Government Executive - Authors - Kirk Victor

Brownback promises battle on Iraq ambassador nominee

Kirk Victor — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

President Obama's nomination of Christopher Hill to be ambassador to Iraq has prompted fierce criticism from a handful of senior Republican senators in what is likely a prelude to a bruising battle on the Senate floor. Critics including Sen. Sam Brownback charge that Hill, a career diplomat, misled Congress in testimony last year when he was handling the six-party talks dealing with North Korean nuclear disarmament.

Brownback charges that Hill failed to follow through on his promise to confront North Korea on its human rights record. The Kansas Republican, joined by four other GOP senators -- Christopher (Kit) Bond of Missouri, John Ensign of Nevada, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona -- recently urged the president to withdraw the nomination not only because of what they see as Hill's misleading testimony but also because of his inexperience in dealing with Iraq. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, last year's Republican presidential nominee, also opposes the nomination.

Obama and Senate Democratic leaders counter that as a seasoned diplomat, Hill is well-suited for this key post. Hill also has won a key endorsement from Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, who said that Hill had "demonstrated extraordinary diplomatic and managerial skills in dealing with an isolated and inscrutable North Korean regime." Lugar's panel is scheduled to hold a hearing on the nomination Wednesday.

Brownback adamantly disagrees with Lugar. Last year, the Kansan even held up President Bush's nominee to South Korea until Hill agreed to take steps to make North Korea's human rights record part of the negotiations. But the senator says that Hill went back on his word. In an interview with National Journal last week, Brownback discussed his determination to do everything he can to kill the nomination. Edited excerpts follow.

NJ: What do you intend to do when Christopher Hill's nomination to be ambassador to Iraq reaches the Senate floor?

Brownback: We are going to fight hard against Chris. I met with him [on March 18] in my office and he did not allay any of my concerns. When he was conducting six-party talks, I asked him to involve the special envoy for human rights. He didn't want to do it. So I held up an ambassadorial nominee to South Korea. The State Department really wanted that ambassadorial nominee.

Finally [former Virginia GOP Senator] John Warner brokered a deal in the Armed Services Committee where Chris Hill was testifying and Warner had me ask questions. One of them was, "Will you invite the special envoy for human rights to the six-party talks?" He said yes, he would. That didn't happen. On his word of doing that, in front of open committee, I lifted my hold on the South Korea ambassador. So he misled me.

NJ: So he lied?

Brownback: He did not do what he said he would do. It was very direct, it was very clear. And it did not happen.

NJ: Have you talked to Senator Lugar at all about him?

Brownback: I raised it at [Republican] caucus on [March 17]. He was there at caucus when I raised this concern.

NJ: What is your reaction to Senator Lugar's support for the nomination?

Brownback: Dick is a great guy. I respect him fully. We have had different outlooks on the six-party talks in Korea. He's been more supportive of moving forward without the human rights agenda even though that was the bill that passed. But I have nothing but high regard for Dick Lugar.

NJ: I know you have written a letter to the White House detailing your opposition. What is the extent of the opposition?

Brownback: I think we are gaining some steam in our caucus off of [his] complete misrepresentation to Congress. And then Hill [also] had some choice things to say about the president [Bush] he served under. It seems as if he went against both Congress and the president in his conducting of the six-party talks.

NJ: Have you ever done this before?

Brownback: I don't recall ever holding up an ambassadorial nominee outside of the South Korean ambassador.

NJ: So this is a big step for you?

Brownback: Yeah. If they nominate somebody qualified to an ambassadorial position, I don't have difficulties. I usually will try to meet with them [to discuss] countries I have been working on and talk with them. They normally have been very good to work with. But Chris has not been good to work with. He has misled me. He has not done what Congress directed. And even our then-ambassador to Japan said he was frozen out of the talks [on North Korea] and the Japanese had concerns. Their embassy contacted my office recently about how the six-party talks were conducted. So you have a guy who is a diplomat that is not operating like much of a diplomat.

NJ: Why do you think the president is so adamant that Hill is the right man for the job?

Brownback: I don't know. There are a lot of diplomats out there that I think would cherish this sort of opportunity. This is our biggest portfolio in the world today. I don't think it is a very smart move by the administration, but it is their choice.

Check out the blog Lost in Transition, a joint effort of Government Executive and National Journal.

]]>

Obama then and now: Confirming an attorney general

Kirk Victor — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

As the Senate Judiciary Committee grills Attorney General nominee Eric Holder, it is telling to take a look at how then-Sen. Barack Obama approached his votes on Cabinet nominees four years ago.

Obama opposed Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's choice for the nation's top law enforcement job, even as he supported the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of State -- an endorsement that put him at odds with his Illinois colleague, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, as well as some liberal activists.

In an interview with National Journal in 2006, Obama set out his rationale for those two votes. He backed Rice even though she had supported what he had referred to as the "dumb war" in Iraq, because, Obama said, "It was my judgment that the president has broad discretion to choose his executive team." She was confirmed 85-13.

But he said he used a different set of criteria for his vote on Gonzales. "I took a different tack when it came to the attorney general because I think the attorney general's job actually is to be the people's lawyer -- to tell the president what the law is and what he can't do and, based on some of the memos related to torture that I have seen from Alberto Gonzales, it didn't appear that he could say no to the president," Obama said in the interview.

Despite Obama's opposition, Gonzales was confirmed, 60-36, to become the first Hispanic attorney general. He resigned in 2007 amid charges that he had politicized the Justice Department and unfairly fired nine U.S. attorneys.

Ironically, some of the same questions that Obama raised about Gonzales are being raised about Holder Friday by Republicans who question whether he will exercise independence and follow the law wherever it leads -- even if it means being at odds with his friend, the president. Republicans asked about his role as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration when the president pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich and commuted the sentences of 16 Puerto Rican militants who had been convicted on sedition and weapons charges. Why had he not challenged the president?

Holder acknowledged some missteps. "My decisions were not always perfect," he said. "I made mistakes.... But with the benefit of hindsight, I can see my errors clearly, and I can tell you how I have learned from them." He also tried to reassure the skeptics at the hearing, saying that the Justice Department represents "not any one president, not any political party, but the people of this great country."

No senator has voiced opposition to Holder's confirmation at this point. Given the Democrats' majority on the committee and barring any unforeseen developments, Holder is expected to win the panel's approval and go on to be confirmed as the nation's first African-American attorney general.

Check out the blog Lost in Transition, a joint effort of Government Executive and National Journal.

]]>

McCain is not afraid to take chances

Kirk Victor — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400

McCain did not want to have to return to this hostile airspace. The 31-year-old pilot calculated that he could unload his arsenal and still avoid the oncoming missile. He was wrong.

His aircraft took the hit, and its right wing sheared off. As the A-4E Skyhawk plummeted from the sky, McCain ejected, suffering grievous injuries. He spent the next five and a half years, at times close to death after being tortured, in the so-called Hanoi Hilton, an infamous North Vietnamese prison camp.

How did the skilled aviator make the wrong call that day? At a life-and-death moment, McCain, like other pilots in war, had to comprehend lots of variables -- from the location of the target to the performance of his aircraft and, of course, the enemy's capabilities. This calibration of various factors during a mission is called "situational awareness," as described in Hard Call, a 2007 book by McCain and his longtime aide Mark Salter.

Reflecting on the decision that changed his life, McCain laments that he had "placed too much faith on what was beyond my knowledge or control: luck. And my luck ran out that day." McCain refers in Hard Call to the "lapse in self-awareness that prevented me from recognizing the cockiness that had blinded me to one of the immutable principles of war and life: Luck is unreliable."

Four decades later, as the Republican presidential nominee, McCain isn't confronted with anything close to a split-second, life-or-death decision. Still, one thing the silver-haired Arizona Republican has learned from that misjudgment in Vietnam: He cannot afford to rely on blind luck.

Although he's no stranger to casinos and enjoys playing craps, when it comes to policy, McCain is not about to simply roll the dice and hope for the best. He has, however, shown himself willing to stick his neck out and make calculated gambles. In fact, he has demonstrated, in this campaign and throughout his political career, a willingness to jump into risky situations and to confront his own party.

Even though he often makes speedy decisions that seem, at times, to be impulsive, his friends insist that McCain proceeds only after taking stock of the rewards and perils of a course of action. But that calculation does not end his decision-making.

Those who know McCain well invariably describe his strong reliance on his instinctive feel for an issue. What separates him from most other politicians is that the 72-year-old actually seems to relish pushing the envelope and doing the unexpected. While many lawmakers race away from risks, McCain seems to thrive on taking a bold stance.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., who has traveled with McCain to Iraq and Afghanistan, observed, "He is willing to do things and go places that a lot of people fear to go. He trusts his gut a lot -- he makes some decisions that on the surface perhaps look very unconventional. He is a risk taker."

But that risk taking is not rash, insisted former Navy Secretary John Lehman, who has known McCain for three decades. "I wouldn't say [he's a] gambler," Lehman said. "John McCain is an excellent poker player because he is instinctively a very good and accurate calculator of risk [and] reward. That is not gambling."

Again and again, McCain has staked out positions on contentious issues despite warnings that he would pay a steep political price for doing so. His advisers cite a succession of issues on which McCain went out on a limb, from supporting more troops for Iraq, to backing an immigration reform proposal that nearly cost him the nomination -- not to mention helping to defuse an explosive partisan showdown over judicial nominations that threatened to gridlock the Senate.

Even his signature legislative success, passage of a sweeping campaign finance reform law in 2002, put McCain at bitter odds with a large segment of the Republican base, who still loathe the legislation.

More recently, as the nation tumbled into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, McCain lunged to play a central role. He even briefly suspended his campaign rather than merely offering counsel from the sidelines. Depending on who is telling the tale -- his supporters or his Democratic critics -- McCain either hastened the ultimate outcome by bringing various parties to the table, or he injected presidential politics into the negotiations and slowed down consummation of a deal.

His supporters call McCain's approach gutsy and decisive. They contrast his style to that of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, who, they argue, rarely takes politically difficult stances.

Others have a slightly different take in evaluating McCain's approach. "He is someone who can turn on a dime and make a decision that surprises even his closest advisers," said Darrell West, vice president and director of the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution. "That seemed to be the case when he put [Alaska Gov. Sarah] Palin on the ticket. He seems an impulsive-type individual, who trusts his instinct and makes decisions very rapidly."

Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University and an expert on the Senate who served in the Navy and was close to a number of pilots, agreed. "Even the squadron commander -- which Senator McCain was, particularly in a single-seat Navy fighter -- is in his own little world. If you have been targeted, your radar tells you there's a missile coming after you. You have to make a decision fast. I think Senator McCain took that with him into the Senate. He [flies] very much by the seat of his pants."

The Decider

Forget self-doubt. When confronted with a problem, McCain moves ahead, confident that his involvement can ameliorate a situation or spur conflicting parties to reach an accommodation -- or that he can force action by denouncing bad actors. Earlier this year, for example, he was quick out of the box to denounce Russia as the aggressor in its conflict with Georgia; the Bush administration eventually echoed McCain's tough stance.

Since he was first elected to Congress in 1982, McCain has demonstrated that he does not avoid hot issues. Sometimes, as with his sudden decision to come off the campaign trail to work on the financial bailout legislation, critics say that he appears impetuous.

In recent weeks, the Obama campaign has pushed the theme that McCain is erratic and does not have a steady hand in times of crisis. But those who know him well adamantly disagree that he is rash.

Lehman, in praising McCain's ability at assessing risks, draws on his experience as a fighter pilot. "When you are in a dogfight, you have to make calculations on the best information you've got," he said. "You can't say, 'Wait a minute, let's call this dogfight off until I have more information.' In a presidency, [you must act] when you are going to have imperfect information."

The combination of his quick calculation of various factors and his willingness to ride against the political current was evident from the moment McCain took office. In 1983, his first year in the House, he opposed President Reagan's deployment of marines to Lebanon despite his great respect for the commander-in-chief and despite overwhelming congressional support for the move.

McCain's approach to that decision was similar to his modus operandi throughout his career. He questioned experts in the field, including Gen. Tom Carpenter, a Vietnam veteran who was then a corps commander at the U.S. Military Academy.

As McCain wrote in Worth the Fighting For, Carpenter had concluded that U.S. goals were unlikely to be met with the means that Reagan was prepared to employ. A force of 1,600 marines was at a serious disadvantage in the middle of a civil war.

"We're not going to keep the peace there -- not with this force -- and we shouldn't take any more casualties to figure that out," Carpenter said. "You should vote against it."

McCain immediately drafted a statement, with Carpenter's help, arguing that the presence of U.S. forces would not make a difference. "The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave," McCain said on the House floor. "We will be trapped by the case we make for having troops there in the first place."

Carl Smith, a McCain pal who flew jets with him in the Navy said, "You had this rather peculiar, high-energy freshman Republican saying this [deployment] is not sound. That shows you that McCain did not acquire this independence through seniority. He always had it. He looks at these things, he comes to a conclusion, and, if he thinks [an action is] wrong, he will speak out. Damn the politics."

Within a month, McCain's stance was sadly vindicated when a suicide bombing killed 241 marines and 58 French soldiers in Beirut.

Fast-forward to the presidential campaign 25 years later, and McCain is sounding a lesson that he learned from Lebanon and subsequent policy battles: A commander-in-chief must act boldly and resolutely, sometimes even when information is sketchy.

"The next president ... won't have the luxury of studying up on the issues before he acts," he told a crowd in Virginia Beach, Va., on Oct. 13. "He will have to act immediately.... I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I've never been the kind to do it from the sidelines."

Deal-Maker or Deal-Breaker?

A dramatic moment in the presidential campaign came in late September as the financial marketplace tottered on the verge of collapse. Congressional leaders scrambled to respond to a White House proposal for a mammoth legislative package to reassure investors, provide liquidity to lenders, and restore confidence on Main Street.

An examination of this volatile period gives a snapshot of how McCain responds as a crisis unfolds. The GOP presidential nominee relied on the advice of confidants and took risks to advance what he saw as the broad national interest.

It began with jockeying on Capitol Hill as lawmakers wrestled with the White House's $700 billion plan to rescue the financial marketplace. "We need the Republican nominee for president to let us know where he stands on what we should do," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Sept. 23.

The senator from Arizona called Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, perhaps his closest ally on Capitol Hill, to get a take on Reid's statement. "John calls me and says, 'What the hell is that all about?' " Graham recalled in an interview. "I said, 'Well, they are trying to make you own this, John.... They are trying to set you up to be the fall guy if they can't pass this thing -- and intimidate you, obviously, into signing on to any package they come up with.' "

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was not about to hold a vote on the package unless it had some Republican support, Graham told McCain. But many Republicans were so unhappy with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr.'s proposed bailout -- and his initial take-it-or-leave-it approach -- that they wanted to vote against it.

Graham made the case to McCain that his personal involvement could make a difference. The South Carolinian understood his GOP colleagues' unhappiness. They were being asked, just six weeks before Election Day, to support an unprecedented intervention by the federal government into the marketplace, a move that their constituents overwhelmingly opposed.

"I said, 'John, Bush can't move these [House Republicans]. Paulson has alienated them.... The only way we are ever going to get a better deal is if you come back here and we try to get the House Republicans on board.' "

Graham added, "It wasn't good for the country or for us politically to just have this thing hanging out there."

As in other high-wire situations, McCain made a quick decision. He announced on Sept. 24 that he was suspending his campaign to return to Washington, and he urged the president to convene a meeting of political leaders to achieve bipartisan consensus.

"We must meet until this crisis is resolved," he said, adding that the presidential debate scheduled for Sept. 26 should be postponed. "Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country."

When McCain arrived on the Hill on Sept. 25, senior senators in both parties were scrambling to work out the broad contours of a deal. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the Republican conference chairman, said that more than 40 GOP senators backed a proposal that incorporated much of Paulson's approach. Graham and other McCain allies, however, say that those numbers were not real.

"That agreement did not have a snowball's chance in hell of passing, because it had 20 percent of potential revenues, profits [from asset sales], going to ACORN," Graham said, referring to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group now being accused of voter-registration fraud that could have gotten money from a housing trust fund designated in the bill.

When Graham and McCain joined a lunch meeting of Republican senators, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire was outlining "the deal." McCain said that the Senate could not ignore the House Republicans, who preferred that the government offer insurance to the banking industry rather than make direct purchases of mortgage-backed securities.

As the Arizonan left the meeting, he delivered a blunt message. "He said, 'Thank you for all the hard work, but I am not going to support any deal if it doesn't take care of the taxpayers,' " Graham recalled. McCain went on: "I didn't come back to sign on to anything. And just like Iraq [on the surge], if I have to be alone, I will be."

That shook up the meeting, Graham said. "You know, Lamar [Alexander] and these guys are great guys, but they wanted to roll the House."

When a White House meeting convened later that day, McCain didn't say a lot -- except to make clear that policy makers could not ignore the concerns of House Republicans in the rush to get an agreement. His comments set off fireworks, and the meeting exploded into a partisan meltdown.

Democrats were miffed. They thought that a deal was close at hand and that McCain had thrown a lit match into the negotiations. But House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, was grateful. "If it were not for John McCain supporting me at the White House when I said, 'Whoa, whoa, time-out,' they would have run over me like a freight train," he later told reporters.

Then, even though no agreement was near, McCain flew to Mississippi for the first presidential debate, which went on as scheduled. Graham insists that McCain had indeed changed the situation, and that House Republicans would have a seat at the table.

Things hit a rough patch when the House initially rejected the deal on Sept. 29. But when the Senate passed it after adding insurance and tax provisions (and dropping the ACORN-related provision) to make it more palatable, the House followed suit on Oct. 3.

Was McCain erratic, as Democrats charged, in grandstanding on Capitol Hill, or did he help bring the parties together?

"If he hadn't come back, you would have had bicameral gridlock," Graham insisted. "The House was set in stone. They weren't going to move, and nobody was able to get them to the table other than John. Here's how he did it: He listened to them. He didn't accuse them of being Neanderthals."

Charles Black, a senior adviser to McCain, contrasts the veteran senator's conduct during the episode to that of Obama -- who remained mostly on the sidelines.

Obama and the Democrats had a different take. "You remember the first day of this crisis, [McCain] came out and said the economy was fundamentally sound," Obama said at a campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Oct. 9. "Two hours later, he said we were in a crisis. I don't think we can afford that kind of erratic and uncertain leadership in these uncertain times."

From Disgrace To Reform

A turning point in McCain's political career came after he made what he has described as "the worst mistake of my life." He twice met, in 1987, with federal regulators who were investigating the practices of Charles H. Keating Jr., who was "a good friend and generous supporter."

Keating, as described in Worth the Fighting For, was unhappy at regulators' tough treatment of his thrift, Lincoln Savings and Loan. In fact, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board found such serious wrongdoing at Lincoln that it ended up referring the case to the Justice Department.

McCain and four other senators whom Keating had also showered with campaign donations, met with regulators at the businessman's request. Although McCain writes that he limited his actions to inquiring about the status of the regulatory board's examination of Lincoln and its valuation of the thrift's property, his participation -- and his friendly relations with Arizona resident Keating, including several vacations at Keating's Bahamas retreat -- landed him among the "Keating Five."

Ultimately, Lincoln collapsed. Taxpayers wound up footing a bill of $3.4 billion for its reckless and illegal actions. Keating did prison time for securities fraud before an Appeals Court overturned his conviction.

By November 1989, as more thrifts collapsed, the story of the Keating Five made headlines. The Senate Select Ethics Committee launched an investigation and, after protracted proceedings, chastised McCain and Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, for "poor judgment." It found no improper conduct on their part. The panel harshly rebuked the actions of the other three senators -- Alan Cranston, D-Calif.; Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz.; and Donald Riegle, D-Mich. -- effectively ending their political careers.

McCain writes of going through hell during the 14-month investigation. "He told me that from his point of view it was worse than being in Vietnam and in prison," former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., said in an interview with National Journal in 1997. The questioning of his honor was almost more than McCain could bear. "He said to me once on the floor while it was dragging, 'Warren, please, if you want to line us up against the wall and shoot us, do it. But please do something -- this is agony.' "

After he was exonerated with the slap on the wrist, McCain became Capitol Hill's most zealous advocate for limiting special-interest money. His campaign finance reform crusade put him at odds with most members of his party. During the long struggle to get the measure enacted, McCain displayed a greater deftness in legislative strategy than he had previously demonstrated.

He reached out to an unlikely ally in 1994, Russell Feingold, D-Wis., a liberal, studious, first-term senator who was not especially well known. Feingold told NJ in an interview in 2001 that McCain called him "out of the blue" and said that he had been looking at his voting record on various reform issues and was impressed.

Feingold agreed to join the Arizonan in an effort that began with attacking "earmarks" -- projects stuffed into appropriations measures without scrutiny. That effort led to their battle for broader reform to limit the influence of money in campaigns.

The pair's push for campaign finance reform failed five times over a six-year period. McCain's relentlessness was clearly fueled in part by his desire to rid himself of the stench of the Keating Five episode. Throughout this period, then-Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, one of only four senators who backed McCain's presidential candidacy in 2000, said that the Arizona lawmaker infuriated his colleagues.

"Someone turned to me on the Senate floor and said, 'Why does McCain do this? Doesn't he understand that senators don't like it, it's not helpful, it makes them mad, it will hurt his relations with them?' I looked at the guy anhttps://login.yahoo.com/config/mail?.intl=usd said, 'I just don't think John cares.' "

But McCain did care about getting campaign finance reform legislation signed into law. As Elizabeth Drew describes in her book Citizen McCain, he learned from earlier setbacks. For example, as his colleagues took potshots at his self-righteousness, McCain reined in his famously fierce temper. He told Drew that after the battle for reform in 1999, he would not rise to the bait.

"I'm not going to let them pull me into personal combat," he said. "I'm not going to engage in that again."

In her somewhat fawning 2002 account of McCain's efforts, Drew concluded that McCain had shown that he could be disciplined and even "remarkably good-humored."

"He turned out to be more long-sighted, a shrewder strategist, a more sophisticated legislator than had been generally thought," she wrote. "This was a different man than the one in earlier fights. He had learned and grown, and put that knowledge to good use. He led."

Enactment of campaign finance legislation is clearly McCain's biggest achievement in Congress. Yet when President Bush signed the measure in the early morning of March 27, 2002, he did so in private. No photographers and none of the bill's sponsors were invited.

The Palin Pick

Before the 2008 Republican National Convention, few people even in Washington knew who the governor of Alaska was. So when McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, he surprised the political cognoscenti.

As with his decision to call Feingold, however, McCain says he had studied Palin's record as a reformer and picked her because she would be unafraid to take on the Washington establishment. Appointed to the state's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2003, Palin had raised questions about the chairman's conflicts of interest with oil companies. He ultimately resigned. Palin later filed an ethics complaint against the state's attorney general. He, too, eventually resigned. Then she challenged Frank Murkowski, the Republican governor in 2005, and won.

"She's a reformer through and through," McCain said during the final presidential debate. "It's time we had that breath of fresh air ... coming into our nation's capital and sweep out the old-boy network and the cronyism that's been so much a part of it that I've fought against for all these years."

Still, the 44-year-old former mayor of Wasilla has been in the state's top job for only two years. So why did he choose her?

Some of McCain's closest confidants, including Graham, had pushed for Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. "I was very high on Senator Lieberman, simply because I thought that would be a statement to the country that the old model was going to be replaced by a new model, but I couldn't be more pleased with Sarah Palin," Graham said. "The calculation [by McCain] was, 'I am dead serious about changing the culture in Washington. I am going to pick somebody not from this town who has got a demonstrated, proven record of doing things fundamentally different from most politicians -- take a corrupt system and turn it upside down.' "

The vice presidential choice gives as good a window into a presidential nominee's decision-making as any other judgment in the campaign. McCain's allies see his selection of Palin as a combination of reassuring true believers in the party, who have never been enthusiastic about him, and sending the message that his administration would not be business as usual. But Democrats, and some Republicans, see the pick as a rash gamble that further reinforces their critique that McCain is impulsive.

Lehman responds that "he calculated the risks, and Governor Palin really appealed to him because he believes it is time for really fundamental rebooting of the way government does business. He had done an awful lot of due diligence on her and her record up there, and read her speeches; and so clearly he felt she'd be a great complement, somebody to really become his understudy."

"It was about energizing the base," added Torie Clark, Mc-Cain's press secretary in the 1980s. "It was, 'Can this person bring some of what I hope to bring to Washington and be willing to poke somebody in the eye if you think that person is wrong, and be willing to go after the old-boy network?' He loves that."

Democrats see the pick as further evidence that McCain is a reckless gambler. "It showed incredibly poor judgment," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said in an interview. "His selection of Sarah Palin -- who is wholly unqualified for the office of vice president, and certainly for president -- showed that John McCain cares more about throwing a Hail Mary pass and winning an election rather than selecting someone who would be best positioned to help him run the country."

Thune sees the choice as reflecting McCain's classic decision-making style. "He was doing something that was not what everyone else expected," he said. "It was very McCainesque."

And what exactly is McCainesque? "It is consistent with his career in public life that he has not been afraid to go against the grain, and not necessarily follow the logic and the wisdom of the political intelligentsia," Thune said. "These are decisions made from his gut, and that's part of what people find very attractive in him, especially at a time in America, and particularly in politics, when there are so many inauthentic people who say one thing and do another. That authenticity is one of his most attractive qualities."

]]>

No simple answer from McCain on use of force

Kirk Victor — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0400

In 1983, his first year in the House, John McCain felt he had to split with President Reagan on a pressing national security issue. Reagan, whom McCain greatly admired, was urging Congress to pass a resolution to keep the Marines in Lebanon for 18 months as part of a multinational peacekeeping force to back up a shaky government.

But the then-47-year-old lawmaker thought that peace could not hold in Lebanon, given the ferocity of the warring factions inside the country. The former Navy pilot concluded that Reagan's objectives were simply unachievable, especially with the small force that the president wanted to deploy: Marines would be lost and the United States' reputation would suffer.

McCain's stance put him at odds with most other lawmakers and marked the first time that he, as an elected official, wrestled with deciding when it is appropriate to deploy U.S. military might. He took a measured approach to the use of force--a trait that has been evident throughout his career despite some critics' contention that as a former military man, McCain would be too quick to pull the trigger in international confrontations.

Judging from his 25 years on Capitol Hill and his writings, McCain decides on a case-by-case basis whether U.S. national security must be protected through military action. If so, he believes that the military should proceed full bore. But, as shown by his position on Lebanon, McCain does not believe that deciding against using force, even when prevailing sentiment favors it, is a sign of weakness.

"The wrong caricature of McCain is that every problem is a nail and every answer is a hammer," observed James Lindsay, director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. "The episode in '83 also speaks to the fact that Senator McCain historically has been willing to speak his mind, even when in a traditional sense it may not have been in his political interests to do so."

Despite his conviction that the Lebanese mission was doomed, McCain took no pleasure in bucking Reagan. His stance attracted more media attention than a first-term lawmaker typically would get, because of his fame for having withstood horrific treatment as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than five years.

"A freshman Republican, particularly one who had been a professional military officer, was expected to support the commander-in-chief in all national security matters," McCain wrote in his 2002 book, Worth the Fighting For. "And I did not then, nor would I now, object lightly to any president's call to arms, especially from a president to whom I felt personally loyal.... I would have much preferred giving the president my support, had I thought his policy had a chance in hell of being successful."

In a speech on the House floor, McCain explained his position. "The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave," he said. "We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.... I also recognize that our prestige may suffer in the short term, but I am more concerned with our long-term national interests."

Ultimately, the resolution easily passed 260-170, but less than a month later two suicide bombers killed 241 U.S. marines and 58 French soldiers. The marines soon "redeployed" out of Lebanon.

Fast-forward to today and McCain is quick to say he took another political risk when he strongly advocated a troop surge in Iraq, again putting him at odds for months with a president of his own party--until President Bush embraced the tactic in the face of the political cognoscenti. That decision rescued Iraq from "the abyss of defeat" and "opened the way for something approaching normal political and economic life for the average Iraqi," McCain contended in an April speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

That stance was consistent with his position in Lebanon, said Carl M. Smith, who flew jets with McCain in the Navy and supports him today. "The question regarding the surge was not, should we go to war, but, now that we are there should we fight and win this war? What he is saying is, if you are going to deploy the military, do it right. Don't do it halfhearted and don't give them missions that they are not trained to perform."

Over his congressional career, McCain has supported force in some instances and opposed it in others; his approach cannot be easily pigeonholed. He backed the 1990 decision to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, for example. McCain later came to believe that President George H.W. Bush made a serious mistake by not toppling Hussein, though he acknowledges that he, too, had initially opposed such action.

In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, McCain, like most lawmakers, favored action in Afghanistan to take out the Taliban-led government. A year later he supported Congress's use-of-force resolution to oust Saddam from Iraq.

"In this new era, preventive action to target rogue regimes is not only imaginable but necessary," he said in Senate debate.

Of his foreign-policy philosophy, the four-term senator has called himself a "realistic idealist" and spoken in favor of multilateral approaches. "We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to," McCain said in March. "We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies."

It was not a new theme. In Worth the Fighting For, McCain wrote: "As powerful a nation as we are, as good a nation as we are, we are not omnipotent, and we cannot impose our values by force of arms everywhere they are threatened. But where both our values and our security interests are at risk ... we are obliged to defend them by whatever means necessary."

To that end, McCain opposed using force in Somalia in 1993. The first President Bush had deployed troops there on a humanitarian mission to ease the famine. But when that mission evolved under President Clinton to include keeping peace among warring factions, McCain saw the situation as ill-defined and risky.

In 1994, Clinton withdrew U.S. forces from Somalia after 18 troops were killed and more than 70 wounded in a bloody firefight. McCain suggests in his book that Clinton was loath to deploy ground troops throughout the remainder of his presidency--a mind-set that the Arizonan views as dangerous for a commander-in-chief.

"When the use of force was necessary to protect American interests, [Clinton] would seldom consider any option other than cruise missile strikes and a few inconsequential bombing runs," McCain wrote in Worth the Fighting For. "I became more convinced that my early assessment of the president's leadership as timorous and uncertain was, if anything, understated."

That issue of optimal force level was at the forefront of the debate when NATO responded to the Serbs' invasion of Kosovo in 1999. McCain supported Clinton's decision to join NATO air strikes, but he blistered the president for ruling out the use of ground forces.

In the Senate, McCain argued that by limiting the U.S. action to air strikes, Clinton emboldened the murderous onslaught of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The president's "indefensible ruling out of ground troops," McCain said, made Milosevic feel "safe enough to ... displace, rape, and murder more Kosovars more quickly than he could have if he feared he might face the mightiest army on earth. That is a fact of this war that is undeniable. And shame on the president for creating it."

Ultimately, the NATO-led bombardment led Serb troops to withdraw. Still, McCain wrote that Clinton's "spasmodic, irresolute, and reactive approaches to international security problems" reflected "self-doubt [and] a mystifying uncertainty of how to behave in a world in which America was the only superpower."

McCain's sometimes harsh rhetoric strikes a different chord abroad than it does at home, said Alton Frye, senior fellow emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The senator's strong national security credentials, his capacity for having shown courage and willingness to make tough decisions reassures the domestic audience that this is a man you can depend on to make firm decisions," Frye said. "But if you look at it abroad, the perception from a number of friends, as well as potential adversaries, is one of potential bellicosity. So he has a balance to strike between reassurance at home and avoiding bellicosity abroad, while establishing the necessary deterrent that is certainly his first objective."

Most recently, McCain was quick--even faster than the Bush administration--to blast Russia following its invasion of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He charged that Russia's military action was designed to restore its old empire. Critics jumped on that early tough talk as reflecting McCain's increasingly provocative stance against Russia. He subsequently said that an independent, international peacekeeping force should be deployed and that the U.S must work with allies to persuade Russia to withdraw and to airlift humanitarian aid to Georgia. After a few days, Democrat Barack Obama's statements gradually began to echo McCain's mix of strong rhetoric and multilateralism.

Of course, predicting how a candidate will make decisions as commander-in-chief is hazardous. "We don't know how they are going to view the world when, all of a sudden, they are no longer on the sidelines telling people what to do but have to bear that burden themselves," Lindsay said. "This is sort of the pig-in-a-poke quality of all presidential elections."

Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign-policy adviser, says that those who worry that McCain will be too quick to send in the Marines have the wrong impression. "The idea that Senator McCain, who sacrificed so much for his country, would be anything less than extremely circumspect in ordering our men and women in uniform overseas is ridiculous," he said. "The use of military force is a last resort--only when all other options have been exhausted and only if it is warranted by what we hope to achieve and what interests are at stake. Senator McCain has said repeatedly that he knows firsthand the costs of war and that he hates war."

]]>

Lawmakers of both parties seek to avoid government shutdown

Kirk Victor — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Leon Panetta remembers that time well. As President Clinton's chief of staff, he helped plot strategy when House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., felt emboldened to draw a line in the sand over his party's budget priorities. Gingrich -- eager to make his mark after the GOP's 1994 electoral sweep gave it control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years -- calculated that a weakened president would capitulate to the Republicans' seven-year balanced-budget plan. But Panetta, a former House member, cautioned the speaker to avoid brinkmanship.

"I remember telling Newt Gingrich that it would be a helluva lot better for them to compromise and cut a deal with the president because, in the end, they would have gotten the credit for governing the country, rather than shutting the government down," Panetta recalled in a recent interview.

Gingrich and the newly elected House firebrands were not about to compromise. Yet, when the appropriations stalemate between them and Clinton closed some of the government in late 1995, it quickly became apparent that voters were directing their anger mostly at Republicans. The president successfully argued that he was standing up to heartless cuts in federal programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, on which the most-vulnerable citizens depend. As Republicans lost the rhetorical battle, Gingrich was forced to relent.

Now Panetta worries that some of the same ingredients that produced that 1995 meltdown are evident today. Once again, an unpopular president and a newly empowered majority on Capitol Hill are bitterly divided over the budget, with plenty of encouragement from their electoral bases. Hard-charging Republicans are demanding that the White House flex some fiscal conservatism, while liberal activists, frustrated that Democratic lawmakers have failed to end the Iraq war, are eager to see a confrontation with President Bush.

"This president has been pretty unwilling to compromise on a lot of issues, and you get the sense that the Democratic Congress isn't particularly anxious to compromise with this president," Panetta observed. "That is a recipe for real trouble. That's why I am not very confident that they are going to easily resolve this issue."

All in all, Democrats want to spend about $23 billion more than the $933 billion that Bush requested for discretionary spending in fiscal 2008. The president, who has threatened to veto most of the pending appropriations bills, has signaled that he's ready for a fight. "You're fixing to see what they call a fiscal showdown in Washington," Bush told a friendly -- and receptive -- audience in Rogers, Ark., on October 15. "The Congress gets to propose and, if it doesn't meet needs as far as I'm concerned, I get to veto. And that's precisely what I intend to do."

Bush scolded Congress for not having sent any of the appropriations measures to him. Because the fiscal year started on October 1, the government is operating on a continuing resolution that expires on November 16. "I don't think it makes sense for a new Congress to come in and make promises about how they're going to be wise about what they're going to do with your money and ... not being able to perform," Bush said.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., shot back within hours of the president's speech. "The worst-kept secret in Washington this fall is that President Bush, after refusing to veto even one appropriations bill over the last six years, wants to instigate an appropriations fight with Congress in a vain attempt to establish his bona fides with his conservative base," Hoyer said. "After enacting policies that ignited record budget deficits and added more than $3 trillion to the national debt, the president simply has no standing to lecture anyone on the importance of fiscal responsibility."

