The Times’ ire at Sensenbrenner

The spiteful adolescents at the New York Times have out-done themselves. “‘Pit Bull’ of the House Latches On to Immigration,” reads the page one profile of Rep. James Sensenbrenner by Times reporter Mark Leibovich in the July 11 issue. The photo shows Sensenbrenner presiding over the Judiciary Committee holding the gavel in front of his mouth so that it appears like a huge mustache, making him resemble You Know Who. Of all the photos they could have picked, they chose one in which the grey-haired Sensenbrenner looks like a jokey version of Hitler; that’s the level of maturity of the Timesians. Leibovich’s story begins with a series of negative personal descriptions of his subject. Gratuitous nastiness is of course the standard for Times coverage of a conservative. What is remarkable here, which I can never remember seeing before, is that the personal characterizations don’t stop, but go on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. The story starts to seem like a temper tantrum at the mean father figure who won’t give Leibovich the nice big open-borders bill he wants. Here is the first half of the story, with the personal descriptions bolded:

‘Pit Bull’ of the House Latches On to Immigration
By MARK LEIBOVICH

WASHINGTON, July 10—Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. has no tolerance for illegal immigrants, either in his political life or personal life.

“My housekeeper in Wisconsin was born in Wisconsin,” says Mr. Sensenbrenner, the Republican congressman and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “My housekeeper here is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nicaragua.”

Mr. Sensenbrenner is so loath to risk dealing with illegal immigrants that when his Cadillacs need cleaning, he prefers do-it-yourself car washes that require tokens. “They don’t have Montezuma’s picture on the front of them,” Mr. Sensenbrenner says of the tokens.

He is sitting in his Capitol Hill office dominated by two life-size portraits of himself. He looms heavily here, as he does in the thick of the national debate over immigration in which he has defied President Bush’s plans for reform and arguably holds more sway than anyone else in Congress. A bipartisan irritant from a state nowhere near the Mexican border, he has outsize influence on the fate of the country’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

In each portrait in his office, Mr. Sensenbrenner appears regal and contented—in contrast to the rumpled and fed-up image he conveys in real life. He is commonly described as “prickly,” “cantankerous” and “unpleasant.” And this is by his friends.

“I would describe Jim as—what’s a nice word—how about ‘idiosyncratic’?” says Representative Dan Lungren, a California Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Lungren equates Mr. Sensenbrenner’s leadership to something the Green Bay Packer guard Jerry Kramer said about his coach Vince Lombardi. “He treats us all equally,” Mr. Lungren says of Mr. Sensenbrenner. “He treats us all like dogs.”

Mr. Sensenbrenner, 63, can be neutrally described as a Washington piece of work—a big-bellied curmudgeon with a taste for old Caddies, pontoon boats and enormous cigars. He is equally at home discussing policy minutiae or the details of his Dalmatian’s recent intestinal problems. His honking voice and Upper Midwestern enunciations make him one of the most mimicked politicians on Capitol Hill. (“Noooo interviews in the hallway” is a familiar refrain as he blows past reporters.)

One could dismiss him as something of a cartoon, except that Mr. Sensenbrenner has been a feared and vital character in some defining political dramas, like the Clinton impeachment, the passage of the USA Patriot Act and the current legislative donnybrook over immigration, an issue that he calls his toughest in nearly four decades of public life.

He has approached the matter with characteristic stubbornness, righteousness and, of course, brusqueness. He delights in placing himself above the chummy niceties of Washington. (On the subject of his crotchety nature, he smiles big and becomes almost giddy—most unSensenbrenner-like.)

His conservative populism and maverick tendencies play well in a state that has elected political outliers including Senators Joseph R. McCarthy and William Proxmire. They also suit the solidly Republican district outside Milwaukee that first elected Mr. Sensenbrenner in 1978.

But he does not always suit the House Republican leadership, many Senate Republicans and the Bush White House. He has been the chief promoter of the House’s “enforcement first” approach to immigration overhaul, emphasizing border security, criminal penalties for illegal immigrants and sanctions against employers who hire them. The president and the Senate have favored a package that offers illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

In recent weeks, Mr. Sensenbrenner has refused to yield on anything, derided what he calls the “amnesty” of the Senate bill and warned that he is willing to walk away without a compromise. [There are Sensenbrenner and his men, standing like a stone wall!] He says his views have been influenced by the flood of immigration-related cases coming through his office and what he sees as the failure of previous immigration reform efforts he has worked on.

He is known as one of the toughest negotiators in Congress, which invites another canine metaphor from a colleague. “Sensenbrenner is a pit bull,” says Representative Ric Keller, a Florida Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “And the Senate negotiators he’s up against are wearing Milk-Bone underwear.”

During a 50-minute interview that feels, at times, like a lecture, Mr. Sensenbrenner says:

”You have to be prickly to prod people into accomplishing something.”

”I’ve adopted a philosophy of telling it like it is.”

”I’ve been referred to … as a difficult child.”

”If you go along to get along, you don’t get anything accomplished.”

For as much as Mr. Sensenbrenner decries the impulse to “go along to get along,” he also pays close attention to what is said about him. This is underscored by how wary colleagues are of speaking on the record about him.

Well, you get the idea. Leibovich from this point onward actually says some nice things about Sensenbrenner, such as that “Democrats on the committee praise Mr. Sensenbrenner for his fairness, efficiency and willingness to heed the concerns of the minority party.” But after this extraordinary outpouring of unattractive personal descriptions, who will notice? Also, if Sensenbrenner is so fair and decent to the Democratic minority on his committee, what about that business of his treating his colleagues “like dogs”?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 13, 2006 06:35 PM | Send