A Political Giant Takes His Leave

A Political Giant Takes His Leave
Warner Leaves Legacy, Void in Va. Delegation

By Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 5, 2009

John W. Warner is a private citizen today. His expansive offices overlooking the Capitol are empty, his loyal staff dispersed, his 30 years in the Senate a fixture of history.

Remaining is the broad legacy of a man who came to personify the Virginia political gentleman. Remaining, too, is the question of who will fill the void he is leaving.

Warner is widely hailed as a bipartisan broker able to break ranks on principle without losing friends; a man who is at least as fierce an advocate for the state's military bases, rivers and highways as for such national issues as security and defense. No matter who among the state's congressional leaders tries to assume that mantle, it will take time for any of them to collect the expertise, good will and political acumen to fill Warner's shoes.

"This is a good man, and he reflects the best of public service," said Mark R. Warner (D), the former Virginia governor who will replace John Warner at noon tomorrow -- and who so admires his Republican predecessor that he has asked the older Warner to escort him onto the Senate chamber floor. "He just oozes Virginia in the best way possible. I may be succeeding him, but I'm not replacing him. He's not replaceable."

John Warner, 81, who will continue living in Alexandria with his wife, Jeanne, dismissed the question of life on Capitol Hill without him as he scrambled last week through the last-minute meetings, interviews and goodbyes of his final days in the Russell Senate Office Building. ("I had to sign eight pieces of paper just to get out of the Senate just now!" he declared.)

During an interview, Warner reminisced about securing money to build aircraft carriers and dredge ports, about pushing the button to explode a dam on the Rappahannock River, allowing shad and striped bass to resume their migration to some of his and many other Virginians' favorite fishing grounds.

But mostly, Warner sounded a wistful note about not being around to face the difficult challenges confronting the Senate and the nation in 2009: violence in Gaza, spiraling national debt, economic uncertainty. More than ever, Warner warned, the nation's leaders must work together.

"The gravity of the issues facing the new president -- be they in foreign affairs like the current conflict in the Middle East, the economy, the worsening situation in Afghanistan -- demand the highest degree of bipartisanship," Warner said. "I would hope -- indeed I would urge my colleagues to give the maximum bipartisanship to help his team resolve these almost unprecedented problems facing this country."

The role Virginia's federal delegation will play in facing those challenges remains unknown. The state's two senators and 11 congressmen will take on a decidedly new look tomorrow when Mark Warner takes office and his Democratic colleague, James Webb, becomes the senior senator from Virginia after just two years in office. Virginia's contingent in the House of Representatives will include three new Democrats, flipping an 8-3 Republican majority to a 6-5 Democratic one.

So who leads this crew? Is it Webb, the intellect and author who, like John Warner, is a former Navy secretary and whose leadership on last year's G.I. bill has helped brand him an independent-minded nonpartisan? Is it Mark Warner, the cellphone millionaire and former Virginia Democratic Party chairman who is more likely than Webb to be drawn to state party-building, candidate recruitment and fundraising?

Webb said the entire Virginia delegation must work together to fill Warner's shoes, as must Senate Republicans, who have lost one of their last remaining moderate voices willing to reach across the aisle.

"We need more people like John Warner, who came to the Senate because the country needs good governance rather than political rhetoric," Webb said.

The stories of John Warner's independent-minded style are well-known. He climbed off a plane in 2006, fresh from Iraq, and declared that the war was "drifting sideways." He stood alongside Mark Warner when the latter was governor in support of a transportation referendum that many of his Republican colleagues opposed. He refused to endorse two conservative Republican candidates, Michael P. Farris for lieutenant governor in 1993 and Oliver North for U.S. Senate the following year, whom he deemed unfit for public office.

"John was never saddled with the wrong priority on parties," said former governor A. Linwood Holton Jr., Warner's fraternity brother at Washington and Lee University who in 1969 helped him become undersecretary of the Navy after both worked on Richard M. Nixon's presidential campaign.

Holton and Warner stayed close even when they competed in the Republican Senate primary in 1978. Holton fondly recalled befriending Warner's wife at the time, actress Elizabeth Taylor, when she dazzled Virginians on the campaign trail.

"He was a Republican," said Holton, who also is the father-in-law of Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D). "But he recognized that parties are competitive devices that give people the opportunity to make a choice. He never hesitated to deviate from the party line if he felt that the deviation was necessary for better government service."

Such deviations also characterize the political styles of Webb and Warner, making it possible for either to gravitate toward a centrist, brokering role in a chamber that Democrats control and where good relations with Republicans could be fruitful for President-elect Barack Obama. The styles of the three new members of Congress, who will be under pressure to follow the lead of their party elders, are less clear.

"There's going to be a vacuum for quite a while," said Republican Tom Davis, a longtime congressman from Northern Virginia who left office last year. "You don't grow seniority right away."

Anyone seeking to replace Warner must start by building expertise. Amid the wingback chairs, empty desks and stacks of framed mementos outside Warner's office last week was a box of volumes giving testament to his deep knowledge, including "Cold War Submarines" and "The U.S. Marines in the Korean War." From that expertise followed accomplishments: serving as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, securing funding for a new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, protecting Virginia's military bases from closure.

His successor also must be willing to work. By all accounts, Warner never slowed down in his final year in office. He led efforts by Virginia's political leaders to save the extension of Metrorail to Dulles International Airport, which was under threat of rejection by federal transit regulators. And little more than a month ago, he was strategizing in his office with Kaine, Webb and Mark Warner to block the move of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier from Virginia to Mayport Naval Air Station in Florida.

The proposal "borders on fiscal irresponsibility," John Warner said at a news conference in late November.

Mostly, anyone hoping to follow in Warner's footsteps must study his grace and level-headedness, friends say -- always mixed with a touch of humor as well as that unmistakable Virginia twang.

One of Holton's favorite stories dates back to his term as governor in the early 1970s, after Nixon had promoted Warner to secretary of the Navy. A Navy ship had crashed into the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which connects Virginia Beach to the Eastern Shore, and Holton rang up his old friend.