Years ago, one of Nancy Pelosi’s most noteworthy predecessors as speaker of the US House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill, uttered the phrase: “All politics is local”. These words may have been on Pelosi’s mind when she decided to go to Taiwan.
O’Neill cut his political teeth in the Irish wards of Boston. Pelosi was the Italian-American daughter of the mayor of Baltimore. People who succeed in those political environments prosper because they remember what got them to where they are.
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John McCarthy is a former ambassador to Vietnam, the United States, Indonesia and Japan, a high commissioner to India, and a senior adviser to Asialink.
