53 pages • 1 hour read
Nancy PelosiThe Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
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BetaPart 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Leadership to Meet Global Challenges”
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Intelligence Does Not Support the Threat”
Pelosi examines the intertwined events of 9/11, the Iraq War, and the war in Afghanistan. She concludes that US actions were a strategic failure that damaged the country. Many of these failures were the result of failures of leadership, especially in the administration of George W. Bush.
Organized by Osama bin Laden, the attacks against the US on September 11th, 2001, were successful terrorist actions because of failures of intelligence. Through her role in bipartisan investigations, Pelosi and others discovered that intelligence and law enforcement agencies missed key indicators of the coming attack because there was no mechanism for agencies to share intelligence. Pelosi was prepared to help lead these investigations because of her deep experience with intelligence matters in her committee work, and through her travels to multiple countries as part of congressional delegations.
The nation went to war against the Taliban, the terrorist insurgency group led by bin Laden in Afghanistan, in retaliation for 9/11, even as the Bush administration stymied efforts to investigate the causes of these failures. Pelosi believes the administration dragged its feet in acting on the reports out of Congress because the Bush administration was rushing to war with Iraq. Pelosi believes that key administration officials misled the American people, Congress, and the Senate in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.
The administration claimed Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction that would eventually lead to the development of nuclear weapons. The administration claimed that the war would be short, American troops would be greeted as liberators from the regime of Saddam Hussein, and the reconstruction of Iraq would be funded with Iraqi oil revenues. The administration sent people of character like Secretary of State Colin Powell to make the case. Pelosi notes that Powell “had served in Vietnam and had achieved the rank of four-star general. He had served as national security advisor in the Reagan administration and had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs under George H. W. Bush, overseeing the earlier Gulf War” (82). As she listened to him making the case for war to the UN Security Council, she “thought Secretary Powell was ill-served by his security staff, who had to know that the proof was not there” (82).
Pelosi was among the loud but few voices proclaiming that the intelligence didn’t support the existence of WMDs in Iraq. She resisted even when members of her own party criticized her stance. She publicly broke with the leader of her party by making comments in the press to argue against the war. She took the responsibility given to Congress in the Constitution and the War Powers Act to authorize war seriously. An exception to that power was the president’s ability to respond if the country was attacked. Pelosi and some of her fellow Democrats in the House and Senate resisted such a declaration of war because they believed the Bush Administration was improperly linking the 9/11 attacks to Iraq. Pelosi argues that the intelligence on the terrorists involved suggests that Saudi Arabian interests were behind the attacks.
Pelosi lost the argument on authorization to go to war in Iraq, despite voting against it. Loss of life, wasted appropriations, distraction from the war in Afghanistan, and a weakened Iraq that was unable to check Iran (which did develop nuclear weapons) were the results. People of character like Congressman Jack Murtha publicly proclaimed that no WMDs existed and that the administration had misled the American public and Congress. Pelosi concludes that “the failures that led to 9/11 were organizational and unintentional. But the intelligence failures that led to the Iraq invasion were bureaucratic and deliberate” (115).
Part 3, Chapter 4 Summary: “From Tiananmen to Taiwan”
Pelosi recounts her engagement with China (The People’s Republic of China) over the past 35 years. According to Pelosi, she has an enduring interest in China because there are “issues on which our conscience will not allow us to be passive or to be silent. They challenge us to act on behalf of those who cannot” (118). For decades, Pelosi has fought against both US and Chinese complacency when it comes to the question of human rights in China.
China’s abuse of human rights is no secret to US politicians or the world. On June 4th, 1989, China turned its army on nearly a million pro-democracy protestors who had gathered at Tiananmen Square. Pelosi believes hundreds or thousands of citizens died in what she describes as a massacre, and those who survived suffered from wounds, greater oppression, or the necessity of going into exile. Pelosi finds subsequent US responses to be even more “appalling” (119) than what the Chinese government did. President George H.W. Bush sent high-level officials to China to reassure China that the events of Tiananmen wouldn’t damage the relationship between the two countries.
Pelosi and her peers in Congress passed a bipartisan, unanimous resolution to condemn China, and some marched to the Chinese Embassy to protest. The House and the Senate successfully passed legislation designed to help Chinese students on visas in the US, but the president vetoed the bill and convinced Republicans not to override the veto by promising to issue an executive order to provide the protection. The White House only followed through on its word because of pressure from Pelosi; the law ultimately passed in 1992.
The root of US reluctance to impose penalties on China for its abuses was an interest in maintaining the country as a trade partner. The argument went that engaging with China on trade would lead to the democratization of China, since it would bring it into greater contact with more liberal countries like the United States. Pelosi refuses to accept this premise, arguing, “[i]f we as Americans do not speak out about human rights because of commercial interests, then we lose all moral authority to speak out about human rights abuses in any other country in the world” (122). Her stance has put her at odds with many other political figures, including people in her own party, and has led her to make alliances with like-minded Republicans, such as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in 2022.
