MADAM SPEAKER

By-the-numbers bio of the Speaker of the House.

Former San Francisco Chronicle Washington bureau chief Sandalow seems unsure whether to like, dislike or fear Nancy Pelosi, whose career he has been covering since 1987 (though, by his account, whom he first met only in 1993). “I have had a hot and cold relationship with Pelosi,” he writes. Apparently Madam Speaker returns the favor, for this is an unauthorized biography chockablock with imagined conversations and scenes that speak to lack of access, unless he were hiding under her bed when the call from the White House came to congratulate her on her election to the nation’s third in command. We will never know. Admittedly, Sandalow notes, Pelosi disdains the press; her attitude probably won’t be improved by this too often ham-fisted piece, with all its unnecessary flourishes (does anyone need to be reminded that San Francisco was home to beatniks?) and choppy paeans to Pelosi’s legendary multitasking abilities (“Each day was a logistical labyrinth. Carpools. Fund raising letters. School plays. Donor meetings. Birthday parties. Printing deadlines. Teacher meetings. Slate cards. Soccer practice. School supplies. Voter files. Press calls. Homework. Thank you notes. Fund raising dinners. Field trips”). Sandalow slowly rises to the occasion as he writes of the impress of Pelosi’s past—born into one political family, married into another—on a career that took off after her first run for political office at the age of 47 and that rapidly led her to one of the most powerful positions in government. Sandalow appreciates his subject’s toughness but sometimes seems not to understand it; there were reasons she endorsed Jack Murtha over Steny Hoyer as her lieutenant, for instance, just as there were reasons for her party to vote Hoyer in instead—and reasons for Pelosi to profess that she was “not a person who has regrets” in the wake.

Still-raw material that could be of use to Pelosi’s next biographer.