The Quiet Power of Jack Reed

After almost 20 years in Congress, moving through disparate settings has become familiar for US Senator Jack Reed.

So it wasn’t particularly surprising when Barack Obama asked Reed — who, thanks to his West Point- Army Ranger background, offers a respected voice on national security issues — to join him as part of a bipartisan delegation to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Jordan last month.

Similarly, the way in which Reed sat down with liberal bloggers from Rhode Island’s Future for an August 7 videotaped interview at Local 121, the downtown Providence restaurant and bar, shows how the Democrat makes regular appearances around the Ocean State.

As he closes out his second six-year term in the Senate, perhaps the most elite club in politics — and a long way from his modest roots in Cranston — Reed is the subject of ongoing speculation about his future.

The focus is whether he will take a role in a Democratic administration should Obama win the presidential election in November.

In response to such guessing, Reed’s mantra is that he wants to stay in the Senate. Considering how the 58-year-old senator has an almost-$4 million war chest and consistently polls as the most popular elected official in Rhode Island, he’s a virtual lock to beat his two opponents, Democrat Christopher F. Young and Republican Robert Tingle.

To some, Reed’s early disavowals of interest in an administration position seemed questionable, partly because of his call to service and partly because of the enhanced opportunities in the private sector that come with White House experience.

It’s true, too, barring a change by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, that Republican Governor Donald L. Carcieri will retain the authority to name a replacement if Reed were to win election in November and then take another post, thereby narrowing the margin of Democratic control in the Senate.

If Obama wins and insists that Reed accept the secretary of defense job, "It would be hard for any American to say no to that," acknowledges Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island’s junior senator.

Yet there’s a case to be made not just that Reed truly wants to remain in the Senate, but that it’s the best place for him to be.

"Right now, he is money in the bank for Rhode Islanders," says Whitehouse, offering a view not necessarily restricted to partisan Democrats. Earlier this year, Knowlegis ranked Reed as the 17th most-influential of the 100 senators. And with seats on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and on the Senate Armed Services Committee, his influence is bound to grow with the passage of time. This is far more consequential for Rhode Island than the short-term boost in the collective consciousness that would come with a Cabinet appointment.

Reed may not be charismatic or a generator of new ideas. But the qualities that underlie his high approval ratings — thoughtfulness, diligence, trustworthiness, and remembering his roots — represent the flip side of Rhode Island’s less savory politics.

Not coincidentally, the Ocean State has a tradition of electing senators who remain in office for long periods of time, going back to the likes of Nelson W. Aldrich — who was dubbed "the General manager of the Nation," because of his command of monetary policy in the first decade of the 20th century — and more recently exemplified by such civic-minded figures as Theodore F. Green, John O. Pastore, Claiborne Pell, and John Chafee.

"Jack is right in that direction," says Whitehouse, "and historians looking back will find him a more meaningful figure in the Senate than some of those."

The media guessing game
If Reed has any pique about a seemingly unending barrage of media questions about his future, he’s not letting on.

Yet back in April 2007 when I wrote on the Phoenix’s Not for Nothing blog that Reed was being coy in response to my inquiry about his potential place in a new Democratic administration, Chip Unruh, the senator’s DC-based press secretary, got in touch to say that he considered Reed’s answer — that he felt privileged to serve in the Senate and hoped to win reelection — "pretty categorical."

If the spokesman had hoped to successfully pre-empt continued questioning along the same line by reporters in Rhode Island and in Washington, it didn’t work.

In July 2007, for example, Andy Miga, a DC-based reporter for the Associated Press, wrote about how "the low-key, unassuming" Reed, who "tends to get overlooked in the Senate where more brash personalities and shrill partisan attacks dominate" was at center stage during a heated debate over the war in Iraq.

"The former Army captain has cemented his role as a leading Democratic voice on the war," Miga wrote. "There’s even speculation he could be tapped as defense secretary or another high-level post if Democrats capture the White House in 2008.

" ‘You’d have to give him a hard look,’ said Norman Ornstein, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, who specializes in Congress and the presidency. ‘In the old days we would call him the E.F. Hutton senator. When he speaks, everybody stops and listens. He’s somebody who commands wide respect.’ "

During a July 2007 appearance on WJAR-TV’s 10 News Conference, Reed was similarly unequivocal in telling Jim Taricani about his plans:

TARICANI: Let’s talk a little bit about your future, we’ve asked you this before, should a Democrat get elected president in ’08 and should you be requested or nominated to be Secretary of Defense, would you accept that position?