Despite her opposition in the 1990s, the US rewarded China with Most Favored Nation (MFN) status (See: Index of Terms) that gave China access to US markets. It did so despite a burgeoning trade deficit with China and evidence of the country’s reliance on prison labor and designs stolen from the US. Time and again, presidents from both parties ignored that China was selling weapons and technology to countries like Pakistan, and other states opposed to American interests. Pelosi believes these government actions were ultimately the result of the influence of greedy corporate interests on American politics. She argues that engaging with countries like China through trade will never lead to more democracy in those countries.
The results of these actions in the 1990s and later in the 2000s are that China still mistreats its people with impunity, as well as posing a threat to the US and its interests abroad. Pelosi provides examples of US failures to act. The US failed to call China to account over its ongoing human rights abuses in Tibet, a region that is supposed to function autonomously from China but that, in practice, suffers from China’s brutal efforts to extinguish its freedom and culture. The US failed to back Hong Kong in its 2020-2021 uprising to maintain democratic laws it passed during its time under British control. The US has also stood by as China made threatening displays of military power against Taiwan (The Republic of China), which China asserts its rights to.
Pelosi shows her uncompromising commitment to holding China and her own government to account by including anecdotes about her visits as part of official delegations to these regions. On one visit to China near the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, she and her delegation went to the square and unfurled a banner with the words, “‘To those who died for democracy in China,’ in English and Chinese characters. It was a simple, silent protest, but there were journalists present to cover and film it” (126). Police chased them from the square and arrested the journalists filming the protest.
Pelosi closes the essay by describing a photograph of “Tank Man,” in which a lone protestor stands against a tank on the day after the massacre at Tiananmen Square. She uses it during floor speeches on Chinese abuse of rights and sees it as “one of [her] most cherished symbols” (144) of her work with dissidents in the fight for human rights.
Part 3 Analysis
In these two chapters, Pelosi focuses on the international impact of her exercise of power, a move that attempts to further establish her credibility as a political figure. Pelosi leans into one of the conventions of political memoir (See: Background)—the use of ideology—as she shows how The Nature of Leadership and Power can be used for good or ill. Pelosi articulates one of her core beliefs about power, which is that it should be exercised on behalf of those who do not have power. She also asserts that a responsible use of power demands action in accordance with one’s ethical beliefs. Her use of power is so rooted in that ideology that she calls the US even worse than China because of its hypocrisy over China’s human rights abuses, while also criticizing the Bush administration for misleading the public to invade Iraq.
While discussing the lead-up to the US war in Iraq, Pelosi explores how things can go wrong when it comes to wielding great power if the people with power lack honesty, competence, or critical thinking skills. As with Donald Trump, Pelosi is focused on failures of leadership by Republicans—George W. Bush in this case (See: Key Figures). Pelosi offers an unflattering account of how the Bush administration systematically used its power to go to war. She gives an insider’s view of how many opportunities there were for the administration to get it right with regards to war with Iraq. The lesson about power in this episode is that power is only as good as the values of the people who wield it. She faults the people wielding it in this case for two kinds of failures.
First, there was the failure of the administration to be truthful about weapons of mass destruction in the first place. Lying in the service of one’s own aims is a failure when it comes to the art of power. Then there were people like Colin Powell. Pelosi argues that Powell was essentially a good person when he worked in the Bush administration, but that it isn’t enough just to be a good person when wielding power. He is a cautionary tale that shows that one must also select good support people—staff who will be honest with the leader—and use one’s critical thinking skills, which she implies Powell did not, given his sincere defense of going to war with little attention to what the intelligence was saying.
Pelosi presents herself as a contrast to the Bushes and Powells of the administration. She titles the chapter with her rebuttal of the administration’s characterization of the intelligence, trying to wield her power in a way that acknowledged facts on the ground. She asked probing questions, demanded evidence, and relied on her experience with committees and travel delegations to read the evidence critically. The course of her actions echoes the point she made in the Preface that one must “[b]e ready” (5) to wield power. Pelosi thus seeks to present herself as someone who is able to see the truth of a situation when others fail to do so.
Pelosi emphasizes how far she was willing to go to practice the art of power in an ethical and informed way when it came to the Iraq War. Despite how partisan Pelosi appears to be in The Art of Power, she suggests that being an ethical leader sometimes requires working across the aisle with Republicans, Having power also means being willing to oppose even one’s allies: She recounts breaking with her party leadership in public when her anti-war stance drew criticism. Pelosi’s account of her efforts to exercise the House’s legislative oversight function to prevent going to war includes details about her unsuccessful negotiation to head off war.
Pelosi also depicts herself as standing with dissidents under foreign regimes, especially in the case of China. When Pelosi recounts unfurling the flag at Tiananmen Square and being chased by police, she is suggesting that sometimes it requires physical bravery and risk-taking to be powerful. She uses her powerful platform to amplify a message for people without the power to do so—another instance of using one’s power for good. Her cherishing of the photo of “Tank Man” shows the emphasis she places on upholding ethical values, which once more speaks to her rhetorical use of ethos in the text.