And, in a refrain sure to be heard over and over in coming weeks, Hoyer emphasized that Democrats want to "adequately" fund education, clean water, veterans health care, and other domestic programs, in contrast to Bush's "deeply misguided" priorities. "At the same time that he is proposing cuts to key domestic programs, he is demanding that Congress appropriate another $190 billion for the war in Iraq -- with all of that Iraq funding added to the deficit," Hoyer said.

Despite the fiery rhetoric and the likelihood of a clash that could keep Congress in session until Christmas, members on both sides of the aisle agree on one thing: They want to avoid a government shutdown. In interviews with National Journal, eight lawmakers from across the ideological spectrum said that even as they brace for battle, they believe that closing the government would be ill-advised and counterproductive.

Likewise, an early-October poll of NJ's Congressional Insiders found that both Democrats and Republicans saw only a "low" chance that a spending deadlock would lead to a government shutdown this year.

Lessons Learned

So why, if party activists are hell-bent on encouraging a war over budget priorities, is there such reluctance on Capitol Hill to push a showdown into a shutdown? The answer seems to lie in the lessons that both parties have drawn from 1995.

First, Democratic and Republican lawmakers worry that such a debacle would amount to a self-indictment -- proof positive that they can't do their job at a time when Congress's approval ratings are already in the toilet. A tacit, but obvious, second reason is that both sides worry about whom the public would blame.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a moderate who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, was adamant that anyone looking to escalate the budget disagreements between Bush and the Democrats is missing the point from 1995. "Certainly the Republicans learned our lesson from Newt Gingrich that the people in the country expect us to act like grown-ups and do our job and not shut down the government," Alexander said.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., was just as resolute. "A government shutdown is a disaster for the American people," he said. "We don't want it to occur. We will do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen. We have passed continuing resolutions until we can finish up with our appropriations bills, and that [shutdown] just isn't part of our strategy."

Even conservative Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who has long railed against government spending and earmarks, said that a shutdown is off the table. "Nobody wins" when the government closes, Coburn said. "The American people reject that. That is the absolute incompetence of Washington -- all that does is prove the point."

For his part, Senate Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., is already set to assign blame. "If the government is shut down, it won't be because Republicans let it; it'll be because Democrats forced it," Kyl said. "I would hope Democrats would not play politics with this issue because it gets to the delivery of Social Security checks and keeping national parks open and all the other things that Americans really don't want to see jeopardized by political gamesmanship in Washington."

A senior Senate Democratic staffer worried that a shutdown battle with the president, even one whose public-approval ratings are also at rock bottom, carries too much risk. "We've read the clips from 1995. We've studied it, and we're just determined to avoid it," the aide said. "The president does have the bully pulpit -- a pretty powerful microphone to compete against -- even though in this instance the president is in a much more weakened position."

But when asked about the Democrats' apparent determination to avoid a shutdown, David Rohde, a Duke University political scientist, was skeptical that they could categorically rule out any tactic in the looming budget impasse.

"The only way for Democrats to absolutely guarantee that the government won't shut down is to capitulate to Bush," Rohde said. "If the president says, 'I am going to veto any bill that doesn't do exactly what I want,' the Democrats have a choice between accepting current policy, which is essentially what a clean continuing resolution does ... or [passing] a continuing resolution with changes. Then if Bush says, 'I'll veto any CR that has changes that I don't like,' the only way to absolutely guarantee that there is no shutdown is to capitulate completely."

If the government did close, Rohde added, "The absolute strategic requirement for the Democrats is not to be seen as causing it.... They have to be able to say, 'It's not our fault -- it's their fault.' This is what Clinton said about the Republicans in '95."

Democrats, in fact, seem to be taking a page from Clinton's budget playbook by emphasizing their support for popular social-welfare programs. Bush "repeatedly says no to health care, no to law enforcement, no to homeland security, no to stronger infrastructure, but he says yes to this intractable civil war in Iraq which is being paid for by borrowed money," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said at an October 22 press conference.

To counter the Democratic efforts, the White House message is that the debate boils down to a choice between continued economic growth and lower deficits versus more spending that will roll back the positive trends. "It is beyond our understanding why every problem that comes forward with this Congress requires increased spending," said Sean Kevelighan, press secretary for the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

Faux Fight?

Although not even an astrologer can foresee how the budget issue will play out, Democrats have begun to signal their initial strategy. They intend to send Bush a series of appropriations bills that enjoy bipartisan support. Early speculation has centered on the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education spending bill, which the House passed in July by a 276-140 vote -- just 10 votes shy of the two-thirds needed to override a veto -- and which the Senate passed on October 23 by a veto-proof 75-19 vote.

The massive Labor-Health and Human Services bill contains roughly half of the $23 billion that Democrats want to spend overall above Bush's fiscal 2008 request, according to CongressDaily. Democrats were willing to strip out an embryonic-stem-cell research provision that Bush opposed, but the White House nonetheless said that the legislation is still objectionable because it contains "irresponsible and excessive levels of spending." Assuming that Bush follows through with his threatened veto, what next?

A senior Democratic staffer pointed to last spring's endgame over the Iraq supplemental spending bill. After Bush vetoed the legislation because of its Democratic-crafted timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, Democrats eliminated the timetable and instead required White House progress reports and "benchmarks" for the Iraqi government to meet. They also added their long-sought minimum-wage increase to the final version, which Bush signed in late May. "We negotiated out a solution," said the staffer, adding that he hopes for similar give-and-take over the appropriations measures.

Republican lawmakers who face tough 2008 re-election battles support plenty of the programs in the veto-bait spending bills, putting them in a difficult position when Democrats try to override the Bush vetoes. "The president can stand his ground at 26-28-31 [percent] approval ratings because he's not running for re-election," the staffer noted.

But Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 110 House conservatives, said that the RSC has already rounded up enough commitments to sustain Bush's vetoes of appropriations measures. "We have a pretty deep bench to come on downfield should we need it in this fight," Hensarling said. He supports Republicans taking a firm stance and dismisses any efforts to minimize their differences with Democrats.

In Hensarling's view, the options are obvious: a "clean" continuing resolution that funds the government at current levels; a CR with proposed funding changes; or an omnibus bill that rolls a slew of appropriations measures into one big package. But he is so suspicious of Democrats' strategy that he added another option: "They may choose to violate their word and shut down the government and try to use that as a ploy to blame the president and see if they can leverage that into more spending."

Democrats' suspicion of the White House is just as intense. House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., noted that a $23 billion difference in a trillion-dollar budget would typically be settled by negotiations, rather than provoking a huge flare-up. "I don't think we are that far apart," Spratt said. "In normal times, this amount of disagreement would not bring the process to its knees."

Similarly, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, noted that the president has shown no real desire to work out the differences. "They seem to be itching for a fight," Nelson said. "When I was governor [and] wanted to make sure that an important piece of legislation was veto-proof, we had our people working with members of the Legislature to make it veto-proof."

Still, some skeptics wonder if Democrats will take this match to the mat. They see party leaders as reticent to engage in a national controversy that could disrupt the political momentum that appears to be going their way heading into next year's presidential elections. A budget impasse wouldn't help at a time when their party's approval rating in Congress is about 10 points higher than the Republicans', when the list of GOP retirees keeps growing, and when polls indicate that their opponents' base is dispirited.

"What I see on the Democratic side is [a sense of], 'Heck, let's get through this next period and not take any big chances here, any risks. We have a chance to pick up seats. We might win the presidency, and then we can do what we want,' " said Steven Smith, a political scientist at Washington University. "This has been a Congress from the start that has been more geared to the next election than any Congress I have seen."

Maybe so, but as the rhetoric gets hotter and the posturing on both sides gets more menacing, it is hard to imagine this face-off ending in a whimper and not a bang.

]]>

Intelligence overhaul supporters seek options

Kirk Victor and Greta Wodele — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:00:00 -0500

House GOP leadership aides said a decision had yet to be made about scheduling negotiations that would justify bringing lawmakers back the week of Dec. 6, despite optimism expressed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., that it could happen.

"Things are still very much up in the air," said a House GOP aide.

Senate conferees who signed off on the deal early Saturday morning say it is now up to President Bush and House GOP leaders to push for an agreement. "The president is committed to getting the bill done -- it's a high priority for him," a White House official said.

This official said Bush had already implemented 90 percent of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations administratively but wants the legislation for such changes as the creation of a director of national intelligence.

House Republicans, spurred by Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., objected to a deal backed by Bush and Hastert late Friday night. As several rank-and-file Republicans said they would go as far as voting against a rule to allow a vote, widely considered to be a "party loyalty" vote, Hastert and other GOP leaders realized they did not want to have a bill pass primarily with Democratic votes, according to aides.

Hunter, backed publicly by senior military officials, opposed giving a director of national intelligence budgetary authority over the Pentagon's intelligence assets. He said through a spokeswoman today that he was optimistic of passing a bill if the Senate comes around to his position. But Senate Governmental Affairs ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said the Senate had gone as far it could go to compromise with the House.

The failure of negotiations prompted Senate Intelligence ranking member John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., to say Saturday, "I think I am going up to my office and start throwing some chairs around." He quickly added, "I won't hit any of my paintings." But the even-tempered Rockefeller could not suppress his anger at what he sees as the "strong-armed tactics" that torpedoed the legislation.

Singling out House Majority Leader Tom DeLay R-Texas, Sensenbrenner and Hunter, Rockefeller said it was "unbelievable" that a measure of this magnitude that had bipartisan support could be shot down.

"I am standing here like I am not a member of Congress, but I am somebody from Charleston, W.Va., looking up and saying, `What are they doing up there? Why do we even keep them around?' I am just angry."

Rockefeller surmised that the critics simply could not stomach any change in the Defense Department's role. He also dismissed those who were saying that the legislation could be resurrected and passed next year and questioned whether Bush would feel the same urgency next year.

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made phone calls to Sensenbrenner and Hunter encouraging them to drop their objections, but their effort failed to change their minds.

]]>

Edwards could play many roles in a Kerry administration

Kirk Victor — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Edwards is also a quick study and nimble at translating complex issues into easy-to-understand sound bites. Senior Senate Democrats were so wowed by his debating skills, evident almost from the moment he arrived in 1999, that they gave him an important role during President Clinton's impeachment trial.

During his improbable presidential campaign, Edwards masterfully highlighted his personal story as the mill worker's son who went on to become a successful trial lawyer. Although the 51-year-old freshman senator carried only one state-South Carolina, where he was born-his aw-shucks manner and populist message made such a favorable impression that Democratic officials lobbied Kerry tenaciously to add Edwards to the ticket.

Edwards's attributes play well on the campaign trail, but they don't answer the question of what kind of vice president he would be. Would his transparent ambition make it difficult for him to easily fit into the No. 2 spot? How would Kerry, who has plenty of Washington experience after serving nearly 20 years in the Senate, deploy his veep? Are there lessons to be drawn from the relationships of other presidents and vice presidents that might apply to this duo?

Obviously, the president ultimately determines how large, or how inconsequential, the vice president's portfolio will be. In recent history, Dick Cheney and Al Gore played key roles in the Bush and Clinton administrations, respectively. But Kerry may or may not follow that pattern if he wins election to the White House in November.

"Although the expectation ... has certainly developed that the VP will have an integral role in an administration, the president still has plenty of discretion," said George C. Edwards III, a political scientist at Texas A&M University and the editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly. "The VP has no serious constituency -- and Edwards has no organized constituency.... Just as presidents use secretaries of State in different ways, they can use the VP as they choose."

In the view of Charles O. Jones, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin, presidents should determine how to deploy their vice president based on this question: "What is it I need, and how can this person be helpful?"

That straightforward formulation leads to one immediate conclusion: Edwards's most obvious asset is his communications skills, an area in which Kerry has not distinguished himself during the presidential campaign. Having been a member of the insular Senate for so long, Kerry has a tendency to fall into a tedious "legi-speak" that works fine on the floors of Congress, but can leave voters confused. Edwards's folksy, homespun speaking style, on the other hand, plays well with his audiences. So perhaps Kerry might best use Edwards as a point man to galvanize support for the administration's programs around the country.

Senate Democrats repeatedly reiterated that theme during interviews this week, after Kerry selected Edwards as his running mate on July 6. A half-dozen Democratic senators emphasized the importance of Edwards's communications talents in selling Kerry's agenda beyond the Beltway, as well as on Capitol Hill. Edwards has an "easy rapport" with voters, said Sen. Jay Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va. "They relate to him."

If Kerry decided to send his veep, in effect, out on the stump as the salesman-in-chief for his programs, Edwards's highly visible role would provide a striking contrast to Cheney's modus operandi in the Bush administration. Cheney has spent much of his time out of the spotlight and in undisclosed locations. In fact, Cheney appears to enjoy campaigning and mixing it up with constituents about as much as one might look forward to a visit to a urologist.

Tutoring the Chief

Some presidents have looked to their vice president to provide insight and advice about matters on which they themselves lack expertise. For example, after serving as governors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton weren't well schooled in the ways of Washington when they arrived at the White House. So they relied, to varying degrees, on their vice presidents, both of whom had plenty of federal experience.

Bush, a former Texas governor, looked to Cheney to provide guidance on a broad array of policies. Cheney had served as Defense secretary for Bush's father, as a House leader in the 1980s, and as White House chief of staff during the Ford administration. In the days following the 2001 terrorist attacks, Cheney became one of the most influential players in developing a plan to wage the war on terrorism.

In fact, Cheney's influence is so vast that no policy area is beyond his reach. It is indisputable that he is the most powerful vice president ever. "There's nobody who can do Cheney's role, because it's such an unusual -- even a bizarre -- role, including being mentor and tutor to the president," said Paul Light, director of the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution and the author of a 1983 book on vice presidential power. "I can't imagine this will be repeated in our political lifetime."

Gore, who had served in both the House and the Senate, was not nearly as powerful a vice president as Cheney is. Still, he played a significant role in acquainting Clinton, who had been governor of Arkansas, with how to wield power in Washington.

"Al Gore helped me a lot in the early days, encouraging me to keep making hard decisions and put them behind me, and giving me a continuing crash course in how Washington works," Clinton wrote in his recent autobiography, My Life. "Though we had a lot in common, we were very different, and the [private weekly] lunches kept us closer than we otherwise would have been in the Washington pressure cooker."

The Bush-Cheney and Clinton-Gore relationships contrast sharply with President Kennedy's dismissive treatment of Vice President Johnson in the early 1960s. Johnson, after serving as one of the most powerful Senate majority leaders in history, was all but humiliated as vice president, according to Mutual Contempt, a book by Jeff Shesol.

Larry O'Brien, Kennedy's liaison to Congress and a member of the so-called "Irish Mafia" of close confidants to the president, didn't bother to stop by Johnson's office even once to seek his advice during a two-year period. According to Shesol, Johnson privately fumed that Kennedy's legislative program was sinking because of "those kids ... from the White House [who] start yelling 'frog' at everybody [on Capitol Hill] and expect 'em to jump. They don't have any idea of how to get along, and they don't even know where the power is."

In the period between the LBJ era and Clinton's election in 1992, the experience of vice presidents varied. Jimmy Carter expanded the role of the office to give Walter Mondale, a former Minnesota senator, a hand in all key policy decisions. But neither George H.W. Bush, as vice president from 1981 until 1989, nor Dan Quayle, who succeeded Bush as vice president and served under him, were given such wide-ranging responsibilities.

Still, a number of presidential scholars, academics, and elected officials agree that it would be difficult for any president today to treat his vice president with the disdain that Kennedy did. "It would look small and insecure and call into question Kerry's judgment," said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

And, given the far more aggressive role of today's media, a president who dissed his vice president would pay a political price. "It's a lot harder to lock a vice president away in the East Wing these days," said Ken Collier, professor of political science at Stephen F. Austin State University. "Reporters will notice the first person to play a smaller role than the vice president that preceded him or her. I'd hate to be the first VP to be moved out of the West Wing."

Even so, if Kerry doesn't forge a comfortable working relationship with Edwards, he could find subtle ways to make his veep look occupied, while also keeping him away from the klieg lights. "The vice president can be on the president's schedule, but it will be hard to tell whether the VP is just taking up space or having a real impact on decisions," Collier added.

Chemistry Test

Before Kerry settled on a running mate, a number of stories in the media suggested that the personal chemistry between him and Edwards was lousy. The bad blood was said to stem from several dustups during the primaries. The 60-year-old Kerry, who has devoted much of his career to public service, gave the impression that he viewed Edwards as an upstart politician of overweening ambition who had not paid his dues.

In the coming months, Edwards will have time to repair any ill will by relentlessly showcasing his total commitment to Kerry. In the view of numerous observers, Edwards must demonstrate his loyalty and downplay his own interests, always keeping in mind that he's occupying the No. 2 spot on a two-man ticket.

"Vice presidents are often judged on their willingness to submerge their own political ambition and their own identity," Light said. "They are tested ... to see just how loyal are they. That's especially important for someone who was a challenger. Edwards was not a slash-and-burn attacker. But it takes time to earn the trust of the president, and more important, the president's inner circle. A vice president spends every day learning the job."

Others suggest that the importance of personal chemistry at this very early stage of the campaign has been overblown. Clinton wrote that he didn't think he would select Gore as his running mate after initially meeting with him. "On the previous encounters, the chemistry between us had been correct, but not warm," Clinton said in his book.

But after spending more time with Gore, Clinton decided he liked him -- and he liked the idea of choosing another young Southerner to be on the ticket, to offer "a new generation of leadership." The selection proved, Clinton wrote, that "I was serious about taking the party and the country in a different direction."

Donald A. Baer, communications director in the Clinton White House, noted that Gore ultimately was given broad responsibilities that went beyond specific programs. "Gore was not only the senior-most adviser, but he was Clinton's go-to person on major projects," Baer said in an interview. "He was in every major meeting."

Baer said that Kerry and Edwards have a chance to pull off the same kind of partnership -- and that any lack of chemistry between them during the primary season will be inconsequential. "The most important thing will be whether their respective operating styles allow them to work constructively with one another," Baer said.

