What Lee Hamilton Could Teach Congress Today

Over his three decades in Congress, Lee Hamilton grew into an almost Lincolnesque figure, a tall, Midwestern lawmaker uniquely trusted by colleagues in both parties to tackle difficult issues.

Republicans outside the Capitol came to see the same virtue in the lifelong Democrat, who was tapped to help lead the 9/11 Commission and later the Iraq Study Group. But Congress is where it all began, and Hamilton’s passing on Feb. 3 is a reminder of what’s so often missing from his old haunts today.

Indeed, Washington might be smart to pause a moment, study Hamilton’s life, and learn again what a true representative looks like as envisioned by the Constitution. This was a lawmaker willing to work across party lines but also stand up to presidents on wars, a quiet man who still made himself heard, a politician who showed a remarkable commitment to the civic education of voters at home.

Lyndon Johnson’s Democratic landslide kicked things off, carrying this minister’s son and college basketball star to Congress in 1964. But Hamilton was always something more, like a piece of Indiana limestone with its own special character.

The late Rep. Abner Mikva, an Illinois Democrat, explained his friend Hamilton perhaps best: “It is a liberalism that is almost uniquely Midwestern. It is reform liberalism, not ideological.”

I should admit up front that I admired Hamilton greatly. We met early in my tenure as a reporter in Congress, where I worked over 30 years for the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and POLITICO. We never socialized nor shared a meal but kept in touch even after he went back to Indiana and I was forced to stop reporting because of a crippling disability from my time as a medic in the Vietnam War. Hamilton gently called it my “condition.”

Our first encounter ironically was over the timeworn issue of Congress’ franking privilege, which allows lawmakers to send mail to their constituents postal free. Good government types had pumped this wet-behind-the-ears reporter with tales of gross political abuse. But there was Hamilton crafting quite thoughtful, regular reports on happenings in government impacting his often-rural constituents. It was a civic education side of him that never changed; after going back to Indiana, he penned a series of newspaper columns on different presidents and his interactions with them as a member of Congress.

A second early memory of Hamilton was in October 1980, when the House debated the motion to expel then-Rep. Michael Myers (D.-Pa.), who had been caught red-handed in the FBI’s famous Abscam sting-operation. Tapes showed Myers accepting cash from undercover agents representing a faux Arab sheik, but the trial court had yet to order his final conviction pending the outcome of due process arguments.

On this day, Myers’ fate was the last legislative business before members of Congress would go home to face voters at the polls, and the smell of jet fumes mingled with political sweat as lawmakers looked for the quickest path to separate themselves from the scandal

The die was cast, but that didn’t stop Hamilton from rising to tell his colleagues to slow down. It was an electrifying, almost Atticus Finch-like moment, the crew-cut attorney standing in the well of the chamber to try to defy the odds.

As a member of the House Ethics Committee, Hamilton warned that the rush to judgement was demeaning to everyone and it was better that Congress respect the court process and act on Myers after his conviction was finalized.

“Members sit here with airplane tickets in their pockets, with bags packed and poised for the rush to the airport,” he said. “Our zeal to prove to our constituents just before the election our own purity should not override our duty to treat the accused with fundamental fairness.”

Minutes later, Myers was expelled, but Hamilton’s stand was not forgotten.

My third and most lasting exposure to Hamilton stemmed from his leadership role on foreign policy and intelligence matters. Reporting for the Boston Globe threw me into the orbit of then-Speaker Thomas O’Neill, and it didn’t take long to notice Hamilton’s presence as an important adviser to the Massachusetts Democrat.

They were very different personalities, the burly, cigar smoking speaker vs. the more reserved Hamilton who neither smoked nor drank. But there was a genuine respect, and O’Neill had placed Hamilton in a top spot on the still relatively new House Intelligence Committee.

Watching the two in leadership meetings, then-Majority Whip Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) put it this way: “There are accents to the speaker’s voice. He will say, ‘Lee what have you got to say on this?’”

Hamilton stood by O’Neill’s side as he struggled with the Reagan administration’s deadly deployment of U.S. Marines as part of a multinational force in Lebanon in the early 1980s. In the same period, Hamilton was a crucial ally for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Edward Boland (D-Mass.) in challenging the CIA’s covert war against Nicaragua.

It was a delicate period for the 13-member House panel, which had only been created in June 1977, a full year’s step behind its Senate counterpart. Intelligence officials, who had had less of a relationship with House lawmakers, were now being asked to answer their questions. And while the highest priority was put on not being political, that was made harder because the Republican-led Senate panel was more deferential to the CIA.

Michael O’Neil, who served as chief counsel to the House committee, recalled Hamilton and those early years. “None of those guys were super political, but of all of them, he was the least political. Obviously, the job is not political, and they all brought to it the clear purpose that it didn’t get that way. But I think he was natural that way.”

Those credentials proved critical when Hamilton teamed up with Boland over Reagan’s policies in Central America. “The two most careful guys in the House are probably Eddie Boland and Lee Hamilton,” said then-Rep. Leon Panetta (D-Cal) after a rare secret session of the House. “If they’re concerned about a policy, you’d better be concerned.”

The political dam broke the following year after a CIA-backed operation to mine Nicaraguan harbors was disclosed in April 1984. This embarrassed the Senate enough to cut off funding, but virtually under Reagan’s nose, White House aides turned next to illegal arms sales to keep the covert war going. The ensuing Iran-Contra scandal pushed Hamilton into the limelight as never before, and he was tapped to lead televised hearings with the Senate in the summer of 1987.

When those ended in August and the top four members gave their closing statements, only Hamilton was direct enough to bring the focus back to Reagan. He was not talking impeachment, but he wanted clarity and responsibility.

“The buck does not stop anywhere else,” Hamilton said. “The president’s decisions must be clear and crisp.”