Before Nancy Pelosi There Was Thomas B. Reed

“The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.”

The current occupant of the White House, the greatest negotiator ever, the purported author of “The Art of the Deal,” met his match with Nancy Pelosi. Speaker of the House Pelosi learned her deal making from her father, a mayor of Baltimore, and later in the bruising political environment that is San Francisco. She has the current President so flustered that the best he can come up with for a denigrating nickname is an ineffectual “Nancy.” Pelosi, in turn, said that the border wall, “is like a manhood thing for him — as if manhood would ever be associated with him.”

The Speaker’s power that Nancy Pelosi is exploiting goes back more than a century when another powerful politician wielded the gavel. Thomas B. Reed was Speaker of the House from 1889-1891 and again from 1895-1899.

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John Boehner: Still Smokin’

“I’m all in on marijuana.”

Republican John Boehner resigned from the House of Representatives in 2015 after nearly twenty-five years, the last five as Speaker. He has since found a life after politics.

“I’m all in on marijuana.”