REED: No. My intention and hope is that I will be re-elected by the people of Rhode Island. I’m very privileged to serve as a United States Senator and I hope they will give me the opportunity to serve the state and the nation for six more years.

TARICANI: So you are ruling that out.

REED: Yes.

Such disavowals notwithstanding, John Mulligan, Washington correspondent for the Providence Journal, duly reported in February, "The mentioning season is upon us, and Sen. Jack Reed’s name has begun to pop up in print, blogs and TV as a possible ticket-mate for front-running Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. But Reed, emphatic in his declarations of non-interest in a national candidacy, is ready for his 15 minutes of near-fame to be over. ‘It’s very flattering’ to be mentioned, Reed said last week, ‘but my intention is to run for reelection to the U.S. Senate from Rhode Island.’ "

By May, the ProJo’s Charlie Bakst and WPRO-AM’s John DePetro cast skepticism upon Reed’s assertion that he wanted to remain in the Senate. When I blogged about that, Unruh got in touch, pointing out:

"In the last 27 years, over 140 people served in the cabinets of Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush, and only 1 person — Lloyd Bentsen of Texas — left their elected U.S. Senate seat to take a cabinet post. After they lost their re-election bids, John Ashcroft and Spencer Abraham joined George W. Bush’s cabinet, but they both had already been voted out of office by the people of their respective states and were not going to serve another term in the Senate."

Reed’s rejections of interest continued even as the senator — who remained neutral during the primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — lent his support to the victor’s campaign in early June. (And though the notion of a vice-presidential candidate coming from Rhode Island, with all of its four electoral votes, might seem far-fetched, it’s worth recalling that Dick Cheney is from Wyoming, which has even fewer.)

Asked that month about serving in an administration post, possibly VP, Reed told Miga, "It’s very flattering, but I am not interested. That’s it."

The ProJo’s Mulligan took it a step farther in July: "Reed was asked: ‘If you were offered this [vice-president] position you would decline, is that correct?’ ‘Yeah,’ he answered, ‘but I frankly I don’t expect to be offered the position,’ " in part since he hadn’t been asked to go through the vetting typical of the process.

Appeal to the center
As the Senate moved toward its August recess, Reed pointed with satisfaction to three measures poised to become law after years of effort: the Conquer Childhood Cancer Act, which contains $150 million to expand childhood cancer research over five years; the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which is projected to provide between $325 million and $585 million a year to build, preserve, and rehabilitate housing for low-income families; and the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which, among other things, seeks to simplify and streamline the federal student aid form.

Reed’s Republican opponent, Bob Tingle, 50, of Westerly, who works as a pit boss at Foxwoods, made his first run against the senator in 2002. Tingle, whose Web site (bobtingle.com) features a photo of Ronald Reagan, calls Reed a proponent of "big government, tax and spend liberalism."

Yet it’s Reed’s identification with typical working Rhode Islanders, as seen in his backing for efforts like those described above, that underlies his ability to connect with his constituents.

In April, a lengthy profile by the ProJo’s G. Wayne Miller described how Reed drives a 1991 Ford Escort to get to the Senate from the DC-area home that he shares with his wife, Julia Hart Reed, and their young daughter, Emily. (The central role played by the Senate in Reed’s life can be seen in how he met Hart, a Senate staffer, when they were part of a delegation to Afghanistan in 2002.)

The son of a homemaker and a school custodian from Cranston, he now makes his Rhode Island residence in Jamestown. Some of the glamour of the Senate fades, though, Reed says with a laugh, "When you’re sitting in the airport for six hours." Becoming a husband and a father, he says, "makes real the notion that what we do has long-term and lasting consequences. You have to work hard and do your best."

An opponent of the war in Iraq, Reed avoids sharp partisan rhetoric. In offering the Democratic radio address after returning from the Middle East in July, for example, he focused on the need for the Iraqi government to make tough political compromises and deliver basic services to its citizens.

This just-the-facts quality aggravated Mitchell Bard, who groused on the Huffington Post earlier this month about how Reed "sat silently on ABC’s This Week while Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) spouted a steady stream of Tass-worthy propaganda about the candidates, specifically that [John] McCain’s position on Iraq had been consistent and correct."

