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Ray LaHood: A driving force in White House

When President-elect Barack Obama named Ray LaHood to his Cabinet shortly after the 2008 election, it was clear the former Republican congressman from Illinois had a clear upside for the White House: bipartisan credentials for a Democratic administration, strong GOP relationships from 14 years in office and formidable political skills honed during three decades working on Capitol Hill, even if he had little formal experience handling transportation issues.

In most presidential Cabinets, a low profile is a fact of life for heads of second-tier departments such as the Department of Transportation, and the Obama administration doesn’t seem to be the exception. Few people outside Washington could name Hilda Solis as labor secretary, find Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a group photograph or identify Energy Secretary Steven Chu — a Nobel laureate.

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But LaHood has become a highly visible point man for crises ranging from runaway Toyotas to air-traffic controllers caught napping on the job — and he successfully managed $48 billion in stimulus money for rail, airport and highway upgrades. He is praised for his accessibility, plain-spoken demeanor and crusades to end distracted driving and protect airline passengers from endless tarmac delays. And his tech-savvy administration has earned him a legion of followers on Twitter and Facebook.

LaHood’s “Fast Lane” blog gets thousands of hits. He recently began posting question-and-answer sessions on YouTube, and he’ll be a panelist at this year’s Netroots Nation convention in Minneapolis. Even once-skeptical liberals and environmentalists love Raymond: He’s embraced Obama’s transportation agenda, including investments in mass transportation, linking transit to housing and jobs, and bike-to-work incentives.

“Let’s face it: Cabinet secretaries don’t register in the American consciousness,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a Dickinson College political science professor and presidential scholar.

And for most, he said — especially those in what he calls the “outer ring” Cabinet posts — the central responsibility is to manage their departments well, keep any major crises in their fields away from the president’s desk and not get noticed for the wrong reasons, as in, “Suddenly, this agency nobody ever heard of not only exists but is doing a terrible job.”

However, LaHood has made a noticeable break from that pack with his outgoing personality, skillful handling of issues of high consumer interest and one vitally important bit of luck: no hugely bad news on his watch. His ties to the president — they served together and became friends in the Illinois congressional delegation — haven’t hurt either. Nor has the fact that for most of the Obama presidency, the White House chief of staff — a key ally for a Cabinet secretary — has been from Illinois.

But unlike, say, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who had to handle the public spotlight as well as the financial meltdown, or Chu, whose department portfolio included the months-long BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, LaHood’s crises have been relatively manageable and swiftly handled. Analysts gave him high marks for acting decisively amid the rash of air-traffic controllers sleeping on the job: Two controllers were sacked, new work rules were imposed and LaHood sent his Federal Aviation Administration chief on a “listening tour” to hear from rank-and-file controllers to determine what other problems might need fixing.

That practical approach matches LaHood’s blog campaign to stamp out distracted driving — people talking on their cellphones or sending text messages while driving.

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“He does not seem like a hectoring government bureaucrat,” Rudalevige said, pointing to LaHood’s user-friendly manner and burgeoning following on social media. “And even when he’s scolding you, he manages to do it in a folksy way.”

His style and common-sense crusades, including protection for airline passengers from endless tarmac delays, have made him arguably the most recognizable leader in the Department of Transportation’s 45-year history. And he’s not modest about it.

“We’ve done things in the last 2½ years that have never been done at the Department of Transportation,” LaHood told POLITICO in a recent interview at his top-floor office near Washington’s Navy Yard. “A lot of people have said to me they can’t remember when they could remember the name of a secretary of transportation.”

“No question in my mind, he’s helped us be successful,” said White House deputy chief of staff Nancy-Ann DeParle, who considers herself among LaHood’s many fans in the West Wing.

One central part of LaHood’s portfolio, however, has not gone smoothly: selling Obama’s vision to spend $53 billion over six years to create a national network of high-speed rail lines, which LaHood and Vice President Joe Biden announced with great fanfare in February, following up on Obama’s “we do big things” State of the Union message.

Though the White House set aside billions as a “down payment” for the system and spread the money among several states, newly elected Republican governors in Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida rejected the money, and the White House’s own budget deal with the GOP wiped out more than half the budget for the project.

Even Democrats such as Bruce Babbitt, former Arizona governor and Clinton administration interior secretary, have criticized the way high-speed rail has been handled by the Obama administration. Babbitt called the White House plan “a complete catastrophe” and questioned whether there’s a public demand for an expensive rail line run by the federal government.

LaHood, however, is bullish on the project and flatly dismisses the criticism: “I don’t make much of it because I’ve seen what’s happened in the last 2½ years.”

“If you look at where we’ve spent our money, we’ve spent $11 billion in 2½ years in 40 places in the county,” he said. “It’s interesting that people like to focus on the three [states rejecting the money] and not the 40. We’re at the starting gate. When the interstate system started 50 years ago, not all the lines were on the map, and people had no idea where the interstate was going to go. Fifty years later, we have a state-of-the-art interstate system.”

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LaHood’s inability to sell Hill Republicans on high-speed rail — several of whom praised LaHood but complained about the White House’s plan — is part of the frustration he had earlier with the administration lobbying his former GOP colleagues on other big-ticket items on the president’s agenda. Despite his efforts, the $787 billion stimulus bill passed in 2009 without a single House Republican vote; ditto Obama’s sweeping health care overhaul a year later.

And with an upcoming, high-stakes vote on the debt ceiling looming, restless Republicans — including a newly empowered freshman class of tea party fiscal hawks — show no sign that they’re ready to compromise with the president. That’s going to make it even more difficult for LaHood to help if the White House sends him to the Hill looking for votes.

LaHood, however, says that arm-twisting Republicans isn’t in his job description, and the highly partisan atmosphere in Congress won’t keep the president or his department from “doing big things” in the coming years. Transportation, he said, is a reliably bipartisan issue; and the political atmosphere is no different than when President Bill Clinton was in office and Republicans, energized by the Contract With America agenda, held legislative power.

“What I do is I work on the idea that 80 percent of what I do is listen, and the other 20 percent is try to take what I’ve heard and make something happen,” he said. “The one thing I know about Congress is when things get done, it’s done by consensus. No one person gets her own way. It’s never been easy. … Big things are never easy.”

In the meantime, LaHood is clear about his main priority as transportation secretary. “You come to the job with only one thing on your mind: safety.”

The future, he said, will take care of itself.


Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC
1010 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Suite 705
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com
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