Reid Faces Battles in Washington and at Home
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
While pushing the president’s agenda through a nearly dysfunctional Senate, Harry Reid is trying to keep his job.
Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, arrived at Reid’s office not long afterward — casually dressed, a cup of coffee in one hand — and after a brisk meeting, a decision was reached: Reid would abandon his compromise, which was intended to appease proponents of a government-run insurance plan. The concession would not sit well with a lot of Democrats, not to mention the powerful constituency of union voters in Nevada, where Reid is up for re-election in November. But there was little discussion. Reid and Emanuel are exemplars of the just-get-it-done style of legislating. As it turned dark outside, Reid began pulling senators aside in the lobby just off the Senate floor, speaking in a strained whisper as he presented the case in characteristically pragmatic terms. “I’m with you; I’m for you,” he told Tom Harkin of Iowa, one of the Senate’s traditional New Deal Democrats, who was pained that the public option was dying.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magazine/24reid-t.html?hp |
