And now from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio, The Axe Files with your host, David Axelrod.

I've had a lot of conversations with Nancy Pelosi, but none quite like our rollicking chat last week at the University Club of Chicago. The occasion was the publication of her new book, "The Art of Power," and it took place in the middle of a Democratic convention week she had helped dramatically reshape, altering the 2024 presidential race. Here's that conversation. Thank you. Speaker I've done this many times. I've never gotten an ovation like that before. And welcome to Chicago. So what have you been up to lately? We'll get to that later. I was at an event before I came here, and I was talking to John Anzalone, who's a great pollster, you know, in the Democratic Party. Said I'm going over to do a book event with Nancy Pelosi. And he just smiled and said, she's such a badass. And. And I said, but the good thing is, she's a bad ass for a purpose. And, your book is called "The Art of Power." You can see I, I folded over every other page here. Your book is called "The Art of Power," but you also exercise power for a purpose. So I really want to ask you about the purpose of power in, in your in your world, in your mind, in your life.

Well, thank you, David, for your very warm welcome. Thank all of you. It's so great to be in Chicago. And isn't it going so well? I thank each of you for the role you played and the weather.

It's like this 365 days a year, you know.

Oh, I know, I've been here summer and winter, just like this. In any event. Thank you, Madame Commissioner, for your introduction and the rest here. And David Axelrod. What an honor it is to be interviewed by David. I don't know how this is going to turn out, but we'll get.

I know how it's going to turn out. This isn't my first rodeo.

He called me a name already. But I just want to thank the University Club and all of you for for the hospitality extended today. I was telling some of the leadership of the club earlier that our family's been a member for over 50 years. Before most of you were born, we were members of the University Club and in New York when we lived in the beginning, and then San Francisco, my husband's home. So we have reciprocal arrangements. I'll be seeing you here. In any event, thank you again for the hospitality and warm welcome. Appreciate it so much. Yes. The book is called "The Art of Power." The use of power. My whole thing about power is all about the children. It's all about the children. My husband and I have five children. One of them is here with me today. Alexandra. I don't know where she is, but she may be in the overflow room, I don't know. I don't know if she could get in here. And she's here with her husband, Neil. But five children in six years and seven days. I keep telling my archbishop, but in any event, he the. It's all about the children. 1 in 5 children in America that has lived in poverty, goes to sleep hungry at night. As a mom, I just couldn't deal with that. That's why I went from housewife, House member, House speaker for the, for the children, and that was my purpose. And I always say to people when they want to be involved in politics, know your why. I know my why. My why is for the children. So the slings and arrows that come your way are completely unimportant, because you have, you're in the arena. As Teddy Roosevelt said, you're in the arena. Note I quoted a Republican president right from the start. You're in the arena. It's a different place. You're no longer a spectator. You're in there to compete. So I say to people, get in that arena. You have to be able to take a punch. You have to be able to throw a punch, for the children. So that's my purpose.

Is that waht you told your kids too? So, you come from a political family. Your father was the mayor of Baltimore. Your brother was the mayor of Baltimore, and your father was a member of Congress. And I can only imagine what he would have thought to see what you became, but, I know he was there when you were sworn in to Congress, but my my question to you is, and I've asked you this before, but it's kind of. What did you learn growing up in that household about this? And why did it take so long? Maybe the answer is five kids in six years. But for you to decide, yeah, I should get in the arena, I should. You were a party chair and so on, but I'm going to run for something.

'Well, I never decided. People came to me and asked me to run, and I said, my daughter Alexandra's here. I really don't see her right now, but she might not want to be here when I tell this story. I was, yes. I grew up in a very political family. We were in Baltimore, Maryland. When I was born, my father was a member of the House of Representatives, one of the earliest Italian Americans to be in the Congress of the United States and a source of great pride to us. We lived in an Italian neighborhood forever. My parents left the earth there, but that's where we grew up, and we were devoutly Catholic. Proud of our Italian-American heritage. Fiercely patriotic, loving America, and in our case, staunchly Democratic. And we saw the connection between our faith and our politics as the Gospel of Matthew. Now, of course, always respecting the the separation of church and state. But nonetheless, when I was hungry, you fed me. When I was homeless, you sheltered me. You. We may or may not know the Gospel of Matthew, but in any event, it is our purpose in the Catholic faith. So we saw that as a connection, and I never. Now I'm saying this for the women, gentlemen, to the women in the room, because they always ask me, how did you decide? I never intended to run for public anything. Think of it. I mean, it was like you're going to be a brain surgeon. Are you going to run for Congress? No, neither of the above. Okay, well.

But why? Explain why. Explain why.

