Nancy Pelosi Calls President Trump Bush Again

Then- Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ) listens equally President Bush, right, meets with Congressional leaders including Minority Leader Sen. John A. Boehner (R-OH), Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA) at a White House meeting to talk over the bailout of the financial manufacture on September 25, 2008.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Pelosi learned the fine art of "no" from working with Bush. Trump is a whole new test.

"She is not in that location to simply follow the dictates of whatever other co-operative."

By Updated Jan eighteen, 2019, ix:16am EST

Donald Trump would practice well to examine how Nancy Pelosi worked with the concluding Republican president.

Pelosi disdained George W. Bush-league for much of his presidency. She fought bitterly with him over the Iraq War and his attempts to privatize Social Security, and the heads of her Firm committees investigated his administration from top to bottom.

From left: Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry "Hank" Paulson.

Lauren Victoria Burke/AP

"At that place aren't enough words to describe how outraged she was with George Bush and his policies," said Jim Manley, a former spokesperson for Harry Reid, then the Democratic leader in the Senate.

Only in the fall of 2008, Pelosi still wrangled the votes for a massive bank bailout proposed past Bush'south administration, in part because of his willingness to requite Democrats some central demands in exchange.

Albeit his party had taken a "thumping" in the 2006 midterms, Bush-league pledged to work with Pelosi. And he did; in 2007 and 2008, they partnered on a fiscal stimulus nib and a large free energy bill that raised fuel efficiency standards, amid other things.

The states Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi signs the Emergency Economical Stabilization Act on October iii, 2008. This is the pecker that would create the Troubled Asset Relief Program, likewise known as TARP.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

"We had adept lines of communication, we had regular meetings downwards at the White Firm," remembered John Lawrence, Pelosi'southward chief of staff from 2005 to 2011.

Pelosi is an former-school politico who sees the role of House speaker as continuing upwardly for the institution, ensuring it fulfills its constitutional responsibilities, and making deals on bills. Even with a powerful position in the bulk, she has had to compromise with the Senate and the White House; for example, like-minded to cut a public option from the terminal version of the 2010 Affordable Intendance Act. Just she still has a strong record working with both Democratic and Republican presidents.

"She makes it very articulate going into negotiations with the executive branch that she is non there to just follow the dictates of whatever other co-operative," Lawrence told me recently.

Equally Pelosi begins her second tenure equally speaker of the House — this time, among a government shutdown — Trump would exist wise to look back at her working relationship with Bush. The 43rd president learned that when he came to the tabular array willing to truly engage, he could get a deal with Democrats. When he wasn't, Pelosi wouldn't cave.

She's earned respect from her Republican opponents. "I don't call up there'south whatever question that she'due south a very achieved legislator," said Michael Steel, who served as a spokesperson for one-time Republican Business firm Speaker John Boehner.

Then far, Trump hasn't taken advantage of Pelosi'south negotiating posture to bargain his way out of a shutdown he helped create. He's offered her nothing in substitution for $5.7 billion to fund his wall, and he'southward thumbed his olfactory organ at her repeatedly — recently walking out of negotiations at the White Business firm with her and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and repeatedly taking to Twitter to blame her.

This calendar week marked an escalation between the two leaders; on Midweek, Pelosi wrote Trump a letter essentially uninviting him from delivering the Land of Marriage address at the Firm, over security concerns. A day after, Trump abruptly canceled a foreign trip Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers were set to take to Afghanistan, just an hour earlier they were scheduled to leave.

Business firm Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer walk out of the White House after meeting with President Trump on December eleven, 2018.

Andrew Harnik/AP

Not only has this left Trump feeling political hurting — a recent Washington Mail service/ABC News poll establish the president and Republicans are bearing the vast bulk of the blame for the shutdown — he'south also missing an opportunity to reap the benefits of really getting some of what he wants.

"Don't characterize the strength that I bring," Pelosi warned Trump at an explosive White House meeting in Dec. She meant it.

Pelosi stood her ground in TARP negotiations

As the global economy risked collapse in the autumn of 2008, leaders in Congress met with Bush and then-presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain to hammer out a deal in a at present-famous meeting.

Pelosi and Harry Reid wanted to brand certain Congress wasn't just agreeing to write a blank check to the big banks, which were failing. House Democrats had a list of demands: adding stimulus to provide financial relief for American families who had simply seen their savings wiped out, restricting and then-called "gilt parachutes" for banking concern CEOs, and requiring banks and other institutions that received bailout money to eventually pay information technology back to taxpayers — with interest.

Sometime US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (third left) and former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke (2nd left) run into with Business firm Democratic leaders including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to discuss the economy on Nov 17, 2008.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

They had gone to the White House expecting to come out with a deal containing some of those sweeteners, simply trivial progress was made. Pelosi had complained Bush wasn't providing leadership, and indeed, the president was at present bickering with House Republicans. It wasn't articulate who was in charge of the proceedings; McCain, who had requested the meeting, offered few of his ain ideas, participants recalled.

"It went very poorly," Manley, Reid's spokesperson, said.

As Reid, Pelosi, Obama, and their aides stood in the Roosevelt Room trying to strategize on their post-meeting remarks to the press, Bush-league'southward Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson outburst in. Paulson literally got downwards on one knee in forepart of Pelosi and begged her to not to give up on the talks, and to aid save the country from financial ruin.

"Don't blow this thing upwardly," Paulson told Pelosi.

Pelosi seemed taken aback by the gesture, also every bit the sentiment, former aides remembered. She wasn't well-nigh to accept blame for a deal going nowhere. She was working with the Republican administration; in fact, Bush had singled her out during the meeting for her cooperation, Lawrence wrote in a contempo piece for the Atlantic.

