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March 5, 2006

Mark Bennett: Center at IU aims to unravel complex issues handled by government institution

It might be hard to imagine a renowned American statesman like Lee Hamilton carrying his orange juice and Egg McMuffin on a tray to join the conversation by a booth of coffee clatchers stirred up about President Bush turning over ports operations to an Arab company.

But in a sense, such connections with Average Joes and Janes are part of Hamilton’s mission in life.

It motivated him to establish the Center on Congress at the Indiana University campus in Bloomington in 1999.

There are other facilities around the country devoted to unraveling the complex issues handled by Congress. But their targeted audiences are, as Hamilton puts it, the experts, the practitioners, the political scientists or even actual members of Congress. The IU facility differs. It is nonpartisan. And it is not a think tank. Instead, it aims to educate typical Americans about what those 535 U.S. senators and representatives do in that domed white building in Washington, D.C.

“Our center at Indiana University is really focused, as I say to the staff, on people who eat breakfast at McDonald’s every morning,” Hamilton said by telephone Tuesday from his Washington office. “They’re busy people in their work and their families and their community. They really haven’t had the opportunity to look at Congress as an institution.

“And among other things that we try to impart to them,” he added, “is that the Congress is an institution that profoundly affects their life.”

Hamilton worked in that life-changing body for 34 years, representing Indiana’s 9th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. His calm, steady Hoosier demeanor got high-profile visibility in the 1980s as chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, especially during its televised hearings on Capitol Hill, featuring Lt. Col. Oliver North.

And even after Hamilton retired from Congress in 1999, he has served as vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, and co-chairman (with Thomas Kean) of the group that monitors implementation of its recommendations.

In short, he knows how Congress works, or doesn’t work.

And the debate over the president’s approval of a company from the United Arab Emirates assuming operations at six U.S. seaports offers a good example.

Personally, Hamilton does not think the deal should be rejected simply because the prospective company is from an Arab nation. After all, most American ports, he explained, are already operated by foreign firms. But Hamilton does like the idea of Congress demanding a more thorough review of the pact arranged by the Bush administration.

“The contract does need to be reviewed very carefully,” Hamilton said. “I think Congress is entirely within its rights when it says, ‘Hey look, Mr. President, we want to scrutinize this contract. We want some answers here.’ And when it demands a very careful review of the contract, I think [the Congress] is performing well.”

But the larger problem goes beyond this one deal. Instead, Hamilton hopes Americans realize this problem has a root cause directly linked to Congress.

“The problem of foreign ownership of important facilities and services in this country is only going to get worse because we engage in such horrendous deficit financing,” he said. Contracting foreign firms often becomes the only affordable alternative.

Thus, the Congress in the 21st century doesn’t always get high grades from this former rep. In a government divided into three branches — executive, judicial and legislative — Congress has slipped in its status, Hamilton said.

“I think it’s become too timid,” he suggested. “I don’t think you can say today it’s a co-equal branch of government. The core of the work of Congress is deliberation. I don’t think it’s nearly a deliberative body as it once was.”

People who live on the polar edges of politics may immediately presume he’s jabbing Congress because of his party affiliation. Not so, said Hamilton.

“I do not make that comment because I’m a Democrat and the Congress is controlled by Republicans,” he said. “I think that the trends have been coming for a long time, under Democratic as well as Republican leadership in the Congress. And I just think it’s not a very effective institution these days in meeting the desires of the American people.”

It’s especially important for Americans to realize what Congress could be during this election year.

Hamilton also takes the media to task for its coverage of that legislative body. He worries that entertainment has overshadowed substance in some media forms to boost an outlet’s bottom line finances. And Hamilton sees too much “incestuous” coverage by the Washington press corps, meaning they often all tend to go after the same story. Not too many pieces detailing farm policies make the evening news.

But Hamilton isn’t coming from the standard make-bad-guys-out-of-the-press viewpoint harbored by many politicians. To the contrary, he wants a more thoughtful, independent and aggressive style of coverage of Congress and Washington government from the media. In fact, he thinks Capitol Hill reporters and politicians get “a little too chummy” at times.

The average American can benefit from a skeptical media.

“I think almost invariably when something is carefully covered by the media, you get improvement over time,” Hamilton said. “And I worry about areas that have no public exposure. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. And the media is the place where you get the sunlight.”

Though they seldom do, politicians should welcome that scrutiny, Hamilton said, and not resent it.

“I think that tension is a healthy tension, and a healthy tension for the country, because the newsman ought always to be skeptical,” Hamilton said. “He ought always to be curious. And he ought always to ask the probing question, even if it causes the politician to be a little uncomfortable.”

Hamilton loves how that happens in England, particularly during Prime Minister Tony Blair’s runs for re-election.

“Today, politicians [in the United States] manipulate the press. It’s very hard to get at a politician in an atmosphere that he doesn’t control, particularly when you’re running at the presidential level,” Hamilton said. “And in Great Britain, he drives into a town, the press is waiting for him there, he’s got to stand out on the commons and answer every question they can throw at him. And some of them are embarrassing, some of them are impolite, some of them are challenging and offensive.

“But, boy let me tell you,” he continued, “it works.”

At the height of his congressional career, many envisioned Hamilton on the campaign trail for this country’s highest offices.

“Clinton interviewed me for vice president, and I think I was runner-up to Al Gore. I’m not sure. Maybe third. Who knows for sure?” Hamilton said, chuckling. “And several other times people approached me about running for president and all the rest. I never did that, and was perfectly satisfied with my position in southern Indiana.”

Two years ago, Time Magazine listed Hamilton as one of its “people who mattered in 2004.” Back here, he already did. Hoosiers first knew him as a basketball standout at Evansville Central High School and DePauw University. The Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame inducted Hamilton in 1982. Then they knew him as a humble, thoughtful, practical-thinking congressman who ascended to powerful positions on congressional committees.

Maybe that’s not 21st-century presidential material. But average Americans would benefit from having more people like Hamilton in Washington these days.

Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

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