'Well, because I didn't have any. Well, I was a very shy person at the time. And I just I loved being chair. I was a volunteer in politics. I love being chair of the California Democratic Party, the biggest party in the state and the country. I thought it was a great honor and I was a behind the scenes person, recruiting and supporting and preparing candidates and supporting the candidates and the causes of the Democratic Party. And then people came to me and said, you love the the issues. And I, by the way, when I was growing up in politics, very staunchly partisan. But we were all friends with the Republicans. It was nothing like it is today. I mean, when I was a teenager, we double dated, you know, was it was all friendship. But the the Republican mayor of Baltimore came to my wedding, actually, he had been the governor, and he sent a tray that said Theodore R., Republican governor. No governor Theodore R., Republican mayor of Baltimore, he was holding on to that governor's title. But nonetheless, it was it completely, you know, it was a battle of ideas and competition and and, you know, you were competitive, but you weren't mean spirited or anything like that, so that there was a different attitude in that. So then they said you should run. So having never even given it a thought, hope and aspiration and nothing and I never, I never even thought of it. And so they came to me and said, you really should run for Congress. You love the issues. You can work on the issues. Four of our five children were now in college. And so I said, well, I, I, I don't even know if I have the, can. I mean, I have a 16-year-old at home about to be a senior in high school. And so I tell her, go to her, and I say, Alexandra, mommy, mommy has been asked to run for Congress. It would be better if it was one year from now when you were also in college. She was going to senior year. 16. Young, but senior year. But I, I thought I would just ask you. I love my life. Any answer is okay. Yes. No. Whatever. Daddy is okay with it. They get along very beautifully. So that was nice. So I said, so, any answer is okay. Here's what it would be if I. I don't know if I win, but if I were to win, it would be, I'd be in Washington three days a week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, four days, three nights, four days. To which she says, mother, not mom. You know, mother, get a life. And not. Like, I never heard that. This was a long time ago. I never heard that expression. Get a life. What teenage girl would not want her mother out of the house three nights? So I got a life. I mean, I had a life, but I got a congressional life, and that was. And then I had a very tough race. But. And this is what I reccomend, I say this. I told the story not to just tell the story, but to say to you, you never know when an opportunity may come along. You never know. You must be ready. Be proud of who you are. Be yourself. Be proud of who you are. Be ready and again, know the power of you. Every one of you is the only person like you in the history of the whole world. That individuality. That authenticity. That sincerity of who you are is the most appealing thing and the most necessary thing. And gentlemen, excuse me. Nothing more wholesome than the increased participation of women in the political and government process. So.

Let's talk about that, because you went to Congress. Raising five children probably was in some ways good experience for dealing with other politicians, but but you.

Good experience for anything.

Yes, it is, it is.

it is. Gold medal, moms. The gold medal.

You, that you ran for? Yeah. Dad's too. You, and then you stood for leadership about a dozen years later, or so, maybe a little bit more. There had never been a woman in leadership.

No.

And you wrote an interesting thing in your book. You said, I told my fellow members that I didn't want anyone to vote for me because I'm a woman, or vote against me because I'm a woman. And it's it's an interesting. I read that and I thought, that's pretty relevant to what's going on right now. So talk about why you, you you emphasized tha,t because everyone understood you, that would be a historic thing. And how it relates to Kamala Harris right now is on the doorstep of perhaps becoming the first woman president, but doesn't talk about her candidacy in those terms. I presume you think that's a smart thing to?

Well, I do, and I, I speak to, I mean, just a dozen events a day here in this, and many of them women's events or events with many women in them. And I say, I know there's excitement about the prospect of a woman president. And that's very exciting, brings tears to my eyes, but doesn't bring votes to the ballot box necessarily. And that's what I'm into. Bringing votes to the ballot box. But it is.

Presumably he people who feel motivated by that will get to the ballot box. And there are other people who aren't motivated by it who may feel, well, then she's not really talking to me.

At the opportunity cost of a message. Somebody looks up, and what do you want them to know? What she can do to help you in your lives, what she can do to keep our country safe and strong. Not that she's a woman. You know those. Let's understand that there isn't that much time that people give to politics, and we want them to know what it means to them in their lives. The kitchen table issues about freedom of choice and making their own decisions about life, about the security of their jobs, their pensions, the safety of their children in their neighborhoods, the world peace and all of that. That, where they can reach their fulfillment, the kitchen table where they, the most important. It's not the boardroom table, not the cabinet table. The kitchen table is the power table in America. So if your people are concerned about the cost of this or the security of their job, and you had just a little bit of time to persuade them, to say she's a woman I don't think is the first case that you should make, however wonderful it is. It's the it's the icing on the cake. But it ain't the cake.

No. Talk for just a.