With the Treasury secretary on his knees pleading with Pelosi not to tank the negotiations, the Firm speaker had a at-home merely precipitous retort.

"Information technology's non me bravado this upwards, information technology's the Republicans," she told Paulson.

The exchange underscored an important point: The Bush assistants was finding more success working with Pelosi than with members of its own party. Though a first vote on the bill failed on September 29, 2008, a second vote in early on Oct on a revised Senate neb made information technology through the Firm and was signed past Bush on October 3, creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signs the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, after the House passed the legislation on October iii, 2008.

Tom Williams/Roll Telephone call/Getty Images

Pelosi didn't become everything she wanted in the bill, just she steered it through Congress and helped avoid a global fiscal meltdown. The terminal deal didn't accept as much economic stimulus money as Pelosi had hoped for, just it did restrict executive bonuses (and Obama canonical an $819 billion stimulus package when he became president).

Neither party liked the politics of bailing out big banks; still, most congressional leaders recognized they had to do information technology. Republicans had grown disillusioned with Bush's administration, questioning his commitment to free market principles and pocket-size government.

"There was a fair bit of resentment among House Republicans toward the administration at that point," said Steel, who was then working for Boehner in the minority. Steel described what information technology was like for Boehner to whip Republican votes for the bailout bill with one give-and-take: "atrocious."

Democrats were deeply distrustful of the White House over intelligence bungling in the lead-up to the Iraq War and were wary of whatever large Bush priority. Pelosi was plenty skeptical of Bush-league's agenda, but she realized the shared responsibleness to do something before the failing banks dragged the unabridged U.s.a. economic system down with them. Pelosi and Bush's working relationship, bolstered by their previous bipartisan deals, helped the nation during a time of most-calamity.

"The fact in that location were relatively frequent meetings between the president, the speaker, and the Senate leader turned out to be extremely helpful when we constitute ourselves in a really horrific crisis in September 2008," Lawrence said.

Pelosi is proverb no to Trump — which he doesn't usually hear

More than a decade after, Pelosi is facing an entirely different crisis.

Three weeks into a fractional government shutdown, there've been plenty of tumultuous meetings betwixt Democratic leaders and Trump, but fiddling actual negotiating.

Pelosi branded any impending government shutdown as a "Trump shutdown" during a December eleven, 2018, meeting with the president.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

"We don't want to be a backdrop for the president to stomp the table, go upwardly, and walk out," Pelosi told reporters last week after Trump abandoned the negotiating table. "I think he thought nosotros were going to stay at that place when he left. He got up, we got up!"

Pelosi was able to navigate a genuine national crisis with Bush, a human being she didn't like or trust. Bush respected Pelosi's ability to work in a bipartisan way and deliver votes. And Pelosi and Reid were clear with him, as they later were with Obama: They were there to piece of work with presidents, not for them.

"I've seen her in these meetings with presidents, including with this president, when she said she told him, 'You're wrong,' when he said he won the popular vote," said Nadeam Elshami, Pelosi'south chief of staff from 2011 to 2017 and a top communications aide before that. "And so she does non shy away. She respects the office, but she wasn't going to give an inch."

Simply some of her quondam acme aides note that Trump is fundamentally different from his predecessors. He'southward a volatile person who constantly spouts falsehoods and manufactures his own crises. Trump has demonstrated he's not trustworthy, and he and Democratic leaders cannot agree on a basic fix of facts from which to start a negotiation.

"We all know what'due south different: It's the president in office," Elshami said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks with reporters afterward a border security meeting in which President Trump walked out on congressional leaders on January 9, 2019.

Evan Vucci/AP

Similar she was with Bush-league, Pelosi is facing the demands of a Autonomous base of operations who wants to see the president impeached. She has as well made articulate that Democrats want to work with Trump where they can, on issues including an infrastructure package and lowering prescription drug costs.

Steel, the former Boehner adjutant, predicts that could be tricky.

"The base of the Democratic Political party is so vehemently, if not violently, opposed to him," he said. "Had a different Republican won the nomination, it would be relatively straightforward to predict areas where there might be mutual basis."

Nancy Pelosi and Paul Ryan are dissimilar

At present that Pelosi is back in power in the House, the dynamics are vastly different than they have been for the past two years. Trump "hasn't experienced Nancy Pelosi in the majority, let me merely say that," Elshami told me.

Members of Congress applaud House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the first day of session of the 116th Congress on January three, 2019.

Flake Somodevilla/Getty Images

For the past two years, Speaker Paul Ryan kowtowed to Trump's demands on immigration. Ryan's final act equally speaker was to add $5.vii billion for Trump's edge wall to a clean government funding bill. The add-on finer killed the nib in the Senate and allowed Trump to avert vetoing it.

Ryan's determination ready the stage for a fractional government shutdown and punted a prepare to Pelosi and House Democrats in the new Congress.

Pelosi, who butted heads with both Bush and Obama, sees the legislative branch as equal to the executive. She went toe to toe with a president of her own party, and she's doing the same under Trump. Until Trump gives Pelosi something she can count every bit a real win during the current negotiations, she will keep to tell him no.

Pelosi believes continuing upwardly to the president isn't just her political responsibility; it's her constitutional one.

She was able to piece of work with a Republican president at a time of genuine crisis. Just so many of Trump's crises take been of his own making: family separation at the border, the Muslim ban, a lack of response to Hurricane Maria, and now Trump's third shutdown of his presidency — the longest ane in history.

What volition happen if Pelosi and Trump are faced with a real national crunch, on the calibration of the 2008 financial meltdown? No one really knows.

The sign at the office suite of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is installed on January 3, 2019.

Cliff Owen/AP

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Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/15/18172806/nancy-pelosi-george-bush-trump-government-shutdown

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