral people arod and move them to support a certain outcome and hillary is the one to figure out what the outcome is. it's a power became bigger and bigger jobs but it is not her. >> pelosi i covered seven presidents and 11 presidential campaigns. i have no other skills. thank god we keep holding elections so i have something to do. nancy pelosii is more comfortabe with accumulating and exercising and maintaining power than any politician i've ever covered. it is natural to her and i think it's because she grew up in a world, she grew up in a household where the use of political power was like the existence of running water. it was part of everything the family was about. it was part of her mother and her father and yet she never thought of herself as a candidate for office until t a woman told her she ought to do it. d >> she had been a very effective political fund-raiser in california and in fact she had chaired then' state democratic party doing a good job running the california party. no one else thought of her as a candidate and neither did she tell a member of congress who's a legend there has been phil burton who was the liberal bias of the house, her husband dies and she gets sick and she calls ara nancy pelosi who is doing a friend raiser and she said you should run. it was celibate put this in her mind that she should run and she told me if sally burton would have done that she would never have run. a neck that's the story of so many women in politics and hillary too. she never saw herself as a candidateat and tell through her husband's political career it became something. >> there's another way they are alike. and that they are hugely demonized. >> i've written two books about it. >> why are these two women demonized? >> honestly when i campaigned with nancy pelosi added vendor a lot. i had been brought upon us communication structure and i handle this and i have been a bus bus driver on the life and all of a sudden when i got on the bus and turnn the wheel this way the bus went that way and it put on the brakes and accelerator would go. all of the ancient myths that i knew how to use just went haywire. i feel now that i have not appreciated. if you add the nominee you've never seen a woman in the oval office who had an idea and i have been a tiffany very late in the campaign like in october and i thought what we have been doing is to jam her into a male world. it's an ill-fitting suit for her. h to do the job as the man has always done it and i thought what a disservice. other people think she's an authentic and i had no idea what to do about it. we just don't know what that looks like and i think, and it's not as if everyone who didn't like her or didn't vote for her is sexist world certain we are not sexist and we are inclined to the biases t we all have. you don't recognize her and her something conducting and confounding about her. there's just something about her i don't like and there's just something about her i don't trust. she's always sketchy and whitewater ended that to be a total nothing. it was suspicion built on suspicion and i think what was remarkablei about pelosi is she just shuts it down. she gives you no signs that others are. boom she just keeps going and it's remarkable. she seems too appreciate it and understand that it's not about her. >> i think she doesn't show when she's really mad. hillary was running for president and nancy pelosi is running for head of the democratic caucus which is a smallern' constituency. she doesn't need to connect with millions of people. it's a different role. think about how nancy pelosi keeps her position. if you cross her and you are a member of congress he will pay a price. she rules with the favor file. members of congress want a verse from her and they won a committee assignment or want to go on a trip where they want legislation. if you behave in a way that she thinks was not appropriate for createdo her problems you wouldn't get it. i did 10 interviews with her for the book which i've been very appreciative of. >> that's a lot for a professional. >> i save that stuff for the ninth interview because i didn't want to start out with this stuff. and the ninth interview i was asking questions about the ithings i knew that she would like the least that she might see as the most negative and there was one thing that i was asking about the she thought did not deserve to be in the book and it wasn't important and relevant and we engages in this conversation which i became increasingly terrified. [laughter] >> she is shorter than i am. she is not as tall as i am. she didn't raise her voice and she didn't yell at me and she didn't but she somehow got bigger. [laughter] pelosi is getting bigger and bigger and more alarming to me. she kept insisting, she asked increasingly probing questions and she forced me to defend myself and defend my point of view torpid to it -- to articulate in a full way why i thought this was an episode that deserved to be in her biography. we ended this interview, which was not myor favorite interview with the suggestion. she continued to think it shouldn't be in and i continued to say it should be on. and it was about 3:00 in the afternoon i left the speaker's office which is a fantastic office with a magnificent view of the national mall. i t went to my car and i drove home and i poured a glass of wine. i crawled into bed and i watched about three hours worth of reruns. my career is not dependent on pelosi. you gi can imagine what a member of congress must feel like when pelosi is trying to get you to vote for the affordable care act and you don't want to. >> during obama the leadership would come in a lot and i think after paul ryanea was speaker ad obama had mcconnell and read, ryan over. they were at an impasse and republican speakers had a very hard time getting the caucus to agree on anything. i was like. just look at these guys and say these guys are bunch of? >> what did she say? >> she was guarded. it was ryan mcconnell and schumer. >> senators of either party shares a lot of contempt for. the senate has its own rules in the senate has been the place where house passed legislation goes to die. >> boehner did say when i interviewed him for the book he thought she was the most effective speaker in american history and actually newt gingrich who is no friend of nancy pelosi and vice versa also said when he looks at pelosi he sees a fellow pirate which i think gingrich thinks of it as high praise. boehner also said that, and this is the point of criticism for some of pelosi,, he said there were times if what he would try to moderate the rhetoric. he would try to leave the door open for more cooperation and she was always full steam ahead and was in dispute taking very partisan views on things. that is also something that top aides to president george w. bush told me. you remember when lucy was first elected speaker the first woman in the history of our country and george w. bush went up to deliver the state of the union address in he acknowledged her and mentioning her father and according to his top aide bush felt bad that pelosi never reciprocated. he was making an offer let's act in a cooler manner than where the politics are heading today and that was not something she was willing to do. >> it's interesting to read that passage and i thought about it and wondered if she thinks if i relinquished any notion -- >> she would say boehner didn't deliver. what's the point of bipartisanship if you can't deliver to the people? she thinks the most damaging legislation she should push through is not the affordablee care act it was the bank bailout in 2008 when we had the financial meltdown and nobody like bailingob out tanks. in american politics bailing out banks is not the most popular thing to do. congress said if we don't do this we will head into a depression so they made ane dea, pelosi and boehner made a deal that they'd each deliver 50% of their caucus for this unpopular legislation as she b delivered % of her caucus in a bit more and hekn did not. i don't know if you remember the stock market just plunged in a way that was very serious and at that point they brought the legislation back up and pelosi delivered all the votes theyy needed. boehner did not deliver 50% of his caucus because they couldn't. the caucus was not under control. her view would be if you want to play with me you have to deliver. .. aca and obama and and then during the and during the trump years and and and then in the in the vitaministration, but i had forgotten that like the magic, you know where you're like, wow. she did like nancy has the votes, right >> like nothing has about this is a mantra nancy always has about she never goess to the 400 started when she was rescue package. >> she rescue george w. bush who said you was humid there was music in the saying a lot which is the iraq war and she didn't know i view of george w bush and even though, because were members to pursue the legislation, she did it because the alternative look to grab. >> tellh, us about she took on n iconic status during the trump years with the color for the white house of the cameras there and you think that jet drumsn numbers because she had seen him .in baltimore and she has seen him in san francisco politics and encountered people i can before. >> erwill donald trumps the figure, well there are people and not sure i know a lot of people like them. >> i grew up in jersey everybody, you know him and like him and bullies like him. >> will i grew up in kansas. [laughter] so, you know jenna's number. >> how did she know will then how to make watching them how to deal and she knew how to deal with aggressive men and bullies you going up a as this five oldr brothers and how to use concern think she learned handlers of those probably also good training.. she had a view of trump that was extremely negative from the get-go and in fact she totally told meto that her plan had been toel resign the 2016 election