Indeed, Kerry's choice signals that he sees attributes in Edwards that more than offset whatever problems the two had during their primary battle. "The fact that Kerry set [those misgivings] aside is a good sign for their governing relationship," Mann said. "It shows self-confidence to pick someone with more political flair than he has. It shows that he won't keep Edwards under a rock.... He will make use of him."

Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., who spent two days on the campaign trail with Kerry over the Fourth of July weekend, agreed. In an interview, Kind said he was struck that Kerry did not feel compelled to choose someone with a smaller charm quotient and who did not have presidential ambitions. "He's very comfortable about his campaign and is not afraid of being overshadowed" by Edwards, Kind said. "He had easier choices, [people] who would not overshadow him and would not be looking to their own future."

In fact, Kerry's determination to keep the vice presidential selection process secret, to avoid embarrassing those he didn't choose, is also instructive. Back in 2000, Kerry felt slighted when Gore did not select him as his running mate. Kerry found Gore's handling of the process unseemly, and was said to want to go the extra mile to make certain not to repeat it. Kerry's actions suggest that he has no desire to publicly embarrass or put down others near him, including his vice president.

Role-Carving

When Clinton selected his running mate, the former president wrote in his book, he was moved in part by the fact that Gore "knew things I didn't." Gore had expertise that Clinton lacked on a range of issues, including national security, arms control, information technology, energy, and the environment. Clinton owned that while he "knew a lot about" economics, agriculture, crime, welfare, education, and health care, and "had a good grasp" of major foreign-policy issues, Gore provided balance in those other areas.

By contrast, one would be challenged to find a similar "balance" in knowledge of various policy areas between Kerry and Edwards. On the big issues of the day -- Iraq and national security -- Kerry, a decorated Vietnam vet and a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, undoubtedly would be the dominant decision maker in his administration.

Given Edwards's lack of foreign-policy experience, other than his work on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he likely would not emerge as a central player in this arena. The contrast with Cheney could not be greater, as Edwards would, quite likely, take a backseat to Kerry's principal foreign-policy advisers, including his secretaries of State and Defense and his national security adviser.

On the domestic agenda, Edwards has tackled several high-profile issues in the Senate, but Kerry also has plenty of knowledge in these areas. For example, Edwards was a leader in Senate negotiations over patients' rights legislation in 2001, but Kerry, as a presidential candidate, has a full-blown proposal of his own.

Still, it is noteworthy that then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., turned to Edwards to take the lead in negotiating a patients' rights measure with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., four years ago. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who was a major advocate for putting Edwards on the ticket, was also heavily involved in the effort.

The Senate ultimately passed that bipartisan legislation, which would have allowed patients to sue their health plans, in 2001, and the GOP-controlled House passed a narrower version. But further action was shelved because of partisan disagreements and because of the terrorist attacks later that year. Although the patients' rights bill faltered, an Edwards spokesman told National Journal last year that the senator considers it his greatest legislative accomplishment -- as well as a great disappointment.

Interest in patients' rights legislation has recently been renewed following a Supreme Court decision involving patient lawsuits. And the issue was a rallying point for Edwards during his presidential campaign, as he etched his theme of an America divided between the haves and the have-nots. Some Democrats suggest that Edwards would be a terrific point man on patients' rights legislation in a Kerry administration. "John Edwards would be a perfect person" to help frame the issue for Kerry, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said.

Edwards also worked with McCain on the campaign finance reform legislation that was enacted in 2002. And he collaborated with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, on legislation to bring down the cost of prescription drugs by removing barriers to competition from generics. That measure passed the Senate in 2002, but not the House.

Edwards's efforts at bipartisanship clearly made an impression on Kerry. "There's something else about John Edwards that is important to this campaign and our country at this critical time: I am determined that we reach out across party lines," Kerry said in naming Edwards to the ticket.

Given the likelihood that the next Congress will be very closely divided regardless of November's outcome, Kerry, if elected, would want to take advantage of whatever honeymoon he has to pass legislation. The new president would need Republican help to pull that off. One senior Senate GOP staffer predicted that Edwards "could be an emissary to moderate Senate Republicans.... He has credibility [with them] and he has charm -- he will have to use every bit of that charm."

Ultimately, much will depend on Kerry's appraisal of Edwards throughout the campaign and on how the two men's styles mesh -- or clash. Assuming that Edwards wins good reviews for helping Kerry connect with swing voters -- who could make all the difference on Election Day -- he might well be able to use the campaign experience as a springboard to high-profile assignments in the administration.

For now, Edwards has what he wants. Nobody has ever campaigned so openly, so forthrightly, to be picked for the No. 2 spot on a presidential ticket. In recent weeks, Edwards pursued a nonstop schedule of fundraising and campaign appearances for Kerry. He essentially sold himself onto the ticket. If he and Kerry prevail in November, it's a good bet that the formidable Edwards will also sell the president-elect on giving him a substantial role in the new administration.

Staff correspondents David Baumann, Carl Cannon, Richard E. Cohen, and Alexis Simendinger contributed to this report.

]]>

Congress exercises poor oversight of executive branch, critics say

Kirk Victor — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0500

"The Republican majority has been exceedingly deferential, partly because they believe they have shared fates with President Bush, and partly because they agree" with his policies, said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Every once in a while, you see members saying, 'My God, what are we doing? We're giving authority over the budget. We don't have a clue as to what we are approving.' "

Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, added: "Look at defense [policy]. It is clear that we have made some mistakes. We are undermanned. We are spread too thin in the world. Shouldn't Congress be holding vigorous hearings on this, with a lot of attention, wondering what the hell we do now? Are they? No."

Even some Republicans acknowledge that Congress has not done enough policing of the executive branch. "A lot of Republicans don't enjoy oversight--not nearly as much as Democrats--and so therefore, they don't do as much," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., the Senate Republican Conference chairman, said in an interview. "We need to do more."

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks during the first year of Bush's presidency, members of both parties were reluctant to question his policies, either foreign or domestic. The nation was in shock and had rallied around the commander-in-chief, who was enjoying sky-high approval ratings. Yet to this day, many lawmakers still remain reluctant to assert themselves on national-security issues.

In the fall of 2002, Congress granted the president broad authority to use U.S. military force in Iraq. Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., who had served as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview last year that Congress "has basically given the power to declare war to the president, and, in that way, has fundamentally changed the Constitution." Then, last fall, Democratic and even some Republican lawmakers asked tough questions about Bush's $87 billion request for the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But notwithstanding their venting, lawmakers ultimately agreed to provide all that Bush sought.

As time has gone on, congressional Democrats have become more emboldened to ask tough questions of the Bush administration, yet they usually run into a brick wall. "This is a discouraging time for people who share my point of view," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., a relentless advocate of vigorous oversight and the ranking member of the House Government Reform Committee. "But by [Democrats'] raising a lot of the issues, the public does pick up on what is going on," he insisted.

Cynics might suggest that politics has a lot to do with congressional passivity. Back in 1993 and '94, when President Clinton was in the White House and Democrats controlled Congress, the House Government Reform Committee did not issue any subpoenas to the executive branch. But from 1995 to 2000, the Republican-controlled committee issued more than 1,050 subpoenas to the Clinton administration. The panel has issued no subpoenas to the administration since Bush became president.

"Congressional oversight needs to be sharpened," Hamilton said. "Instead of looking into a large number of federal programs, committees tend to focus on investigations that will get more publicity."

Some experts say that aggressive congressional oversight has been declining in some respects over several decades. They point to how Congress routinely allows federal programs to escape scrutiny by failing to reauthorize them. The governing laws for these programs then lapse, but the programs remain in business only because Congress continues them through the must-pass appropriations bills. The result is no accountability in many federal programs.

"There has been a drastic drop in legislative hearings and the kind of review that goes on when programs are reauthorized," said Joel Aberbach, a political scientist at the University of California (Los Angeles) and an expert on the relationship between Congress and the executive branch.

"That, of course, is the most potent kind of oversight, because it is there that Congress, if it is going to do it at all, tends to make the link between whatever problems they may uncover in programs and changes they are going to make," Aberbach continued. "What has happened is that the party leadership has basically seized control of the legislative agenda. Lots of things are done in big omnibus bills."

Aberbach's research shows the declining role of congressional committees. The panels met for a combined 1,281 days in 1997, about half the number of times that committees met in 1975, when they convened 2,552 days. The committees also devoted fewer days to performing agency oversight in 1997 (422 days) than they did in 1975 (459 days).

While Congress's oversight has been lax in recent years, the Bush administration has been especially aggressive in asserting executive powers in the domestic- and foreign-policy arenas. James Lindsay, vice president and director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that the relationship between the executive and legislative branches is cyclical. "The pendulum--the balance of forces between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue--ebbs and flows," he said.

Lindsay noted that in the 1950s and early '60s, the White House also dominated Congress on defense and national-security policy and on many domestic issues other than civil rights. That period was followed, Lindsay said, by a congressional resurgence in the 1970s and '80s. "What we have learned since September 11 is that the Imperial Presidency may have gone into remission after Vietnam, but it didn't die," he concluded.

]]>

Congress, administration test limits of rocky relationship

Kirk Victor — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Hagel's unhappiness exploded to the surface during a mid-September interview with National Journal, when he was asked about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's warning that harsh domestic criticism of U.S. policy in Iraq might embolden terrorists. "I find that offensive," Hagel snapped. "I heard that same argument in Vietnam for 11 years: 'Don't dare question. Don't dare probe.' My goodness, we would be abdicating our responsibility to the American public if we didn't question and probe policy."

But Hagel didn't stop there. "If that is the way [administration officials] feel, they should review what happened in Vietnam, and they should review history and review the Constitution," he said. "Article I of the Constitution is [on] the legislative branch-not the executive branch. We are coequal branches of government. We have coequal responsibilities."

That Rumsfeld provokes such strong reactions on Capitol Hill does not surprise Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who also served heroically in Vietnam. "There is a perception here that sometimes Secretary Rumsfeld does not have the highest regard for the Congress and the role that it plays," McCain said in an interview.

But the testiness between Congress and the White House goes beyond personal antagonisms. In recent months, lawmakers have blasted administration officials for failing to consult Congress before sending troops into Liberia and for not being honest about the costs of the Iraq war and its aftermath. In fact, members of Congress have complained about the administration's general unwillingness to share much information at all involving national security issues.

Even senior Republican lawmakers not known for making waves, such as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., have occasionally been put off by the administration's imperious attitude toward Congress.

Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence, said that he had, "for a long time, long before we ever went into Iraq, encouraged senior members of the administration to make the Congress their partner in this Iraqi effort [by telling them]: 'Don't push us back; don't push us away; don't treat us like an appendage or a nuisance.' There were many, many times they did that."

That back-of-the-hand treatment is by design, according to some observers, who invariably point to Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney as determined to rectify a loss in executive branch powers dating to the Vietnam War. Back then, Sen. J. William Fulbright Jr., D-Ark., the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an acerbic critic of the Vietnam War, made Congress such a force that it was a factor in President Johnson's decision not to seek re-election in 1968. Also, the passage of the 1973 War Powers Act curbed the president's powers to pursue certain military actions without congressional approval-a measure that has nettled presidents ever since.

"There is a real sense among senior administration officials that they have a solemn obligation to reclaim lost territory, that Congress has overstepped its bounds," said James M. Lindsay, vice president and director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "When they talk about reversing the impact of Vietnam, which Rumsfeld has alluded to on a number of occasions, they are not simply talking about re-establishing American power abroad. They are talking about re-establishing presidential power here at home."

But such efforts to reclaim power for the chief executive are now encountering increased resistance on Capitol Hill. Democratic and Republican lawmakers are becoming more aggressive, by employing tough rhetoric on Iraq and asking sharp questions about U.S. foreign policy, all at an inopportune time for the administration. On Sept. 7, President Bush announced he is seeking an additional $87 billion from Congress for the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration's supplemental funding request has provided an opening for lawmakers to vent.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a moderate who often works closely with Republicans and who supported the Iraq war, let Rumsfeld have it at a Sept. 24 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the funding request. She was unimpressed when the Defense chief enumerated the many briefings and hearings that he and other top officials have attended on Capitol Hill over the past year to keep Congress apprised of developments.

"The briefings go on... but we could be anybody in those briefings, not United States senators.... It doesn't matter what we think," Feinstein said. "There's a feeling that you know it all. The administration knows it all, and nobody else knows anything. And therefore, we're here just to say, 'Yes sir. How high do we jump?' And at some point, we refuse to jump."

Some who follow Congress closely agree that the Bush administration has been disdainful toward the legislative branch in matters of defense and foreign policy. "It is simply a fact that the president has thinly veiled contempt for the Congress," said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The vice president has the same. The secretary of Defense has the same. Basically, members of Congress have been dissed badly by this administration."

Sticker Shock

Until recently, lawmakers seemed quite content to play a secondary role, especially on national security issues. Last October, by overwhelmingly approving a resolution that many commentators viewed as giving the executive branch carte blanche to wage war against Iraq, Congress all but took itself out of the biggest debate facing the country.

Congress, after all, had been eclipsed by a strong president following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Bush's sky-high popularity reinforced that subordinate position. With the GOP controlling the House, the Senate, and the White House, lawmakers had little incentive to make waves, as long as things were going well.

McCain, when asked if Congress was indeed relegated to the sidelines following last year's passage of the Iraq use-of-force resolution, replied: "To a very large extent, yes, and it is more Congress's fault than anybody else's. [Opponents of the war] could have extended the debate; they could have said, 'Hey, let's discuss this closer to the actual onset of hostilities.' But you also have a very popular president, with the events of 9/11 overhanging everything."

In the past few months, however, the tone has shifted. Warner, who usually is a cheerleader for Bush's national security policy, sharply rebuked the administration this summer for preparing to send marines into Liberia without properly consulting Congress. And Lugar started airing his view that the Pentagon should be replaced as the lead agency in the reconstruction phase of the Iraq mission.

Then, during the August congressional recess, many lawmakers got an earful from constituents over the growing number of U.S. casualties and the escalating costs of the Iraq mission, and over the weak U.S. economy. Those factors have contributed to Bush's plummeting poll numbers recently, and have led some members of Congress to be more assertive, at least rhetorically.

The president has been forced to lobby in this inhospitable environment in order to tap Congress's power of the purse. To win approval for the $87 billion Iraq supplemental spending bill, top administration officials suddenly have seemed solicitous of lawmakers' views-an about-face that has impressed even Hagel.

"We've had calls being made over the last [few] weeks from [National Security Adviser Condoleezza] Rice and others, that have never really taken place at this accelerated rate," Hagel said. "You have more reaching out, more effort being made from the White House, through Defense and State, to make their senior people accessible than I have seen in two years."

During the week of Sept. 22 alone, Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon brass, as well as Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, appeared at a half-dozen House and Senate hearings to make the administration's case. Cheney also went to the Hill to rally support among Republicans. Congressional experts are not surprised.

"The administration has been forced to make adjustments in its policy and to be more forthcoming about the costs involved," Mann said. "The president's weakened political standing gives members of Congress the resolve to start playing their appointed constitutional role."

In this changed atmosphere, Democrats have felt more emboldened than ever to criticize the administration's Iraq policy-an aggressiveness that some Republicans have derided as pure partisanship. GOP officials, for instance, slammed Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., for making highly charged statements during a Sept. 18 interview with the Associated Press in which he called the war a fraud "made up in Texas" to give Republicans a political boost. Bush himself said Kennedy's remarks were "uncivil."

Yet the questions raised by senior Republican lawmakers such as Lugar show that congressional concerns about the administration's Iraq policy aren't limited to Democratic attempts at political point-scoring. Even conservatives in the GOP rank and file have grumbled about some seemingly unnecessary line items in the administration's $87 billion request. Conservatives are also unhappy about adding to the sea of red ink in the fiscal 2004 budget, which already is running a whopping deficit of close to $500 billion. "With some members, there was sticker shock of $87 billion, and they are trying to grapple with that," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told reporters.

Indeed, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have aggressively quizzed administration officials about the $87 billion request. Given shaky public support for the massive allocation, Congress is feeling political heat not to supinely acquiesce to the president.

"Congress is not an ATM," thundered Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, at a recent hearing. "We have to be able to explain this new enormous bill to the American people."

Fellow appropriator Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., has been equally adamant about Congress's playing its rightful role in the debate. "We don't just sign checks. Part of the oversight is, What are they doing with the money?" Shelby said in an interview. "What's the progress? How long are we going to be there? What's going to happen six months from now, in their judgment, or a year from now? I think these are legitimate questions."

Likewise, Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., the chairman of the House Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, said in an interview that Congress must play a significant role in allocating the money. "We want it justified, specified, and then we will appropriately put it in the right categories for spending.... And then if [administration officials] decide to ask for a transfer from one to the other, we can have some oversight of that," Kolbe said.

Kolbe also noted that he has "insisted" that any contracts for projects funded by the Iraq supplemental package be "competitively bid." Halliburton, a Houston-based energy company where Cheney served as chairman and chief executive officer, has been at the center of a controversy because it was awarded, on a noncompetitive basis, at least one contract for reconstruction work worth more than $1.2 billion.

Nevertheless, many insiders and outside experts are not sure that the louder barking on Capitol Hill will translate into much of a bite. They question whether, when push comes to shove, lawmakers would really turn down a presidential request for wartime funding, much of which is earmarked for the troops overseas.

DeLay predicted that lawmakers ultimately would realize that "when this country is at war, you have got to pay for the war." And even as Democrats try to use the debate over the Iraq funds to shift attention to the rising budget deficit and "neglected" domestic programs, they are quick to stress that they will not shortchange the soldiers. "The Democrats will support our troops and make sure they have what they need," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters on Sept. 24.

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., talked about the possibility of splitting the president's request into two, between the $66 billion earmarked for the Defense Department's management of the mission, and the other $21 billion or so allocated for reconstruction costs in Iraq. Democrats, with the support of some Republicans, also pushed to make the reconstruction funds a loan to be paid back by Iraqi oil revenues.

"I think that there is a real possibility that the $22 billion now requested by the administration [for reconstruction] does not have the support in the Senate sufficient to pass," Daschle told reporters on Sept. 23.

