Category: Spring 2007 Newswire
President’s Trip Director Honed His Skills Campaigning in New Hampshire
RECHER
New Hampshire Union Leader
Greg Hellman
Boston University Washington News Service
3/30/07
WASHINGTON, March 30 — When Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast and the city of New Orleans in August of 2005, millions of people left homeless or without electricity looked to the president for comfort and aid in their time of need.
As President Bush visited the disaster zone four days later and confronted the difficult road ahead to recovery, White House senior advance representative Jason Recher of Rye, N.H., along with an entire team of 20 White House staffers and volunteers stood behind him. They planned each appearance, accommodation, travel logistic and detail to coordinate the president’s travels through the Gulf region.
In New Orleans, taking a helicopter tour with Mayor Ray Nagin to survey the devastation, Bush saw the city under water, homes and people alike swept away.
“The most difficult time I’ve had in this job was following Hurricane Katrina,” Jason Recher said, in a coffee shop near the White House. “We were down in the Gulf after the storm hit. Trying to get the logistics of a trip like that really is very trying and very fluid.”
As the President toured the devastated region, moving from state to state, he was accompanied by an entourage of staffers, security officials and military aides. The grueling pace quickly forged bonds of friendship between Recher and one particular military aide to the president.
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Christian Cabaniss and Recher first met during a NATO summit in Istanbul in 2004. The next year after Katrina struck they found themselves traveling together with the president throughout the Gulf Coast.
“Mostly what we did down there was see things and communicate that to the senior leadership,” Cabaniss said in a phone interview from his current station in Kabul, Afghanistan. “Jason was the eyes and the ears. Part of the challenge was there’s so much to see. But Jason walks into the room with no ego; he just wanted to get the job done.”
For 27-year-old Recher, however, planning the president’s travels both around the country and around the world, whether to a disaster relief zone or an international summit, is just another day at the office. His responsibilities include coordinating the many different groups involved in the president’s trips, including the Secret Service, the White House Military Office, host committees and cabinet agencies.
While he says he must pinch himself everyday to remind himself how far he has come, colleagues and friends alike praise him for a professionalism and an attention to detail that allowed him to rise up the ranks of the White House so quickly.
“He knows the important questions to ask and grills down into the details,” Joe Hagin, White House deputy chief of staff, said. “There’s always a lot of demands. When we’re traveling he can sense when something’s coming off track. He has good instincts and is confident enough to act on his instincts.”
Recher began developing those instincts at an early age when he attended St. John’s Preparatory School in Danvers, Mass. While still in high school, Recher volunteered on Ruth Griffin’s reelection campaign for New Hampshire Executive Council, where Griffin said he encouraged her to visit every town in her district.
“One of the smartest things I ever did was invite Jason Recher to help me with my campaign,” Griffin, who retired in January after two decades on the Council, recounted. “He came on board to help me with the nuts and bolts. I saw in Jason the promise of a young man with great principles and great integrity.”
While working for Griffin, whom Recher called one of his great political mentors, he recalls frequent stops at Evelyn Marconi’s Geno’s Chowder and Sandwich Shop, a state political landmark in Portsmouth, where they would meet with everyone from community members to former-first lady Barbara Bush.
“Ruth taught me the true value of New Hampshire retail politics,” Recher said. “Ruth also taught me the meaning of grassroots activism.”
In 1996, around the same time he was volunteering for Griffin, Recher also was working on John Sununu’s first campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. He went on to become the congressman’s first page after Sununu won the election.
“I would see him whenever he worked on the floor,” Sen. Sununu recalled. “He was quiet and enthusiastic; he’s a soft-spoken guy even now. He’s obviously very motivated and very disciplined.”
Only four years later, he left Boston College during his junior year to permanently join the Bush campaign in New Hampshire. Campaigning with George P. Bush, the president’s nephew, and coordinating youth events throughout the state, he never looked back. Come election night, he was a fully entrenched member of the Bush camp.
“I stayed with the campaign throughout, spent election night in Austin [and then] came home to New Hampshire for about 12 hours,” Recher reminisced. “Then, I hopped on a plane to Palm Beach and spent 36 days in Florida during the recount.”
After the Supreme Court’s landmark 2000 ruling, allowing Bush to assume office, Recher came to Washington to work on the president’s inauguration, a ceremony he would manage in 2005. In 2001 he organized a youth concert at the MCI Center featuring pop artists, including Jessica Simpson, 98 Degrees and Destiny’s Child.
Recher continued to volunteer in the advance office until 2003, while he finished his education at George Washington University. In 2004, he joined as an official staffer and was named trip director last May.
To date, he has traveled to more than 40 countries, including working the president’s recent tour through Latin America – not bad for a man who had never left the country before taking the job.
“I thought it was a great trip, and the president said several times it was one of his most memorable trips as president,” Recher said.
Even on official business Bush and his staff still find time for a little tourism. Trips to China, for example, included visits to the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square, Recher said.
“Beijing is a really unique place to go, an even more unique place to go with the leader of the free world,” Recher said. “You’re going to the heart of modern-day communism and you go on the Great Wall with the president. It’s kind of a pinch yourself moment.”
Of all the places he has traveled, and of all the people he has met, including world leaders, Recher insists members of the military still leave the greatest impression upon him.
