Washington Will Miss Ray LaHood

Because they sense that voters have finally had it up to here with the petty, polarizing partisanship of the kind that prizes making political points instead of making tough decisions, candidates in 2008 are busy touting their commitment to bipartisanship.

The sad fact is that one public servant, unknown to most, who has lived and practiced genuine bipartisanship is retiring this year. After 14 admirable years of representing Peoria and central Illinois in the U.S. House, Republican Ray LaHood has made the House a more civil, more decent and more personal place.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to the testimony of U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Democrat who is so tough he's widely rumored to eat nails and spit rust: "I'll miss him dearly. ... I'm a Jewish-American Democrat, and Ray is a Lebanese-American Catholic Republican. If we could work together, anything is possible."

And work together they have. As LaHood recalls, "The day after Rahm got elected (in 2002), he called me and said, 'Ray, I want to work with you.'"

Together, the two have co-hosted a series of bipartisan dinners where House members from both parties have been able to spend an evening talking policy and politics and getting to know each other personally. One major Republican leader gravely warned LaHood against any collaboration with Emanuel: "Don't do it. He's the devil!"

Last year, when 43 governors of both parties endorsed the Democratic congressional leadership's plan to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to include an additional 4 million uninsured children of working poor families who made too much to qualify for Medicaid, Ray LaHood broke with his party leadership — including President Bush — and helped persuade nearly four dozen House Republicans to buck the White House and back SCHIP.

Dick Durbin, the senior U.S. senator from Illinois, is the assistant Senate majority leader and a formidable party strategist. But Durbin, when asked, praises LaHood to the sky: "He's one of my three best friends in the Illinois delegation (in which there are today 13 Democrats and eight Republicans).

I trust Ray. I have worked closely with him. His word is always good. Ray is a real human being who always tries to find that common ground."

Working for five years with Massachusetts Democrat Bill Delahunt, LaHood successfully cosponsored the Innocence Protection Act, which ensures that death-row defendants are competently represented and have access to DNA evidence.

Ray LaHood has been a loyal Republican but with a strong streak of independence. That may explain why Barack Obama, three days after his own 2004 election to the Senate, called LaHood and spent an hour and a half exploring ways they could work together. What does LaHood, an early endorser of John McCain, think of the 2008 Democratic standard-bearer? "I think he's very smart. He's a very good guy with a good heart." Reservations? "I'm mystified," notes LaHood, an alumnus of the Illinois legislature, "how a guy in the state Senate can vote not 'yes' or 'no,' but vote 'present' 130 times."

LaHood is no plaster saint. His cooperation, while natural to him, is rooted in pragmatism: "The only way to get anything done is by being bipartisan," he says. "That's what people who live in the real world do. They work together on school boards, hospital boards and library boards."

What is he most proud of? The four bipartisan House retreats he organized working with Democratic colleagues. "We had 200 members and 150 spouses on one weekend," he said. "If you get to know somebody, it's a lot tougher then to be ugly to them."

Anything else? As somebody who clashed often with his own hyper-partisan GOP leadership in the House, he admits: "I survived Gingrich, Armey and DeLay. I'm still here. They're all gone."

He didn't just outlast them, he also outclassed them. Ray LaHood never had a political enemies list because he did not have political enemies. He had political adversaries who were also his colleagues and often became his friends. Capitol Hill and the House will both be poorer for his absence.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 MARK SHIELDS