You have to ve respected. To. When I was running for. Now this was in this century. I'm not talking about ancient, in this century. But I. People called upon me to run again. I didn't have any interest in running. I loved my work on appropriations and intelligence, of 30 years of intelligence experience. Nobody in leadership ever had national security experience. So I was very proud of all that. And then people came to me and said, you should run. I said, no, I love what I'm doing. I love my issues and this or that, and I had seniority here, there and wherever. And I, n, you, you have to run. So I became interested in running because we kept losing. The elections 94, 96, 98. And then it was 2000. I thought, I'm so tired of losing. For the children. So. So I am, said I was going to run. And the men said, who said she could run? Light my fire, why don't you, you poor babies? Imagine. In this century. Who said she could run? And then they said, you know, you probably should know that for as long as we've been in Congress, there's been a pecking order, and men are in line for jobs when they open up, and you're not in that pecking order. I said, and so you, these people have been waiting a long time. I said, was it over 200 years? So. But we. I knew my politics and that's what, that's why people were calling on me to run for leadership, to win. When we won, when we got the gavel. The gavel makes a lot of difference in a conversation.

You.

So I think it's important for Kamala just to talk about what she's going to do for America rather than gender politics.

Yeah. And that's what she's doing. You, you became. When you were elected, of course, it was historic, as Speaker of the House. And everybody said she's now a historic figure. She's the first woman speaker of the House. Now they say she's a historic speaker, because she may well be the best speaker of the House that ever held the gavel because of the use, because you knew how to exercise power to get things done. And I want you to talk a little bit about that. You talk in the book about viewing the caucus. You know, some, I think maybe it was Dick Gephardt, one of your predecessors as a leader in the Democratic Party, said that it was like herding cats, being the a leader in the House. I don't I guess you don't make cat references these days, but, but but but, you talk about it as a tapestry and a kaleidoscope. And I thought those were two really interesting images. Talk about what each means.

'Well, first, I'll talk about my grand cat named Daisy. Adorable. And, the idea that they're saying they're women without children are, the leadership of the Democratic Party have been childless women--five in six years and seven days. Okay. Let me introduce myself to you. And and and there's so many women with children in the Congress that's just so ridiculous for them to say, but also cat, women without children and cats. We have children. We have cats. Well, whether we do have children or not is none of their business. But in any case. Our cat is Daisy. We have dogs, too.

We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of the Axe Files. And now back to the show. We talked before we came out here about the fact that the speaker is a Deadhead. Yeah, a Grateful Dead fan. And she is fantastic at riffing. So, I'm just throwing it out there and letting her go, but go ahead.

I was telling folks the other day that I was pulling down a, I would say, cleaning out my closet, but that's an exaggeration. I was just pulling down a purse from overhead that I hadn't used in a long time. This was recent. Well, within the past year. Pull down the purse. In the purse is a button. It says Deadheads for Dukakis.

Yeah, bet there aren't many of those around. So kaleidoscope and tapestry.

So here's the thing. People ask me, how on earth did you do all that? Because we always won. It was, you know, just the way it was. We built our consensus. We shared our ideas. And the rest of that we strove for consensus building, even across the aisle and the rest. But in terms of knowing you had the votes, you have to count largely on your own party. If you're going down a courageous path like the Affordable Care Act, something like that, the climate plan and all those kinds of things. Anyway, so I said, it's about respect. So I write in the book about two of the metaphors or whatever.

I don't know, I haven't heard what you're going to say.

I thought you read the book. No. Two ideas. Let's put it that way. Maybe they don't rise.

They are metaphor, metaphors.

Okay. So one of them is that that in terms of my caucus here, is when I came to Congress, there were 23 women out of 435 people, more people than in this room, 23 women, all the rest men. And so of course, being political, I was like, well, we have to, political in a sense of wanting to elect more women. We have to change it. Now we have 94 women in the House Democratic Caucus. In 94 we only had 12, then 94. We want more. And then, they had 11. Now they have 30 somethings. They're making progress. But we all have to do more in our caucus. 70% of the caucus. This is important to note for when I say that 70% of the caucus are women, people of color, LGBTQ, a beautiful diversity of our country. So that says geographically gender wise, gender ID, idea wise, in every possible way, there's a beautiful diversity. And that's a lovely thing to behold. But it also says that our job title and our job description are one in the same: representative. So we have different views. We represent different areas, different generations and the rest. So what I listen to them, respect them, what they have to say as we build consensus. So I consider myself a weaver at the loom. Every member is a valuable thread in our tapestry of what we call the Democratic Party in the Congress. Every person is a value. So as we build our consensus, we want everybody to know we want them to be part of it. But we don't always have unanimity. We just have to have a majority, but even more than.

It's math.

