For more than six decades, Nancy Pelosi has shared her life and career with her steadfast partner and husband, Paul Pelosi.

Pelosi was a hell of a lot better counting votes as speaker of the House than anybody I ever saw,” Joe Scarborough said Thursday.

Nearly 40 years later, Pelosi will leave office as the most powerful woman in congressional history, one of the most powerful in American history, and surely the most skilled and accomplished congressional leader of her era. On Thursday, the 85-year-old former House Speaker announced that she would not seek re-election after 20 terms.

Nancy Pelosi deserves credit for helping millions of people. She's also partly responsible for how we got here.

Nancy Pelosi was the first of her kind and perhaps the last of the powerhouse speakers able to bend the increasingly fractious and Balkanized House to their will to achieve big things. Ms. Pelosi, who broke the House’s glass ceiling after learning rough-and-tumble politics in the D’Alesandro family business in Baltimore,