A defense lobbyist who favors an ax

The leather cowboy boots should be the first hint. And then there’s the almost unnoticeable piercing in his left ear — not exactly a Washington staple.

But the secret is out when David Morrison starts talking about his guitars: Music runs through his veins.

{mosads}Just don’t be fooled by his stories of jamming with members of the Grateful Dead. Morrison believes in wielding more than his ax. He’s one of the city’s leading defense policy experts, giving up life on the road many decades ago for an office on Capitol Hill.

The former staff director for the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee and adviser in the Clinton White House in January joined the Podesta Group to head up the lobby shop’s national security and international policy practice. One reason for the change is to afford more time for his music and poetry — he jokingly calls himself the “lobbyist laureate.”

To many, the free-spirited world of music and the more straight-laced defense policy life may be an odd mix. Not to Morrison.

“There is a creative, arts side of me that not many people have seen,” Morrison, 50, said in an interview at his new office in downtown Washington.

He’s come a long way from his days attending “No Nukes” rallies. Though he still opposes nuclear war, somewhere along the way he embraced the nuances and complexities of the world, and changed his outlook.

“I realized that having a strong and efficient military is important for advancing U.S. interests and protecting our people,” the lifelong Democrat said — knowledge that came to him after he attended graduate school at the University of Maryland. For two years, he put down his guitar and studied national security policy.  

He started his new career in 1985 as a budget analyst for the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) national security division. From there, Morrison landed in the Senate as a professional staff member on the Appropriations Defense panel.

He returned to the OMB as the deputy associate director for national security — the chief of the national security division and President Clinton’s senior civil servant adviser on the defense budget.

Morrison followed a somewhat familiar path when he returned to Congress, but this time in the House, where he spent four years as the Democratic clerk of the Appropriations Defense subcommittee and one year as the panel’s staff director.

Now, at Podesta, Morrison is dealing “with the same group of folks I have dealt with all my life, just in a different guise.”

He is missed at the committee and the Pentagon.

“I hate to lose him,” said Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Morrison’s former boss. “He was one of the best staffers I have ever worked with. He was great at working with people, listening and coming up with solutions for very delicate problems.”

As a staff member, Morrison was very good at conveying the views of the lawmakers without being their direct mouthpiece, recalled Gen. George Casey, the Army’s chief of staff.

“When he talked to you it seemed like he was talking for himself because of his command of the issues, but he also was very much in sync with Congressman Murtha,” Casey said. He represented the views of the members “without saying, ‘The boss thinks this’ or ‘The boss thinks that,’ ” Casey added.

Jim Dyer, an appropriations lobbyist at Clark & Weinstock and former Hill staffer, said that Morrison took the House defense appropriations directorship when the Pentagon’s portfolio had greatly expanded.

 “He was always accessible, and despite the pressures, you found you could get to him,” Dyer said. “That is very rare on the Hill these days.”

Those who know Morrison speak of his “excellent temperament” and say he never loses his cool. Apart from his solid knowledge of the defense budget, he understands both intricate details and big-picture policies.

Nothing could have been as challenging as writing the many emergency war-spending bills that have passed in the last few years, said Rudy DeLeon, an analyst at the Center for American Progress and Boeing’s former head of government affairs, who has known Morrison for about 20 years. “They are so complicated, and there was so much tension between the Senate and the White House on one side and on the other with the House wanting to create benchmarks [for troop withdrawal from Iraq],” DeLeon said.

As expected, Morrison is in high demand in his new role. Podesta represents Lockheed Martin , Northrop Grumman , BAE Systems , Boeing and General Dynamics — some of the biggest names in defense.

Morrison has also dabbled “on the edges” with the Barack Obama presidential campaign and is part of the candidate’s defense budget sub-groups, he said.

Shipbuilding, missile defense, military medicine and space programs are just a few of the areas Morrison is handling this year.

“This is going to be a pivotal time in our history in terms of how we sustain our military modernization [and] improve the [Pentagon] acquisition system and the relationship between the Congress and the administration,” said Morrison.

“Democracy works only to the extent that there is a good line of communication and trust between decision-makers, both in the executive branch and the Congress.”

A lot has changed from the 1970s, when he played with Stephen Stills, members of Little Feat and the Grateful Dead.

These days, Morrison is more likely to be jamming with House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) or entertaining friends at the Democratic National Club.

But the love of his music and poetry is still there — beneath the daily talk of guns and missiles.

“It’s a rich life. It truly is,” Morrison said.