'Consensus. Consensus. Because that's more from the ideas rather than numbers, the consensus and recognizing that tomorrow is another day, we have another vote, another subject, another initiative that we're putting together. And so some of those threads may not always be enthusiastic, but they're always part of the tapestry. That the other one, and this is across the aisle, that is the kaleidoscope. When we're doing legislation, you never know geographically. Generation, whatever it is that some people on, say, the first run at this side of the room is against that. Not against, vis-a-vis that side of the room. The next bill might be the back of the room versus the front of the room, but it's just different individuals with different ideas. So everybody is a strength to you and you don't want to weaken them. So that respect that you have for them can be with us today. We'll be with you. We may be with you tomorrow, but again, it is, as you know, a kaleidoscope with those colors come into the design. You turn it again, different colors, but some of the same. And others will be in the next design. So you always think these people are going to be in the next, one of the next designs will be in there, they'll be in ours. But always, always with respect. And that usually that was how we functioned. Lately, it isn't that way across the aisle. It's just really most unfortunate that I.

Not a tapestry.

No, not a kaleidoscope. The kaleidoscope. We still. We got 13 votes for the infrastructure bill. We got 24 for the chips and science. We got it more for veterans.

So it all sounds so nice. It. But, you know, you're part of there are there are a lot of elements. This. One is you got to count. Right. You once told me what you, I asked you what you learned from your father. You said I learned how to count. And secondly, I mean, it strikes me the way you operate or, operated as speaker is there's, like, part den mother of a very large family and then part ruthless enforcer.

Did you hear him call me ruthless? Another name, he called me.

Yeah. Steve. She knows I meant it as a compliment. Steve Israel, who is a former member and a great fan of yours, once said to me that when you walk into Nancy's office, there are two things you notice. There's always chocolate on the table and there's a baseball bat in the corner. But, I saw you work your magic on a couple of things that changed this country. One was the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. You write about it in this book. The other is, you mentioned it earlier, one that I'll be forever grateful for as the parent of a child with a chronic illness. And that's the Affordable Care Act. And I wanted to tell you that there are three people without whom the Affordable Care Act would never have happened. There was the president. There was Harry Reid, the leader of the majority leader of the Senate, and there was the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. I'm not even going to tell you what order I would put them in. But, talk about those those two. We got to keep it relatively brief. But tell me what, when you were facing, these challenges, how do you approach it and how do you put it together? How do you put these votes together?

Well, thank you for mentioning those two. They're very important. And I do mention them in the book. I would write another book because I had some other bills that I want to write about, but these were. But I'm spelling out now. So here's the thing. Whatever it is you're out there to do, whether it's to win an election or to pass a bill, whatever it is, you make a decision to get it done and then you make every decision in favor of getting it done. And that means whether it was. Let me I'll tell you a story about the don't ask, don't tell because this is a real kaleidoscopes. Yeah. So we we've been trying for a long time. I never voted for Don't Ask, Don't Tell under President Clinton. But people did, and it was the one we wanted to get rid of it. And so we, set out to do it as a big task with. The president of the United States was magnificent, Barack Obama. And talking to the generals about, I think, hearing them out on this or that, but took an act of Congress to do so. I'm trying to do this briefly. Believe it or not. So we go to the floor this day after much, but go to the floor. We pass an amendment to the National Defense Authorization bill. It's a big deal bill. It's about our national security. Pass the bill. Pass an amendment to it. Everybody's so excited. Everybody's so excited. We finally had the votes to pass an amendment to the defense bill, because not even every single Democrat at the time had, shall we say, evolved to that place. So. I go see my, shall we say, lefties? Of which I am a proud member. And I say congratulations. You made history today. Yes, we've past, and I said, now we're going to make it twice. Because today, for the first time, you are going to vote for a national defense authorization bill. Don't ask us to do that. We've never voted for one of those bills. We have a perfect record towards all over the walls of our offices here and home and all the rest. We cannot do that. I said the bill doesn't, amendment doesn't pass unless the bill passes. While the Republicans always vote for the defense authorization bill, that's what they come here to do is the defense. We are never voting for. I said, well. You're going to vote for it today. Don't ask us. So what makes you think they're saying? Oh, I read lips. I can see it in their eyes. I mean, I'm I'm the speaker. Okay, so I said, do me a favor. Go to the back of room. Stay there. Don't vote until you see the votes on the board. Nine Republicans voted for the defense authorization bill. That meant like 170 some voted against it. There. That said, here we go. Making history two times. Now you're all going down to the well. John Lewis, Barbara Lee, Anna Eshoo, Dennis Kucinich, you name it, the whole Progressive Caucus going down to the well. You made us do that. I didn't make you do anything, I'm naking you make history again. And but you see, what I say is you just never know. They thought voting for the amendment was going to make it the law of the land. No, you have to vote for the bill. And so they had a, shall we say an epiphany of whether they would vote for the defense bill or not.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

That's fun. That's part of the kaleidoscope I talked about. And they all still say you made me vote for it. I had a perfect record. I said, you have a more perfect record. You've done something instead of getting a plaque on the wall.

