Biting Nussle

When he nominated former Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to take over at the Office of Management and Budget last year, President Bush’s choice was hailed on Capitol Hill. Portman is highly regarded on both sides of the aisle as a man capable of both sticking to his principles and negotiating compromises.

It would be difficult to find a former Congress member more different in reputation than ex-Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa), who is regarded as unnecessarily abrasive even by some of his allies, and who triggered a frosty response from Democrats when they heard of his nomination to replace Portman Tuesday.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) comment was a classic in the art of damning with faint praise. After effusive praise of Portman, Hoyer hemmed and hawed about Nussle and finally mustered only a remark that the new guy was of Danish descent. Even from Hoyer, who is also a Dane, that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Clearly, Nussle is going to have to start building some bridges. It was heartening that he reached out immediately to Sen.
Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the Budget panel chairman. But Conrad nevertheless made it plain that he regrets Portman’s departure and does not welcome the arrival of “an intense partisan more given to confrontation than cooperation.”

Nussle, who lost his bid to become Iowa’s governor last November, is remembered for having made a House floor speech in 1991 with a paper bag over his head as a way of protesting the “shameful” conduct of lawmakers embroiled in the House banking scandal.

Nominees going to Capitol Hill generally need to show more deference for the institution than that, and Nussle’s White House handlers are doubtless already making sure he knows that instead of putting a bag on his head, he will need to put a sock in his mouth.

The president is looking for a level of confrontation with the majority Democrats over spending, to help reestablish a Republican record tarnished by years of fiscal excess. Nussle’s fiscal credentials equip him to lead that challenge, and he won’t demur in repeating threats of a Bush veto for appropriations bills that balloon spending much beyond administration requests.

That is a battle that the GOP believes it desperately needs to win; it squandered one of its strong political suits and is faced with the electoral imperative of rebuilding it again. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) commented that Nussle would “work with House Republicans, just as Rob did, to reform the way Washington spends taxpayer dollars, and to fight against wasteful and excessive spending.”

To do that job, Nussle may soon have to say some biting things. But he has to secure the job, and for that he probably needs first to bite his lip.