CQ Profile: A Wily Inside Player, Reid Is Key to Obama Agenda
By Chuck McCutcheon,
CQ Staff
Nevada’s Harry Reid carries considerable influence as Senate majority leader, but you might not know it from watching him.
He shuns self-promotion and avoids the social circuit; he once passed up a White House state dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth II to stay home with his wife. He can be taciturn, even dour on television, and often speaks in such a whisper that, to start off 2008, he revealed a New Year’s resolution: “I’m going to try to talk louder.”
But he more than makes up for any stylistic shortcomings by being the consummate inside player.
Reid called his 2008 autobiography “The Good Fight,” a reference to the combative ex-boxer’s willingness to enter a tussle. As leader of the Senate Democrats in the 111th Congress (2009-10), Reid can expect far fewer scraps with the White House than when it was in Republican hands, plus an expanded base of Democrats that will give him greater leeway to operate. But he isn’t assured of a totally peaceful life.
Reid will be under pressure to push through the Senate the Obama administration’s ambitious agenda to revive the economy and plans for energy, health care and other matters. He will need to corral at least a few Republicans to support those efforts, while keeping the liberal core in his own party satisfied. And he’ll have to deal with a conservative-leaning GOP caucus keen on embarrassing him tactically and defeating him at the polls in 2010.
A wily parliamentarian, Reid can be persuasive behind closed doors. He was instrumental in talking former Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords into leaving the Republican caucus in 2001, handing Democrats a majority until 2003. He also ensured that Connecticut independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman was not booted from the Democratic Caucus late in 2008 for enthusiastically supporting Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain ’s presidential bid.
(More here.)
CQ Staff
Nevada’s Harry Reid carries considerable influence as Senate majority leader, but you might not know it from watching him.
He shuns self-promotion and avoids the social circuit; he once passed up a White House state dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth II to stay home with his wife. He can be taciturn, even dour on television, and often speaks in such a whisper that, to start off 2008, he revealed a New Year’s resolution: “I’m going to try to talk louder.”
But he more than makes up for any stylistic shortcomings by being the consummate inside player.
Reid called his 2008 autobiography “The Good Fight,” a reference to the combative ex-boxer’s willingness to enter a tussle. As leader of the Senate Democrats in the 111th Congress (2009-10), Reid can expect far fewer scraps with the White House than when it was in Republican hands, plus an expanded base of Democrats that will give him greater leeway to operate. But he isn’t assured of a totally peaceful life.
Reid will be under pressure to push through the Senate the Obama administration’s ambitious agenda to revive the economy and plans for energy, health care and other matters. He will need to corral at least a few Republicans to support those efforts, while keeping the liberal core in his own party satisfied. And he’ll have to deal with a conservative-leaning GOP caucus keen on embarrassing him tactically and defeating him at the polls in 2010.
A wily parliamentarian, Reid can be persuasive behind closed doors. He was instrumental in talking former Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords into leaving the Republican caucus in 2001, handing Democrats a majority until 2003. He also ensured that Connecticut independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman was not booted from the Democratic Caucus late in 2008 for enthusiastically supporting Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain ’s presidential bid.
(More here.)
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