I'm going to truncate the Affordable Care Act story. But that some of you may remember we passed a bill through the Senate. 60 votes it needed. We had 60 Democratic senators. And then Senator Kennedy died and we lost our 60th seat. The House did not like the Senate bill. It was lacking a lot of things that the House felt should be in the bill. I felt they should have been, too. But the question was, what do we do now? Because the House didn't want to accept the Senate bill. The Senate couldn't change it. They couldn't have a conference. We sat in the Oval Office, Phil Calero, our magnificent legislative director, who I know you love and you mentioned in the book.

He's Italian American.

He, he said, well, I'll tell you this. They he said the president said, well, Phil, what do you think the chances of passing the bill are? And Phil said, well, it depends how lucky you feel. Mr. President and President just smiled and said, Phil, I'm a black man named Barack Hussein Obama and I'm President of the United States. He said, I feel lucky every day. But but, but everybody said we were 20 votes short in the House, but let's let Nancy do her thing. And we went underground. Everybody was sort of like, what's going to happen to the Affordable Care Act? And I was at the Senate caucus. See, what happens is they call you when you work in the White House down to the Hill. She did it. Harry did it. To get ritually flayed by their members who are mad at the White House. I understood that was part of my job, you know. And I went to the Senate caucus and Al Franken was very mad. And he said, I'm doing a slow burn over here. When is the president going to tell the speaker of the House to pass that bill? And I said, well, Senator, I said, if you've got 218 votes in your pocket, you should angle across the Capitol and hand it to the Speaker of the House, because I don't think she has that list yet, and she's working on it. But you did put it together. Yeah.

So there was a terrible bill, the Senate bill. It just was a missed opportunity of a generation. So we're having our, you know, our, shall we say, a truth session here now. But here's what happened. When Senator Kennedy. We were on a path. Read my book because my displeasure with the Senate was pervasive.

Shot throughout. You can't. You can't miss it.

That's it. You know, that's why I wrote it. Because I know they're writing books so I could. Somebody said, well, I didn't see it that way. Write your own book. This is the way we saw it. So. But this is the consensus of our House Democrats. So here's the thing. We didn't. The the House is more like the band wagon that is going out there and doing the best we can do. The Senate is like a convoy that's going as slow as the slowest ship. So here we are, this culture clash.

It's the way the Constitution, I mean, that's the way the Founding Fathers intended it, isn't it?

Yeah. No, they didn't, the Founding Fathers didn't intend 60 votes.

Oh, no, I understood that.

They did not intend that.

Yes, that's true.

And that's now where we are. Because Senator Kennedy died. And it was such a very sad thing, such a very sad thing for our country. And I the his letter to the president in the book. You should read it. So beautiful. But in that case, the press said to me, you're dead. You're not going anyplace because you don't have 60 votes in the Senate. So I said, no, we're not passing up an opportunity of a generation to have affordable health care for Americans. This was tried by 100 presidents, starting with Teddy Roosevelt, all but Franklin Roosevelt. Truman. He succeeded with almost getting Medicare that then Lyndon Johnson did. But but in terms of affordable, quality health care, we're not passing up the opportunity. Our president has a vision about this. He has values based ideas about what should be in there. And we're not passing of this opportunity. They said you don't have 60 votes. I said, well, I'll tell you what. If there's anything blocking our way, we will push open the gate. The gate doesn't open, we'll climb the fence. If that doesn't work, we'll pole vault in. If that doesn't work we'll helicopter. They ain't letting anything stand in the way of Affordable Care Act, of passing the Congress. So when we did it, they said, which one did you do that we pushed open the gate because we had the outside mobilization in addition to the votes in the Congress to do it. But let me go to Harry Reid. He was the one who made so much of this happen. In our view, the Senate bill was a stinker. So it was the path of least resistance. Ours was a noble calling. Just in the family. Don't say I said that. Okay. It's in the book, though. So, the president, they were saying to me, just passed the Senate bill. I said, you don't understand. That doesn't do it. It's a missed opportunity. It's worse almost than doing nothing because you think you did something. So they. Well, we agreed. And Harry Reid was our hero. And thank you for mentioning him, may he rest in peace. He he. There were those, I mean, the administration, but they did. They kept people on TV saying she doesn't know what she's doing. We should be passing the Senate bill. This is a great bill. So we were ignoring them, not the president, but them. So this is a rough business we're in, right? So, for the children, we had to get this done. So anyway, we say we can only pass their bill if we have this list. It's in the book. Of amendments to the bill. If you agree to those amendments to improve this bill drastically, take it to a different place. Then we can pass the bill. So nonetheless, Harry Reid got, and I said I need 51 Democratic senators. Not that every one of them of the 60 was going to be with us. Don't get that. Let's not be disillusioned by that. But nonetheless, I need 51 people signing the letter with these amendments that they will vote with. We vote for this bill. They'll vote for the amendments to it.