But congressional efforts to separate out the requested reconstruction funds, or to make them a loan, ran into a wall of resistance from the administration. When Bremer testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sept. 24, he made the case that the package must be kept intact. He even suggested that if this "urgent" request were not approved, the troops could suffer.

"No one part of this $87 billion supplemental is dispensable, and no part is more important than the others," he said. "This is a carefully considered, integrated request. This request is urgent. The urgency of military operations is self-evident. The funds for nonmilitary action in Iraq are equally urgent. Unless this supplemental passes quickly, Iraqis face an indefinite period with blackouts eight hours a day. The link to the safety of our troops is indirect but no less real."

Such words put a heavy onus on Congress. The Senate began debating the Iraq supplemental spending bill on Oct. 1, although Democrats were successful in delaying a final vote until after the chamber returns on Oct. 14 from a weeklong recess. In the House, the Appropriations Committee is expected to mark up its version of the legislation during the week of Oct. 6. In the end, some experts predict Congress will pony up the money, even if partly as a loan, given the pressure not to undermine the military in Iraq and the sway that the commander-in-chief holds.

"When you take money away, it can blow up in your face because it looks like what you are really trying to do is sabotage the president's policy," Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations said. "The president can turn around and say, 'We didn't fail in Iraq because I screwed up. We are failing in Iraq because Congress won't give me the support I need.' "

Similarly, Mann said he could not imagine Congress rebuffing Bush on an issue that he has painted as critical to U.S. national interests. "The president is still calling the shots here," Mann said. "Members are now criticizing and raising questions, but they are nowhere near the point of stopping him dead in his tracks. That will take a lot more negative experience before that happens, but at least they have begun to ask questions-sharp questions-that should have been asked all along."

Presidential Trump Card

During the summer, when Warner uncharacteristically went public with a sharp scolding of the administration for failing to adequately consult with Congress about Liberia, his comments reverberated at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The withering statement was a damning indictment of the administration by a fellow Republican, the usually circumspect chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Still, even as Warner made his comments on Aug. 1 on the Senate floor, warships carrying marines were heading for Liberia.

Warner complained that the administration had not even provided sufficient facts to enable him to make "an informed decision" as to whether a troop deployment to that African country was in the national interest. He was clearly infuriated that the day before, the Defense Department had suddenly canceled a scheduled briefing on the Hill by three high-level officials.

"In my 25 years in the Senate, it is most unusual to conduct our affairs in that way between the Senate and the Department of Defense," said the courtly 76-year-old senator. "Indeed, I am not sure I know of a precedent of that type of abrupt cancellation."

And Warner, who served as Navy secretary during the Vietnam War, strongly implied that he sees parallels between the way the Nixon and Bush administrations mishandled wartime relations with Congress. The Vietnam era in the 1970s, he recalled, was marked by "animosity in the Congress against the Department of Defense."

Warner said that the Bush administration did not prepare the American people for any possible casualties in Liberia, and he noted that a lesson from Vietnam is that the public must be ready to accept "such losses as they might occur." Then, he asked rhetorically: "Has that been done? I fear, in my judgment, it has not been done."

Although Warner has a reputation as a loyal team player, even he had a breaking point beyond which he could no longer silently tolerate a dismissive attitude from the administration. "The involvement of Congress when men and women go in harm's way is a very important responsibility," he declared, adding that the executive and legislative branches are coequal.

Ultimately, the small contingent of marines sent to Liberia remained there only 11 days, but Warner's speech had struck a nerve. "When he speaks up and criticizes harshly, then that is going to make everybody take notice in a way that others wouldn't," said Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "It's a real wake-up call to [the White House], because it's hard to find anybody who has been a more active and articulate defender of the administration in foreign policy than Warner."

Hagel echoed Warner's concerns. "I am absolutely worried about a very wide, deep chasm developing between the executive and the legislative branches of government," he said. "That is very dangerous, at a dangerous time in the world."

Warner is not the only Republican committee chairman to gripe about the Pentagon's unresponsiveness. Lugar was put off at the last-minute cancellation in March of the much-anticipated testimony of retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, Iraq's first U.S. administrator, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Lugar chairs. Garner was slated to brief committee members on the administration's postwar plans, which some lawmakers now charge were deficient in anticipating the very problems that have forced Bush to seek the $87 billion.

Garner's no-show was a "fiasco," Lugar recalled in an interview. "He was not able to come to the [Senate] Dirksen Building, but could brief [reporters] in the Pentagon.... On the face of it, it was ridiculous." The Pentagon, Lugar added, was "all thumbs when planning and in dealing with Congress," although he noted that more recently, Rumsfeld and other top administration officials have reached out.

During the summer, Lugar began publicly making the case that the Pentagon should no longer assume the lead role in Iraq during the reconstruction phase. He has suggested that the State Department or some other agency could play a larger role during what he called essentially a "civilian" reorganization.

Hagel agreed that downgrading the Pentagon's responsibilities makes sense, since this phase of the mission "requires different leadership, different infrastructure, different expertise, different skills." He added: "What we need to recognize is that it does the Iraqi people and the Iraqi effort and certainly America's purpose here no good for the Iraqi people to constantly see American tanks and soldiers in place."

The comments of Lugar and Hagel reflect their stepped-up efforts to have an impact on this key issue. "A number of those very strong members who had misgivings before about how the Pentagon was muscling aside the State Department-but out of party loyalty, kind of swallowed hard and basically said it is not our role and that it is up to [the administration] to figure out what they want-now are much more willing to step forward," Ornstein said. "They see Rumsfeld, despite his own background as a former congressman, giving them the back of his hand."

Indeed, others, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Joseph Biden, D-Del., strongly support a transition from the Pentagon to the State Department. But some longtime experts on foreign policy are skeptical that such a shift will occur.

"Even if you give State a bigger chair at the table, the Department of Defense is still sitting on the throne because it is contributing the most people, and you are not going to be able to shut Mr. Rumsfeld out," Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations said.

Moreover, members of Congress are hardly speaking with a unified voice. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sided with the administration in arguing that the Pentagon must remain in charge. "It's an insecure world," Graham said in an interview. "You're not going to rebuild Iraq when [terrorists] are blowing up the U.N. The Pentagon should be in the lead."

Even as this debate intensifies, observers such as Lindsay note that in the final analysis, presidential prerogatives will trump lawmakers' efforts. "The reason the Pentagon looms so large in all these decisions is because that is where the president places his confidence," Lindsay said. "And there is nothing that Congress can do, in terms of assigning responsibility or not assigning responsibility, that is going to affect who the president decides to rely on."

Pulling Punches?

The failure, so far, of U.S. weapons hunters to come up with evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has put a spotlight on the work of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, which have been examining the caliber of intelligence that the administration relied on to make its case for war.

In keeping with the new assertiveness on Capitol Hill, the chairman and ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence fired off a sharply critical letter to CIA Director George J. Tenet on Sept. 25 expressing their "preliminary view" that U.S. intelligence on Iraq had "serious deficiencies." Reps. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and Jane Harman, D-Calif., wrote that the intelligence was "fragmentary" and "sporadic" and contained "insufficient specific information" on Iraq's weapons programs and capabilities.

Despite that tough tone, skeptics fear that the two Intelligence panels ultimately will pull their punches, given the political pressure they will feel not to embarrass a Republican president. Lawmakers already have "relegated themselves to a supporting role of the president" because of their "lack of rigorous oversight of the intelligence community," argued James Thurber, director of the Center for Presidential and Congressional Studies at American University.

Early on, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and is viewed as a strong ally of the administration, refused to even use the word "investigation" to describe his committee's work because he felt it was "pejorative."

In a recent interview, Roberts said, "Right now, we are taking a look at the credibility and the reasonableness of the intelligence." He suggested that the process is straightforward. "You take a look at the intelligence reporting, and you take a look at the recommendations that were made, and you say, does that make sense?"

Roberts insisted he has felt no pressure from the administration and noted that of the more than 100 administration staffers questioned by the committee, not one has indicated any pressure to testify in a certain way. The chairman also said his committee's history of bipartisanship continues. He and ranking member Jay Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., have developed a good working relationship. "There are obviously strong opinions, but Jay and I have been able to settle out any differences," Roberts said.

But Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., a member of Roberts's panel, complained bitterly in an interview of intelligence leaks designed to gain partisan advantage by the administration's foes. "We have seen unprecedented efforts to politicize the work of the Intelligence Committee," he said.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., a moderate who also sits on the committee, said that the panel simply does not have the resources needed to exercise the oversight that he feels is necessary. "There are a lot of barriers," Bayh said. "We ask questions, and sometimes [administration officials] say they don't know the answer, and we never hear back."

So, as the Senate committee wraps up its preliminary report, Bayh remains skeptical. "It is a patina of oversight, without the depth and consistency that I think the American people deserve," he said.

"The Republicans control both houses of Congress," Bayh added. "They control the presidency. Do you think they want more oversight? I don't ascribe sinister motives. This administration has shown that they like to act unilaterally wherever possible. Congressional oversight is an irritant."

]]>

Congress in eclipse as power shifts to executive branch

Kirk Victor — Mon, 07 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Fast-forward to today. A remarkable turnabout has occurred in less than a decade. Congress, for some time, has been eclipsed by President Bush, who has made himself the dominant player in Washington, despite his failure to win a majority of the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election. And Congress has also been superseded by an activist Supreme Court.

Bush's pre-eminent position is facilitated by his party's control of Congress and by the usual flow of power to the commander-in-chief in wartime. But the explanation for the shift in power also lies in the willingness of the president and other executive branch officials to take initiatives that seem to put Congress, a coequal branch under the Constitution, in a subordinate position.

Early on in his administration, for example, Bush walked away from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, without bothering to consult Congress, in what was a precursor to other equally audacious moves in the foreign-policy arena. "The idea that Congress just sort of lets treaties expire without insisting on a vote ... shows that not only is there a sense of people being a little intimidated" by the president, Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., told National Journal, "but also just a lack of understanding of the historical role that Congress has played in the checks-and-balances scheme. What Congress is failing to do, almost in every instance, it seems-it's failing to take the power that the Constitution gives it."

Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the powers claimed by executive branch officials-and the resistance they've sometimes demonstrated to congressional oversight-have rankled lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The administration's failure to share information on pressing national security issues "does not encourage a good amount of trust and cooperation," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told reporters a few weeks ago.

But Congress, for its part, exercised little review over Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's request for vast new, and in some cases unprecedented, powers to fight terrorism. "Congress is acquiescing more to the executive branch than I have seen in my 25 years in and around Capitol Hill," said Laura Murphy, Washington director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in an interview.

Critics also worry that Congress has largely taken a pass on the war in Iraq. Some lawmakers and commentators argue that since last fall, when Congress overwhelmingly approved a resolution granting Bush broad authority to pursue the war, the legislative branch has essentially opted out of the discussion. Lawmakers seemed determined this year to avoid a comprehensive debate over the merits of U.S. military action in Iraq.

"We have left the field, after the October use-of-force resolution," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., who opposed the resolution. "This is the largest grant of presidential authority ever given by a Congress."

James M. Lindsay, a senior fellow in foreign-policy studies at the Brookings Institution, agreed. "The war power is a use-it-or-lose-it power. Once Congress delegates that authority to the president, its constitutional role is to sit on the sidelines," Lindsay said. "What we have learned since September 11 is that the imperial presidency may have gone into remission after Vietnam, but it didn't die."

Curbing Congress

Even before 9/11 and the war in Iraq, Bush and others in his administration had moved to vigorously protect executive branch prerogatives. Vice President Cheney, for example, refused to provide Congress with even the names of those he consulted in developing the administration's energy policy in early 2001. Cheney's stonewalling precipitated the first-ever lawsuit by the General Accounting Office against the White House.

"An overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats [in Congress] that I spoke with felt that the limited amount of information that we were seeking should be released to the GAO," Comptroller General David Walker told National Journal. "We had scaled back the request to such an extent that it was not intrusive, and that it involved information that the Congress and the American people had a right to know."

After a federal district court dismissed the case in December, however, the GAO decided not to appeal. Further litigation would have consumed "significant time and resources over several years," the GAO said in a Feb. 7 statement.

More recently, the White House played a remarkable role, behind the scenes, in orchestrating the Senate Republicans' selection of Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to succeed embattled Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., as majority leader in late December. Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, had one word for the White House's involvement: "breathtaking." Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed: "There is almost no historical precedent for a president getting involved in any fashion in a congressional leadership battle."

Presidential Prerogatives

Still, not everybody on Capitol Hill is troubled by Bush's assertive approach.

"This administration clearly feels that the executive branch has historic prerogatives that ought to be defended, and they are prepared to take personal heat, as Vice President Cheney did over energy policy in the GAO fight," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. "The president is asserting the historic prerogatives of the president that he thinks, in some ways, Clinton allowed to be eroded."

Cheney has spoken bluntly of his conviction that Congress in recent history has invaded powers within the White House's purview. "In 34 years [in Washington], I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and [of] the ability of the president of the United States to do his job," Cheney said during a January 2002 interview with ABC's This Week. "We've seen it in cases like this before, where it's demanded that the presidents cough up and compromise on important principles."

"One of the things that I feel an obligation on-and I know the president does too, because we talked about it-is to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them," Cheney continued. "We are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 or 35 years."

Despite the White House's continuing efforts to maximize its power, many public policy experts predict that after the war in Iraq is over and the nation shifts its attention back to domestic issues, Congress will reassert itself. They say that lawmakers-and not just Democrats-will more aggressively resist some of the president's legislative priorities.

It is already apparent that Bush will have to fight for his proposed $726 billion 10-year tax cut. On March 25, three Senate Republicans joined Democrats in passing an amendment to the fiscal 2004 budget resolution that would slash the new tax cuts by more than half. But administration officials remain confident that the president will get much of what he wants. They point out that the vote was only the opening salvo in what is likely to be a protracted battle before final tax legislation is enacted.

On another front, Senate Democrats have certainly not been timid in challenging Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. But although their filibuster reflects how a minority in the Senate can work its will, it is not a broad assertion of congressional prerogatives.

"That is taking place notwithstanding the contrary judgment of the Senate-meaning that if the members of the Senate voted tomorrow, more than 50 would vote to confirm him," said Chuck Cooper, who headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in the Reagan administration. "It's not Congress flexing its muscles; it's a determined minority, using a technique unique to the Senate."

Historians and political scientists have written that power runs in cycles among the three branches of government. They point to the executive branch's strength during the 1950s and much of the `60s; that period was followed by one in which Congress reasserted itself, first in response to growing public discontent over the Vietnam War, and later after the Watergate scandal erupted and President Nixon resigned.

Today, amid war in Iraq and constant fears of terrorism at home, it is not a surprise that the public looks to the commander-in-chief, not Congress, to take the lead. "This is cyclical, and the president, right now, is up," said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor. "He is the individual that people are looking to. The sense of reassuring, the sense of where the nation is going, is just not within the province of Tom Daschle or Bill Frist to provide the American people."

Others agree that the balance of power is likely to shift with events. "Looking at the broad historical sweep of American history, congressional powers tend to be greatest at times of peace and prosperity. The power of the president tends to be greatest at times of economic trouble and great threats," Lindsay said. "If you move back to times of rip-roaring prosperity and the threat stays away, then power will flow to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and Congress will be restored to a more prominent place. I wouldn't write the obituary for Congress yet, but don't be surprised if it is laid up in intensive care for a while."

No Blank Checks

At 85 and in his eighth Senate term, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., is one of the fiercest defenders of congressional prerogatives. Since 9/11, he has repeatedly castigated his colleagues for insufficiently defending their oversight power, in the debates over enacting broad new anti-terrorism tools, over creating a massive Homeland Security Department, and over waging war in Iraq.

Byrd, the Senate's longest-serving member, will not be quieted by predictions that Congress's diminished role is just a temporary phenomenon. He is always ready to cite relevant provisions of the Constitution, a copy of which is never missing from his left breast pocket.

In February, before the war began, Byrd took to the Senate floor to decry the fact that, even as U.S. citizens face the threat of chemical or biological attack, "this chamber is silent." He scolded, "On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual here in the Senate.... We are truly sleepwalking through history."

Byrd was equally plainspoken at a session with reporters at The Christian Science Monitor in January. "In the days since September 11, 2001, we have seen power shift to the executive branch," he said. "Without a Congress willing to stand up for its prerogatives, and without a public that understands the importance of equal branches of government and separation of powers, that shift will gain the speed of a downhill truck."

In recent days, Byrd has balked at Bush's request for wide discretion over how to allocate funds in the pending fiscal 2003 supplemental spending bill for the war in Iraq and homeland security. "Count me out when you ask for these additional flexibilities," Byrd told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a March 27 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. "Congress will respond to the needs whenever the case is made, but we can't afford to give this administration, or any other administration, a blank check.... The people have the right to know how their monies are spent and to believe that they're being spent prudently."

Such rebukes from Byrd are nothing new. But he is gaining support from others who are also increasingly concerned that some administration officials are overreaching. Take GAO chief Walker, who calls himself a student of history and is quick to point out that Congress is the branch of government "most representative of the people."

Walker declared, "In the final analysis, there is a reason that Congress was in Article I [of the Constitution] and a reason that Congress sits up on a hill, looking down at the White House. While, obviously, deference needs to be given to the executive branch in matters of foreign policy and matters of national security, and in times of war, that does not mean a blank check," he said. "It also requires active interaction and oversight by Congress."

Blind Oversight

Congress hasn't found it easy to perform its oversight role since Bush took office, however. Plenty of elbows have been thrown between lawmakers seeking information and executive branch officials resisting those requests.

Members of Congress had to issue threats to get answers about the Justice Department's implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act, the post-9/11 law that gave the government sweeping investigative powers to combat terrorism. Last year, House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., became so incensed by the Justice Department's failure to respond to questions submitted by him and ranking member John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., that he told National Public Radio he was considering issuing a subpoena, a move that would have escalated the situation considerably.

