In the marble corridors they called her: “Where are you, Nancy? We’re looking for you!”
“Nancy! Oh Naaaancy.”
And during those minutes on January 6, 2021, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in action. She was a battle general in taupe heels, making calls to move troops, to quell the ambush, to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.
That was the scene America finally saw on video played at the Jan. 6 select committee hearing Thursday.
Calm, cool and focused, Pelosi was the leader American democracy needed that day.
Tell me again: How are women too emotional to be in charge?
If only disgraced President Richard M. Nixon could see how this staunch woman, who saw the medieval scene of thousands outside, handled it.
Nixon is a king of the “emotional” female trope.
He considered appointing a woman to the Supreme Court in 1971 because he hoped it would get him an extra 2 percent in the 1972 election, according to one of the books former White House counsel John W. Dean wrote about that time. Nixon rejected the idea, however.
“I don’t think a woman should hold any government job. I mean, I really don’t,” Nixon said. “The reason I do it is mainly because they’re erratic. And emotional. Men are erratic and emotional too, but the thing is, a woman is more likely to be.”
huh I guess we missed all those tantrums and erratic emotional outbursts from Margaret Thatcher or Angela Merkel or the dozens of other female leaders who kept it cool and reasonable and just did their jobs.
Some of the men still like to dredge the depths of their souls that they need a mother when a female lead is anything but sugar pie sweet. Remember when Vice President Harris was called “hysterical” for her unyielding and stern questioning of Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a hearing in 2017?
In Nixon’s time, polls showed that many people, as many as 55 percent, depending on education level, thought women were too emotional for politics. That has changed, but not by a ton. In our enlightened new world, where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote for the presidency, 13 percent of respondents yet they think women are less suited, emotionally, for politics. That means about 1 in 7 people think a woman would be too emotional to do exactly what Pelosi did on Jan. 6: lead.
“There has to be some way to maintain the feeling that people have, that there is some security, or some confidence, that the government can function and that the president of the United States can be elected,” he said in people gathered in a safe way. location in the Capitol building.
Meanwhile, Richard “Bigo” Barnett was carrying a handgun and slumped into Pelosi’s chair, putting his feet up on her desk. He wrote her a note:
“Nancy, Bigo was here, you…”
Trump promised Barnett and the others that “it would be wild” if they came to DC that day. Was.
Pelosi, however, was not.
He didn’t pull a Josh Hawley (the Republican senator from Missouri caught on video running an 11.7-second 100-meter dash from the rioters that day). She didn’t curse, scream or cry.
Forget your politics; it’s hard to watch this video played in committee today and deny his cool head amid the chaos.
“Hi, Governor, this is Nancy,” Pelosi said over the phone to Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), as she went through the mechanics to get help at the Capitol.
It was clear to her that they had been abandoned by the rest of the federal government, as the Capitol Police were being beaten outside and help didn’t seem to be coming.
In one part of the video, members huddle around the phone and talk to someone who can send help. But the guy is playing, explaining the leaders who are on the ground and yada yada yada.
Pelosi chimed in: “Well, just pretend, just pretend for a moment that it was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege. Let me say that logistically you can get people there while you’re making the plan.”
And then he was shown trying to get lawmakers back into session.
“We got a very bad report on the state of the House floor,” Pelosi said.
“There’s defecation and all that kind of stuff,” said the mother of five, who knows her way around messes.
Constant, he went on, “I don’t think it’s hard to clean,” he said.