We should point out this is through the process of reconciliation, budget reconciliation, which doesn't require 60 votes.

No, but that we had got to get to get to that point. We had very well prepared for reconciliation. So once. We were voting, we were doing, a, a conference committee where we would they do their bill, we do our bill, and we come to reconciliation on it. But once we lost the 60th vote, then we had to then move from conference to reconciliation, and that's when we didn't need 60 more on the subject more. No, but it's little clear in the book. So. So anyway, Harry Reid, Harry Reid. This beautiful name that these wonderful visionary. I just loved him so much. We only have one fight. It's in the book. But the the, gets the letter with those signatures so that then we can pass the bill. They passed the amendments, we passed the bill as amended. And then we can have Affordable Care Act with the members voting for it. It was there were many because we were building consensus. There were many regional differences. There were just some differences that we had to reconcile. So when you say members of Congress voting for a bill, that's like the end of. It's like singing Happy Birthday without having the baby to begin with. This is a lot of work that goes into producing legislation, especially that complicated, that historic. And our president, President Obama, was faithful to the end to having a great, a great deal. The staff, not so much. But the president was there for us.

Wow. You know, I'm sitting right here.

I know, I mean, I'm not necessarily referring to I'm just talking about your, the staff.

But that's I'm going to let that slide and we're going to move. We're going to move on. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of the Axe Files. And now back to the show. Listen.

It's in the book.

It's. There are other things in the book.

I only could do a few subjects because I had to have the granularity of how it happened.

The, the the, there are other things in the book that I would love to ask you about that I can't, but you'll read it and you'll read it with interest about intelligence. And the, the mis the misuse of and the misrepresentation of intelligence that led to the Iraq War. The speaker was on the Intelligence Committee, as she mentioned, on, the battle for human rights in China and the kind of constant interplay between human rights and interests and how you balance those and so on. I have to ask you this, though. I joked at the beginning about what you've been up to lately, and I don't want to quibble about the facts of this because the president has acknowledged it, that you advised him of what you thought the situation was relative to his candidacy, about President Biden. And, I want to ask you this. You were you've been friends for 40 something years. You're both devout Catholics. You share so much. How hard was it to go and deliver that message?

I think that's a subject for another book.

Well, give us the trailer.

Well, here's the thing. I have very serious concerns about the presidency of the preceding president, too. I don't usually use this name, but, you know, I mean.

You use it in the book.

Yeah, I do, I do, but I won't say it, and I just write it and then. But in any case, it was essential for our country, for our democracy, for us to be able to win this election. Under President Biden, we had consequential. He had a consequential presidency. Right way up there. I mean, in the two years that we had the majority and he was president and continues to be. In that two years, and even after we didn't have the majority, we were in the passing of legislation in the execution of it. This is a very consequential president.

And you write several, several pages on this at the end of your book.

'When I talk about it in the book. But this book was written long before we had any concerns, change in attitudes around. But it's the. So this is a great legacy, a legacy of finally grasping the, the the the Covid crisis, putting shots in arms, money in pockets, children safely in school, workers back to work, of giving resources to cities, states and localities to have law enforcement and transportation, all the things that they needed because their pay had gone away during the, had melted down during Covid. The infrastructure bill, biggest bill since Dwight Eisenhower in the late 50s did the interstate, the the bill to build the interstate highways and the chips and science bill to keep America resilient and self-sufficient in terms of chips, but also science for the future. The I.R.A. bill to save the planet with the most historic bill to save the planet from the climate crisis, as well as at the same time reducing the cost of prescription drugs, which he celebrated with Kamala Monday. Or, when, was that last Friday? Whenever it was.

Speaker, you you you're filibustering. I just want you to get to the question.

