Berens Charlyne - Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward

Acknowledgments

I cant think of a new way to phrase it, so Ill just say that this book would not have been written without the help and support of a passel of fine people.

I appreciate the support and encouragement of Dean Will Norton and the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of NebraskaLincoln and of Jim and Rhonda Seacrest, who have helped foster research by the college faculty.

I am grateful to all who served as sources for the book, offering their insights and expertise about Senator Hagel in particular and politics and government in general. Those who offered especially helpful perspectives and gave generously of their time included Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker; Delaware senator Joe Biden; Senator Hagels wife, Lilibet; former Nebraska congressman John Y. McCollister; CNN s Judy Woodruff; and the Washington Post s Helen Dewar.

Mike Buttry, Senator Hagels communications director, was endlessly patient and cheerful in responding to my myriad requests for access and referencesas well as points of information.

And Senator Hagel himself, of course, made it possible for this book to be more than just a digest of previously published and broadcast stories. I am enormously grateful that he was willing to answer scores of questions, thoughtfully and with good humor. He gave me hours of time and took considerable risk in giving me access to so many of his ideas, thoughts, and reflections with no right of pre-publication review. I appreciate it.

Quotes and paraphrases not footnoted in the text should be assumed to come from personal interviews with the people cited.

Finally I am grateful to my husband, Denny, for listening to me complain when things werent working and rejoicing with me when they were. Hes the best.

Who Is This Guy?

I TS LATE AUGUST 2004 , and the Republicans are celebrating in New York City. Its a foregone conclusion that they will nominate incumbent George W. Bush for a second term as president. Not much to watch there.

But some other scenarios are playing themselves out among the delegates and party enthusiasts. After all, its only four years until the Oval Office will be wide open, and its not too early for potential Republican candidates to start positioning themselves to be anointed in 2008. The routine involves going to the right parties, meeting the right people, getting interviews with the top medianot just the hometown folks but those who can make a persons name a household word around the nations collective dinner table.

Chuck Hagel, Nebraskas senior senator, is playing the game. Only a few weeks before the start of the festivities, he finally confirmed that he was considering taking a shot at the 2008 presidential nomination, something many observers had long expected hed do. Now hes laying some groundwork.

Hes been invited to speak at a morning gathering of the Iowa delegation and will drop in at an afternoon reception hosted by the New Hampshire delegation and make a few remarks there too. The potential candidate and the party leaders from the two states with the earliest caucus and primary election will size up each others moves.

Hagel takes the opportunity to compliment his hosts. You started the process, and youre going to have an awful lot to do with how it ends, he tells the Iowa delegates in the morning. You shape and mold the outcomes from start to finish, he says to the New Hampshire delegates in the afternoon.

The senator may be making the required moves, but hes not always saying the expected things. Instead of gliding along, telling his audiences what he thinks they want to hear, he tends to talk about the things he thinks are important. Sometimes they do not reflect Republican orthodoxy.

Several days before Bush will make his speech to accept the nomination, for instance, Hagel is interviewed on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer . The topic is the role the war in Iraq is playing in the presidential campaign. Reporter Margaret Warner asks whether Iraq is a real negative for the president.

Hagel does a delicate turn. Its a major issue. There are other issues, too, of course, but, Yes, its an issue.

Warner reminds Hagel that, back in June, he said the occupation of Iraq had been poorly planned and had actually spread terror cells throughout the world. Does he still think thats true?

Well, yes. We didnt think about consequences. We didnt think about the long term, he says.

And when the president addresses the convention and Americas voters, what should Mr. Bush say about the nations involvement in Iraq?

Some careful footwork: It is very complicated. And we are going to need relationships. We are going to need associations, seamless networks of cooperation with our allies.... And if he can clearly define that, then I think the American public will continue to give him the latitude that presidents must have in the implementation

Earlier in the week Hagel surprised some observers by cohosting a reception at Bob Kerreys home in Greenwich Village. The two men became friends when they represented Nebraska together in the Senate, and in 2004 Kerrey, the Democrat, is president of the New School University in New York. The reception is billed as a kickoff for a New School forum, a series of roundtable discussions on urban issues that, Kerrey says, both parties policy makers need to confront. Crossing party lines in the midst of a convention is not exactly commonplace, but Hagel takes advantage of the opportunity to promote some of his own policy views.

And he takes advantage of the conventions media spotlight as well. He doesnt get to make a speech to the convention this time, as he had done in 2000 when he nominated his friend John McCain. But he gets plenty of attention off the floor itself.

Hagel is interviewed live on CNN s American Morning . The possibility that he will be the partys chosen one in 2008 is discussed in stories in major papers like the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , and the Boston Globe , as well as in wire-service stories that run in papers around the nation.

Then, as the convention ends, Hagel becomes really blunt. The Republican Party has come loose of its moorings, he tells reporters. He doesnt blame Bush for the mess, but he laments what his party has done during the previous four years. For one thing, the Congress, with Republican majorities in both houses, has run up the largest deficits in the nations history. For another, Republicans have embraced a foreign policy that has put the United States at odds with many of its longtime allies and fed Americans suspicion that multilateral institutions like the United Nations and NATO are a nuisance at best and a threat at worst.

Once upon a time, he says, the Republicans made a name for themselves as an internationalist party, reaching out to build consensus all over the world. Now theyre turning their back on their reputation and their friends. Its a position he thinks is dead wrong.

Well. In the wake of his partys party, Hagel is not in the mood to celebrate the GOP s condition or direction. Instead of joining the post-celebration euphoria, he contributes to the morning-after headaches. Is this any way to navigate the treacherous road to the White House?

Maybe, but its risky. Most people who want to win delegates support try to keep in step with those delegates, not challenge them to change their ways. But Chuck Hagel is not afraid of challengeor risk. He may be jumping through mandatory hoops on the way to a possible presidential nomination, but hes leaping through some of them a bit sideways or even backward, pausing occasionally to stick his finger in his partys eye.

For all the frustration Hagel expresses about the Republican Partyand sometimes about politics in generalhe is philosophically in tune with many of the partys traditional positions. The man who grew up in independent-minded Nebraska and made a fortune in the cell-phone industry believes ardently in free trade, in as little government intervention as possible, in fostering a climate that lets people do for themselves, and in a government that interferes in peoples lives only when it has to. It is primarily on matters of foreign relations that he parts company with his party.