Bono's Calling

"This is a polarized and very divisive environment these days," former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle says somberly. "The one person who's brought us together is Bono."

For many of the powerful and dispirited like Daschle, who has joined the rocker-advocate's crusade, Bono is the last hope to forge bipartisan reconciliation in a capital city bitterly divided and angry. That he can't go five minutes without calling something "quite sexy" is quite beside the point.

"I don't think he's a celebrity," says Jamie Drummond, a veteran of Third World development causes who now works closely with Bono. "Let's brainstorm a new name. He's breaking a mold here. He's spanning different universes. He's a little mercurial at times but also has a strong focus. He's relentless."

As proof of his potency in Washington, one need only look at the crowd that Bono, 47, draws one fall evening on the second floor of Sonoma, a restaurant on Capitol Hill. Surrounded by administration officials and Hill staffers -- Democrats and Republicans -- and musicians from Mali, he mixes easily with these folks, most of whom he knows and greets by first name. Daschle is there, as is Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) and Jendayi Frazer, the State Department's top official for Africa. Yes, they are together for Africa. But they're really here for him.

"When I first met him, I was thinking, what does this man have to do with the people I represent?" says Rep. John R. Carter (R-Tex.), a third-term congressman from the district that includes the Fort Hood Army base as well as the blossoming suburbs north of Austin. "But listening to him, well, he's a straight shooter, and that's what we like back home."

The straight shooter has control of the room soon enough. Looking out at the bipartisan crowd, Bono talks about the stats that have been flashing on flat-screen televisions all evening, of the 20 million African children going to school because of debt cancellation. Then, as he did in accepting the Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he talks of Thomas Jefferson and "what lyrics he wrote."

"It's the closing lines that struck me as a student and fan of America," the Irishman says of the Declaration of Independence and the founders, "which is we 'pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.' These people could have actually paid with their lives. It was an act of treason to sign it. Am I ready, a man who has stepped off a private jet a couple of days ago, to pledge my fortune? It doesn't look like it. My life? I hope not. But my sacred honor? I like to think I am."

Not unexpectedly, he receives great applause. After all, he's a man preaching to the very people he himself converted. After he makes small talk with those devotees he's brought together, suddenly he's down the stairs, leaving the devoted to their free drinks and, more important, to their sense of renewed inspiration.

'Why Are People Listening?'

How did this happen? How did a man who spent an entire concert tour crank-calling the White House become a power punk in Washington? Well, it all starts with the initial meet. What one hears from elected officials about their first experience meeting the gilded one follows a familiar path. There's the initial skepticism on their part before getting Bono's pitch, which targets a person's secular compassion or sense of religious duty (depending on the legislator) and blends in simple common sense. To forgive debts would allow African countries to spend their money elsewhere, allowing them to create their own anti-poverty programs. As a topper, Bono stresses accountability -- arguing for aid to nations that practice good governance and transparency.

He has set up a lobbying shop, with 75 full-time employees here, welcomed into every corner of power within Washington. He's helped push forward the issues of debt forgiveness and economic development on the continent and a re-energized effort toward eliminating HIV and AIDS. Now, he's determined to poke his mug into the thick of the U.S. presidential campaign, meeting with candidates to push them to add global poverty reduction to their platforms.

"If you want to know, what I do is I put flesh and blood on statistics," Bono, in an interview, says of his method of advocacy. "I try and get those people to come alive and walk around the room for a while -- mothers, children, families. Because once they're real, they're very hard to ignore. There's a kind of cold passion that is necessary for us all in terms of policy and strategy. But there comes the occasion when you want some warm blood to run through the veins."

What comes next is a follow-up that stretches into years. There's the call to Dick Durbin's cell while the senior senator from Illinois rides a bus on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. There's the call to Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy from the deepest reaches of Africa. ("Oh, hi. Honey, it's Bono !")