“It really is inspirational for me every day to work with them,” Recher said.
As the president nears the final year-and-a-half of his term, Recher says he looks forward to returning to New Hampshire, where his parents and family still reside, and that he will welcome a break after an exhausting four years.
“I could leave here tomorrow and know that I’ve done my part to serve,” Recher said. “I’ve had an amazing experience here, but I’d love to come back to New Hampshire and return home.”
Above all, Recher’s friends and co-workers alike note his enthusiasm and caring for all those with whom he works. As Cabaniss prepared to go to Afghanistan, Recher organized one last gathering to send off his friend.
“Before I left he pulled all the New Orleans’ team together and took me to lunch at the Convention Center,” Cabaniss said. “We need more people like that.”
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Rep. McGovern: A Different Approach in the Rules Committee
RULES
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Priyanka Dayal
Boston University Washington News Service
March 30, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 30 – Every time he takes his seat in the cramped Rules Committee room on Capitol Hill, Worcester Democrat James P. McGovern is fulfilling his mentor’s dying wish.
His mentor was the late J. Joseph Moakley, a widely admired congressman from Boston and former chairman of the committee. Through every discussion, debate and dispute, Mr. Moakley’s portrait stares down at Mr. McGovern.
In 2001, Mr. McGovern recalled, when Mr. Moakley learned he was dying of leukemia, he had one request: he wanted Mr. McGovern, a former aide, to have his spot on the committee. His wish was granted, keeping a Massachusetts voice on one of the most important committees in Congress, which clears all legislation for debate on the House floor.
When Mr. Moakley gave his Rules seat to Mr. McGovern, he propelled the Worcester congressman to a critical role in the machinery of the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill. The Rules Committee, often called the “traffic cop” of the House, is a tool the House Speaker and party leaders use to assert majority rule and block initiatives from the minority.
While it is largely mysterious to people outside the Capitol, in power and influence, it is one of the most important panels in Congress: In the highly-structured House, it is the Rules Committee that sets the terms for debating legislation on the floor – deciding, for example, how long debate will last and whether amendments will be allowed.
And while Mr. McGovern is the second-ranking Democrat on the panel, he does not always hew the party line expected of its members. Mr. McGovern and other Democrats say that when Republicans ran the House, they violated traditional standards of openness and fairness.
Democrats, he said, are fairer than were Republicans, but “we’re not as open as I’d like.”
The Democrats, who gained control of the committee when the majority switched in the 2006 election, sometimes may disagree on how to structure or amend a bill. But Rules Democrats never act independently. If there is discord within the party, they don’t let the public see it. They are agents of the Speaker, party loyalists, who speak with one voice.
Unlike some Democrats, who prefer to set rules that guarantee a party victory, Mr. McGovern said his party members should be open to hearing Republican ideas.
“We need to be more accommodating to different points of view – even if that means we lose a few votes,” he said. “I think that would help greatly in increasing civility in the House.”
But Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise M. Slaughter, a New York Democrat, said she will be aggressive in pushing through the Democratic agenda.
“I don’t want to lose any votes,” she said. “I’m pretty much a stickler on that.”
Rules Committee meetings are often characterized by sharp interchanges where members of both parties accuse each other of ignoring the opposition or using underhanded tactics. Some members like to talk more than others. Mr. McGovern tends to listen more than he talks.
During a day of back-to-back meetings and debate sessions, Mr. McGovern stopped by his office, a spacious room with a narrow window view of the Capitol dome. Magic Marker drawings from his children deck the walls, hanging next to framed photographs of congressmen and presidents.
Mr. McGovern is exhausted from attending a four-hour Rules Committee meeting the night before, which ended at 1 a.m. “There’s never a downtime,” he said.
“I’m on my ninth cup of coffee,” he said, cracking a tired grin. “I spend more time in that little committee room…”
“…than in your own bed,” chimed Michael D. Mershon, his press secretary. Mr. McGovern nodded in agreement.
Tired, Mr. McGovern was clearly excited by his newfound ability to influence every important piece of legislation in the House.
John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, said that while he does not doubt Mr. McGovern’s sincerity regarding being fair and open to Republicans, he questioned the extent to which McGovern can make it happen. This kind of approach would be in direct conflict with the Democrats’ efforts to push through their agenda, he noted.
“I don’t think it would take many losses to change his opinion,” Mr. Samples said, “and if he tried to act on it, [House Speaker Nancy P. Pelosi] would try to change his mind very quickly.”
“I would not expect for any length of time that there would be any effort to allow minority party participation,” he added. “The leader and the new majority wish to be successful, and to be successful, they have to control the agenda.”
Mr. McGovern said he likes serving on Rules because it gives him the power to fight for the issues he cares about. But this can be challenging. The Rules Committee meets more often than any other House committee, and members must be able grasp bills spanning issues from foreign affairs to energy to education. On all these bills, the members communicate constantly with the speaker.
“It’s highly extraordinary that [Mr. McGovern] got a seat on the Rules Committee as early as he did in his career,” said Marc C. Miller, an associate professor of government at Clark University who studies Congress and is on sabbatical in Washington, D.C., this year. “It’s absolutely incredible that he would get that as such a junior member.”
