As the highest ranking woman in Washington and the leader of her party for nearly two decades, Ms. Pelosi, 79, of California, made her mark as a leader with muscle and spine when Mr. Trump was still a reality television host. She says she wants to be remembered not for impeachment, but for her legislative achievements — primarily a meticulous and politically complex push to pass the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law.
But for better or worse, people in both parties say, her legacy is now wrapped up with Mr. Trump’s.
“We don’t get to choose how history remembers us,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, who compared Ms. Pelosi to Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who was said to have wandered Athens with a light, searching for an honest man. “Of course she’s going to be an inspiration because of this. Somebody had to be that person with the light — even if it was a lonely challenge.”
But if impeachment has made Ms. Pelosi an inspiration to her fellow Democrats, it has also cemented her status as a villain in the eyes of Republicans. In a long, rambling letter to her on Tuesday, Mr. Trump warned Ms. Pelosi that “history will judge you harshly” — a sentiment Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, echoed in an interview.
“This will be a stain on Pelosi’s legacy,” he said. “She’ll be historic in many ways — the first female speaker, and that’s a great accomplishment. But in terms of abusing the power of Congress to settle a personal vendetta, I think that’s playing out before our eyes right now.”
Over the past year, Ms. Pelosi has routinely gone toe-to-toe directly with Mr. Trump. A photograph of her wearing sunglasses and a swingy rust-colored coat emerging from a White House meeting where she told Mr. Trump not to “characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting” quickly went viral — before she became speaker.
When Mr. Trump wanted to deliver his State of the Union address during the government shutdown in January, Ms. Pelosi disinvited him, leaving him fuming. When the White House released a photograph of her wagging her finger at the president, and he called her “Nervous Nancy,” progressives lapped it up on Twitter.