Sensenbrenner called Ashcroft's Justice Department the least cooperative of any Justice Department in his 24 years on Capitol Hill. The chairman even went so far as to say that if responses to the questions were not forthcoming, Congress might allow the act to expire in 2005. "The Framers of the Constitution gave Congress the power to do oversight over the executive branch," he told NPR.

The threats worked. Justice finally provided answers last October, about four months after the questions were submitted. In an October 17 statement, Sensenbrenner said he was "satisfied" with the answers.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, agreed in an interview that "getting information from the Justice Department under Ashcroft is like pulling teeth." But Grassley sees it as an institutional problem, and said it had also been difficult to get responses when Janet Reno led the department.

Grassley said he has had no problem in asserting his oversight powers with the executive branch. As for his colleagues who worry about presidential usurpation of Congress's powers, Grassley added, "It doesn't matter to me what the president thinks, unless I want to take it into consideration. He didn't elect me-the people of Iowa elected me. I am a trustee of the people, not a messenger boy for the president."

But Leahy had a far more negative, withering take on the Bush administration's actions to avoid oversight. He and some other Senate Judiciary Committee members have sent the Justice Department 28 requests for oversight information, dating back to July 2001. The department has not responded to any of them.

Ashcroft "basically ignores most of the requests, but at least I give him credit for being bipartisan-he ignores Republican requests, too," Leahy said in the interview. "And this is the man who [when he was a senator] thought he should hold up judicial nominations and everything else when the attorney general didn't give us what we wanted."

Several members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also reacted angrily when the administration canceled, at the last minute, testimony by the top official in charge of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance in Iraq, who was to appear at a March 11 hearing. They also were surprised to learn from that day's newspapers that the administration was seeking bids from U.S. corporations on reconstruction contracts for Iraq.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., a committee member, told reporters that he found it "outrageous" that Congress was kept in the dark while such bids were solicited. "I think the administration believes that they can get away with it, that the Congress will just not do anything about it," he said.

Hagel, another committee member, has also been miffed at the administration's dismissive attitude toward Congress. He bristled that Bush, at a March 6 press conference, had referred to Congress as "the spenders." Hagel responded sarcastically that such presidential rhetoric "certainly encourages warm feelings," according to an account in the Omaha World-Herald.

The administration's words and actions have prompted some damning assessments of its approach to Congress. "They are consumed with secrecy," Mann said. "They have cut Congress off, and there are many Republicans who have felt that the briefings that they have had on Iraq have been less informative than reading the daily newspaper."

"Congress finds itself very much boxed in," said Baker, saying that this era is akin to the period before the Civil War. Back then, he said, "the Senate was where the great debates took place. And that's where they should be taking place today, but they aren't."

]]>

Senate debate over homeland security bill heats up

Kirk Victor and Brody Mullins — Tue, 30 Jul 2002 00:00:00 -0400

In an ominous sign for homeland security legislation, the Senate's senior Democrat accused President Bush Tuesday of undermining the Constitution's most fundamental doctrines, while a senior Republican blasted Democratic delaying tactics and urged Bush to play hardball on the issue.

In a harangue on the Senate floor that ended in a rare round of applause, Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said the Bush administration's proposal to create the Homeland Security Department guts the system of checks and balances by giving the department's secretary the authority to spend money and reorganize without congressional advice.

While administration officials have said the proposed department needs managerial flexibility to combat terrorists, Byrd said although al Qaeda "may not be encumbered by constitutional limitations on its powers … I would scarcely argue that al Qaeda sets an example for this government to follow." Byrd, who is considered to be the fiercest defender of congressional prerogatives, continued, "This administration shows little appreciation for the constitutional doctrines and processes that have preserved those freedoms for more than two centuries."

Byrd urged the Senate to put the brakes on the legislation in order to fully digest its impact. "If ever there was a need for the Senate to throw a bucket of cold water on an overheated legislative process that is spinning out of control, it is now," he said.

Other senators also believe Congress is moving too quickly on the legislation, Byrd said. "We're all talking about this in the privacy of our offices, behind the closed doors of elevators and in our hideaways … We are rushing ahead to pass legislation, which many of us think is bad policy," he added. Byrd also took aim at Bush's claim that the department would not cost any more money, saying: "That sounds like a neat trick … This massive governmental reorganization is going to be costly. It is going to require the investment of real money. It cannot be done with the kind of creative accounting gimmicks you might expect to find at Halliburton Co. and Harken Energy Corp."

Separately, Senate Banking ranking member Phil Gramm, R-Texas, urged Bush to send a message to Senate Democrats by refusing to compromise on the homeland proposal, particularly on personnel issues. "I think the Democrats deserve a good blow upside the head on this issue," Gramm told National Journal in an interview Monday. "They are letting the status quo and the government employee unions dictate their policy, and basically they are denying the president the tools he needs to do the job he has been asked to do."

Gramm added that the president should stick up for himself. "If I were the president, I would go to war over this homeland security [issue]-I think the Democrats are putting special interests and status quo in front of homeland security-I think it is intolerable," he said. "I have suggested to more than a few people in the administration that they are not being treated right."

]]>

Justice Department

Kirk Victor and Elisabeth Frater — Thu, 28 Jun 2001 00:00:00 -0400

Established: 1870
Address: 950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20530
Phone: 202-514-2000
2001 Budget:: $21.5 billion
Employment:: 125,732
Web Site: www.usdoj.gov
Functions: The Justice Department provides the means for enforcing federal laws and furnishes legal counsel in federal cases. The department provides legal advice to the President, investigates federal crimes, and represents the executive branch in court. The department also operates federal prisons; oversees the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; and coordinates the work of the U.S. attorneys.

John Ashcroft
Attorney General
202-514-2001
None of President Bush's nominations has provoked more controversy than his choice of former Sen. Ashcroft of Missouri to be Attorney General. Blasted for what critics see as his smear campaign against the confirmation of Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White, an African-American, to be a federal district judge, as well as for his hostility toward abortion rights and for his opposition to desegregation plans in St. Louis and Kansas City in the 1980s, Ashcroft was confirmed by only a 58-42 vote. The 59-year-old Springfield native was Missouri's attorney general from 1976-84 and was governor for two terms before his election to the Senate in 1994. Ashcroft's far-right views were reflected in his voting record in 1997 and 1998, when he was tied as the most conservative Senator in National Journal's rankings. He lost his re-election bid against Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan, whose name remained on the ballot even after his death in an airplane crash. Early on as Attorney General, Ashcroft surprised some critics by naming minorities to several high-level Justice posts, advocating legislation against racial profiling, and dispatching attorneys to Cincinnati to investigate white-on-black police shootings. "There's no question that Ashcroft has not moved as far to the right and as fast as many people feared," said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of the liberal People for the American Way. Ashcroft, who is a graduate of Yale University and of the University of Chicago Law School, will have plenty of opportunity in the days ahead to show his hand more clearly on hot-button issues from affirmative action to abortion. He will likely find that the attorney general's post continues to be a lightning rod for controversy.

Larry D. Thompson
Deputy Attorney General
202-514-2101
Thompson may bring new clout to the No. 2 post because, unlike Ashcroft, he has plenty of trial experience. He'll undoubtedly be called upon to advise on litigation strategy in sensitive cases. A partner in the Atlanta law firm of King & Spaulding, the 55-year-old Thompson is no stranger to highly visible litigation, having served as U.S. Attorney in Atlanta from 1982-86. During his confirmation hearing, Thompson, an African-American, was warmly praised. He told the Senate panel that growing up as the son of a railroad laborer in Hannibal, Mo., he "could not have imagined 40 years ago" that he would one day appear before the Senate to be confirmed for a top government job. As he takes charge of the daily management of the department's bureaucracy, Thompson is not unfamiliar with Washington's ways. He provided behind-the-scenes advice to Clarence Thomas during the contentious battle over Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court. A graduate of Culver-Stockton College, Thompson received his law degree from the University of Michigan.

Return to Main Story

]]>

Reg reformers accused of sneak attack

Kirk Victor — Thu, 20 Aug 1998 00:00:00 -0400

Gary Bass is angry. The executive director of OMB Watch--a nonprofit advocacy group that monitors federal regulatory processes, focusing on the Office of Management and Budget--feels that he was "misled" recently by Senate Governmental Affairs Committee staffers.

Bass was prepared to testify before the panel in late July about a bill that would require OMB to make biennial reports to Congress detailing the costs and benefits of regulatory programs. His assessment: The legislation would create "silly paperwork" and "yield very little information that is of use, policywise."

When advised that his testimony was not needed because the hearing was canceled, Bass inquired about the bill's status. He was not told of plans to move the measure on the Senate floor two days later. "They stuck it in the dead of night on to an appropriations bill," he complained. "It was pretty duplicitous. It's one thing to lose on an issue, it's another to [lose as a result of] tricks. The staff operated in a very inappropriate manner."

But a spokeswoman for Sen. Fred D. Thompson, R-Tenn., the committee chairman and bill sponsor, dismissed the criticism and pointed out that the proposal has bipartisan support. "This is a piece of good-government legislation that passed unanimously in the Senate and with no objection from the White House," said deputy press secretary Esther Campi. "We're not surprised that OMB Watch opposes it. They've opposed every piece of moderate, bipartisan reform legislation that has been offered in recent memory."

The Senate passed the measure on the night of July 29, as part of the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill, in its rush toward the August recess. Thompson was quick to note that Democratic Sens. John B. Breaux of Louisiana and Charles S. Robb of Virginia were co-sponsors, declaring, "We represent diverse political viewpoints, but we all agree that we need to improve our regulatory system and make it more open and accountable."

The House did not include a measure similar to Thompson's in its version of the appropriations bill, and differences between the two chambers will be worked out in a conference committee. The White House, for its part, doesn't have a firm position on Thompson's measure. A Clinton administration official said that there's been insufficient time to study the proposal, but added that such reports can be useful, though they take "a lot of staff time and work."

Meanwhile, the fate of Thompson's broader effort to overhaul the regulatory process in legislation that he's co-sponsoring with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is very much in doubt. Although Levin's tireless lobbying of the White House was recently rewarded by an endorsement of the bill by OMB, the time remaining in the session to consider it is limited.

Endorsement by OMB, furthermore, was conditioned on "no changes" being made to the measure--a condition that is extremely unlikely to be met. Some senior House Democrats in late July fired off a letter to OMB saying the bill takes a "one-size-fits-all" approach that fails to account for the wide range of agencies that it will affect. They warned the measure could have "serious, and perhaps unintended, adverse consequences."

]]>

Eyes on the Exits

Kirk Victor — Mon, 10 Aug 1998 00:00:00 -0400

Republicans across the ideological spectrum generally agree that an ugly, prolonged standoff with the White House this fall over the appropriations bills must be avoided. They learned that lesson when President Clinton outmaneuvered them during the government shutdowns of the winter of 1995-96. These days, Congress has high approval ratings, the economy is booming and the public is content. The last thing Republicans want is to undermine those good feelings. "The American people would not countenance a breakdown" over spending priorities, said Rep. John Edward Porter, R-Ill., chairman of the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Subcommittee. "It just won't happen."

The trouble is, Republicans are somewhat empty-handed as they go home to face the voters in the midterm elections, given the don't-rock-the-boat strategy they've followed since hammering out the ballyhooed five-year balanced budget deal with Clinton in 1997. Congress's most notable achievements since then? Passing two political no-brainers: mammoth highway legislation full of local pork projects and a bill to overhaul the much-hated Internal Revenue Service. In the first six months of 1998, Congress passed about half as many measures that were signed into law as was the case at similar points in the past two election years.

"This is a remarkably issue-less election," said Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Interior Subcommittee. "In one sense, incumbents in both parties would just as soon keep it issue-less, but at the same time, they want something to point to their own strongest supporters to show why those supporters should come out."

Republican lawmakers plan to use the remaining weeks until the targeted Oct. 9 adjournment to try to put their stamp on the appropriations measures and to move a few other big bills -- such as health maintenance organization reform and tax cuts -- that will energize their hard-core supporters or inoculate themselves from Democratic attack. But their attempts to score political points in the final weeks of the session won't be without risks or complications, and it's far from clear that the leadership can achieve the discipline needed for a quick and easy escape.

Ideological divisions continue to tear at the GOP, especially in the House, where hard-charging conservatives this summer have been attaching controversial riders embodying their pet legislative agenda-items to the appropriations measures. The conservatives are determined to press their case more effectively than last year, when they felt GOP leaders tilted too far to accommodate Democratic spending programs.

"The leadership is weak -- and I don't mean that as a reflection on the leadership's ability -- but it's a matter of arithmetic, sheer numbers," said former Congressional Budget Office director Robert D. Reischauer, referring to the House GOP's slender 11-seat edge. "When you have narrow majorities, you can't afford defections. All the members know that, and so they don't play team ball, because they think they can get more out of their leaders by acting as renegades."

The trick for Republican leaders is to shape the spending bills so that they appeal to core conservative supporters who are the most likely to go to the polls -- without alienating important swing voters or damaging the electoral prospects of moderate incumbents, some of whom are viewed as highly vulnerable.

On the right, the Christian Coalition and other activists have sought signals in the closing months of the session that Republicans are addressing their concerns. They haven't been disappointed. GOP hard-liners have used appropriations measures to turn up the heat on abortion-related issues; to limit support for the International Monetary Fund; and to press, albeit unsuccessfully, to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

But to successfully negotiate the shoals ahead, the leadership must also protect Republicans on voter-friendly issues like HMO reform. "Republicans have to make sure that they take the HMO stuff off the table," said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster and partner at Alexandria, Va.-based Public Opinion Strategies. "As long as Republicans have something that they are for, it kind of cuts the legs out from underneath the Democrats."

Further complicating the Republicans' year-end strategy is the onrushing investigation of Clinton, an investigation that could even result in impeachment proceedings this year. Though allegations of perjury in the Lewinsky affair may weaken Clinton's negotiating position in dealing on the spending bills, Republicans recognize the dangers in overplaying their hand against a popular president. "It is a hand grenade sitting out there ready to explode on anybody who handles it," said House Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston, R-La. "It could blow up on the Democrats. It could blow up on the Republicans. We just don't know."

But just because a 1995-style showdown, and resultant government shutdown, are unlikely this year doesn't mean there won't be plenty of threatening noise. Expect a healthy measure of bellicose posturing in September, as Republicans turn up the rhetoric to champion their spending priorities, and Hill Democrats and Clinton answer in equally partisan terms.

Already, the president and other White House officials have blasted many of the major appropriations bills making their way through the House and Senate and have issued a string of veto threats. They have attacked GOP proposals to sharply cut or even eliminate a slew of education and other social programs, to "roll back environmental protections" and to deny funds for statistical sampling in the 2000 census. With Congress behind on passing the 13 measures, a fallback continuing resolution -- "CR" in Washington-speak -- on Oct. 1 seems a foregone conclusion, but even reaching agreement on CRs can be troublesome.

On July 31, a seemingly anxious House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., urged Clinton to disavow that he is purposely pursuing a shutdown strategy designed to gain political advantage. "We want to publicly reaffirm our determination to keep open the vital functions of the federal government at the end of this fiscal year," the two leaders wrote to the president. "We ask you to give the same reassurance to the American people."

Just a few days later, Clinton responded by drawing a line in the sand. "The last budget of the 20th century should be preparing our nation for the challenges of the next," he said during an Aug. 3 speech, in which he vowed to veto the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. "I will not accept a budget that fails to do this." Pressed subsequently by reporters about whether the president "would veto any continuing resolution and thereby trigger another government shutdown," White House spokesman Barry Toiv replied: "He has now given the Congress a fair warning.... They're the ones creating this issue."

A Game Of Chicken

Congressional Democrats, too, are poised to attack. They plan to argue that in failing to even pass a budget resolution -- something that was supposed to be done by April 15 -- and in ducking other major issues, Republicans have proved themselves incompetent. "If the general impression is that they have not done their work, we can create the image that this crowd can't shoot straight... as they did to us in 1994," said House Minority Whip David E. Bonior, D-Mich.

Democrats will also try to make some political hay by exploiting the GOP's internal divisions. Rep. David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, having served on it 29 years, questions whether the Republican leadership will resist the demands of the most conservative, take-no-prisoners wing of the party.

"It's like the guy who's in a game of chicken, driving 100 miles an hour down the road. He's terrified, but he keeps stepping on the accelerator," Obey said. "I don't see what their endgame is. What they have done in every instance is to respond to the temporary pressure of the moment, depending upon which group in their caucus squeezed them."

Some rank-and-file Republicans are sweating so much over the possibility of a replay of a politically damaging denouement this year that about a dozen of them recently circulated a letter urging their colleagues to stand by the leadership on procedural matters. The letter, ultimately signed by a majority of the House GOP, even recommends disciplinary action, including loss of committee chairmanships, against Republicans who don't fall in line. "This is truly the time of the year when the majority party shows the public that it can govern -- that means passing the appropriations bills, obviously," said Rep. Bob Ehrlich, R-Md., one of the authors of the letter.

Even top GOP leaders, however, sometimes cannot resist stepping out of line for their own political purposes. For instance, tensions between Livingston and Majority Leader Richard K. Armey of Texas -- both of whom would like Gingrich's job should he leave to run for president -- have hampered the movement of some appropriations bills. Other powerful chairmen also have their own prerogatives that occasionally run counter to the party line.

Ultimately, even hard-line Republicans recognize the constraints facing their leaders as they struggle to finish the 105th Congress's business in a manner that pleases, or at least doesn't annoy, voters. Many conservatives may be satisfied if the proposals they champion are simply given a fair airing. For example, when the House on July 21 overwhelmingly rejected their push to eliminate funding for the NEA, members of the Conservative Action Team -- who call themselves CATs -- remained sanguine.

"It put everybody on record," said two-term Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., the CATs chairman, of the NEA vote. "A lot of people wanted to have it both ways: They wanted to go to their Christian Coalition base and say, 'I don't think we should have NEA funding for obscene art,' and then go to their donors at the country club... and say, 'Oh yeah, I'm with you; I think we should have funding for the NEA.' "

But the GOP leadership, in an adroit move, also took the opportunity to use the battle over NEA funding to help a vulnerable moderate incumbent. After funding for the agency was eliminated on a technical motion on the House floor, it was Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, R-Conn., who was chosen to make the parliamentary motion to restore the full $98 million.