Massachusetts has a long history with the Rules Committee. Four decades ago, the late Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, a Democratic congressman from Boston, was chairman of the committee, a position he used to vault himself into party leadership, eventually becoming Speaker of the House. Mr. Moakley chaired the committee in the 1990s. Mr. McGovern, now serving his sixth term in Congress, is the vice chairman.
Mr. McGovern said he tries to emulate his mentor and close friend, Mr. Moakley, by building personal relationships with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, and by not taking himself too seriously. He worked for Mr. Moakley as a senior aide for 14 years, spending several of those years in the Rules Committee.
When Mr. Moakley chaired the committee, relationships between the two parties were more cordial than they are today, according to Mr. Samples. But that’s because Democrats were so comfortable with their majority that they didn’t feel the need to be as combative as they are today.
“It was easier to be nice when the other guy didn’t have a chance of winning,” he said.
Mrs. Slaughter called Mr. McGovern “an extraordinary member” who has had “the best training in the world” working with Mr. Moakley. “Jim is so capable and so bright… everything that a committee like Rules needs,” she said.
Unlike other congressional committees, where the percentage of Democrats and Republicans reflects the ratio in the House, the Rules Committee always has nine members in the majority and four in the minority. The system is designed to give the majority iron control of House proceedings.
Close observers of Congress say it’s too early to tell if the new Rules Committee is running things differently from the committee led by Republicans, who were in the majority for the last 12 years.
“The Democrats are enjoying the honeymoon period,” said Sherwood L. Boehlert, a centrist former Republican congressman from Utica, N.Y., who did not run for re-election in 2006 after serving 24 years in the House.
When Republicans held the House, the leadership was often hammered for holding late-night and early-morning meetings in efforts to keep Democrats out of the decision-making process. When Democrats returned to the majority this year, they vowed to keep the rules process more open and limit meetings to the “light of day.”
“The Democrats are doing things about the way they said they would do, and how people think they should be done,” Mr. Boehlert said. “They haven’t had any 3 a.m. meetings, but they haven’t faced any significant controversies yet” either.
Still, most substantial conversations among committee members happen behind closed doors. “Nobody in the Rules Committee is going to open everything up entirely, because that isn’t how Congress works,” said Karin Walser, who served as press secretary to Mr. Moakley until his death in 2001.
Ms. Walser said polarization of the parties is preventing the kind of personal relationships that used to exist among congressmen when Mr. Moakley chaired the committee.
“Joe Moakley came from a world in which members of Congress would disagree during the day, then go out for dinner together or play golf. It was not the partisan world that it is now,” she said.
“Worcester is incredibly lucky to have a representative on the Rules Committee,” she said.
Jessica Arriens contributed to this report.
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Olver Calls for More Funding for Intercity and National Rails
AMTRAK
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Danny Lauridsen
Boston University Washington News Service
3-28-07
WASHINGTON, March 28 – U.S. Rep. John W. Olver (D-Amherst) Wednesday criticized the Bush administration’s proposed funds for Amtrak, saying the president “would allow Amtrak to wither on the vine.”
In an Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development hearing, Mr. Olver said an increase in population has brought about congestion problems that the country couldn’t fix with only roads and airways.
The 30 largest metropolitan areas now account for almost 45 percent of the country’s total population, said Mr. Olver, who chairs the subcommittee, and this boom has caused “congested highways and airspace, increased travel delays and environmental degradation.”
“The challenges created by this growth are clear,” he said. “It should also be clear that we cannot build our way out of these mobility problems with new roads and airspace alone.”
The subcommittee heard from Amtrak President and Chief Executive Officer Alex Kummant and Federal Railroad Administration chief Joseph H. Boardman, both of whom who said that while Amtrak has made improvements greater funding is still needed.
“We see the demand for intercity rail routes,” Mr. Kummant said. “Our statements are following the demand. We have an aging fleet.”
Mr. Olver expressed his hope not only for sufficient funds for Amtrak to keep current rails running and begin fixing backlog problems on the Northeast Corridor, but also enough to begin the first stages of implementing a high-speed intercity rail system in several corridors nationwide.
“With a modest capital investment, we could implement higher-speed rail in a number of corridors in this country,” he said, adding that the administration has failed to provide “the necessary investments for a robust passenger rail system.”
The Bush administration’s budget proposes $900 million for Amtrak next year, a $400 million decrease from this year. Two weeks ago, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general testified before the subcommittee that Amtrak could not function at that level of spending.
But Mr. Olver’s office said he was confident Amtrak would receive more. The office estimated that the final amount would be $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion but said it was entirely too early in the allocation process to say for sure because the subcommittee will not mark up its part of the budget until May or June.
“Each year the committee has funded Amtrak well above what the administration has proposed,” Olver said. “We will do the best we can.”
Amtrak plans to put its first high-speed railways on the West Coast between Los Angeles and Oakland and in the Northeast between Washington and Boston, but Mr. Olver has also worked to get the Boston-Springfield-New Haven route included as a high-speed rail planning route, and he said he would like to upgrade commuter rail service between Worcester and Boston.
Mr. Olver said trains between Worcester and Boston currently run at about 30-35 miles per hour, taking about one hour and 20 minutes, and he would like to see the commute time drop to one hour.
“There are big, big improvements needed on the Northeast Corridor,” he said.
