WASHINGTON - Nancy Pelosi crashed through a glass ceiling when she became the first female House speaker a year ago. That turned out to be the easy part.
The reality of leading a bitterly divided Congress at odds with a Republican White House is that victories are difficult and disappointments many. Chief among them for the liberal San Francisco Democrat has been failure to deliver on her biggest goal: ceasing US combat missions in Iraq and getting troops on their way home.
The House's final days before winter break were reflective of Pelosi's up-and-down year: a major success - an energy bill including the first increase in vehicle fuel economy standards in 32 years - and two bitter defeats.
Hamstrung by Republican opposition and veto threats from President Bush, Pelosi had to abandon her promise to not add to the budget deficit when the House agreed to a $50 billion tax-relief bill without making up the loss to the Treasury. The House's final vote was on legislation giving Bush $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no withdrawal deadlines attached.
"The war in Iraq is the biggest disappointment for us, I mean the inability to stop the war in Iraq," Pelosi, 67 and in her 11th House term, said in a recent round-table interview.
At the beginning of 2007 she believed Republican support for the war would erode. It didn't. In fact, it solidified as the US surge that began in the summer helped reduce the violence.
"They have stayed wedded to the president on this," Pelosi said.
Time and again, the House passed bills setting a timetable for troop withdrawals only to see them fail in the Senate, where Democrats hold a 51-49 edge, including two independents who usually vote with them. Sixty votes are needed to overcome Republican filibusters.
Pelosi's inability to force Bush's hand on Iraq made her a target of an unlikely group: antiwar liberals.
They dogged her at public events and even protested outside her San Francisco home on Easter Sunday. In August, activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, announced she would run against Pelosi in 2008, contending the speaker had lost touch with people in her district who want troops home now.
Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, said the war presented Pelosi with an unsolvable dilemma. Anything short of immediate withdrawal infuriated the left, but Democrats also feared criticism from the right that they were depriving troops in combat of money they needed.
"The base is not going to be satisfied until every American comes home, and realistically that's not something she can deliver," Pitney said.
Pelosi said she will continue to push next year for withdrawing troops and improving the training and equipping of military units.
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