Johnson, first elected in 1982, barely survived her re- election bid two years ago, after she was pilloried for being too soft in her role as chairwoman of the Standards of Official Conduct (Ethics) Committee when it investigated Gingrich. By taking the lead on a high-profile, controversial measure and winning, Johnson may well get a bounce in support back home. "Clearly there are a lot of votes that people perceive to have political value, and the NEA obviously was seen as some value to Nancy Johnson," said House Democratic Caucus chairman Vic Fazio of California.

Still, no-nonsense conservatives did not seem put off by the maneuvers to help Johnson. Many of them were first elected in the Republican takeover of 1994 but these days talk more often of pragmatism than of revolution. "I personally have learned that we need to do things incrementally and act strategically," McIntosh said.

As for the endgame on the appropriations measures, Rep. Tom A. Coburn, R-Okla., one of the most aggressive members of the CATs, predicts that this Congress will adjourn with more of a whimper than the bang that he, personally, would prefer. A spending agreement will be hammered out at the 11th hour, he said, adding, "Congress is not noted to be typically courageous in an election year."

Veto Threats And Exit Fees

Administration officials insist, at least publicly, that the current veto threats have nothing to do with rousing core Democratic constituencies. Perhaps, but there is something about the prospect of a messy appropriations process that seems to make them smile. "We don't perceive this to be some act of base- mobilizing, as I think possibly [the Republicans] do," said Lawrence Stein, Clinton's director of legislative affairs, while quickly adding, "I shouldn't characterize their motives."

Other White House staffers are not so circumspect. Given the virtual certainty that Republicans will fail to finish the 13 appropriations bills on time, they are ready to join Capitol Hill Democrats on the attack in exploiting GOP fissures. The mantra, said a White House aide, might go like this: "The people didn't send them here to do CRs.... They were so incompetent this year, they couldn't even finish a budget. What did they do this year? They renamed an airport and they renamed a lake."

Such battles in the final weeks of the session "could be very important," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. "First of all, they will determine whether there is or is not any core national issue that infuses all of these campaigns. At this point, there are a lot of issues being discussed, but there certainly is not a national texture to this campaign." And Mellman, pointing to managed care and education funding as two winners for Democrats, added, "What happens in these closing weeks will give individual candidates some additional arrows in the quiver."

Yet, as they head into this fall, Democrats will have to sort out their own conflicts over ideology and political strategies. "There are some Democrats who would rather have an issue than an accomplishment," a Clinton aide said. "The President always wants to take a good step forward." There have been times this year, for instance, when the White House has made quiet overtures to House Republicans on issues, hoping House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri -- who might disapprove -- would never find out.

At the same time, administration strategists will undoubtedly feel pressure from some Hill Democrats who want to go home, and Clinton cannot be too heavy-handed as he tries to pressure them to hang around Washington to increase his bargaining power. And Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill to some extent recognize, as do Republicans, that voters don't have much of an appetite for warfare in Washington, even if Clinton did come out on top following the battles of 1995-96.

So what would Clinton like to get done? Anything from his own priority list, especially initiatives that help him keep his job-approval numbers up as he continues to wrestle with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

The president started the year with a long wish list of spending and tax-break proposals. In truth, the White House never expected Republicans to give away much in an election year. They knew the bonanza was never going to be as great in fiscal 1999 as it was in 1998, when both parties built plenty of padding into the first year of the five-year budget blueprint. Clinton's prospects for success declined further when the demise of a mammoth Senate tobacco bill took with it the $65.5 billion in tobacco tax money he counted on over five years to help pay for his new spending initiatives.

For the White House, the negotiations now are more about fighting the GOP over spending cuts in each appropriations measure, than about making great strides to get new spending to Clinton's desk. The best-case scenario, according to administration officials, is that Clinton might be able to make a "downpayment" this year, with some Republican backing, on his priorities, particularly in the area of education and training initiatives. The president would also be happy to get funding for the IMF, and perhaps some tax breaks for pensions and child care if there's a tax bill this fall.

The president's economic team knows Republicans are in a powerful rush to head home and campaign early in October. And with Gingrich openly talking about wrapping things up in CRs to get out of town, Clinton has some leverage to try to force the Republicans to pay an "exit fee" to win his signatures -- in the form of money for his favorite initiatives. "When people feel the pressure to get things done, there can be an ocean shift to do it," said a White House official.

Members of Clinton's economic team who've been around the longest say they've learned a couple of things about dealing with the GOP on the budget: 1) Republicans' ideological splits make everything more difficult to bring to the finish line and 2) the GOP caves to external political pressure. To take advantage of that posture and move things closer to his agenda, Clinton needs Republican allies -- to apply pressure from within Congress. At the same time, the president will use the bully pulpit (and carefully crafted, poll-tested rhetoric) to bolster his position and cajole special-interest groups to increase the pressure coming from outside Capitol Hill.

All the while, that looming investigation of Clinton may well have an impact in the waning days of the session. "I think there has always been a strategy on Gingrich's part to put the president up against the end of the session with the Starr report floating up here to complicate things," Fazio said. "My current reading is that [Republicans] are still rather chary of taking the president on, and I think they see the American people as not wanting them to pile on."

See You Next Year

In the world of budgets and fiscal policy, 1999 will be far more interesting to watch than 1998's election year. Why? Because irrespective of the results at the polls in November, Clinton will be thinking more and more about his legacy. And early on next year, his ambition will be to win approval for legislation to ensure the solvency of Social Security.

Second, after dealing with Social Security, Washington will leap on the sizable budget surplus, which offers temptations for legislative mischief by both parties. And third, the White House and some members of Congress will try to raise the budget ceilings established in the 1997 five-year balanced budget agreement.

The spending ceilings, set when Washington was still trying to erase the deficit, are viewed by some as unrealistically restrictive in a world of large surpluses. Skirmishes over tinkering with the spending caps have already flared up this year -- and will continue this fall -- as conservatives worry that Washington may be loosening its belt too quickly. In an Aug. 4 letter, Gingrich and Livingston asked Clinton not to demand any funding increases for specific programs this fall without also identifying offsetting cuts to ensure the spending doesn't violate last year's ceilings.

A renewed battle is all but certain next year, as budget hawks and activists on the right fight efforts by Clinton and other Democrats (and probably some Republicans, too) to fund new government programs or favorite initiatives, including tax cuts. That clash is likely to be contentious and protracted, but there is nothing all that new about it.

"What you always have to remember about budget disputes is that these are battles in an ongoing war, a war without an end," Reischauer said. "People often talk about them, particularly in the press, as if in the war itself there is going to be a winner and a loser, but the combatants know that they have to deal with each other again next year."

]]>

"Acting" appointments outrage lawmakers

Kirk Victor — Mon, 18 May 1998 00:00:00 -0400

To Sen. Fred D. Thompson, it's not even a close call: The Clinton administration is "ignoring" the law.

"I don't know of any other way to put it," huffs the Tennessee Republican. His indignation is directed at the administration's practice of filling lots of top executive branch jobs with officials who serve for lengthy periods on an "acting" basis, without Senate confirmation. The Governmental Affairs Committee chairman contends that the White House--in failing to submit nominations to the Senate more expeditiously--is disregarding Congress's role in the confirmation process, as spelled out in the Constitution.

"We have a government now that is more and more operating without the Constitution," Thompson said in an interview. "The executive branch is not fulfilling its responsibilities to give Congress the opportunity to exercise its advice and consent powers. We've got to do something about it."

"Acting" officials hold 20 per cent of the Cabinet-level department jobs that require Senate confirmation--64 out of 320 slots, according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) survey taken at the end of February. For a majority of those 64 posts, the administration had not even sent a nomination up to Capitol Hill.

In the Commerce Department, for instance, James F. Holmes has manned the critical position of Census Bureau director on an acting basis since January. The administration has yet to nominate anyone to the post, even as partisan spats continue over how to get the most accurate population count in the 2000 census, which has huge political implications.

Similarly, as allegations of scandal swirled about the administration, an acting appointee, John C. Keeney, headed the Justice Department's Criminal Division for two and a half years before a nomination was finally sent to the Senate earlier this year. The nominee, James K. Robinson, has yet to be confirmed.

In addition, Walter E. Dellinger III assumed the important post of Solicitor General on an acting basis in 1996 and went on to represent the government before the Supreme Court for an entire term of the Court--more than 14 months. The liberal Dellinger was a controversial figure on Capitol Hill, and President Clinton never submitted his name for Senate consideration. Rather, he waited until Dellinger resigned before choosing a nominee--Seth P. Waxman, who was confirmed last November.

Thompson and other senior lawmakers in both parties argue that such lengthy tenures for acting officials fly in the face of the 1868 Vacancies Act. The law states that if an executive branch post that requires Senate confirmation is vacant because of an illness, resignation or death, the President may fill it on a temporary basis, but for no more than 120 days. If a nomination is submitted within the 120-day period but the Senate takes no action, then the person serving in an acting capacity may remain until the nominee is confirmed. If the nominee is rejected by the Senate or withdraws, then the acting official may remain in office for another 120 days from that date.

Despite these requirements, each department in the Clinton administration has had at least one temporary officer who served more than 120 days before the President submitted a nominee to the Senate. Of the 64 acting officials tallied up by the CRS in late February, 43 had served beyond the 120-day limit.

The White House contends that the law is impractical and outdated--out of step with an increasingly contentious confirmation process that involves intense Senate scrutiny of nominees and requires the administration to examine the backgrounds of all potential nominees meticulously. "The reality is that the vetting process has become a much longer and more involved process, in good measure because of the lengths to which the Senate has gone in delving into every possible element of an individual's life," said White House spokesman Barry J. Toiv. "If they are going to do it, we have to do it--and that takes a real long time."

Still, senior Republican and Democratic Senators are concerned that the courts are misinterpreting the law and that the Justice Department in particular is defying it. They've introduced measures to put an end to what they see as abuses. Thompson says the issue is "on the front burner." His committee was tentatively scheduled to take up the legislation on May 14.

"It is time for this institution to state in no uncertain terms," implored Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., at a Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on March 18, "that no agency--no agency, none, not even the Justice Department--will be permitted to circumvent the Vacancies Act or any other act designed to safeguard our constitutional duties."

The Justice Dodge?

The Justice Department is in the spotlight largely because of the debate over the appointment of Bill Lann Lee to be acting assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division.

Lee, an activist lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, was initially nominated to the post on July 21, 1997, after Isabelle Pinzler had served 181 days as the acting chief of the office. His nomination failed to pass the Judiciary Committee and never made it to the Senate floor. Attorney General Janet Reno nevertheless designated Lee as the acting chief of the division last Dec. 15. Six weeks later, on Jan. 29, Clinton again formally nominated Lee to the post.

But how can Lee remain as the acting head of the civil rights post long after the 120-day limit has been exhausted? Justice Department officials contend that the Attorney General has independent authority to make such appointments under a 1950 law that reorganized the department. The statute provides that "all functions of agencies and employees of the Department of Justice are vested in the Attorney General," and that she has the power to delegate those functions to other Justice officials.

The argument that Justice has such authority may not be a stretch. "I think Justice can take that position quite credibly," said Michael J. Gerhardt, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Though the Justice Department has used it for nearly five decades, the argument still infuriates a number of Senators. Thompson at his March 18 committee hearing pressed Daniel Koffsky, a special counsel in the Justice Department's office of legal counsel, to say whether there are any time constraints within which the President must make a nomination. "There is no precise limit," Koffsky responded. "There is a duty on the part of the President to submit a nomination, just as there is a duty on the part of the Senate to act on the nomination."

Asked about the two and a half years that an acting official led Justice's Criminal Division, Koffsky said it was permissible. Thompson, however, dismissed as "an absurd interpretation" the suggestion that Congress would "completely divest itself of any say with regard to these important positions for an entire term, or two and a half years, or three years."

Less than 10 days after the hearing, Thompson was further troubled when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused to invalidate the decisions of Jonathan L. Fiechter, a career government employee who served from 1992 until last fall as acting director of the Treasury Department's Office of Thrift Supervision, without ever being nominated. Thompson said the ruling showed the "necessity for legislation" to make it absolutely clear that no administration can duck its obligation to make timely nominations. His draft bill would cover all executive branch posts, limit recess appointments and retain the 120-day limit, among other steps.

Senate veterans share the view that the administration is taking a cavalier attitude toward its constitutional duties. They include Republican Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who has introduced his own bill, and John Glenn of Ohio, the senior Democrat on the Governmental Affairs Committee. Such concern may give legislation a fair shot at passage, even in a truncated election-year session.

Glenn, while chairing that committee in 1988, secured the passage of amendments to the 1868 Vacancies Act, giving the President more flexibility by increasing the time an acting official may serve to the currently allowed 120 days--up from the 30 days that the law previously mandated. The Senate report accompanying the 1988 measure stressed that the Vacancies Act was "the exclusive authority" for filling vacancies in posts that require Senate confirmation. "We saw this problem building up, through the Reagan and Bush administrations, and we thought we had corrected it," Glenn said recently.

But Glenn said that, given the Justice Department's view that the changes did not diminish the Attorney General's independent authority, Congress must revisit the issue so that government officials "cannot interpret the law in any way except to preserve the advice and consent role of the Senate." He added: "Right now, it is being bypassed."

Byrd's Blast

In clashes between the executive and legislative branches, no lawmaker makes the case for Congress's prerogatives with more passion and eloquence than Byrd.

When he came to testify before the Governmental Affairs Committee in March, the 80-year-old lawmaker--one of only three Senators in history to have been elected to seven six-year terms--was clutching a copy of the Constitution. "Each time a vacancy is filled by an individual in violation of the act, yet another pebble is washed off the riverbank of the Senate's constitutional role," he said. "As more and more of these pebbles tumble downstream, the constitutional riverbank weakens until, finally, it will collapse." He minced no words in attacking the Justice Department's "unmitigated arrogance."

Byrd's legislation would deny pay to anybody performing the duties of a post that had been vacant in excess of the 120-day limitation. Like other proposals, Byrd's would also make clear that the Vacancies Act supersedes other laws, unless another law expressly says that it takes precedence. Such language would finally wipe out the claim of Justice and other departments that they have authority independent of the Vacancies Act.

A House proposal by Judiciary Committee chairman Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., also gives the Vacancies Act precedence over other statutes, but would require the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to choose an acting officer for a job when no nominee has been submitted for it within 120 days.

Even as Congress scrambles to protect its constitutional role, White House officials such as Toiv note that lawmakers have exacerbated the problem by increasingly politicizing the confirmation process--a notion with which Glenn is sympathetic. "Congress shares some of the blame here," Glenn said, "because it has become so partisan that people are being held up in the process for something that they had nothing to do with."

Another factor slowing down the process is the exponential growth in the number of executive branch jobs that require confirmation. "The consensus in the public management community is that there are too many presidential appointments," said Herbert N. Jasper, a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration, a Washington consulting group. "The number has grown as party control of the White House has changed. Each new administration thinks that to get control of the bureaucracy, it needs to have more of its own people. This, in our view, is illusory."

Paul C. Light, who helped draft the Vacancies Act amendments in 1988, when he was a Democratic congressional staffer, agreed with Jasper that the more basic matter of the executive branch's spiraling growth must be addressed. "Ultimately, I don't see a radical improvement in the time limits of presidential appointees until we deal with the number of the positions," Light said.

But Byrd argues that such concerns are secondary. He believes that the overriding issue of redeeming Congress's constitutional role must be dealt with now. "If the Constitution can be chipped away, a little here and a little there," he says, "it will not be long until it will be left in shreds."

]]>

Regulatory Reformers

Kirk Victor — Tue, 17 Feb 1998 00:00:00 -0500

They are the quintessential political odd couple, brought together by a shared determination to make federal bureaucrats more accountable. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee chairman Fred D. Thompson, R-Tenn., whose imposing presence, folksy manner and camera-friendly mug landed him roles in nearly 20 motion pictures before he jumped into politics in 1994, has teamed up with liberal Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, who looks forever rumpled and professorial, with trademark granny glasses that slip down his nose.

Their proposal, which has attracted some bipartisan support, requires federal agencies to better justify major rules that they write. Agencies would have to weigh whether the benefits of their regulations make them worth the cost; determine publicly that the rules they choose are better than other alternatives; and assess how environmental, health and safety regulations would reduce risks to the public.

On the surface, the measure looks like an election-year winner. After all, what's the downside of getting tough on Washington rule makers? Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., himself has said he wants the Senate to spend one-third of its time on "oversight"--investigating whether laws work and how well agencies perform.

Thompson insists the legislation has nothing to do with scoring political points and everything to do with making government more open. "I don't consider requiring regulators to tell us what they are doing as beatin' up on them," he said in an interview. "What this does is pull back the curtain. It doesn't tell anybody what to do."

Levin, say sources on and off Capitol Hill, has long wanted to reform the regulatory process and is determined that conservatives with zealous antiregulatory agendas should not drive the effort.

Rules must be "sensible and cost-effective," Levin said on Feb. 4, when he and Thompson unveiled a slightly modified version of their bill, which they first introduced last June. The changes make clear that the bill does not override existing regulations and that it does not dictate regulators' decisions, but simply forces them to disclose some of their data.

Thompson's pitch is that the bill is really about letting people look over the federal government's shoulder and about lessening the burden that Uncle Sam puts on small businesses and local governments. But he knows that past campaigns to overhaul the regulatory process have sparked bitter brawls.

House GOP leaders had made the issue a key part of their Contract With America and pushed through a sweeping proposal in early 1995, only to watch it go up in smoke in the Senate. Then-Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan., also championed a comprehensive measure, but failed in three attempts to end Democratic filibusters. The Democrats blasted the GOP effort as an all-out assault on environmental laws and on safeguards to protect public health and safety.