U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern (D-Worcester) has also worked to increase Worcester-to-Boston commuter rail service. Michael Mershon, Mr.McGovern’s press secretary, called this route a “primary focus” for his boss.
“There are a myriad of issues with that,” he said. “This is something that’s been an issue in Worcester for a long, long time.” He added that Lt. Gov. Tim Murray has done “a lot of heavy lifting” on increasing service for that route.
“I am concerned with making sure that we have passenger rail as part of the balanced transportation system,” Mr. Olver said, “and I would like to see us get over the hump and finally do something in the high-speed rail area.”
While the allocated funds will not be nearly enough to implement high-speed railways across the country, Mr. Olver and Mr. Kummant said they were confident they could begin laying the groundwork for such a system.
“I think we can get there in steps,” Mr. Kummant said, citing Amtrak’s ability to run trains at 80 miles per hour before moving to 120 and 200 miles per hour, like the true high-speed rails of Europe and Japan. He said these systems got to where they are now using similar steps.
Mr. Olver said Western European governments invested more than $100 billion in their intercity rail systems throughout the 1980s, while Japan continues to invest billions in high-speed rail infrastructure.
“With the current budgetary climate in the United States, we could never invest the capital needed to build the types of dedicated intercity high-speed rail systems found in the rest of the world,” he said.
But he said a little overspending now on modest track improvements would make major track improvements – required to make the switch to high-speed trains – much easier and less expensive in the future.
“We need to move this debate forward,” Mr. Boardman said. “We need to have national rail in this country.”
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Senate Joins House in Setting Timeline for Troop Withdrawal
AMENDMENT VOTE
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
March 28, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 28 – Voting Tuesday to keep a timeline for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the Senate joined the House in opposing President Bush’s stay-the-course plan, as debate about funding and a timeline continued Wednesday in the Senate.
The Senate narrowly rejected the Republican amendment to strike the timeline language from an emergency spending bill, 48-50. A final Senate vote on the bill is expected Thursday.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), voting with the Republicans, supported the amendment that would eliminate the timeline for troop withdrawals from Iraq while Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) voted against the amendment.
Dodd said that although he would have preferred an earlier start date for troop withdrawal, he remains in strong support of keeping the bill’s March 31, 2008, target date for ending combat operations. The bill would provide $122 billion most of it for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The decision of both houses of Congress to support a timeline for withdrawal for the first time since the war began could have symbolic implications, even though Bush has already said he plans to veto the bill. The House passed its emergency spending plan, which includes similar troop withdrawal measures, last week.
“This vote sends a clear message to President Bush and others who believe that a protracted, embattled stay in Iraq is preferable to a clear course of action,” Dodd said.
“Even if the President vetoes this bill…Congress has taken a critical step in taking the U.S. policy in a new direction,” he said, adding that Congress will lead future efforts to reverse the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.
Lieberman, speaking to the Senate just before Tuesday’s vote, said the withdrawal provision “is contrary to our traditions; it is contrary to our values; and it is contrary to our interests. And yet that is precisely what this Congress will be calling for if we order our troops to withdraw.”
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House Votes for Better Health Care Management for Veterans
WOUNDED WARRIOR
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
March 28, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 28 – The House voted unanimously Wednesday to require better and more individualized case management for veterans receiving outpatient health care and for the creation of a new hotline for reporting deficiencies in health care facilities.
Aiming to reduce bureaucratic procedures in the wake of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal, the Wounded Warrior Assistance Act also would require the Department of Defense to physically provide medical records of retiring or separating veterans to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
During debate before Wednesday’s vote, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) called the existing method for the transfer of medical records “inexcusable,” saying it is the biggest problem with the current system and has left some servicemen unaccounted for. He noted that patients in Connecticut sometimes wait more than 600 days for claims to be processed.
“There is a poor system of interface between the two” departments in caring for veterans, Courtney said in an interview last week. With the passage of the bill, he said, “there won’t be this paper chase that’s going on right now that’s slowing down and backing up the system.”
Courtney successfully offered an amendment in the House Armed Services Committee to take the bill a step further by requiring that the Department of Veterans Affairs also notify the state veterans affairs departments when a veteran is returning home.
“The state VA can’t even get involved to help people because they don’t know when people are getting discharged back to Connecticut,” Courtney said, noting that the Connecticut Department of Veterans’ Affairs offers programs beyond the offerings of the federal department , including educational benefits, tax abatements and certain job preferences in hiring for state employment.
“The quicker the DVA can start interacting with the families and the veterans, the more help they can get,” Courtney said.
Because some opponents said the release of a veteran’s contact information would be an invasion of the veteran’s privacy, he said, the measure was amended to require a veteran to consent to the release of information to the state departments.
Commissioner Linda Schwartz of the Connecticut Department of Veterans’ Affairs said her office has advocated for this measure in the past.
But she said she worries that some veterans who have traumatic brain injury may be unsure of how to respond to the question about keeping their contact information private. “Leaving it up to the veterans sometimes is not as productive as it could be,” she said.
Schwartz said she herself was a reservist injured in an aircraft accident while on active duty and had to wait three years before receiving help from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
With the service member’s consent, members of Congress also would be notified every time a patient from their district is being treated within the Veterans Affairs health care system. Courtney explained: “If I’m notified there is someone from Vernon, for example, that is going to be treated, we’ll certainly assign a staffer to let them know contact info for their families to let them be in touch.”
