Trostisar Today

The other day, Nancy Pelosi-the longtime Democratic Congressional leader and the first and only female Speaker of the House-announced that she will not seek reelection next year. Unless she retires before this term is up, Mrs. Pelosi, who is also one of the most successful investors of her generation, will be just shy of 87 years old when she returns home after 40 years in Congress and a lifetime in and around politics. Because Pelosi was the first woman Speaker and because she has been the face of Congressional Democrats for so long, many in the mainstream media are calling her decision not to run for another term the “end of an era.” I beg to differ. While Nancy Pelosi’s tenure in office may be coming to a close, the era in American politics that she helped inaugurate is nowhere near finished. Indeed, after this past week’s off-year elections, it has new life and new momentum. Pelosi may be leaving Congress, but this is not the end of her era. It is, rather, the end of the beginning of her era-“the Pelosi Era.” Just over three months ago, I used this space to heap considerable scorn on former President Barack Obama, whom I blamed for helping to inaugurate the “total state” in American politics. “In 2008,” I wrote, “Americans were given implicit permission to hate one another for their differing ‘values’ and to see one another exclusively as friends or enemies in accordance with those values.” Obama, I continued, “took the political and cultural degeneration of the previous two centuries and made the acknowledgment and application of that ‘ruin’ socially acceptable, if not socially mandatory.” It is important to note, however, that Barack Obama and his divisiveness did not emerge onto the political scene fully formed, like Athena springing forth from the forehead of Zeus. They were part of an overarching trend in American politics that began in earnest a full six years before his election. Dating the beginning of a historical epoch is always difficult, often far more so than identifying its end. Nevertheless, the current epoch can likely be said to date from November 14, 2002. On that day, the House Democratic Caucus convened to choose a new leader.