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DECEMBER 20, 2004
Edited by Richard S. Dunham The Man Who Drove A Tank Through Congress On Capitol Hill, the name Duncan Hunter has never been mentioned in the same breath as legendary House Armed Services Committee bosses such as Carl Vinson and L. Mendel Rivers -- at least until now. But by holding the intelligence-reform bill hostage until the Bush Administration heeded his concerns, the Southern California superhawk proved that his brand of pit-bull politics can win him influence -- if not necessarily friends -- in Washington. "Compromise is not a word in his vocabulary," says John D. Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, a Washington arms-control group. Despite overwhelming bipartisan support for the spy reforms recommended by the 9-11 Commission, Hunter deployed rough apocalyptic rhetoric about potential risks to soldiers to stymie the Administration-backed bill. His persistence won the conservative Republican language protecting the military chain of command, even though his critics insist the legislation never threatened it. Warriors' Advocate A Vietnam veteran whose son has served two tours of duty in Iraq, Hunter was swept into the House in Ronald Reagan's 1980 landslide. Since then he has climbed up the Armed Services ladder, building expertise and wielding clout even before he became chairman in 2003. Skeptical about Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's plans to let technology replace boots on the ground, Hunter helped quash Rummy's initial plans to slash the Army's size. With undermanned U.S. troops struggling to put down the insurgency in Iraq, "it's clear Duncan Hunter was right," says Loren B. Thompson, chief operating officer of Lexington Institute, a conservative think tank. Hunter's goal is always clear. "Everything he wants is for the war fighter," says Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), a sometime rival on Armed Services. And there's no end to what he wants for the war fighter, from more vehicle armor to more body armor for GIs to greater support for Lockheed Martin Corp.'s (LMT ) F/A-22 Raptors. "Total Nonstarter" Hunter's instincts put him on a collision course with Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) over the ill-fated Boeing tanker lease deal. The Armed Services chairman worries that the military isn't replacing tankers and other aging gear fast enough -- and wants the replacements to be built by U.S. companies like Boeing Co. (BA ), not such European outfits as Airbus. "It's a total nonstarter to give the French hundreds or thousands of American jobs to build a part of our national defense system that they aren't willing to support," snaps Hunter, who backed Pat Buchanan's 1996 run for President. The chairman's next test will be his handling of defense spending. With deficit hawks looking for ways to slash the deficit, Hunter will man the ramparts to prevent Pentagon cuts. When House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) tried to pare one-half of one percent of Bush's defense request, Hunter enlisted nearly three dozen Republicans to vote against Nussle's budget. The Iowan backed down. Among spending priorities, Hunter insists, "defense clearly has to take precedence." If the intelligence-reform fight is any indication, the battle between budget hawks and defense hawks will be one bruising brawl. But this time nobody is going to underestimate the new heavyweight running the Armed Services Committee. By Stan Crock CAPITAL WRAPUP Will Business Get A Friend At The SEC? Corporate attorney John Olson has emerged as a business favorite to succeed Harvey Goldschmid as a commissioner at the Securities & Exchange Commission. Like Goldschmid, Olson is a Democrat. But the senior partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher is viewed as having more real-world experience than investor champion Goldschmid, who plans to return to Columbia law school by next summer. Olson, a governance expert, counts the Business Roundtable and audit committee of Coca-Cola (KO ) among his clients. The California native says he hasn't been contacted by the White House but would consider taking one of the SEC's two Democratic seats. Another contender who gets high marks from business is Cary Klafter, Intel's (INTC ) vice-president for legal and government affairs.   CAPITAL WRAPUP The Reports Of Snow's Departure Have Been... After allowing Treasury Secretary John W. Snow to twist in the wind for a week and half as rumors swirled of his imminent departure from the Cabinet, the White House announced on Dec. 8 that the embattled policymaker would stay on. Snow, who spent his first two years tirelessly promoting tax cuts hatched before he took the job, is looking forward to putting his own mark on the Social Security and tax reforms Bush has teed up for his second term. But the Treasury's chief's ability to do that has been damaged by the sniping he endured from GOP insiders as his fate was being decided. The White House refused to say how long Snow would stay on, but the betting is that he's likely to step down sometime next year.
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