The bill also would assign each veteran a case care manager to assist with medical care, a service member advocate to assist with the patient’s general welfare and quality of living and an officer from the physical evaluation board to ensure consistency and fairness in determining disability ratings.
“When you’re at war, it’s the last time you want to skimp on programs for your servicemen and women,” Schwartz said. “If something happens, they have to be able to trust that this system will be there for them when they get back.”
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Life After Congress is ‘Not at all Bad’ for Charlie Bass
BASS
Keene Sentinel
Jessica Arriens
Boston University Washington News Service
3/28/07
WASHINGTON, March 28—Former congressmen rarely fade into oblivion—and Charlie Bass is no exception.
The New Hampshire Republican, who lost his 2nd District seat to Paul Hodes in November, is eager to show off the impressive offices of the Republican Main Street Partnership, where he is now president and CEO.
He points to a circular conference room with views of the Washington Monument and National Mall, a back stairwell (“My own personal stairway to Starbucks”) and a roof exit (“In case I ever need to jump”).
“Much to my surprise, I discovered that there is life after Congress,” Bass said. “And it’s not at all bad.”
Bass’s ties to Congress are still strong, however, largely through his work at the partnership—an organization that promotes what it calls centrist Republican values like limited government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes and strong national security.
The group started in the immediate aftermath of the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, when Bass was first elected. A group of moderate Republicans, concerned with the party’s conservative shift, met to discuss ways to promote a moderate, bi-partisan agenda.
Warren Rudman, former New Hampshire senator and a board member of Republican Main Street Partnership, called the group an alliance of moderate Republicans, worried their party is drifting too far right, “who want to bring the party back to the center.”
Rudman said it is “too early to say” if the group will be successful. “It takes years and years for this kind of organization to have any kind of real impact.” But he predicted Republicans may be more willing to listen to moderate viewpoints, now that they are in the minority in Congress.
“We are fortunate to have Charlie Bass at the helm of Main Street,” said Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., also a member of the partnership. “His energy and commitment to the moderate cause will strengthen the organization and help us rebuild the center.”
Bass said he provides a weekly report on the issues the organization works on to the Republican congressional leadership and plans to work closely with moderates from both parties to promote a moderate Republican agenda.
Bass took over the partnership in late December, after being approached by founder Amo Houghton, a former New York congressman, and the partnership’s former CEO Sarah Chamberlain Resnick.
“They basically persuaded me that at this critical juncture it is important to have a congressman who could improve, or really create good contacts with the current members of Congress,” Bass said.
Bass said the group will be “actively supporting candidates that fit the rough parameters that we’ve established as the mission for this organization.”
The Republican Main Street Partnership Political Action Committee, which is not part of the non-profit partnership that Bass heads, has a goal of raising $1 million for moderate candidates. The two groups have “essentially the same mission,” said Bass, but because of legal reasons they are run as separate organizations.
“My job is to make sure that as a group we’re strong, we’re viable, and we make a difference in what happens to Congress over the next two years,” Bass said.
Though there are no more midnight floor sessions, or Saturdays spent on Capitol Hill, Bass’s post-congressional life has been busy. In addition to the partnership, he serves as a senior advisor to the Manchester law firm Devine Millimet, is on the board of the alternative energy company New England Wood Pellet, and was recently named a trustee at Franklin Pierce College.
“Just because I’m not a sitting member of Congress doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to offer the community,” he said, bristling at a remark about how his full schedule seems surprising.
“I’m only 54,” he said. “I’m not retired. I don’t qualify for Social Security.”
His work schedule is still much the same as when he was in Congress. Bass travels to D.C. Tuesday morning and leaves Thursday afternoon, renting the same apartment, running the same five-mile loop, and commuting on the same subways he did while in office. But that’s about where the similarities end.
“I don’t have to come every week anymore,” he said. “And I can make my own reservations and decide when I’m going to come and when I’m going to leave. Being able to control my own schedule is like being liberated.”
But Bass’s congressional influence is still strong, according to former legislative director John Billings. “I see members interact with Charlie still,” said Billings, who now works as a policy advisor for Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. “They respect his global view of things.”
That respect may be rooted in Bass’s 12 years of experience, or simply his affable personality. Another former staffer, Kathleen Amacio, who now works as scheduler for Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., said that speaking with Bass made people feel like “you were back in New Hampshire with your next-door neighbor.”
But Bass’s own political leanings, what Billings classifies as a “quintessential centrist Republican,” also merit respect on Capitol Hill.
“That’s what a New Hampshire Republican is,” Billings said. “Down here [in Washington] we’re known as moderates. Up in New Hampshire, we’re just Republicans.”
Bass’s moderate Republicanism manifests itself in his association with Main Street. The group does not support a social agenda, believing that issues such as gay marriage or abortion should be decided by state legislatures, and stresses the need for strong environmental policy and increased stem cell research.
“I’ve always prided myself on being bipartisan, on being willing to listen to other points of view, be they Democrats or Republicans who disagreed with me,” Bass said. “And I will continue to be that way.”
Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center and associate professor of political science at the school, calls Bass a typical New England “Rockefeller Republican.” Moderate to liberal on social issues, and conservative on fiscal issues, it is a breed of Republicanism that stood in good standing with New Hampshire voters for a long time.
