Health-care victory puts Pelosi in the history books

WASHINGTON — In the tense hours Sunday leading up to the House vote on a historic health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., took time to call the former president of Notre Dame, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh.

The House Democrats' leader was not seeking spiritual guidance. What she wanted was Hesburgh to help lock up the vote of Rep. Joe Donnelly, a Democrat from South Bend, Ind., who was wavering over the abortion issue. Donnelly ultimately pressed the yes button late Sunday.

The incident, one of scores on the road to the Democrats' historic health-care victory, illustrates that Pelosi — long the target of merciless Republican attacks — is beginning to play the game as well as powerful former speakers like the legendary Masters of the House "Tip" O'Neill and "Mr. Sam" Rayburn.

As with Rayburn and O'Neill, the key to Pelosi's success on the health-care vote is intimate knowledge of her members and the kinds of influences that will move them.

"She knows almost everything you ever want to know about every member of her caucus," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., a Pelosi confidant.

But the San Francisco Democrat remains one of the nation's most polarizing figures, and her drive to pass a bill — without the support of a single Republican — has heightened partisan tensions in the Capitol.

"She may get a stellar entry in the history books, but that entry will not include the word "bipartisan," said John Pitney Jr., a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College.

"You strive for bipartisanship when you can," Pelosi said Monday on ABC's World News with Diane Sawyer. "But you cannot let the lack of bipartisanship stand in the way of making this change that is important to the American people."

When Democrats won control of the House and she became speaker in 2007, Republicans eager to bring down her party attacked her as a San Francisco liberal. But on the paramount issue of the past year, she defeated them and renewed her own party's confidence in its ability to get things done.

While the House Republican campaign committee Monday lashed out against "Pelosi's government takeover of health care" in a fundraising appeal, Democrats suggested her victory could strengthen her hand.

"There is nothing to strengthen a politician like a big victory," said Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton.

On Monday, Pelosi savored a moment "on par with passing Social Security and Medicare" as she prepared to send the bill to the White House in a ceremony held, ironically, in the Capitol's Rayburn room.

Pelosi overcame skepticism even within her party to deliver the bill.

Even after Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, after Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts, she pushed the White House to go with a broader bill rather than a scaled-back version.

"Everyone said this was dead after Scott Brown's victory," said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.

Martin Frost, a former Texas congressman added: "She was very firm with the president that he needed to go forward with the entire bill rather than doing it piecemeal."

When House Democrats expressed distrust in the Senate to make the changes they sought to the bill, Pelosi stood before her caucus and told them to trust her.

Congress watchers say Pelosi's drive to pass the health-care bill will be a political gamble in November election.

"The number one job of any House speaker is to hold the majority. If she does that in November, then you can put her in the annals with the great ones. But it's a little early to do that yet," said Daniel Palazzolo, a University of Richmond political scientist and expert on the speakership.