Nancy Pelosi, underrated talent

There is a pattern in Pelosi, Molly Ball's admiring and illuminating new biography of the most powerful woman in American politics

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been right about a lot. She was right in the early 1990s, when, as a fierce critic of China’s human rights record, she rejected the bipartisan faith that economic liberalisation in China would inevitably lead to greater democratisation. She was right again in 2003 when, as the leader of the House Democrats, she was one of the few party leaders to oppose the war in Iraq. Ms Pelosi was right throughout Obama’s administration, when she struggled to make the president see that his fetish for bipartisanship was leading him to make pointless concessions to Republicans,