Then came November 2006, where Bass “was a non-ideological candidate in an ideological election,” Smith said. “He didn’t have any loyal core of supporters to fall back on.”
According to Smith, moderate Republicans are out of step with the national Republican Party, which has moved far to the right, fueled by socially conservative voters in the South and Midwest.
Groups like the Christian Coalition, a political organization that promotes a conservative social and economic agenda, have thrived off these voters. Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition, said that to separate social issues from the Republican Party agenda would “split the party right down the middle. That doesn’t even make any sense.” To lose socially conservative voters would be disastrous. “Republicans cannot get elected without that block vote,” she said.
But Smith argues that the growth of social conservative power has come at moderates’ expense, a notion that Bass himself admits. “I come to the Republican Main Street Partnership, I think, at a crucial moment in its brief history,” Bass said. “We are now a minority of a minority in the Congress. The crucial issue is, do we matter? And the answer, obviously, is yes.”
But while the Republican Party itself is turning increasingly conservative, New Hampshire is leaning the other way. Smith predicts that within 10 years, the state will be solidly Democratic, because of a large influx of people from the mid-Atlantic region moving to New Hampshire for jobs, who tend to vote Democratic. If Bass decides to challenge Democratic Rep. Hodes in the 2008 election, Smith said he could have a hard time winning back the seat.
Smith said Bass would have a better chance of winning the governorship or a seat in the state Senate—but this all hinges on whether Bass himself decides to run another race.
Bass chuckles and smiles wryly as he answers questions about his political future. “I intend to keep my political options open,” he said. “I am making no plans at this point to run for any office, or rule out running for any office. And I really can’t say anything more than that because that’s the truth.”
Bass said he plans to remain active in politics, working on issues he has a “personal interest” in—telecommunications, energy and the environment. And while he does miss having the ability to vote in the House, and the initiatives he had to drop because of his defeat, Bass said those regrets are “tempered by the realization, or the understanding, that Republicans are no longer in charge, so therefore life for me would be much more frustrating and difficult.”
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Bridgeport Native is First Lady’s Chief of Staff
MCBRIDE
The Hour
Anthony Rotunno
Boston University Washington News Service
3/28/07
WASHINGTON, March 28 – Unlike her husband’s West Wing Oval Office, the East Wing office of first lady Laura Bush is modest, and square. A wall of full bookshelves stands behind a simple desk, and sunlight shines through two glass windows overlooking the East Garden in bloom. Meetings have pulled Mrs. Bush away from her desk, but seated at a small conference table in the corner is a woman as poised and put-together as the first lady herself.
Anita McBride, Mrs. Bush’s chief of staff, sits attentively, smiling politely from across the table. After two decades of White House service under three different Republican administrations, the former resident of Bridgeport, Conn., now serves as the first lady’s right-hand woman and as a senior staffer to President George W. Bush. Her perfect posture and kind brown eyes visually suggest the delicate balance between seriousness and compassion that’s come to characterize her life both in and out of the White House.
On her boss of more than two years, McBride says: “Mrs. Bush sets a very high standard. She sets the tone for the office and all of us really want to do the best that we can possibly do. She cares about us, she has very good instincts and she gives good direction.”
“More and more actually, I realize how we are so privileged to be temporary custodians of these jobs and how much we are responsible for actually accomplishing here,” she says of her various jobs in the White House. “I feel the real sense of history around me…It’s a national park, it’s a museum, it’s a symbol of our democracy where our president works and lives.”
McBride, 47, is a veteran in the ever-reshuffling White House cast. In addition to working in the current administration she also has served Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Occupying positions in both the East and West Wings over the course of her tenure, she says there is no spot on the 18-acre estate her jobs have not taken her.
Up at 5 a.m., she says her work days start in the car, where she listens to radio broadcasts of Fox News and CNN for what will be the day's hot news topics as she drives to work each morning. In the office by 7 a.m., she tries to quickly read emails and the newspapers before she’s required to attend the president’s senior staff briefings each morning at 7:30 a.m.
“As a member of the president’s senior staff but assigned to the first lady, my position gives me, and ultimately everyone on our staff, the opportunity to have our feet in both camps,” she says of her jobs in both wings.
As Mrs. Bush’s chief of staff, McBride oversees a group of 23 East Wing employees, and is responsible for managing the First Lady’s policy, press, correspondence, scheduling, speechwriting and social offices – responsibilities, she says, that don’t allow her to leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until 9 o’clock each night.
“I do get about five to six hours of sleep a night,” she says, laughing at the suggestion of going days without rest. “The days are long and full, but they are exactly what you would expect them to be working in the White House.”
McBride began working her “long and full days” more than 20 years ago, starting as a volunteer for President Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984. Following her volunteer work, she served as Reagan’s deputy director of personnel for two years until she was promoted to director of White House personnel in 1987, a position she held through the George H.W. Bush administration.
Of all three administrations she’s served, McBride says the Reagan White House was her favorite, “because it gave me my start.”
Working under Reagan was also when she met her husband, Timothy McBride, then an aide for Vice President Bush and now the senior vice president and a top lobbyist at the financial services company Freddie Mac. They have been married for 14 years and have two children.
In terms of her influence within the White House, however, McBride says her positions in the current administration have given her the ability to have a much greater impact on a number of very diverse issues.
