Lee Hamilton: Washington's bipartisan power broker
Need to get bitter political rivals talking? Need the ear of an ayatollah? He's the go-to guy in crises.
from the December 12, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
By the 1980s, Hamilton had taken a stronger role in that drama, reaping the spoils of repeated campaign victories – clout through seniority – and chairing House committees on foreign affairs, intelligence, and economic policy. He oversaw an inquiry into the Reagan administration's covert arms sale to Iran, and, after Congress, was vice chair of the 9/11 commission and chair of the Iraq Study Group. "Quick," Hamilton's friend, Rep. Barney Frank, (D) of Massachusetts, is known to say jokingly among friends, "name a commission Hamilton hasn't been on."
His is the kind of career a person builds in cunning steps. But there is no Ivy League degree, no childhood fascination with politics, no emboldened determination to make history. Hamilton's parents – his father was a Methodist minister; his mother, a helper in the church – talked politics at dinner. But for him it was table talk, not a professional path. He wound up in Congress, he says, because being a lawyer bored him.
He'd tried a ritzy Chicago law practice and a small firm in Columbus, Ind., but neither satisfied him. So in 1963, he spent nights and weekends driving his southern Indiana district, to talk politics with anyone he'd meet. A year later – the year of Lyndon Johnson's landslide – he launched his first campaign, a $30,000 fight to regain a seat for the Democrats in a rather conservative state. "I was lucky to run in 1964. Any fool on the Democratic ticket could win in 1964, and several did," recalls Hamilton. "My wife would put me in that category, I'm sure."
If his timing didn't hurt him, neither did his past. By age 16, Hamilton was a household name among Hoosiers. A star high school basketball player, he was injured in the Final Four game his senior year – but won one of Indiana's most coveted prizes, the Trester Award. "It was an award for the student athlete who demonstrates ... the highest character. So even as a loser, people saw what Lee was made of," says Robert McClure, one of Hamilton's early legislative assistants.
Congress suited Hamilton. He arrived at work by 5:30 every morning – for 34 years – partly for quiet time to think, partly to avoid Beltway traffic. The discipline he took from the basketball court helped him stay even-tempered, he says. He liked his colleagues but deferred socializing for dinners with his wife, a grade-school teacher, and their three children. "This was not a guy," a former staffer recalls, "on the rubber chicken circuit."
He wasn't a natural public speaker, but his talent for simplifying complex issues helped him connect with people individually or in small groups. He'd seem to fit as easily into George Bailey's old Building and Loan as he did into the halls of Congress, whose politics he insists he didn't like. He had little use for campaign funding and strategy, intricate guesswork about members' motives, or use of votes to win political points rather than solve problems: "I put up with that in order to be able to work on public policy."
Hamilton earned a reputation as evenhanded and willing to listen to multiple points of view. This made him a useful ally for bipartisan initiatives but a risk to his own party. Indeed, he was one of 31 Democrats to vote for the investigations that led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
RSS feed
