David Obey is a serious man. During 20 years in the House, he has accumulated as many critics as friends in the relentlessly collegial body.
The Wisconsin Democrat came from Wausau to do a job. He is possessed of a professorial, finger-wagging manner and is given to flashes of temper. He looks like a grade-school hall monitor come to power, the sort of kid who couldn`t wait to get his first pair of glasses.
Slow to make friends, Obey waited 14 years-an inordinate length of time in the House-for the chairmanship of a subcommittee. He used the time to become the resident expert on foreign aid matters.
A decade ago, Obey involved himself in rewriting House rules on ethics, the sort of substantive endeavor most of the profiles in courage lounging around Capitol Hill would just as soon avoid. Campaign finance reform has been another issue for Obey, an issue that makes his re-election-crazed colleagues nervous.
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Obey has not learned the lively art of television. He is not the sort to hang around the House gym or to linger outside the House TV-Radio Press Gallery, trolling for an interview.
So it was something of a surprise last week that Obey pushed his way out front in the continuing wrangle over Iran-contra documents made public during the just completed trial of Oliver North.
From his post as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Obey threatened to delay more than $700 million in foreign aid to Central America until, as he said, ”I get some answers to some questions.”
Obey is not alone in wondering about a 1985 trip that George Bush took to Honduras, a trip in which he may have been aware of plans to increase U.S. aid to that country in exchange for support of the contras. Bush adamantly said Thursday that there was was no ”quid pro quo” for the Honduran aid, but the questions linger.
Documents about that excursion, and about Bush`s knowledge of a 1987 briefing on an arms shipment to Iran through Israeli intermediaries, were not given to Congress or to the laughable Tower Commission, the independent panel established by the executive branch to parcel out blame and rationalizations for what went on in the White House basement on Ronald Reagan`s watch.
Over the last two weeks, while Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine and Rep. Lee Hamilton (D., Ind.), chairman of the House Iran-contra committee, were writing peevish letters to the White House about the phantom documents, Obey had it cold.
Congress, he maintained, had been ”snookered” on Iran-contra.
It helped that Congress did not seem to have the stomach-or the lawyers-for an effective investigation. Devotees of the televised Iran-contra hearings in the summer of 1987 could sense congressional anguish as Ollie North worked his telegenic powers and committee members such as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) and Rep. Henry Hyde (R., Ill.) apologized for the Capitol Hill inquiry, deeming it ”micromanagement” of the president`s inalienable right to do more or less whatever he wants on foreign policy matters.
Reacting to the verdict in the North case, Obey said he was ”as tired as anybody else of Iran-contra.” But the day before the verdict, when discussing the general reluctance on all fronts to reopen the investigation, Obey offered this refreshing perspective: ”I didn`t swear to uphold the Constitution until I got tired.”
Congress is shamed by the revelations of the North trial, to the degree that the institution can be shamed at all. But Obey understands that Iran-contra is old news, the kind that isn`t of any more interest to members of Congress than it is to CBS` Dan Rather.
Our elected officials are nowadays as aware of ”news cycles” as your average TV news director. Obey`s colleagues are thoroughly modern in that they possess the attention span of hummingbirds. Once a big story has been moved along-generally by another big story-there is seldom any interest in reviving it.
George Bush understands it as well, in the same way he understood it during a two-year presidential campaign where the operative phrase was ”out of the loop” when arms-for-hostages, diversion of funds and lying to Congress were being discussed.
Bush understands Congress, so he understands that Iran-contra is as dead as disco, as dead as the 51 percent federal pay raise.
So all praise to David Obey. It appears he holds to this wonderfully archaic notion that issues of possible lawbreaking and malfeasance in office ought not to be tagged with shelf lives or branded with expiration dates.