Pelosi’s Farewell

By GENE NICHOL

I’ve long been a sucker for a great speech. The first politician I ever paid any attention to was John Kennedy. His language, his humor, his accent and, most pointedly, his call to service and sacrifice mesmerized. Dr. King could lift, and stun, even a teenage football player from Texas. Later I’d become enthralled with Roosevelt, Churchill, and, of course, Lincoln – the greatest by a wide margin, plying “mystic chords of memory, (from) every heart and hearthstone” to touch “the better angels of our nature.” Let that sink in.

Then, for me, there was Barack Obama – teaching that not all our most miraculous and transforming inspirations lie buried in the past. We might demand more of ourselves; trigger the American promise more deeply; carry the torch of our ancestors into new uplands in ways that many of us had long given up on. Who would guess that a young Black man with a foreign sounding name could explain the meaning of America, and the hope for its prospects, more powerfully than the rest? Democracy has worked in unforeseeable ways. It still does.

Obama has been an impossible act to follow. I feel a notable and permanent gratitude to Joe Biden for defeating the strongest threat to American government and culture in my lifetime. But I’ve never been able to listen to President Biden’s tortuous ramblings. And that has nothing to do with his age. I couldn’t stand to listen to him 30 years ago. I’m guessing nothing’s going to change that.

But Pelosi’s remarks reminded that we don’t always need a full-blown address to capture the centrality of the challenges we face. Sometimes a sentence or two will do. I’m sorry to see Nancy Pelosi depart. I’m confident she was the most remarkable and effective Speaker of the House in our history. And, not unrelated, she’s been the only politician of the last decade who could look Donald Trump in the eye and reduce him to frightened whimpers. I wish she would run for president. Though I concede she hasn’t been seen as much of a speechmaker.

Still, on announcing her retirement from leadership, Pelosi deployed phrases that jolted, and encapsulated, and grounded, and prodded, and, deeply, irrevocably inspired.

Speaking from the “temple of our democracy, of our Constitution, of our highest ideals,” Pelosi argued that “with these elections, the people stood in the breach and repelled the attack on democracy.” They “resoundingly rejected violence and insurrection, and in doing so gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.” Proof through the night.

Proof, through Jan. 6th and Nov. 8th. Through the murderous Trump-adorned and summoned thugs who stormed and stained the temple of democracy. Through the Republican sedition caucus members who tried to overthrow an election and a form of government. Through a history-shaming, defeated president who attempted to enlist the congress, the courts, the military, the states, and the entirety of the executive branch in a coup to crush the American project. Through a political movement rooted intensely in lies and hatred – embraced and abetted by a political party draped in flags and hideously-deformed claims of duty and patriotism.

And, on Nov. 8th, the “people stood in the breach.” Standing against election deniers who lie as a way of being. Standing against Republican lawmakers obsessed with denying the defining, inherent, foundational right to vote. Standing against gun-toting gangsters seeking unsuccessfully to scare their adversaries away from the polls. Standing against justices profoundly unworthy of the name. Standing against authoritarianism and for the actual American dream.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2023

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