Senate Sayonaras: Some bulls leave. What's next? - Brief Article

National Review, Oct 1, 2001 by Kate O'Beirne

The U.S. Senate will convene on January 3, 2003, without its most prominent and effective social and economic conservatives. Ever since Jesse Helms and Phil Gramm announced their intent to retire at the end of their current terms, Hill conservatives have been calculating the effect of the loss of these two stalwart allies. The retirements come just a year after the death of Georgia senator Paul Coverdell, who had been an invaluable behind-the-scenes coalition builder and a key strategic asset for conservatives. In its own way, each of these losses is more important than the defection of Jim Jeffords: While Jeffords just scrambled the committee chairmanships, the loss of Helms, Gramm, and Coverdell shifts the composition of the Senate markedly to the left.

While Coverdell's work might be taken up by another unique politician who is simply willing to work harder than anyone else, and shun the limelight, the current complacent political mood can't be expected to produce the likes of Jesse Helms and Phil Gramm.

Sen. Gramm asserted, correctly, that he had completed much of the work he had come to Washington to do. As a newly minted Republican congressman, he led a crusade against energy price caps, runaway welfare dependency, a hollow military, and big federal deficits. Under the Gramm-Rudman law, which required automatic budget cuts if the federal deficit wasn't brought down to specified levels, the deficit was reduced from 5 percent of GDP in 1986 to 3 percent in 1989.

"Phil Gramm's not replaceable, you know," says Republican Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona. One conservative Senate aide despairs that with Gramm's departure, "there is no one to take on Pete Domenici," the considerably less conservative Senate budget baron. Times have changed. The budget fights Gramm waged back in the 1980s took place when government was seen as the problem; today, the head of the GOP is a "compassionate conservative" who hopes only to cut the rate of growth of federal spending. One former GOP Senate staffer doesn't believe that conservative senators can be expected to operate the way Helms and Gramm did, because "cool times don't produce such hot politicians."

This veteran aide also expects that few newcomers will share the rarest of qualities in the clubby, collegial Senate: the willingness to make their colleagues angry. The most effective senators are those who are willing to use the full extent of their individual power-even when it inconveniences other senators-when some issue is of critical importance to them. "There are only a few senators who are willing to keep a best friend from attending a daughter's graduation because he's determined to keep the Senate in session" to enact or defeat some measure.

Sens. Helms and Gramm-like others in the past, such as Bob Packwood and Howard Metzenbaum-have stubbornly wielded that power. Gramm freely, and frequently, acknowledges the price: "I did not come to Washington to be loved, and I have not been disappointed." Like Helms and Gramm, Sens. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and John McCain of Arizona have shown a willingness not to care a whit about being in the good graces of their colleagues; but, unlike those stalwarts, they have not necessarily done so on behalf of conservative policy goals.

Although Gramm will be leaving a more conservative Senate GOP conference than he joined almost 20 years ago, its average IQ will slip with his departure. Minority leader Trent Lott, an admirer, has been known to declare, "The problem with Phil Gramm is that he knows more than the rest of us, and he knows that he knows more." Gramm intimidated allies and adversaries alike-an approach that had its downside.

As chairman of the Senate GOP conference, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is looking to the future, and working on the coalition- outreach and communications strategy that Paul Coverdell had mastered. At one of his recent bimonthly briefings for lobbyists, Santorum explained that Gramm's enormous talents would be sorely missed when he left, but looked for a silver lining in the opportunities his absence would provide junior senators who had deferred to the talented Texan in the past.

Sen. Helms has been less active in recent years, and some of his younger colleagues have taken on the social issues he ably championed for so long. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas is leading the fight to prohibit cloning and the funding of embryonic-stem-cell research, and Sen. Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas chairs a weekly conference of conservative pro-family groups. Senate watchers hope that tough, committed conservatives like Sens. Jim Bunning (Kentucky), Mike Enzi (Wyoming), and the impressive Jon Kyl (Arizona)-together with newcomers like George Allen (Virginia) and John Ensign (Nevada)-take up parts of Gramm's broad portfolio. In a power play worthy of Jesse Helms, for instance, Sens. Kyl and Larry Craig (Idaho) recently threatened to block Senate approval of an appropriations bill until the Senate took up a few stalled presidential nominations. The Democrats promptly approved the nominees.