Okay. So this this is a, the Pact act for our veterans who were exposed to burn pits in there. So. So this is a big, a big legacy for. The rescue package and for the I.R.A.. Not one Republican vote, not one Republican vote, but for the others. We had 13 for infrastructure, 24 for, back the kaleidoscope. Yeah, so not that many, but we had some. So in any case, this is a legacy that was, in whatever it is, imbued in it was not just the particulars of the legislation, but a system of justice and science and education opening up to many more young people who might not have had especially more diverse communities that might not have had the access, but had the, the, the desire and the enthusiasm to participate. It was a great thing, has been a great thing for our country, and we take great pride in the Congress in passing this legislation. But a lot of it was in the spirit of Joe Biden and his priorities in the rest. I wanted very much to protect his legacy. I do not think his legacy, not only because it was his legacy, but but what it meant to the American people in terms of of jobs and the rest, 15 million jobs versus the worst job record of anybody since Herbert Hoover on the other side by that guy. So there was a big difference here. So so it was for the people and for his legacy. I thought it was essential that we win the election. Elections have ramifications. That's just the way it is. So my point was only we need a better campaign. Not, it was not about his leaving. It was about things I thought. See, I'm a former party chair, you know, doing my policy but I doing my politics too. So I wanted to see certain things. Those things. The president made his decision. Remember I said.

Can I ask you a question?

Remember I said he made a decision? He made a decision to pass the torch with great selflessness, great patriotism. And as he said, I love being president, but I love America more.

Okay. I said. I said earlier that when we were back there, we spent some time together. I said sometimes it's like trying to rope a bull with dental floss. So, but my question to you, is he he made clear that you gave him a message, and it wasn't just about the campaign. And, but there were concerns about him, and the polling was pretty clear. And you probably saw it from your districts, which is a big concern for you winning back a Democratic House. I'm asking you what it was, what it meant to you to have to have that conversation with him.

We won't be having that conversation right now. What we're doing now is to say great sacrifice was made here.

Okay.

Great, great, great patriotism was demonstrated here. It only can lead to winning the election. So right now I'm about winning the election, okay. And I will I will say this, in a larger sense, I mean, our friendship, we're Catholic, we we pray together. All that. I cried over this. I'm sad about it, but but. We take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That's who we are. We take a pledge every day to the flag of liberty and justice for all. That's who we are. I'm from Baltimore originally, as was mentioned. I I've lived in San Francisco 50 years, but nonetheless. And I spoke to the Maryland delegation earlier today, and I told them, I said, you know, we take pride in the fact in Maryland that the national anthem was written here at Francis Scott Key with 1812, all of that. And I said, I tell people that how proud we are of the whole, you know, at the end of the game, land of the free home of the brave. But before that, before that, it says proof through the night that our flag was still there. And this is part of the night that we have to prove through that our flag is still there.

You.

'It's very essential that we win the House and Hakeem Jeffries is the speaker of the House on January 6th. On January 6th, says she self-servingly.,Thank God I was the speaker on January 6th last time. Now Hakeem has to be speaker for our democracy, for our for our country. So. We have to win the White House. That's for sure. But we have to also protect our our, our democracy. And we have to win it all in order to do that. That's most unfortunate to say it never was that way with Bush was with, either Bush, with, Bob Dole, any of those people. It never was that way that we had to win the election. This is a different story. We must prove of the night of what they have said. I'll only accept the results of the election if I win? Where did that come from? What is that? So I feel very proof through the night-ish about, about winning this election. So you have to make this, as I said, you make a decision to win, and you have to make every decision in favor of winning. You have to mobilize and own the ground. So you get out the vote. You have to message with unity and and consensus boldly and progressively, but not menacingly. Let's be unifying for a country. Not menacing and scary, and you have to have the resources to get the job done. Three things. And you cannot waste any time. You cannot underutilize any resource, and you cannot have one regret the day at the election that you could have done a little bit more. So. We can, should we say, contemplate who said what, when, where and how on how we got to this decision. It was the decision of the president of the United States, as I said, patriotically, selflessly, and God bless him for making that decision, because I do think, as we've seen the response, it increases the odds that we can protect and defend the Constitution of the United States on Election Day. It's going to take work. It's going to take work. There's no given in any of this. On the ground. That's what we have to do. Proof through the night. Our flag is still there. With liberty and justice for.

Let the. Let the record show that about 45 minutes in, I totally lost control of this conversation. I want to finish. I want to finish by by asking you, but I was I was moved this morning.

Didn't he say that already? About finishing?

This morning, there was a photo in the paper of you, with Jack Schlossberg, the the grandson of, President Kennedy. And, next to it was a photo of you as a young woman with President Kennedy, I believe, maybe at his inauguration. I'm not sure what the event was from 1961. And you were holding Jack's hands in your, the palm of your hand. And the whole picture seemed like a generational journey. And talk to me about that and what generational change means, as someone who stepped aside from your own position.

