House chairman won’t be McCain’s wingman

House Armed Services Committee chairman Mac Thornberry (R) is working to put himself on equal footing with his Senate counterpart, John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Since gaveling in the 114th Congress, the Texas lawmaker has embarked on an aggressive media campaign to boost his visibility inside and outside of Washington.

Days into the new session, he gave a major speech at the American Enterprise Institute to detail his priorities for the committee.

He’s followed that up with weekly press gaggles and has started talking to reporters after the panel’s often hours-long hearings.

{mosads}Just last week, the new chairman participated in a question-and-answer session at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City and aides hope to have him sit down with military branch-focused publications in the weeks and months ahead.

“When you’re new to a job, people want to know what your priorities are going to be, what you’re going to work on, and so forth,” Thornberry told The Hill.

The push is also based, in part, on the idea that “this job carries with it a certain responsibility to talk about national security issues,” he said. “My colleagues in the House expect that and, to some extent, it hopefully can help shape opinions in the country, if you’re good and I’m not saying I am.”

A new panel chairman working to build up his credibility isn’t new, but then again not everyone has to share the spotlight with McCain.

The 2008 GOP presidential nominee has long been a media fixture -— eager to discuss the topic du jour with reporters, appearing regularly on Sunday talk shows and making guest appearances on television shows like “Parks and Recreation.”

Both men insist there is no competition between them but Thornberry’s moves signal that he’s not willing to take a backseat to anyone in his party when it comes to national security issues.

“It’s very important for him to be known because he really has an in-depth knowledge” on national security issues such as the Pentagon budget, acquisition reform and U.S. detainee policy, McCain told The Hill.

“I really think that we have a partnership that is almost unprecedented,” he added.

Thornberry, likewise, was effusive in his praise of McCain.

“He’s a unique person in our country’s history,” he said, citing McCain’s years in captivity as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, his run for the White House and his long tenure on Capitol Hill.

“It’s not a competition. He has a job, I have a job and we need to work together for the good of the country and it’s been excellent so far,” according to Thornberry.

In addition to leading a bipartisan congressional delegation at the Munich Security Conference in Germany in February, the pair has “regular exchanges of information,” either on the phone or over breakfast, he said.

Thornberry’s enhanced profile hasn’t escaped the notice of his other closest co-worker.

“I don’t know that he’s been raising it so much as it’s raised with his new position,” said Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), Armed Services’ top Democrat and himself a regular guest on cable news and Sunday talk shows.

He said it’s “very important” for the panel’s leaders to be visible on national security.

When asked if that was hard to do with someone like McCain around, Smith joked: “No, that’s impossible.”

“McCain will always be the driver,” he added. “Guys like Thornberry and I, from the media perspective, are following up on the back end. I don’t think it’s important that we’re out in the media all the time but, yes, it’s important to make statements when we can.”

It’s “clear” Thornberry is “making a concerted effort to elevate his own profile,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

“The press is a megaphone for politicians,” she added. “If he can’t reach other members personally” they can at least learn his views through the media.

If there’s any competition “it’s not so much man-to-man as chamber-to-chamber” because Thornberry recognizes the House is viewed as the “unwieldy little brother to the more studious and thoughtful Senate on everything,” according to Eaglen, who was the top defense adviser to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) when she sat on the Armed Services Committee.

“If he’s competing directly, that’s a lost cause,” she said.