Posted on 12/13/2009 7:17:21 PM PST by Born Conservative
With President Barack Obama still mulling his Afghanistan strategy several weeks ago, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey wanted an update on the region.
His staff called Richard C. Holbrooke, the president's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"I was thinking it might be the ambassador and maybe one of his staff or two of his staff," Mr. Casey said. "And we got there and it was a roomful of, gosh, it must have been 25 people ... having a briefing for one United States senator about what's happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan."
The briefing included intelligence officials, State Department officials, Department of Agriculture officials and representatives of many of the alphabet soup of agencies with roles in Afghanistan.
Perhaps Mr. Casey should not have been surprised, considering he is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The subcommittee oversees the volatile Middle East or, as Mr. Casey's top aide put it, "all the bad stuff in the world."
But the "gosh" in Mr. Casey's voice as he described the encounter shows a surprise that perhaps some skeptics who watched and doubted him for years are feeling now, too.
Just a few weeks short of the halfway point in his first term, the former state auditor general and treasurer, a son of Pennsylvania's most famous political family, is turning into a senator with some real influence.
"He has positioned himself to become - I don't know if he has become - a significant player," said Joseph DiSarro, Ph.D., the chairman of political science at Washington & Jefferson College near Pittsburgh. "If he continues to make progress, he could become a very significant player."
Take it from his colleague, Sen. Arlen Specter, who as a five-term senator and Senate Appropriations Committee member knows the Washington power game.
"He's taken to the Senate like a duck to water," said Mr. Specter of Mr. Casey, less surprised than others. "He's swimming along faster now than when he began but he came to the Senate with a lot of experience. He's gained experience and self-confidence and I think that helps a lot."
Two years ago, Mr. Casey was just another rookie senator learning the ropes, quieter than most, invisible to some. Now, hardly a day goes by that some cable news channel is not interviewing Mr. Casey about abortion, Afghanistan, health care or the accidental electrocutions of more than a dozen soldiers because of faulty wiring at military installations in Iraq. He has been especially passionate about the electrocutions because one soldier who died was from Pittsburgh.
It helps to have friends in high places.
Mr. Casey, 49, a lifelong Scranton resident, has three in the highest: Mr. Obama, his vice president, Joe Biden, himself a native Scrantonian, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose father grew up in Scranton.
In a statement to The Times-Tribune issued Friday by the White House, Mr. Obama called Mr. Casey "one of the most thoughtful, practical, hard-working members of the U.S. Senate" and "an invaluable partner to my Administration."
Known for his reserved, often soft-spoken nature, Mr. Casey shocked more than a few people during the Pennsylvania presidential primary campaign last year. In late March, he joined Mr. Obama on the stage of a Pittsburgh auditorium and said the senator from Illinois was the best hope for changing the country's direction. He then accompanied him on a statewide bus tour that included a couple of morning basketball games.
Part of the shock was because Mr. Casey said he would avoid endorsing either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton, so he could mediate a reconciliation between the two later on. Also, Mr. Casey had no reputation for bold strokes.
"His big debut was the Obama endorsement," said James Brown, Mr. Casey's chief of staff. "Prior to that, ... he had become well-respected. People said, 'He works at it, he does his homework, he doesn't shoot his mouth off so that when he says something he's actually got something to say.' I think that was the take on him. But what people have said about Bob a lot is ... he's too cautious. My sense of Bob is he watches, he watches, he comes to understand things, and then he pushes all the chips to the middle of the table."
The gamble - if it was one, considering Mr. Obama's delegate lead at the time - paid off.
"It was a rather shrewd move to support Barack upfront," Dr. DiSarro said. "He has matured politically, that seems obvious."
As the future president awaited the outcome on Election Day, he invited Mr. Casey to join his pickup basketball game in Chicago. The list of players mostly included Mr. Obama's longtime close friends.
Two weeks after the inauguration, Mr. Casey watched the Super Bowl at the White House. And days before Thanksgiving, when Mr. Obama hosted his first state dinner to honor India's prime minister, Mr. Casey and his wife, Terese, were invited, unlike a certain Washington couple who crashed the party.
"That was the toughest ticket of the year, by far," Mr. Brown said.
That's all cosmetics, the kind of stuff Washington's powerful pay more attention to than the rest of the country, though it sends a message to political insiders.
What really matters is getting things done.
First, you have to get in position.
Mr. Casey said he worked hard to get the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations subcommittee earlier this year, convincing others ahead of him in seniority to step aside.
