The most ruthless political operator in the country is a woman

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Can we all admit there was something supremely gratifying about watching Nancy Pelosi work over the last few weeks?

As concerns mounted among Democrats about President Joe Biden’s mental fitness and his disastrous debate performance, and as Biden responded by digging in his heels, it was the 84-year-old Pelosi — a fellow octogenarian, no longer in charge, yet as shrewd and formidable an operator as ever — who took those concerns and helped organize them into a sustained pressure campaign.

When Biden said he absolutely wouldn’t drop out, Pelosi went on his favorite TV show to say he needed to make a decision “because time is running short.” When the president told her during a phone call that polling data suggested he could still win, she challenged him: “Put Donilon on the phone,” Pelosi is said to have demanded of the president, asking for one of Biden’s advisers. “Show me what polls.”

Even as Biden was becoming “increasingly resentful” of what he viewed as the “orchestrated campaign” against him, as the New York Times reported, she kept working methodically behind the scenes, talking to lawmakers, members of her old leadership team and her large network of donors, who slowly and steadily kept piling on. Before Biden ultimately threw in the towel last weekend, his team was bracing for what she might do next, Politico reported, with a quote that made this grandmother of 10 sound a bit like Don Corleone.

“Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” a Democrat familiar with the conversations told the publication. “She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way.” As one Democratic strategist told the Hill, referencing the president’s statement that it would take “the Lord Almighty” to make him withdraw his re-election bid: “Once she weighs in, it’s done. He wanted the Lord Almighty. Well, this is the Lord Almighty.”

Nancy Pelosi with the iron fist!

We — myself very much included — have spent years tying ourselves in knots over the fraught question of the right way to be a woman in power. Women have to be more humble. Women leaders have to work differently to build consensus. Women have to be tough, but also warm, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, here was a woman with power, looking supremely competent, unapologetically ruthless — Lyndon Johnson, if Lyndon Johnson had once been a housewife — and seemingly entirely unconcerned about whether anyone finds her “likable.” (She wants to win in a way that is “coldblooded, almost reptilian,” as one colleague put it.)

As we stand poised on the brink of yet another iteration of this seemingly endless, sometimes even paralyzing discussion — how angry would be too angry for Kamala Harris to appear about the end of Roe v. Wade? — to watch someone operate this successfully and appear this unencumbered by the weight of these concerns is honestly refreshing.

Which isn’t to say there’s some kind of big take-home lesson here about how a woman in power ought to be, or even that Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, or any of the other women candidates for president were unreasonable for perhaps feeling tripped up by these expectations.

Pelosi has power already; that’s meaningfully different from being a woman who is seeking power. She also built that power as a speaker of the House — a very different role from president, and one that doesn’t require appealing to wide swathes of the public in the same way (although it does require a willingness to twist some arms on occasion). If there is a takeaway for ambitious little girls who want to change the world, it may be simply that power and influence take many forms, and that learning to play hardball, sometimes behind the scenes, is a useful skill. (Just, you know — don’t play it too hard.)

But for me, a moderately ambitious adult woman who is extremely capable of getting in her own head about gender, power and perception, what it was mostly was: fun. And a little inspiring.

As it happens, Pelosi has a new book coming out next month that promises to reveal how the first woman to become speaker became a “master legislator” who is “not afraid of a good fight.” I have not yet read it, but judging from its title, it is more Sun Tzu than Sheryl Sandberg. It’s called “The Art of Power.”

Jessica Bennett is a contributing editor in New York Times Opinion, where she writes about gender, politics and personalities. This article originally appeared in the New York Times.