they would take us off the shelf."
Tom Davis Gives Up
By PETER BAKER
Published: October 3, 2008
The Republican cloakroom of the House of Representatives is a strangely narrow room that bends around a corner and hardly seems like much of an antechamber for the barons of American politics. Members negotiate tight spaces between the furniture, stepping around one another to find an open seat to while away the breaks, maybe pick up a newspaper or chat with a colleague.
On a desultory afternoon last month, Representative Tom Davis cruised through the cloakroom on his way to the floor to manage a bill, a mobile telephone pressed to his ear as he waved me to follow. We entered the chamber where war, slavery and impeachment have been debated, and he headed to the lectern while I sat a couple rows back. Davis clicked his phone shut and addressed the mostly empty chamber: “Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on H. R. 5683, the Government Accountability Office Act of 2008.”
After a couple of minutes, Davis was back in the cloakroom, plopping down in a chair, propping his feet up on a coffee table and popping open a Diet Coke. He sighed at the tedium of the exercise and then thought back to the first time he ever managed a bill on the floor. It was 1995, and he was a freshman Republican congressman from Virginia, swept into office by Newt Gingrich’s revolution. “What a thrill,” he said, his eyes lighting up at the memory. “I thought, You know, maybe I belong here. Now it’s kind of like, Oh, I gotta do this?”
A few minutes later, in fact, an aide emerged from the House chamber to ask Davis if he wanted to manage the next bill, H. R. 6575, the Over-Classification Reduction Act. Davis shook his head no. “In the old days, you’d jump at the chance to manage a bill,” he told me.
No more. The revolution is over, the thrill is gone and the Republican brand under President Bush has, in Davis’s view, been so tarnished that, as he likes to say, “if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf.” These will be Davis’s last few weeks in Congress. He decided against re-election, disaffected by the partisanship, by a process he calls broken, by a party he considers hijacked by social conservatives. “We’re just not getting much done,” he said.
Another aide sat down and told him there would be three more votes. “They’re all yes votes,” the aide said.
Davis laughed. “Let me make up my own mind!” he said in mock protest. Gesturing to me, he said, “I’ve just been telling this guy I’m an independent agent!”
Then he asked for a list of the three bills to see if he really did want to vote yes: A nonbinding resolution “recognizing that we are facing a global food crisis.” O.K., Davis said puckishly. That’s a yes.
A second resolution “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the emergency communications services provided by the American Red Cross are vital resources for military-service members and their families.” O.K., another yes.
A third resolution “condemning the use of television programming by Hamas to indoctrinate hatred, violence and anti-Semitism toward Israel in Palestinian children.” A third yes. “They read me pretty well,” Davis said, chuckling at the absurdity of it all.
Then he shook his head. Three resolutions offering platitudes, none of them carrying the force of law, none of them actually doing anything. Davis asked for a list of all 20 bills on the floor that day — naming post offices, recognizing the anniversary of Bulgaria’s independence, honoring an old American war sloop.
Davis wanted me to have the list. “Tell them about the important work we’re doing while Rome burns,” he said.
After 14 years in Congress, Tom Davis is giving up his place in the bucket brigade. Someone else will have to put out the fire. If anyone wants to try.
For Republicans like Davis, these are gloomy times. While John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate energized the party after a long stretch of depressing developments, the most optimistic Republican strategists still expect further losses in Congress even if McCain wins the White House.
The way Davis sees it, the system has become dysfunctional. Bush has so destroyed the party’s public standing and Congress has become so infected with a win-at-all-costs mentality that there is no point in staying. “You know, the Cubs fans used to put the bags over their heads,” he told me when we met for eggs at Mickey’s Dining Car in St. Paul the first morning of the Republican National Convention. “That’s what I feel when you say you’re from Congress, because there are just so many things we’re not doing.”
This might be dismissed if it came from a fringe player on Capitol Hill, but for years Davis was one of the rising stars, a quintessential inside player who as part of the leadership managed to steer his party to election victories in even-numbered years while working with Democrats on legislation in odd-numbered years. He ran the House Republican campaign committee for two elections and later bypassed more senior congressmen to become chairman of the House Government Reform Committee until his party lost control of Congress. He spent a lifetime getting to this point and is now washing his hands of it, even as he foresees a fiscal reckoning after so much unbridled government spending, most recently to bail out Wall Street.
“When you get the majority, the leadership team sits around the table, and the first question the winners ask, sitting in this ornate room, is ‘How do we stay in the majority?’ ” he said. “Now the members, a lot of them, are willing to tackle these issues, but they elect leaders, and the leaders’ report card is: Do they get their members re-elected? You see what I’m saying? And the minority, by the way, sits in a little less ornate room, a little smaller room in the Capitol, and they say, ‘How do we get it back?’ And so for every issue it’s ‘Do we cooperate or do we try to embarrass them?’ Very few times they cooperate.”
