Nowhere to Hyde

Mr. Fowler, NR's Associate Publisher, served for several years in NR's Washington office.

Soon enough, the baton in the Clinton scandals will pass from Kenneth Starr to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, who is an entirely different animal. A former staffer remembers Hyde one day "sitting at his desk, smoking a huge, huge cigar. He pulls out of his desk one of those terrible abortion pictures, points his cigar at it and says, 'How the hell can someone be in favor of this?"'

That is pure Hyde. He is a congressional Old Bull who nonetheless has a keen and unmovable moral sense. He is a conviction politician who nonetheless manages to be a team player in the House GOP. He is an articulate and sharp-witted Republican who nonetheless enjoys the respect and affection of Democrats. He could, in short, be President Clinton's worst nightmare.

Everything about the 74-year-old Hyde speaks of largeness. With his burly physique, his prophet-like mane of white hair, his large cigars, and his booming voice, Hyde has always stood out on Capitol Hill. He fills the room. And over the last three years he has often, with his graciousness and humor, provided the ballast of maturity to a collection of House Republicans sparked with the energy -- and sometimes the recklessness -- of the Class of 1994. From the other side of the Capitol, a Senate leadership aide describes Hyde simply: "From where we sit, he's the most highly respected member. He provides the adult supervision for the House leadership. He's it."

It's a long way to have come for the former Democrat from Chicago. ("It was a woman who made a Republican out of me," he told the Chicago Tribune, "and that was Eleanor Roosevelt.") Hyde won a seat in the Illinois House in 1966 and was elected to Congress in 1974. He quickly made his reputation by grabbing the most emotional issue in American politics: abortion.

Despite a press eager to brand pro-life activism as extremist, and despite his colleagues' anger at being forced to vote on the sticky issue, Hyde blitzkrieged the House with amendments to ban Medicaid funding of abortion. Through the sheer force of his passion and eloquence Hyde won the day; the ban was enacted in 1976.

Overnight, Hyde became a hero and a leader to social conservatives, including ethnic Democrats who felt a one-of-us-ness about the Irish Catholic congressman. And he became a leader among his congressional colleagues. Patrick Riley, former editor of the National Catholic Register, recalls Hyde's helping him to find work. "Hyde invited me to lunch in the Capitol. Well, he was late, and I asked the cashier if she had seen the Congressman. She said she hadn't, and then called to the waiters: 'Has anybody seen Henry?' The familiarity was indicative of how everyone liked him. And then at lunch, every congressman who passed our table, I mean every single one, stopped to say hello and talk with Henry. I was dumbfounded. It was obvious he was everyone's darling, and this was in 1979 -- he had been a congressman for only four years."

For the next twenty years, Henry Hyde would be at the center of congressional policy battles. He was a key figure in the ongoing war in the Eighties over funding for the Nicaraguan Contras, and a primary House spokesman for the Reagan Administration's foreign policy. He served on both the Iran - Contra committee and (as ranking Republican) the October Surprise panel, and on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. When the leadership position of Republican Policy Committee chairman opened in 1992, Hyde was the unanimous choice for it, and in 1994 he was selected to lead the Judiciary Committee even though another member had seniority.

Hyde doesn't need much coaching. Peter Roskam, now an Illinois state representative, recalls that when he was an aide to Hyde someone once told him: "'You must be very bright, he's so smart.' That's because people know there's a lot of propping up of members. But Hyde didn't need it." Roskam recalls the morning of a critical vote on Contra funding: "I came in early, but Hyde was already there, at his desk, writing a speech on a legal pad with his felt pen. He didn't need any research. He didn't need any writers. That afternoon he was the debate's clean-up hitter, and he knocked it out of the park."

This eloquence and wit can be the bane of Democrats. During the height of the Nicaragua battles, then-Rep. Michael Barnes (D., Md.) and other Contra foes held a Capitol Hill press conference to attack Contra funding. Hearing of the event, Hyde left his office with a glint in his eye. As he walked into the room and took a seat in the back, Barnes blanched, and with good reason: Hyde began hurling one-liners that short-circuited the press conference. Barnes left clearly flustered. Hyde left chuckling.

The combination of deeply felt principles and tactical smarts can make trouble for a politician's colleagues. Not in Hyde's case. "He doesn't demand, 'I must have this!"' says Kathryn Lehman, a former staffer. "And even when there is something he feels strongly about, like civil-asset forfeiture, he's willing to back off to protect Republicans."