Well, let me just say it wasn't 1961. It was like 1957 or something. I was a teenager in Baltimore where my father was mayor, and John F Kennedy was coming to speak to a big dinner in Baltimore, black tie dinner in Baltimore. I had these Irish nuns in school, and they just, from Boston. They talked about the Kennedys all the time. Oh my God, the Kennedys, the Kennedys, the Kennedys from Boston. So when he was coming, my mother knew that I wanted to really see him. And, so she said, you know, I don't think I'm going to feel well that night. You should take my place at the dinner. So I take her place at this big, big dinner in Baltimore, Maryland. Black tie sitting next to John F Kennedy. Oh, my God, wait'll I tell the nuns this. And this is really awful. I'm ashamed of what I'm going to say to you. This was a United Nations Association dinner honoring a leader in Baltimore, and there was a table for United Nations youth there. And they came over to me at the head table and they said, I know that you're a member of United Nations Youth in high school. We'd like to invite you to sit at our table. It's bothered me for decades. But all I could do is think of my mother. How could I have a vacant seat next to John F Kennedy? So that's the night. I was young. And that picture that. I did wear that same dress to the inauguration, because that was the dress I had. But, but that was then, and I mean, that picture. Has it? It wasn't. I never even saw it, but somebody found it somewhere. This, that, the other thing has become this picture. And then I saw John F. Kennedy's grandson at the convention. Was that yesterday?

Last night.

Last night. Yeah. And so I love him, I love Caroline, I love the family that, you know. And so I went over and I was. Loving him, you know, just touching his face. And somebody took a picture and they had me with John F Kennedy. Was it? I mean. 60 some years ago. And now with his beautiful grandson there. But if I just may take it to another place. When I a couple of years later, when I was in school, in college, I went to John F Kennedy s inauguration. That was the inauguration and it was freezing cold. It was fabulous. And I think I'm the only person left in Congress who was at John Kennedy's inauguration. I don't think anybody else was. But in any case. He made in the speech. You know this. Every child in America, your childhood, was my youth, it's history books to you. But you see in the history books he said to the citizens of America, ask not what your country can do to you. You can finish it with me. Ask what you can do for your country. The next sentence in the speech is to countries of the world ask not what America can do for you, but what we can do working together for the freedom of mankind. That's what stuck with me, because that's what I was studying was like, oh my gosh. But everybody paid attention to the first sentence. But I tell Joe Biden, I said so when I said you had been so Kennedy esque in what you have done in our foreign policy as our leader in the world, strengthening NATO, increasing the size of NATO, standing up for democracy in Ukraine, just so many things. And they did it in a way that was not condescending of America says this. It was, what can we do working together, collaboration, cooperation, respect, what we can do. And that's why he succeeded, has succeeded so much in his foreign policy. I traced it back when. He wasn't there, but the spirit of our country, of we're not just the leaders and money and that this and that and so we're going to tell you how we're going to get it done. We listen, we collaborate, we cooperate, we respect, we succeed in the spirit of John F Kennedy and now Joe Biden. So the picture is adorable to me to see John, but it also means a lot else to me. And our family, it was a very patriotic thing. Everything was about America, the flag, this, that. And in any event, and just one more thing about religion one, I'll tell you one, because this is Rahm Emanuel. Rahm Emanuel, I love him so much. We didn't always get along, but we. That is to say we didn't. We always got along. We didn't always agree. And he was who I was referring to earlier, you know.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Well, he knows you know. You know, but we agree. I praise him in other parts of the book. In Any event, when I became the, we won. We won, 2000, we won the election. We're going to be the majority. We hadn't been the majority since 1994, and I was going to be the first woman speaker. So when you get nominated by the caucus, the nominate, the caucus nominates me. So I go up to the podium and the chairman was Chairman Rahm Emanuel. He insisted on being chairman. So he he receives me there and he whispers in my ear, your parents would be so proud. I thought my parents would be so proud because I'm speaker? They didn't raise me to be speaker. They. They raised me to be holy. They will be proud if I was a good person. And can include being speaker. But nonetheless, it was just such a startling thing to me that anybody would think that the pride my parents would take in me would be anything other than the person that I would become, not necessarily the speaker that I would become. So it takes us back to that religion. And, you know.

And the difference between Jewish families and Catholic families.

Maybe if I were a doctor or lawyer, maybe, I don't know.

Well, speaker, let me just say two things. One is Rahm is one of my closest friends and has been since he was 21 years old. And I can tell you that these are all Chicagoans here, so they'll appreciate why, he reveres you. He and he's afraid of you. But he. But but he he he he does revere you. The second thing I'd say is I'm going to repeat what he said then, because your parents would be proud of you. Because you've achieved both things. You've achieved both things. And we are a better country for it. And we owe you such a debt of gratitude. So thank you very much.

Thank you for listening to the Axe Files, brought to you by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio. The executive producer of the show is Miriam Finder Annenberg. The show is also produced by Seralena Barry, Jeff Fox, and Hannah Grace McDonald. And special thanks to our partners at CNN, including Steve Lickteig and Haley Thomas. For more programing from the IOP, visit politics dot Chicago dot edu.