权力不是任何人都能给予的， "你必须为它而战。

 她的父亲告诉记者，她的大哥们并不热衷于让一个妹妹加入他们全男性的行列，但邻居们却很高兴。

"整个社区都在支持一个女孩，"她最大的哥哥汤米（当时11岁）回忆说。

Her big brothers weren’t enthusiastic about having a sister join their all-male ranks, her father told reporters, but the neighborhood was delighted. “The whole community was rooting for a girl,” her oldest brother, Tommy, then eleven, would recall.

 

从一开始，南希-帕特里夏-达莱桑德罗就在公众视线中成长，她的童年充满了政治、高尚和琐事。

当她成为一名日益强大的国会议员时，她的政治血统将不被许多人承认，因为作为一个成年人，她已经搬到了另一个海岸并使用了她丈夫的名字。

当她在2007年首次当选为众议院议长时，对一些人来说，南希-佩洛西的父亲曾经是一位强大的大城市市长，这是个新闻。

From the start, Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro would grow up in the public eye, her childhood suffused with politics, the high-minded and the nitty-gritty. When she emerged as an increasingly powerful member of Congress, her political lineage would go unrecognized by many because as an adult she had moved to the other coast and taken her husband’s name. When she was first elected Speaker of the House in 2007, it was news to some that Nancy Pelosi’s father had once been a powerful big-city mayor.

 

但在那些日子里，在巴尔的摩，几乎所有人都知道达莱桑德罗家族。

在他们那个时代，他们是肯尼迪王朝在全国范围内的一个地方版本，他们的职业和争议被仔细审查，他们的家庭生活被屏息记录。

小汤米-达莱桑德罗是一个新晋的政治家，有一个迷人的妻子。

三十六岁时，他已经在州立法机构任职两届，并在巴尔的摩市议会任职，然后当选为国会议员。

他代表马里兰州以巴尔的摩为中心的第三区。

他在民主党初选中击败了连任六届的现任议员文森特-帕米萨诺。

几年前，住在附近的政治领袖帕米萨诺，在他想竞选马里兰州众议院议员时，立即对这个年轻人产生了厌恶。

后来，正是达莱桑德罗赢得了帕尔米萨诺的众议院席位，结束了他的职业生涯。

But in Baltimore during those days, just about everybody knew the D’Alesandro family. In their time, they were a local version of what the Kennedy dynasty would become on a national scale, their careers and controversies scrutinized, their home life breathlessly chronicled. Tommy D’Alesandro Jr. was an up-and-coming pol with a glamorous wife. At thirty-six, he had already served two terms in the state legislature and a stint on the Baltimore City Council, then been elected to Congress. He represented Maryland’s Third District, centered in Baltimore. He had ousted a six-term incumbent, Vincent Palmisano, in the Democratic primary. Years earlier, Palmisano, a political leader who lived around the corner, had taken an instant dislike to the younger man when he wanted to run for Maryland House of Delegates. Later, it would be D’Alesandro who ended Palmisano’s career by winning his House seat.

 

这将提供南希-达莱桑德罗-佩洛西从未忘记的政治教训之一。

That would provide one of the political lessons that Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi never forgot.

 

权力不是任何人都能给予的，她会宣布。

"你必须为它而战。

" 这是她父亲在挑战帕米萨诺时遵循的戒律。

这是她向正在考虑艰难竞争的民主党人提供的建议。

这也是她在自己的职业生涯中采用的方法，她赢得了众议院民主党领导层中的一个职位，而这个职位是一个竞争对手认为他有资格获得的。

那场激烈的竞争使她走上了成为美国政治史上最有权力的女性的道路。

“Power’s not anything that anybody gives away,” she would declare. “You have to fight for it.” It was a precept that her father had followed in challenging Palmisano. It was advice she dispensed to Democrats contemplating tough contests. It was the approach she would apply in her own career, winning a position in the House Democratic leadership that a rival had assumed he was in line to claim. That bitter contest put her on the path to become the most powerful woman in the history of American politics.