Don’t Look Back

Darrell Issa, the congressman about to make life more difficult for President Obama, has had some troubles of his own.

by Ryan Lizza January 24, 2011
The New Yorker

A few days before Christmas, the mood in Representative Darrell Issa’s office was jovial. Outside, the hallways were filled with the House’s equivalent of scalps: wooden pallets piled high with shrink-wrapped boxes belonging to defeated or retiring Democrats. Inside, some of Issa’s closest advisers sat around talking trash. Issa, a six-term California Republican, had recently been elected chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which, according to House rules, “may at any time conduct investigations of any matter.” Now that he had been given the power to subpoena, investigate, and harass the Obama Administration, Issa was being described as a future leader of his party—and the man most likely to weaken the President before the 2012 election.

Issa’s chief of staff, Dale Neugebauer, was wedged into a chair before a semicircular desk. He turned to welcome Kurt Bardella, Issa’s spokesman. On a couch sat Jason Scism, the congressman’s longtime legislative director, who had recently left to become a lobbyist for Research in Motion, the manufacturer of the BlackBerry.

Bardella removed his suit jacket, picked up four darts, and started tossing them with near-perfect aim at a well-used board on the wall. “The thing we discovered with Jason is that he’s unable to play darts sober,” Neugebauer said. “Kurt is actually a phenomenal dart player, but Jason, once he gets about six beers in him, is also phenomenal. They call him Dead-Eye.”

(More here.)