Earlier this month, McBride accompanied the President and Mrs. Bush on their trip to Latin America, where she visited the countries of Brazil Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico. Last year she helped to organize the White House’s Summit on Malaria and Conference on Global Literacy, two integral components of the First Lady’s policy initiatives.
“One of the most important things I had an opportunity to play a role in was the search process to hire a new chief usher for the White House,” she says of her part in selecting a new manager of the first family’s executive residence. “Being part of that selection process really drove home for me that if I do nothing else, I have helped place somebody who will serve future presidents to come in a really, really good way.”
McBride says a career in politics was not one she imagined for herself while growing up in Bridgeport. The daughter of Italian immigrants, she says her parents were not politically active, but they did teach her early on how important it is to vote.
“They took voting very, very seriously,” she says.
She may be modest about her political prowess, but McBride’s flair for leadership was evident long before she joined the Reagan campaign, according to Carl Phillip, then her Spanish teacher and now assistant principal at Notre Dame Catholic High School in Fairfield, Conn. As president of her 1977 senior class, McBride (then Anita Bevacqua) did a great job “without a lot of fanfare and noise,” Phillip says.
“She’s probably perfect for the job she's in now,” he adds. “In contrast to other presidents who might have been flashier, she would take the last seat in the room but would give the best product. Laura Bush must see that in her.”
McBride’s desire to give more than 100 percent effort to everything she does is another quality that makes her so successful, according to longtime friend and fellow University of Connecticut alum Gregg Shipman. When they were both living in UConn’s Buckley Hall, McBride’s positive attitude and optimism made her one of the most well liked students in the dorm, he says.
“It’s not a coincidence that everyone ended up congregating in her room,” Shipman says. “She really is the type of person who gets her greatest joy from making other people happy.”
Initially enrolled as a pre-med student, McBride says she was not turned on to a political career until she spent her junior year abroad at the University of Florence in Italy and experienced anti-American sentiments during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979.
“The American flag and effigies of Jimmy Carter were being burned in the courtyard of where I was going to school,” she says. “I had not had the experience of being challenged as an American, and it really threw the light bulb switch on about how deeply I felt about my country.” She returned to graduate with a degree in international studies from UConn in 1981.
After her stints in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, McBride thought it was time for a break. From 1992 to 2000, she held various jobs in the private sector, and was working part-time as an executive recruiter when her two children, now ages 9 and 6, were born. “I had moved on in my life,” McBride says.
She was enjoying the chance to spend more time with her family at their home in Washington’s Spring Valley neighborhood, but after agreeing to help the current administration set up their personnel structure, she quickly got sucked back into the daily White House routine and the subsequent offer to become Mrs. Bush’s chief-of-staff marked a “career capstone” that she and her husband decided she couldn’t pass up.
Having worked for former President George H.W. Bush, Timothy McBride says he has “a very clear appreciation and enthusiasm” for the roles his wife plays in the current administration. With the help of a nanny, the couple has been able to establish a fairly efficient system to manage their household but, he says, some kinks are still being worked out. Vacations often get missed or postponed because of their busy schedules, he explains.
With less than two years left in the White House, McBride says, everyone on the first lady’s staff, including Mrs. Bush herself, feels the pressure to get as much accomplished as possible in the short time that remains.
But, she says, once that time expires, she has no expectations of staying in the White House under a new Republican administration. And as her children get older, Timothy McBride says, they look forward to the time when their mom’s schedule isn’t so consumed by work – unless it gets them another trip to Camp David, that is.
“They're always asking when we can go back,” Timothy McBride says of their trip to the presidential retreat in western Maryland. “They don't realize those invitations are only extended by the president and the first lady.”
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Senate Joins House in Setting Timetable for U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Iraq
IRAQ
The Hour
Anthony Rotunno
Boston University Washington News Service
3/28/07
WASHINGTON, March 28 – Senate debate continued Wednesday on an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Iraq, following Tuesday’s vote to retain the legislation’s nonbinding provision establishing a firm timeline for troop withdrawal.
The Senate rejected, 48-50, an amendment to remove the timeline for withdrawal. With the House’s approval of similar but binding timeline legislation last week, this marks the first time since the war began that Congress has gone on record opposing the president’s policy to stay the course in Iraq. But President Bush already has said he will veto any bill demanding troop withdrawal.
Tuesday’s narrow vote was largely split along party lines, with only two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon, voting not to remove the requirement that U.S. combat forces leave Iraq by March 31, 2008, and one Democrat, Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, voting to strike it from the bill.
The Connecticut Senate delegation also was split, with Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd voting to keep the withdrawal provision and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman voting to remove it.
“This vote sends a clear message to President Bush and others who believe that a protracted, embattled stay in Iraq is preferable to a clear course of action,” Dodd said in a statement following the vote. “I would have preferred to begin phased deployment even earlier, but this is a positive development that I strongly support.”
Dodd, a 2008 presidential candidate and one of the Senate’s most vocal critics of the president’s policies on the war in Iraq, has supported previous measures calling for troop withdrawal and proposed legislation to cap the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.
“Even if the President vetoes this bill, which I would strongly urge him not to, Congress has taken a critical step in taking the U.S. policy in a new direction and stopping the administration’s failed policy,” he said.
