The Republican leaders of the House and Senate were 4,000 miles apart on a recent Friday afternoon. One hunkered down at a GOP lawmakers' retreat in West Virginia while the other discussed world poverty with movie stars in a Swiss resort town. People who know them were not surprised.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) share many goals and, by most accounts, genuinely like each other. But in style, ambition and operating methods, they could hardly be more different.
Their ability to work together this year and next -- and, more important, to align their two chambers -- will have major ramifications for President Bush's agenda and the course of such knotty issues as the Iraq war and the federal deficit.
With Republicans holding the House, Senate and White House, cooperation would seem easier than under divided government, but that has not always been the case. The House consistently leans more conservative than the Senate, and lately Hastert has differed with Bush on such matters as highway funding and Social Security.
Aside from making them a political odd couple, Hastert's and Frist's actions, choices and priorities reflect the realities of the chambers they lead.
Republicans dominate the House, where Hastert has moved quietly but aggressively to consolidate his power, rarely bothering to explain his rationale or involve Democrats in making decisions. In the Senate, Democrats still hold enough seats to block Republicans on most issues, sometimes by using the filibuster. Their strength forces Frist to cajole, explain and persuade almost constantly, either before television cameras or secluded in his office with a handful of fellow senators.
Frist's job is "like herding cats," said James A. Thurber, director of American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. Mainly because of half a dozen moderate GOP senators, he said, "it's very hard to keep the caucus together in the Senate."
As for Hastert and his lieutenants, Thurber said, "it's brilliant in the House how they've centralized power."
A comparison of the two men, and the current state of the institutions they lead, suggests both the power and the limits of one-party rule.
A Difference in Style
The events of Jan. 27 and 28 neatly captured their divergent styles: Hastert the classic insider, a legislator's legislator, little known to the outside world; Frist the cosmopolitan traveler and frequent television guest, known as much for his medical skills as his legislative talents. Most House and Senate Republicans had traveled to West Virginia's Greenbrier resort for a long weekend of partisan strategizing. Hastert arrived promptly on the first day, a Thursday, and was there Friday when Bush spoke.
Frist was in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. A surgeon who has operated on indigent patients and campaigned for better health around the world, he had agreed last summer to moderate a panel on global poverty. In doing so, he drew a few chuckles when he appeared not to recognize actress Sharon Stone, asking her to "please identify yourself" when she interrupted the talk to offer money to fight malaria in Africa.
Frist left Davos early to fly home in time to reach the Greenbrier on Friday night, soon after Bush had left, and he stayed through the weekend. A few published reports said Frist's Davos diversion had irked Hastert and other Republicans, but the speaker plays down the incident.
"Somebody assumed that I would probably be unhappy because he was in Davos and I was with the conference," said Hastert, who, like Frist, spoke for this article. "But that's up to him. He has to make the decisions. I have enough trouble filling my shoes every day and getting things done here."
By "here" he means the 435-member House, his workplace for two decades. Whereas Frist, 53, is contemplating a 2008 presidential bid, Hastert, 63, has made it clear he aspires to nothing beyond the speakership, which he has held for six years. He rarely holds news conferences or goes on network talk shows. A burly man who ambles when he walks and often mumbles when he talks, Hastert still resembles an Illinois high school wrestling coach -- which he was, for many years.
