You can bank on Nancy Pelosi

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (SUSAN WALSH / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

WASHINGTON -- What a fitting start to the Year of the Dragon: breakfast with Nancy Pelosi.

The San Francisco political giantess and former Speaker of the House of Representatives -- and thereby the highest-ranking woman in American legislative history -- is in an aubergine pantsuit and pointy purple shoes, as partisan and serpentine as always, and seated in front of a banner advertising the Bank of America, where she and her tycoon partner in a 49-year marriage may or may not be parking part of their many-many-million-dollar fortune.

Mrs. Pelosi is crowing about how her Democrats have "out-raised, out-redistricted, and out-recruited" the loathsome (to her) Republicans, with election day only 280 days away. And she predicts her team will recapture the House from the anti-immigrant, anti-education, anti-health care, anti-environment, anti-everything obstructionists this November, thus rendering her Madame Speaker redux, just in time for her Golden Anniversary.

"Give 'em credit, bless their hearts," she says with a smile, patronizing the rival team, which holds a 51-seat majority in the chamber, with two chairs vacant. "They do what they believe, these Republicans. They do what they believe."

We are a small gathering of insiders, pundits, and Washington pros, except for me.

The talk is of battleground states and districts, and Pelosi, 71, who was accused on 60 Minutes last fall of using her confidential knowledge of pending legislation to profit in the stock market -- not that she needs the dough -- is cooing that "the legacy of the Democrats has to be a new politics, free of special interests."

(Unmentioned is a recent poll showing only 13 per cent of Americans approve of how Congress is doing its job. To say Pelosi is, in some circles, the most reviled Congressperson of all would be an understatement.

Recently, a neighbour of mine was expecting a daughter. "As long as you don't name her Hillary or Nancy," her own mom told her, "you can call her anything you want.")

"In order to win 25 seats, you have to play in 50 seats," Nancy declaims at our breakfast.

In this, I hear the voice of Fagin as he demonstrates how to pick a pocket or two in the Broadway version of the Charles Dickens classic: "Just a game, Oliver, just a game." And then, of course, he begins to sing:

In this life, one thing counts:

In the bank, large amounts.

As an anthem for American politics, no more fitting hymn could be selected.

The president of the United States, for example, whinges ceaselessly by day against under-taxed millionaires. Then, at night, in private, "closed press" dinners in their own opulent lairs, he begs the hoity-toity for a soupßon of their surplus. Already, Barack Obama has pocketed more money than the Miami Marlins will pay Albert Pujols and the Detroit Tigers will pay Prince Fielder over the next decade, combined.

Most of this lucre will be used to cast either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich as the bastard offspring of Tiger Woods and Satan, although Nancy Pelosi already has been defaming the latter candidate for free.

"There's something I know," she has been delightedly clucking, hinting at ex-Speaker Gingrich's unfamiliarity with the Congressional code of ethics, 15 years ago.

"It wasn't 'till Newt Gingrich that it got to be so poisonous," Pelosi declares at breakfast, flogging the silver-haired amphibian, just for fun.

While this is going on, a motley, mud-stained cabal of freaks, anarchists, stoners, college girls and disgusted grown-ups is stomping and hollering below the Capitol and holding banners that say, "PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF INDUSTRY IS THEFT" and "IF I HAD A NICKEL FOR EVERY LIE I'D BE IN THE 1%."

They call today's hubbub "Occupy Congress." Maybe 300 people are involved.

I get there in time to find a man named Dick Eiden in the middle of the morass, holding up his own campaign sign. Like Pelosi, Eiden is running for a seat in the House of Representatives from the state of California. In his case, it is the 49th District, north of San Diego, encompassing Richard Nixon's old hideout at San Clemente, a major marine corps base, and the famously punctual swallows of Capistrano.

Unlike Pelosi, however, Eiden is no one-percenter. He is a 66-year-old self-employed barrister with a long history of suing heartless cities and evil corporations and defending activists, leftists, and the downtrodden, people who often could not pay their bills. Even the filing fee of $1,740 has been a major hurdle for him.

"I don't like the Tea Party, and I don't like the Democratic party either," Eiden says. "They're totally corrupted, including Barack Obama, though I did hold my nose and vote for him. I don't want to be part of the Democratic machine, where the progressives take a back seat to the corporatists."

So he is running as an independent.

"I could win," he says hopefully emphasizing could. "People are tired of this 'lesser of two evils' shit, and I just could sneak down the middle."

It is not an outcome on which one would be well-advised to bet the Bank of America. The incumbent in the 49th District of California is Republican Darrell Issa, the wealthiest man in the entire United States Congress with an estimated net worth, according to the Washington Post, of $448,125,017.

In the same list, Nancy Pelosi ranks ninth at a mere $101 million.

This morning, though, the Dragon Empress of the Democrats catches a break. Breakfast is on the house.

Allen Abel is a Brooklyn-born Canadian journalist based in Washington, D.C.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 28, 2012 J1