Tom Davis Gives Up
By PETER BAKER
Published: October 3, 2008
The Republican cloakroom of the House of Representatives is a strangely narrow room that bends around a corner and hardly seems like much of an antechamber for the barons of American politics. Members negotiate tight spaces between the furniture, stepping around one another to find an open seat to while away the breaks, maybe pick up a newspaper or chat with a colleague.
On a desultory afternoon last month, Representative Tom Davis cruised through the cloakroom on his way to the floor to manage a bill, a mobile telephone pressed to his ear as he waved me to follow. We entered the chamber where war, slavery and impeachment have been debated, and he headed to the lectern while I sat a couple rows back. Davis clicked his phone shut and addressed the mostly empty chamber: “Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on H. R. 5683, the Government Accountability Office Act of 2008.”
After a couple of minutes, Davis was back in the cloakroom, plopping down in a chair, propping his feet up on a coffee table and popping open a Diet Coke. He sighed at the tedium of the exercise and then thought back to the first time he ever managed a bill on the floor. It was 1995, and he was a freshman Republican congressman from Virginia, swept into office by Newt Gingrich’s revolution. “What a thrill,” he said, his eyes lighting up at the memory. “I thought, You know, maybe I belong here. Now it’s kind of like, Oh, I gotta do this?”
A few minutes later, in fact, an aide emerged from the House chamber to ask Davis if he wanted to manage the next bill, H. R. 6575, the Over-Classification Reduction Act. Davis shook his head no. “In the old days, you’d jump at the chance to manage a bill,” he told me.
No more. The revolution is over, the thrill is gone and the Republican brand under President Bush has, in Davis’s view, been so tarnished that, as he likes to say, “if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf.” These will be Davis’s last few weeks in Congress. He decided against re-election, disaffected by the partisanship, by a process he calls broken, by a party he considers hijacked by social conservatives. “We’re just not getting much done,” he said.
Another aide sat down and told him there would be three more votes. “They’re all yes votes,” the aide said.
Davis laughed. “Let me make up my own mind!” he said in mock protest. Gesturing to me, he said, “I’ve just been telling this guy I’m an independent agent!”
Then he asked for a list of the three bills to see if he really did want to vote yes: A nonbinding resolution “recognizing that we are facing a global food crisis.” O.K., Davis said puckishly. That’s a yes.
A second resolution “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the emergency communications services provided by the American Red Cross are vital resources for military-service members and their families.” O.K., another yes.
A third resolution “condemning the use of television programming by Hamas to indoctrinate hatred, violence and anti-Semitism toward Israel in Palestinian children.” A third yes. “They read me pretty well,” Davis said, chuckling at the absurdity of it all.
Then he shook his head. Three resolutions offering platitudes, none of them carrying the force of law, none of them actually doing anything. Davis asked for a list of all 20 bills on the floor that day — naming post offices, recognizing the anniversary of Bulgaria’s independence, honoring an old American war sloop.
Davis wanted me to have the list. “Tell them about the important work we’re doing while Rome burns,” he said.
After 14 years in Congress, Tom Davis is giving up his place in the bucket brigade. Someone else will have to put out the fire. If anyone wants to try.
For Republicans like Davis, these are gloomy times. While John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate energized the party after a long stretch of depressing developments, the most optimistic Republican strategists still expect further losses in Congress even if McCain wins the White House.
The way Davis sees it, the system has become dysfunctional. Bush has so destroyed the party’s public standing and Congress has become so infected with a win-at-all-costs mentality that there is no point in staying. “You know, the Cubs fans used to put the bags over their heads,” he told me when we met for eggs at Mickey’s Dining Car in St. Paul the first morning of the Republican National Convention. “That’s what I feel when you say you’re from Congress, because there are just so many things we’re not doing.”
This might be dismissed if it came from a fringe player on Capitol Hill, but for years Davis was one of the rising stars, a quintessential inside player who as part of the leadership managed to steer his party to election victories in even-numbered years while working with Democrats on legislation in odd-numbered years. He ran the House Republican campaign committee for two elections and later bypassed more senior congressmen to become chairman of the House Government Reform Committee until his party lost control of Congress. He spent a lifetime getting to this point and is now washing his hands of it, even as he foresees a fiscal reckoning after so much unbridled government spending, most recently to bail out Wall Street.
“When you get the majority, the leadership team sits around the table, and the first question the winners ask, sitting in this ornate room, is ‘How do we stay in the majority?’ ” he said. “Now the members, a lot of them, are willing to tackle these issues, but they elect leaders, and the leaders’ report card is: Do they get their members re-elected? You see what I’m saying? And the minority, by the way, sits in a little less ornate room, a little smaller room in the Capitol, and they say, ‘How do we get it back?’ And so for every issue it’s ‘Do we cooperate or do we try to embarrass them?’ Very few times they cooperate.”