Reed, however, got equal time during the exchange, and Lieberman’s statements seemed unlikely to win fresh converts.

The senator and his opponents
Even GOP opponent Bob Tingle, whose political differences from the senator can be seen in how he favors abolishing the IRS, instituting a "fair tax," and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, doesn’t hesitate in describing Reed as "a good man" whom he respects and admires. Tingle says he’s running his low-budget effort since "there should always be a race, and it looked as if Jack was going to go unopposed."

Reed’s other opponent, Democrat Christopher F. Young, who is making his third campaign for Senate, has a Web site (wheretovote.com) depicting George W. Bush making a Nazi salute, and it offers a pastiche of criticism of various elected officials, including Reed, Obama, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline and Hillary Clinton.

Striking a quasi-populist stance, Young (who did not return a call seeking comment) suggests on his Web site that Reed is to blame for rising prices for oil and various consumer items, including flour, bread, and milk. He also charges that Reed is a captive of his campaign contributions, including those from banking interests and the federally-backed mortgage industry.

In the realm of Rhode Island politics, there’s no doubt that Reed is a high-flier; the senator has spent $1.7 million from his campaign fund since 2003, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org).While individual contributions represent 57 percent of his fundraising total over the last five years, according to the CRP, his top five contributors by industry over that period are as follow: Lawyers/Law Firms ($428,856); Securities & Investments ($348,038); Real Estate ($206,550); Insurance $189,850); and Commercial Banks ($161,849).

Asked about the influence of campaign contributions, Reed, who sits on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, says he tries to make good decisions based on the substance of an issue.

In May, Financial Week reported that Reed was starting to make waves through his chairmanship of the Banking Committee’s subcommittee on securities and investments: "Reed has been particularly tough on the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Accounting Standards Board for not doing enough to require adequate disclosure from banks that engaged in rampant securitization using off-balance-sheet entities during the past several years."

Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University, who compares Reed’s ethical standing with that of the late John Chafee, says senators from smaller states typically have to make far fewer deals and compromises than their large-state counterparts. "He studies the issues and knows his stuff," she says. "It’s very hard to attack him."

Reed is "a workhorse who’s actually achieved national prominence without having to jump in front of a camera," Schiller says. "He gets internal respect from the senators, and external respect from the media — respect for what he knows and how he conducts himself. He really has a tremendously important influence [in the Senate], and it’s his realm. People respect his character, and that’s a great accomplishment for someone who never really sought this influence."

Will Obama call?
Close observers of Reed mostly take him at face value when he says he wants to remain in the Senate.

Providence lawyer Jack McConnell, a major Democratic fundraiser in Rhode Island, for example, says, "I can not imagine Jack Reed leaving the United States Senate for any position." In having worked with many senators, "I have never met anyone who loves being a senator from Rhode Island as much as Jack Reed. I can conceive of no scenario that would have him leave."

Of course, it’s hard to predict how things might change if Obama wins in November.

"If [Reed’s] asked to be secretary of defense, I believe he will say, "Yes" to the commander-in-chief," says Schiller. "Just like Colin Powell, this is a guy who respects the chain of command."

Jennifer Duffy, a Rhode Island native who follows the Senate at the Cook Political Report, says Reed is not poised to gain much seniority through the 2008 election cycle, but that he has forged a strong relationship with Obama and could potentially have the president’s ear even while remaining in the Senate.

"The future, politically, is all pretty bright" for Reed, says Duffy, "and if Democrats win the White House, it’s brighter. I think he is already part of the Senate Democratic leadership on a sort of ad hoc basis, because they do rely on him on national security and defense issues. This trip with Obama [in July] made a lot of people take notice of him who did not do so before," both in the Beltway and beyond.

Considering his strong suit in national security, Reed might help Democrats to make an impact in that area, either in the Senate or as a secretary of defense.

Asked about how the US is faring in the so-called global war on terror, he offers a characteristic response, citing the need for a multilateral approach that makes better use of resources and changes the dynamic in the Islamic world, so that terrorists become marginalized there.

In the present, Brown’s Schiller says that Reed offers a more immediate lesson for Democrats. "Do what you say you’re going to do," she says. "That’s what Jack Reed has always done . . . He never promises more than he can deliver."

To read Ian Donnis’s politics + media blog, to thephoenix.com/notfornothing. He can be reached atidonnis@phx.com.