Today Thompson is grappling with similar pressures, as environmental, labor and safety advocacy groups have lambasted the new proposal. "If people want to make this a grass-roots issue, we can win that battle," said David C. Vladeck, director of the Ralph Nader-founded Public Citizen Litigation Group. "I don't think people want to see the ability of the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] to regulate drugs, the ability of OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] to regulate workplace safety, and the ability of the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to protect our environment weakened--and this bill indisputably does that."

Karen Kerrigan, president of the Small Business Survival Committee, a Washington group that fights regulations on small businesses, counters that the bill is a "good, incremental step," but she still is braced for an assault from activists. "The likely suspects will be out there on TV and radio, running ads, saying it will be the end of mankind as we know it if this bill goes through," she said.

Thompson's agenda may also be complicated by lingering fallout from his committee's acrimonious hearings into fund-raising abuses in the last presidential campaign. The sniping is already in full swing over the report detailing the committee's findings.

When asked whether the panel had become a dysfunctional family, Thompson joked: "You mean my committee? No, we're not a family." The former trial lawyer who went on to become the Senate Watergate Committee's chief GOP counsel added that he didn't think his efforts would be hampered. "You have to get over things and move on," he said.

Still, Lott--who did not see eye to eye with Thompson over the fund-raising hearings, preferring a narrower focus on Democratic abuses--is a major wild card. A Lott spokeswoman denied that he harbors any ill will toward Thompson, adding that Lott "would look forward" to starting discussions with Thompson about regulatory reform.

The Thompson-Levin bill has attracted support from eight other Senators, including Governmental Affairs senior Democrat John Glenn of Ohio. But the sponsors' middle-of-the-road approach may have alienated some on both sides. Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla., a conservative stalwart in the regulatory reform wars, and Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle, D-S.D., so far are noncommittal about the bill. Last week a group of Democratic Senators wrote to Thompson urging him to take a go-slow approach to reform.

The Clinton Administration also is taking a wait-and-see attitude. "Before we embrace another comprehensive statute," said a senior Administration official, "we ought to make sure that we have road-tested other statutes," such as the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act.

In a truncated legislative session whose schedule is already bursting at the seams, Thompson and Levin will have to press hard to move their proposal. If they succeed, then the House, which has no companion bill, is likely to act, Thompson said. As he expresses optimism about the measure, the Tennessee lawmaker with presidential ambitions might well be talking about his own future when he says, "You know, timing is important."

]]>

FAA Revamp Hits Turbulence

Kirk Victor — Tue, 23 Dec 1997 00:00:00 -0500

Norman Y. Mineta, a former Democratic House Member from California, was upbeat as he recently outlined his blue-ribbon panel's sweeping proposals to overhaul the Federal Aviation Administration. As chairman of the 21-member, congressionally created National Civil Aviation Review Commission, Mineta stressed that unlike several other efforts since 1993 to tackle the FAA's budget and organizational problems, his panel had a consensus package.

Earlier studies that reached similar conclusions have been gathering dust. But Mineta is confident that his commission's recommendations--which were praised by Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater--have a far better shot at serving as the basis for legislation next year, when Congress is slated to consider reauthorization of the FAA.

The commission would free the agency from discretionary budget limits by tying its spending directly to its revenues. It also would put the air traffic system in the hands of a separate "performance-based organization" overseen by a private-sector board of directors. And the aviation industry would be given greater say in developing a game plan to improve safety. Without such changes, the panel warned, the country risks severe gridlock in the skies that will not only have devastating economic consequences, but also could dramatically increase the chance of air accidents.

Despite such huge stakes, even Mineta, a former chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee, knows his task is formidable. Making such fundamental changes to a federal agency will be a hard sell in Congress, where committees jealously guard their turf and entrenched bureaucratic ways.

Budget hawks are among those skeptical of a separate FAA funding scheme. Only half-jokingly, Mineta recounted that when he recently left the office of Rep. John R. Kasich, R-Ohio, the Budget Committee chairman, "I might as well have been [undergoing] a police frisk--you know, when they tell you to stand up against the wall and spread your arms and legs. Boy, he was tough."

If the current airline taxes were chucked and replaced with user fees, the tax-writing House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees would lose jurisdiction, a veteran House aide said. The Appropriations Committees also would be shut out, because funds from user fees would go directly to the FAA.

"It is going to be a fight. It is so much easier to maintain the status quo," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. "The fight will be whether we can convince especially the Finance Committee to view this very seriously."

Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., noted that another turf war is likely to erupt within the Clinton Administration. "The Department of Transportation, of course, wants the FAA under its wing," he said. "And the FAA likes the degree of control it has over the [air traffic] system at the present time, and may not be anxious to give it up." Gorton said elements of the aviation community are likely to wage "great battles" over who comes up with the money if the FAA were to be even partly weaned from its federal patron.

Much posturing already was evident within days of the study's release. Mineta and the other commission members face a struggle to keep their report out of the dustbin that others before it have fallen into.

]]>

Lawyers vs. Lawmakers

James A. Barnes and Kirk Victor — Mon, 04 Aug 1997 00:00:00 -0400

Call it a clash of cultures. On the one hand, career federal prosecutors build a case, gather evidence and then recommend whether there's enough ammunition to win a conviction. On the other, a committee of lawmakers holds hearings with an eye toward exposing and publicizing wrongdoing.

Good prosecutors work as a team, keep their cards close to the vest and stay as far from the spotlight as they can, while Members of Congress are independent operators who often engage in partisan one-upmanship, all the while hoping to attract the klieg lights.

In the past several weeks, the cultures have clashed in Washington. On one side is the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which is examining 1996 campaign finance improprieties. On the other side is the Justice Department, which is also investigating these allegations.

The most recent disagreement came as lawmakers, led by Governmental Affairs Committee chairman Sen. Fred D. Thompson, R-Tenn., pushed the Justice Department to sign off on immunity for a handful of peripheral players under investigation. He wanted them to testify before the committee about allegations that President Clinton's top fund raisers in the Asian-American community--Yah Lin (Charlie) Trie and John Huang--schemed to launder foreign money for contributions to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). But the prosecutors, jealously guarding their turf and cautious about losing leverage over any witness, would not accede to the committee's request.

Finally, on July 23, frustration boiled over. Even the Democrats on the committee, with the exception of Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, could not buy Justice's arguments against immunizing four Buddhist nuns who made contributions to the DNC at a Los Angeles temple fund-raiser last year attended by Vice President Al Gore.

By taking such a tough stance on immunity and providing little rationale for it, Attorney General Janet Reno has set herself up for unusually harsh criticism of her long-standing reluctance to appoint an independent counsel to look into alleged fund-raising abuses by President Clinton's reelection campaign.

Republican leaders charged that Reno is motivated by a desire to protect Clinton and Gore. Led by Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., who called the Attorney General ``General Stonewall Reno'' on NBC's Meet the Press, the GOP critics argued that the department's position was untenable. Some are even exploring how the 1978 independent counsel statute enacted in the wake of the Watergate scandal could be revised to force Reno's hand.

``There is a loss of confidence, and I think she simply has to request the appointment of an independent counsel or she will lose a lot of credibility,'' Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee said. ``It is really getting to be kind of ugly.''

On July 28, the department finally waived its right to hold up the immunity grant pushed by committee Republicans, but the entire process only exacerbated the tensions between Congress and Justice. The department's performance even puzzled some Democrats, who successfully fought to delay a committee vote on immunity until department lawyers could provide their rationale for not granting it.

Three Justice officials had come to Capitol Hill on July 22 to testify on why they opposed the proffer. By all reports, the performance was underwhelming. Citing their reluctance to discuss matters still under criminal investigation, the Justice officials declined to lay out in detail why they opposed granting immunity to bit players in foreign money-laundering schemes.

``The Justice Department people were taciturn,'' Lieberman said. ``I wish that they had pushed their own envelope a little bit in explaining their case,'' he added.

``They're asking our Members to take some pretty tough votes without supplying any facts to support their reasoning,'' said Democratic committee spokesman Jim Jordan. Indeed, some Democrats who felt that they had stuck their necks out to defend Justice on the immunity issue said the department should not ignore the fact that six of the panel's seven Democratic members voted for immunity.

Republicans complained that Justice sent over emissaries who were either insufficiently high-ranking or ill-informed about the investigation. Lieberman disputed that complaint, but he added that because the Attorney General ``is such a credible person . . . I wish she would take the opportunity to speak to the committee in closed session.''

But even that probably wouldn't mollify many Republicans who are starting to see partisan motives in just about every decision that the Justice Deparment has made on the 1996 fund-raising scandals.

While they were careful not to challenge the Justice officials' motives for not signing off on the committee's immunity grant sooner, Republican staff members claim that the delay--five days after the committee vote--precluded the GOP from adding Keshi Zhan to its witness list during the last week of hearings in July. Zhan, who was also granted immunity along with the four Buddhist nuns on July 23, played a key role in orchestrating some of Trie's laundered contributions, according to Republican investigators.

At a July 24 press conference, Reno attempted to depersonalize and depoliticize her disagreements with the Republicans. While she noted that Thompson and his committee have ``a very important role, which is oversight and legislation, our role is to investigate and to prosecute.'' She stressed ``it is just really very important that we work together, recognizing that we each have two separate roles and that we're each trying the best we can to perform those roles in the proper fashion.''

But congressional Republicans are reluctant to accept the notion that ordinary institutional tensions are at the heart of their feud with the Attorney General. ``We understand that there are differences in our responsibilities, but there are certain areas of comity which we think she has exceeded,'' said committee Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

The Republicans' problem is that they have little legal leverage. The Senate Judiciary Committee formally called on Reno to appoint an independent counsel in March. But under the statute, the Attorney General could turn down that request by simply setting forth her reasons in a letter to the committee, which she did in April. Congress can't require an Attorney General to appoint an independent prosecutor.

Specter has been exploring two other avenues to try to put the squeeze on Reno. During the Senate debate over the appropriations bill for the Departments of State, Justice and Commerce, Specter hinted that he might propose an amendment to the spending measure to modify the special counsel law, thereby triggering an appointment of an independent prosecutor in this case.

The combative Pennsylvanian, a former Philadelphia prosecutor, also suggested filing a lawsuit asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to make an appointment, on the ground that Reno has abused her discretion as a public official in not seeking an independent counsel.

Either way, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the author of the statute, argues that the law was carefully crafted to avoid congressional interference in prosecutorial decision making. ``The surest way to destroy the independent counsel statute would be for Congress to take on itself the power to initiate the petition [to the court for an independent counsel], because the Supreme Court's ruling was based on separation of powers that this [appointment power] remained in the executive branch,'' Levin said, referring to a 1988 ruling upholding the law. ``If we blow that line, we are going to lose the independent counsel statute.''

Even some Republicans are leery about following Specter into court to force Reno to act. ``I am not so sure about that,'' Hatch said. If the case got to court, one veteran GOP ethics attorney said, ``I think there would be a lot of deference given to the Attorney General's opinion.''

Four independent counsels have been appointed to investigate the Clinton Administration. But Republicans, who have never been big fans of the statute, are still not eager to expand the law in ways that might come back to haunt future GOP Presidents.

Meanwhile, the conflicts between Justice and the congressional Republicans are likely to continue. Thompson committee staff members say that the Republicans are considering more immunity requests for potential witnessess. ``We each have a job to do, and those jobs bang into each other,'' Lieberman said. ``I think there'll probably be some more bumping.''

]]>

Regulating Regulators

Kirk Victor — Mon, 14 Jul 1997 00:00:00 -0400

kvictor@njdc.com

A bipartisan group of Senators has fired the first shot in an effort to overhaul the government's regulatory process, and liberal public-interest groups are shooting back to try to derail the initiative. But they face an uphill battle given the breadth of support for the measure.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Fred D. Thompson, R-Tenn., chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, and Carl Levin, D-Mich., would require federal agencies to analyze proposed major rules to determine if the benefits justify the costs. Certain rules would have to undergo "risk assessments" to ensure they are "scientifically sound," and judicial review would be limited.

During the 104th Congress, Republicans were unable to win approval of far-reaching regulatory reforms because of strong criticism about the impact on the environment and public health. The new measure, according to a Democratic aide, would provide for a "more coordinated and consistent approach among regulatory agencies."

Nevertheless, Gary Bass, the executive director of OMB Watch, blasted the bill as "a boon for the special-interest and K Street lobbying corridor," and said it adds "enormous amounts of red tape" by putting agencies on "an endless treadmill of chasing their tails in rereviewing existing rules."

Despite the criticism, Thompson is committed to holding hearings on the measure, though the timing is up in the air, given his panel's campaign finance probe.

]]>

Justice: Pushing Reno Out Wouldn't Be Seemly

Kirk Victor and National Journal — Sat, 16 Nov 1996 00:00:00 -0500

on't look for Attorney General Janet Reno to go anywhere other than the enormous edifice at 10th Street and Constitution Avenue that's home to the Justice Department any time soon. She's happy to be at the helm of the department and recently told reporters, ``As I've said all along, if the President wanted me to stay, I would be honored to do so.''

Though the White House has not always been happy with her independent ways, her unquestioned integrity makes it highly unlikely that she would be jettisoned, especially when the President, his wife and other figures in his Administration are under fire for various alleged ethical and legal transgressions.

It would be especially unseemly to push Reno overboard at a time when she has initiated a preliminary review to determine whether an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate recent fund-raising practices of the Democratic Party. Reno already has recommended the designation of an independent counsel four times -- decisions for which she has sometimes been criticized by sources within the Administration. Some analysts note, however, that under the law, the Attorney General has had little latitude.

Substantively, Reno has not always seen eye to eye with the White House on criminal law enforcement matters. ``There has been some tug-and-pull--the President and White House are somewhat more conservative than Reno,'' said John D. Podesta, a former White House aide who is now teaching at Georgetown University and is himself in the running for a senior post on the White House staff. ``That's been a source of some friction, but she has [ultimately] been a team player.''

Reno's management of the department has also been criticized, but deputy attorney general Gorelick is said to have cracked the whip, imposing a tighter chain of command between the Attorney General's office and the division chiefs.

Reno, widely regarded as a straight shooter, remains a popular figure nationally. She's stressed such issues as the need to combat domestic violence and other ``pro-family'' themes. She is also an enthusiastic supporter of putting more police officers on the street under the Community Oriented Policing Services program.

Reno has said that her mild case of Parkinson's disease, which has caused a noticeable tremor in her left hand, doesn't interfere with her work. If she were to leave, forget the speculation that Clinton would tap Mickey Kantor, who is resigning from his post as Commerce Secretary. Though Kantor is well liked on Capitol Hill and by Clinton, his heavy political involvement as chairman of Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign does not make him an ideal candidate.

One surprising name that has surfaced as a possible replacement for Reno is that of former New York Gov. Cuomo, who immediately would be viewed--once again--as a prospective Supreme Court nominee. Another possibility would be one of the youthful rising stars among state attorneys general, such as Michael Moore of Mississippi, who has attracted national attention by aggressively pursuing litigation against tobacco firms.

]]>

Black View of the Convention

Kirk Victor — Tue, 13 Aug 1996 00:00:00 -0400

Black Americans seeking the lowdown on the goings-on among the Republican Party faithful here need look no further than Faye Anderson.

Anderson, the executive director of the Council of 100, a network of African-American Republican officials, entrepreneurs, educators and civic leaders, is serving as special correspondent for the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a trade group for the black press. She is also holding political chats on the Internet for NetNoir, an Afrocentric forum that will be accessible to America Online subscribers. After the convention, she'll file a report for Headway, a monthly magazine on minority politics.

Despite her Republican credentials, Anderson is not one to spew the standard upbeat line that tumbles automatically from most folks' mouths here. Her audience will be treated to an unvarnished report on the convention.

For example, Anderson is up-front in saying that she hopes the tone this year is a far cry from the atmospherics of four years ago in Houston. ``I was sitting in the hall when Pat Buchanan did his thing, and it was chilling,'' she recalled. ``He talked about taking back our streets--taking back from whom?''

When pressed on how she feels the Republican Party is doing in reaching out to minorities, Anderson said it has ``missed the opportunity'' to make inroads.

``The black middle class has the same concerns as middle-class whites,'' Anderson said with a tone of frustration. ``The traditional Republican message will sell in the black community.''

Her concerns boiled over when Robert Dole, the party's presidential nominee, recently declined a chance to speak before the NAACP's annual convention. Anderson wrote an op-ed article in The New York Times arguing that Dole ``could have connected with the delegates'' there by touting his own strong civil rights record.

``I have yet to hear from anyone in the Dole campaign. I would think that kind of piece begs for a response,'' she said. She pins the blame for such maneuvers on those whom she derisively refers to as ``gray suits''--the advisers to Dole who push ``wedge issues'' to try to score political points.

``Obviously the Republican Party has a winning mainstream message, or President Clinton would not appropriate it as shamelessly as he does,'' she added.

Given Clinton's move to grab so many Republican themes, Anderson said now is the perfect time to challenge blacks' overwhelming ties to Democrats. Instead, she said, the party has given the Christian Coalition and the anti-abortion movement disproportionate clout. ``This vocal, active, energetic minority is driving out everyone else,'' she said.

Anderson has had politics in her blood since she went to political rallies as a youngster with her mother, but she has traversed a lot of political territory since then. She was a Democrat, but after attending the 1984 Democratic National Convention, she was so put off by the party's failure to address the breakdown in values that she changed her allegiance.

Now she is fighting to effect change within the Republican Party. ``It's a good party, but I think it has lost its way--not in terms of values and not in terms of principles, but just in terms of strategy and tactics,'' she said.

Anderson, who coldly declines to reveal her age, saying that a woman who confides that information ``will tell anything,'' is almost plaintive as she talks of the party's failure to aggressively seek support from blacks.

``Given all the rhetoric in the last couple of years about `outreach' and `big tent,' I would have expected, if anything, that there would have been an increase--that's the surprise, that there has not been an increase,'' she said.

Despite such feelings, Anderson's theme to her audience will highlight the need to persevere. ``We have to keep plugging away--to give up would be to give up on having any political policy influence in this country,'' she said.

]]>