Baghdad
DAN SENOR’S WORST DAY was Friday, March 5. Senor is the chief spokesman for Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council and their families had gathered for the signing of the new Iraqi constitution. The Baghdad press corps was assembled in full force for the ceremony, having waited restlessly for hours. And Senor had to tell the families, the media, and the world that the constitution was, well, still being worked out. Senor never made it to the podium in the briefing room of what was once Iraq’s convention center under Saddam Hussein’s regime. He was swarmed by reporters who had concluded that the whole process of drafting a constitution agreeable to the full 25-member governing council had gone awry. Senor’s explanation: democracy isn’t neat but includes a lot of rough and tumble. If you want neat, Senor said, Saddam provided that. But there would be a constitution, he said.
The writing of a constitution had indeed experienced a serious glitch. Some Shiite members of the council balked at a provision allowing 3 of Iraq’s 18 provinces to veto the constitution if voters decided against it by a two-thirds margin or better. The Shiites said this would let the Kurds alone block the constitution.
Over the weekend, the Shiites backed down under pressure from Bremer, the CPA chief. And the new constitution, which will stay in effect until a new government elected by January 30 takes office, was signed with much fanfare. It represented an historic moment in Iraq’s evolution towards democracy.
SENOR, 32, was a year out of Harvard Business School and working for an investment company in Washington, the Carlyle Group, when he was tapped to come to Iraq. He’d had political experience as an aide to Republican senator Spence Abraham of Michigan during3 the 1990s, but not in dealing with the press. Abraham is now President Bush’s energy secretary.
When the White House first called, Senor was asked to go to Qatar during the war in Iraq as a press official. “I was a strong supporter of the war,” he said. “I said if I had any skill set they could use, I’d do it. I was just helping out.” Less than two weeks after the April 9, 2003, fall of Saddam, he rode with the first convoy of civilians into Iraq from Kuwait. Upon arrival at the presidential palace of Saddam designated as the coalition headquarters, he found it had no electricity, no phones, no water, no bathrooms, and no air conditioning. He and his colleagues–seven in all–slept on the floor.
Bremer showed up a few weeks later, but it appeared Senor would not be his press secretary. On a trip with Bremer to Washington in July, Senor was officially announced as the new deputy press secretary at the White House. He never spent a day in that job. It was decided he was needed more critically in Baghdad than in Washington.
In Iraq, Senor and others found there was no manual to work from. “There was no substitute for being there,” says Senor. The Bush administration had a plan for Iraqi democracy, but it didn’t include mundane details such as how to repair the crumbling electricity grid. The administration had figured on serious problems in Iraq, but not all of the ones that actually emerged (such as rampant looting).
Once the CPA got established, Senor began daily briefings, with simultaneous translations for Arabic-speaking reporters. Now, he and Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military spokesman, brief and answer questions together. Like Bremer, Senor wears sand-colored soft Army boots with a suit and tie. Nearly everyone else in the CPA is tieless. When Bremer travels, Senor is invariably by his side.
SENOR GREW UP in the United States and Canada and went to the University of Western Ontario before getting his undergraduate degree at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He keeps to a kosher diet, which is difficult in Iraq.
Senor’s plan is to return to the States with Bremer after the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30. But officials here tease Senor about signing up for another year in Iraq, working for the new U.S. embassy. That’s not likely, but it’s not inconceivable either. Senor says a big reason for his coming to Iraq was that he “was drawn to the historic moment.” In Iraq, that moment will continue after June 30.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
