Nancy Pelosi’s legacy — spending a colossal amount of money

Nancy Pelosi, who announced she would not continue as the Democratic Party’s leader in the House of Representatives, has been a great legislator. You’d have to be to last for 19 years at the top of the Democratic legislative greasy pole.

That doesn’t mean she has been a great font of ideas, a great visionary, or a great leader of the American people. She has been none of those things.

Her own contributions to this country on matters of policy, rather than shepherding or opposing bills in the House, have been negligible. She was impotent when it came to dealing with an anti-Semitic outbreak in her caucus in 2019, for example.

And she descended into childishness to match her target’s behavior when she ripped up Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech as she sat behind him in 2020. But fair is fair. She has proved herself a political technician of immense skill. And if you like the game of politics, you have to enjoy someone who plays it masterfully even if she’s on a team you dislike.