Now, he's in the middle of the Afghanistan maelstrom, surprising people like G. Terry Madonna, Ph.D., the noted political analyst, that he did not immediately endorse the president's plan to send 30,000 more troops.
Don't be surprised, Mr. Casey said. A decision as monumental as this one "warrants a lot of review and study."
After meeting Afghan President Hamid Karzai in August, he came away feeling Mr. Karzai showed little urgency about rooting out corruption and delivering services. Despite his allegiance to the president, he insists he could come out against adding troops as Mr. Specter has, or he could agree with parts of the policy and seek changes to others.
"I still need to hear a lot more about how they're going to handle Karzai," he said.
In mid 2008, Mr. Casey visited Majority Leader Harry Reid to express his interest in joining the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He wanted to be on that committee, he said, because health care reform was a big reason he ran for the Senate and he wanted to ensure the future of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. S-CHIP is dear to his heart because his father, the late Gov. Robert P. Casey, initiated one of the first such programs in the nation.
"I have been most impressed by Sen. Casey's commitment to the most vulnerable among us, particularly children," Mr. Reid said in a statement. "Sen. Casey has been a strong voice in the Senate and a valuable member of our caucus, and I expect his influence to continue to grow."
He has enough influence now to keep alive the idea that CHIP should remain a separate program, while the current Senate health care reform bill would fold it into a national health insurance exchange. Hundreds of children's activists are backing him.
But on no issue is his growing influence more obvious than on the one that has defined his family for a generation: abortion.
He is among a handful of conservative senators aiming to ensure the longstanding prohibition on federally funded abortions gets in the Senate health care reform bill. The bill lacks that prohibition at the moment. A dispute is raging about the prohibition's nature.
The dispute centers on whether low-income families who receive money to buy health insurance should be allowed to purchase plans that cover abortion. Anti-abortion groups say they should not.
Even if the anti-abortion groups do not get exactly what they want, Mr. Casey said it is highly likely he will vote for the final bill because it is too important.
That would probably mean criticism from the anti-abortion groups, but Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor who follows the Senate, said Mr. Casey's support for the bill could give political cover to other wavering conservative Democrats because of abortion.
The health care bill points up Mr. Casey's experience with Washington. Two years ago, he downplayed differences with Republicans, saying Congress was bipartisan more often than people think. He still thinks that, but not when it comes to health care.
"I reached a point a while ago ... where in my own mind I've determined the Republicans want to do one thing: kill the bill," he said. "And if they're out to kill the bill, they're opposing what I want and I want to beat them."
Ping
He is every bit as compelling as Bill Nelson of Florida.
And to think Pennsylvania kicked out Rick Santorum for this bozo!
It’s almost as though Mr. Krawczeniuk is promoting Casey as a presidential possibilty.
Have you ever heard him speak? He’s an idiot.
Granted, this is the party of Joe Biden and Patty Murray and Barbara Mikulski, but still.
ROFLOL! Bob Casey makes my Senator, Ben Cardin, look smart.
“I have been most impressed by Sen. Casey’s commitment to the most vulnerable among us, particularly children,” Mr. Reid said in a statement. “Sen. Casey has been a strong voice in the Senate and a valuable member of our caucus, and I expect his influence to continue to grow.”
What a champ Bob Casey is!! Ha, hah, ha!!
and to think Joe Biden is from Scranton too.
STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES.
It’s mind boggling that he’d go against his core Anti-Abortion beliefs just to pass this bill to beat the Republicans?
Have you ever heard him speak? He’s an idiot.
Granted, this is the party of Joe Biden and Patty Murray and Barbara Mikulski, but still.
Biden, Murray, Mikulski, Casey=Box of Rocks. Babs Boxer=dumber than.
I someday would like to see and hear a conversation between Obama and Casey.
Two empty suits; with two empty brains. Barry whistles his ‘sss’ Bobby drones. Really...how, in a nation of 200 million THEY rose to power is chilling.
I've spoken to him in person. He didn't strike me as an intellectual powerhouse. My impression was that of a polite man who either doesn't think for himself, or hides it well.
He probably is....
Bob Casey have even more in common; they are both from Scranton (along with Hillary’s family, the Rodhams)
Oops. Meant to say he has even more in common with Biden.
ROTFLMAO
Some people don’t know anything...Bob Casey doesn’t even SUSPECT anything.
lol
It was his father who had the core anti-abortion beliefs. He refused, as governor, to sign the death warrants for convicted, sentenced to death, inmates. He was pro-life all the way.
The Casey ads last year mocked Santorum for being the only senator to go to Florida to try to save Terri Schiavo's life. Doesn't sound too pro-life to me.
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