Land of Hard Knocks

If Reid is worried about the possibility of Armageddon over the Supreme Court vacancy, it doesn't show. "I really believe the president is gonna try to get somebody who is not a lot of trouble," Reid says. "He's got enough going on."

Reid told White House officials that they should deal directly with Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee -- and a senator whose estimation in the eyes of the Bush administration was distilled last year when Vice President Cheney urged him to perform an impossible act on himself.

"He's stuck with Leahy, you see," Reid says, speaking of Bush. "Leahy is a pleasant man. I think it will work out fine." He smiles, reciting his lines.

Caught Up in Searchlight

Reid talks a lot about his home town, even for a member of Congress. Washington pols love talking about their home towns, especially if they provide a tableau of personal adversity to overcome. Searchlight is especially rich in this regard. Gold was discovered here in 1897, and there have been few highlights since. "The boom peaked in 1907 and quickly faded along with the town," it says on a plaque in front of the Harry Reid Elementary School. The name of the town is derived, most likely, from an old local miners' lament: "If there is in fact gold in these mines, we'd need a searchlight to find it."

Reid waxes exhaustively on Searchlight -- in speeches, floor debates, even in a 233-page book he wrote in 1998 about the town's history. He romanticizes the coyotes and jack rabbits, bugs smashing against windows and the bright dust of stars at night.

He also invokes the town to explain his unfiltered style. The Searchlight of Reid's youth was an anything-goes outpost, even for Nevada, and it tended to be indifferent to contemporary sensitivities. Pete Domitrovich, who had a big nose, was called "Big Nose Pete." There was a handicapped man everyone called "Cripple Jack." Reid had a bright pink complexion and was known as "Pinky."

"Look, I don't want to be a name-caller," Reid says. "But it's kind of hard for me to get away from my past."

John Ensign, Nevada's Republican senator, who lost a tight race against Reid in 1998, says he suspected Reid's "whole Searchlight thing" was exaggerated, if not phony. He was later convinced otherwise. Either way, Searchlight is a political boon for Reid, a testament to his pluck, and he has deployed its narrative more and more as he has become better known.

"It's a smart thing for him to emphasize," says historian Michael Green, a columnist for Nevada's Washington Watch, a monthly newsletter. "One thing that Reid and Bush have in common is that they are easy to misunderestimate . And, to a degree, they both reinforce that, and thrive on it."

Reid is a master of "that practiced, pale-faced-bumpkin-from-Searchlight act," says Las Vegas political analyst Jon Ralston. This masks a savvy, rough-hewn politician that Ralston describes as "ruthless" and "Machiavellian."

Still, Reid clearly loves Searchlight, and his hard-bitten story is legitimate. The third of four brothers, Pinky Reid grew up in a wooden shack with no hot water or indoor toilet. Harry Sr. was a hard-rock miner who suffered chronic pain from on-the-job injuries. He battled alcoholism and depression, and spent time in jail. He killed himself in 1972, at 58.

The senator reflects on his childhood with an air of detachment, as if describing events from a novel. He cheerfully recalls his father pulling out his own teeth with pliers. Or the time his brother Dale had his ear sheared off by a windblown piece of tin. Or when another brother, Larry, broke his leg, which also went untreated. Reid vividly recalls the sound of Larry crying out in pain from his parents' bedroom.