Lieberman, in remarks on the Senate floor before the vote, said legislation supporting troop withdrawal goes against the nation’s “moral responsibility to the Iraqis.”
“It is contrary to our traditions; it is contrary to our values; and it is contrary to our interests,” Lieberman said. “And yet that is precisely what this Congress will be calling for if we order our troops to withdraw.”
A final vote on the Senate bill containing the troop withdrawal measure is expected Thursday.
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Hodes Hails Iraq Spending Bill in Democratic Radio Response
RESPONSE
New Hampshire Union Leader
Greg Hellman
Boston University Washington News Service
3/24/07
WASHINGTON, March 24—New Hampshire Congressman Paul Hodes, delivering the Democratic response to the President’s weekly radio address Saturday morning, hailed the passage of the House Iraq spending bill, which sets a timeline for troop withdrawal, as an important step to altering the course of the war.
“Under Democratic leadership, the House of Representatives told the President that it's time to change course,” Hodes said. “We are holding him accountable for a new direction in Iraq.”
The bill imposes security benchmarks on the Iraqi government and mandates troop withdrawal by September 2008.
President Bush, who has already promised to veto the legislation if it were to pass in the Senate, blasted the measures calling them counterproductive to the mission on the ground and noting the bill’s shaky support, which narrowly passed the House Friday by a vote of 218-212.
“The emergency war spending bill they voted for would cut the number of troops below the level our military commanders say they need to accomplish the mission. It would set an artificial timetable for withdrawal that would allow the enemy to wait us out,” the President said. “I have made it clear that I will veto any such bill, and it is clear that my veto would be sustained.”
The President accused The House of playing politics by passing a bill they knew he would veto and called on Congress to send him a clean spending bill without timetables or restrictions.
“By choosing to make a political statement and passing a bill they know will never become law, the Democrats in Congress have only delayed the delivery of the vital funds and resources our troops need,” he said. “They need to send me a clean bill, without conditions, without restrictions.”
Rather than undercut the military, Hodes said the bill would provide troops with their needed resources while creating benchmarks for troop withdrawal.
“We support our troops by providing needed funding for their equipment and protection,” he said. “But this bill is not a blank check to fund the war in Iraq. It requires that the Iraqis meet the benchmarks for success that the President himself outlined in January.”
Hodes used the opportunity to also address scandals involving misspent government money on reconstruction in Iraq and the dilapidated conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, two issues addressed in recent weeks by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on which Hodes sits.
“I can assure you the Congress will continue to keep a close eye on our military and VA facilities to ensure our troops and our veterans get the care they deserve,” Hodes said. “And while we put an end to the under-funding of our veterans' care, we are also cracking down on the over-funding of politically connected contractors…. For four long years, a Republican Congress ignored that responsibility, and billions of dollars were wasted.”
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Kerry, Markey, Others Call for Action on Climate Change Legislation
CLIMATE
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Danny Lauridsen
Boston University Washington News Service
3-21-07
WASHINGTON, March 21 – U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Medford) joined members of Congress from across the country Tuesday to call for legislation to slow climate change and tighten energy emissions standards.
The legislators gathered to address a conservationist rally timed for the first day of spring. Basking in weather fair enough for short sleeves, a few hundred demonstrators turned out on the Capitol’s west lawn for “Climate Crisis Action Day,” including three in full-body polar bear suits and dozens carrying signs that read “Cool the planet, save the Arctic.”
“We deserve a government that accepts science and facts,” Mr. Kerry said, garnering the loudest applause of the day.
Mr. Markey, whom House Speaker Nancy P. Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently named chairman of the new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said he will use his new position to bring climate change legislation to the congressional forefront.
“What a difference a day makes,” he said, referring to the 2006 elections in which the Democrats took control of Congress. He added that a year ago, under Republican leadership, global warming was not considered a major issue.
“This is an incredible moment in American political history,” he said. “Either we are going to solve this problem or we will destroy the planet. The time to act is now, and you are the change.”
Mr. Markey joked that as a 30-year member of both the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Natural Resources Committee, he has been going to hearings on climate change for 60 years.
He assured the crowd that his experience has led him to one conclusion about President Bush’s position on climate change: “On every one of those issues, you are right, and he is wrong,” he said.
He added, “What a difference it would have made, ladies and gentlemen, if instead of George Bush, John Kerry was now sitting down in the White House.”
Sens. Barbara L. Boxer (D-Calif.) and Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), who co-authored what they called the most progressive climate change bill in the Senate, spoke on behalf of their bill.
“The government of America belongs to all the people and not just big oil, big coal and special-interest organizations,” Mr. Sanders said. “We can turn our country and the entire world in a brand new direction. We can do that.”
He added, “This is the challenge of our lifetimes. Let’s go forward together.”
Ms. Boxer, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee,, also referred to the change in party leadership in Congress, saying that while former Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) adamantly denied the existence of global warming, she has introduced it as a prominent issue in the committee and has invited former Vice President Al Gore to speak to the committee Wednesday.
Mr. Kerry, who has characterized the climate change bill he co-authored with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) as a more realistic approach than the Boxer-Sanders bill, acknowledged that scientists he has spoken with recently are now calling for more drastic changes in emissions requirements.
“This has been a long journey for all of us,” Mr. Kerry said. “Let’s get this job done.”
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