Bridging a Divide -- and Crossing an Ocean

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 24, 2007

David L. Hobson, a nine-term House member from Ohio, is becoming the token Republican.

In January, he was the lone Republican on a congressional trip to Iraq led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). This month, Hobson was again the only member of the GOP on a trip to the Middle East organized by Pelosi.

That was the same trip, which included a stop in Syria, that drew criticism from Hill Republicans and the White House. They accused Pelosi of undermining the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Vice President Cheney called Pelosi's trip "bad behavior." House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) said Pelosi traveled to Syria "for one reason, and that is to embarrass the president."

And Rep. Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican who serves as chief deputy minority whip, wrote in an essay for a conservative journal that Pelosi "and many of her Democratic allies have become so drunk with grandiose visions of deposing Bush that they break bread with terrorists and enemies of the United States."

All that rancor irritated Hobson, a solid Republican who is well regarded within his party.

"Before we left, we met with the State Department people and nobody told us not to go," Hobson said, adding that none of his Republican colleagues broached the subject, either. "Nobody ever called me to say, 'Why are you going to Syria with those people?' "

Why, indeed. Especially when a group of Republican lawmakers led by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (Va.) traveled to Syria days before Pelosi's group.

"I went to dinner with who asked me," said Hobson, the only Republican Pelosi invited to join the group. "Frank Wolf didn't ask me to go to Syria."

It is important for lawmakers from both parties to travel together to lend credibility to the trip and present a cohesive message to foreign governments, Hobson said.

"When we're outside the country, we should be putting forth a bipartisan foreign policy -- and we did," he said. "There could be misconceptions in the region that because we are divided over the [Iraq war] supplemental, there are also divisions on the war on terror.

"But the speaker told the Syrians we are united that Syrians should not support terrorists going into Iraq and should work for peace with Israel," he said. "It's important to have somebody from the other party along to say, yes, that's what she said."

Hobson is close friends with Boehner; the two represent adjoining congressional districts and have a long personal history.

"I haven't talked to John about it," Hobson said. "Boehner has a different job than I do; he's the minority leader."

Boehner's spokesman, Brian Kennedy, said that "there's no tension or hard feelings there whatsoever."

Pelosi invited Hobson to travel to the Middle East because the two have a good rapport, according to her spokesman, Brendan Daly. "He's a good guy, she likes him," Daly said. "She thinks he's a very smart and able member."

Hobson sent a box of chocolates to Pelosi to thank her for including him in the trip.

"If asked, I would go again," he said. "I thought it was a good trip."

Hobson, who serves on the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, has been to Iraq five times. When Republicans controlled Congress, he took trips with Pelosi and Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a fierce critic of the Iraq war, and got to know both well.

"You can't do this stuff behind the desk in Washington," Hobson said of making spending decisions involving military actions. "On this trip, I'd never been to any of the countries I went to, and I wanted to understand them."

Foreign travel gives members from opposite parties a chance to get to know one another, Hobson said. That is lacking in Washington these days, he said.

"I learned that Keith Ellison is a nice young man -- he and his wife," said Hobson, referring to the freshman Democrat from Minnesota, who is the first Muslim elected to Congress and was part of the delegation.

While Republican leaders lit into Pelosi for taking the trip, Hobson said he has not suffered any criticism from his party.

"I don't care about that -- my job is to represent the people of my district and my country," he said, spoken with the confidence of an incumbent who won 61 percent of the vote in November in his district, which forms a horseshoe around Columbus.

"Rather than playing politics, there's a more serious problem here, and that is: How do we get peace in this area?" said Hobson, who was elected to Congress in 1990. "A huge problem is Lebanon and the Palestinians, and it's all being lost in politics."