Growing up with his parents and six siblings on a tenant farm in northwestern Iowa, Jim Nicholson knew more than a little about poverty and family dysfunction: He had no indoor plumbing, sometimes went to bed hungry and had to cope with his father's alcoholism.
Yesterday, as he stood beside President Bush after being nominated as secretary of veterans affairs, Nicholson marveled at how far he has come. "The boy from Struble, Iowa, may serve in the president's Cabinet. How could this happen?" Nicholson asked. "For me, it is because of the opportunities that my country gave me as a cadet at West Point and as a soldier."
After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1961, Nicholson became an Army Ranger and a paratrooper. He served in Vietnam, where he was a much-decorated soldier. After eight years of active duty, he spent 22 years in the Army Reserves and retired as a full colonel in 1991.
"Jim Nicholson is a patriot, a man of deep conviction who has answered his country's call many times," Bush said after announcing the nomination in the White House's Roosevelt Room.
Nicholson, a former Republican National Committee chairman, has served since 2001 as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. He is being called upon to lead a federal agency with 230,000 employees and a pressing mandate to deliver medical and other benefits to the nation's 25 million military veterans.
Compounding Nicholson's challenge is that he will replace Anthony J. Principi, widely viewed as an effective advocate for veterans.
"[Nicholson is] going to have to figure out how to deliver services with what we perceive is going to come down the pike in terms of smaller budgets," given the growing deficit and other demands on the federal government, said Bob Wallace, executive director of the 1.8 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Unlike Principi, who had served as a VA deputy secretary before being appointed to the agency's top post in 2001, Nicholson has no direct VA administrative experience. Nonetheless, veterans groups are impressed with his record as a military man.
"Ambassador Nicholson has a superb background of distinguished military service and understanding of veterans' issues," said retired Vice Admiral Norbert R. Ryan Jr., president of the Military Officers Association of America.
Nicholson, 66, calls his military service the defining experience of a life marked by subsequent success as a businessman and political operative. After leaving active duty, Nicholson earned a master's degree in public policy and a law degree before working as a lawyer and launching a home-development firm.
Active in Republican politics, Nicholson was first elected an RNC committeeman in 1986 and survived a fractious election to become RNC chairman in 1997.
Nicholson confronted skepticism when he took over as chairman. Could he lead the party out of debt? Would a low-key style allow him to exercise the clout wielded by his more charismatic predecessor, Haley Barbour? Most of all, could he help the GOP recapture the White House?
Four years later, Nicholson left his post with the RNC having more than $15 million in the bank, a voter list of 165 million names and its candidate in the White House.
Nicholson also proved to be a tenacious political brawler. Activist Al Sharpton filed a $30 million libel suit against the RNC in 2000, after Nicholson wrote a letter to The Washington Post accusing Sharpton of instigating a deadly riot in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in 1991 and instigating arson that killed seven people at a Harlem store in 1995. The lawsuit was dropped after the RNC apologized publicly to Sharpton. No money was paid.
Beyond his business and political work, Nicholson has been active in several volunteer organizations, including the Volunteers of America.
Mitch Bainwol, chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America, who worked as RNC's chief of staff for Nicholson in 1998, called his former boss "an incredibly disciplined human being. He is a guy who gets up at 5, focuses on mission and goes to bed at midnight focused on mission and wondering what else he could have accomplished that day."
