The New York Times has an interesting profile on Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island in yesterday’s edition. The article profiles the critical role Reed played in brokering a deal to help deal with the home foreclosure crisis:
Rhode Island’s housing woes receive little notice compared with the more serious plight of states like Florida and Nevada. Similarly overlooked is Mr. Reed’s central role in clinching an agreement on a foreclosure rescue bill last month — the latest sign of his rising stature as a quiet dealmaker respected by colleagues in both parties. Mr. Reed’s name even appears on some lists as a potential running mate for Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
It was Mr. Reed who accompanied Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the banking committee, to meet with Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the committee’s top Republican, when they brokered the final terms of the foreclosure rescue plan, which will widen access to federally insured mortgages without tapping taxpayer money.
The Senate could bring the bill to the floor as early as Tuesday, Democrats said. And if Congress, as its sponsors hope, sends the bill to President Bush before the July 4 recess, it will be Mr. Reed who emerges as one of the big winners on Capitol Hill, not only by securing aid for troubled borrowers back home but also because the legislation creates an affordable housing fund that he has been fighting for since he won a second term in 2002.
“He is to be commended for his tenacity, for his never-give-up,” said Mr. Shelby, who, like Mr. Reed, prefers to flex his legislative muscle behind the scenes.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a fellow member of the banking committee, said Mr. Reed pressed for years to create the affordable-housing fund, and finally found the perfect moment.
“Once again,” Mr. Schumer said, “Jack does it in his quiet, steadfast way, and it is extremely effective.”
Reed isn’t just a leader on domestic housing policy–he also has military experience as an Army ranger, has been a vocal leader on changing our Iraq policy, and has visited Iraq several times and toured territory and terrain that few civilians have been able to:
Mr. Reed, 58, is perhaps best known for his repeated efforts last year to set a deadline for the withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, but his diminutive height — 5 feet 7 inches on a good day, he says — makes his Special Forces background seem both improbable and all the more intimidating.
He has taken frequent trips to Iraq on which he goes out in the field with troops and surveys territory and operations that would most likely be off limits were it not for his close relationships with so many commanders.
Mr. Reed is a former paratrooper retired from active duty as a captain, did time as a professor at West Point and is a member of the academy’s Board of Overseers. All in all, his military credentials have some Democrats speculating about him as a potential vice-presidential nominee or, more likely, as a secretary of defense in an Obama administration.
Of course, VP pundits will point to Reed’s height, and that he’s from such a small state–Rhode Island. But Reed could help swing Connecticut firmly in Obama’s column.
And here’s a bonus for those supporters of John Edwards:
In 1989, as he prepared to run for Congress, Mr. Reed went to Washington to join a march against homelessness, an issue that continues to be a priority.
FYI–Here’s Reed’s Democratic response to the President’s State of the Union–an effective case for changing course in Iraq:
