A senator’s work is a never-ending series of committee hearings, caucus meetings, floor votes, flights, fund-raisers, and constituent service. It is, in many ways, a dreadful job that inevitably produces burnout. Yet Paul Coverdell, who died suddenly and much too young last week at the age of 61, may have been the only senator in U.S. history who had more spring in his step after seven years in office than at the beginning of his tenure.
In this way and many others, Coverdell defied the senatorial stereotype. He didn’t come from a prominent family, he wasn’t particularly handsome, and he had a speaking style that, as the joke went, looked and sounded like someone imitating Dana Carvey imitating George Bush. He was never much of a back-slapping glad-hander. His campaign slogans — “Paul Coverdell Means Business” and “Coverdell Works” — reflected his simple, can-do approach to politics.
Before coming to the Senate in 1993, Coverdell spent more than 20 years building an insurance company and the Georgia Republican party. (The party was so small when he began — he was one of just four Republicans in the state senate in 1971 — that he used to joke about its meeting in a phone booth.) He proved a spectacular success at both tasks, and the experiences taught him a skill noticeably lacking among today’s senators of both parties: how, against all odds, to get things done.
Coverdell lived by the simple creed of a Boy Scout: Be prepared. His work ethic was the stuff of Senate lore. If he wasn’t sleeping, he was working. He once took his briefcase to an Atlanta Braves game and worked from the third inning on. Trent Lott, the Senate Republican leader, was so enamored of Coverdell and his work habits that he put him in charge of countless task forces and working groups. He also dubbed him “Mikey,” a reference to the kid in the Life Cereal commercials who was always willing to eat anything.
Yet Coverdell was not a grind who worked for the sake of working. His labors flowed from his deeply held belief in the value of freedom. A few years ago he wrote that “ensuring freedom is to me the highest possible goal of a political party. Why freedom? Because human experience has shown that the greatest practical good for the greatest number is achieved by free people through free elections and free markets.”
Tagged as a moderate upon his election in 1992 — he was mildly pro-choice, and his chief Republican primary opponent had been Bob Barr — Coverdell emerged as one of the more conservative members of the Senate, and certainly one of the most effective conservatives. Asked about this seeming ideological shift, he downplayed it, saying he’d simply become “more concerned about government’s intrusion into our lives.”
Coverdell’s concern jelled in 1993, with the release of the Clinton plan to remake the American health care system. While many Senate Republicans were squeamish about raising objections, Coverdell told them in one now-famous meeting precisely what was at stake: “Think of this as 1939. We have to choose whether to be Chamberlain or Churchill.” To that end, he began organizing meetings attended by Senate staffers, activists, and interest group representatives, and these meetings quickly became the nerve center of the opposition. Coverdell’s boundless energy, and willingness to do the organizational scut work his colleagues couldn’t be bothered with, yielded this apt characterization of his time on Capitol Hill: “The best staffer in the Senate.” In the end, he may have done more to defeat the Clinton health care plan than anyone else in Congress.
Coverdell was not, however, a wild-eyed partisan. He struck close alliances with Democratic senators like Bob Torricelli and Dianne Feinstein. And though a journalism major in college, Coverdell rarely made for good copy. His loyalty to his colleagues prevented him from revealing much of anything in interviews.
Phil Gramm, who delivered a moving tribute to Coverdell on the Senate floor, once pinpointed a secret behind his close friend’s success: “People like to put Paul in leadership positions because he makes other people look good.” Indeed, for all that Coverdell had already accomplished, there was a widespread belief among Republicans that his best years were ahead of him. Slated to move into the number three position in the Senate GOP hierarchy next year, replacing the retiring Connie Mack, he was widely expected to continue his rapid ascent of the greasy pole. As a confidant of George W. Bush and a close friend of Bush-pere, Coverdell would have been even more influential in a Bush presidency. As it is, his success in the Senate stands as proof that Washington does occasionally reward, rather than punish, talent and effort. And decency. Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, in a tribute last Wednesday, called Coverdell “a gentleman.” So he was.
It is fitting that Coverdell’s last floor speech in the Senate, on July 13, was devoted not to advancing an arcane piece of legislation but to honoring another friend of freedom, Ronald Reagan. Fitting because Coverdell had emerged as a latter-day Reaganite who, like Reagan, was more interested in what was accomplished than in who got the credit. In his speech, Coverdell described the former president as someone who “preferred to see himself as a simple citizen who had been called upon to aid the nation he so loved.” That’s a good description of Ronald Reagan. It’s also a good description of the late Paul Coverdell.
Matthew Rees, for the Editors
