EMERSON NEEDS NOTICE FOR MORE THAN HIS ILLNESS

From the "Congress Inside Out" column by Norman J. Ornstein in Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill:

Bill Emerson, Republican of Missouri, has been in the news lately. Unfortunately, one reason is that he has inoperable lung cancer, and has been taking radiation therapy for it. With his tumor reduced, he has announced his intention to run for re-election. If he is re-elected -- a pretty safe bet if his health is good -- and if the Republicans retain control of the House, he would be eligible via seniority to become chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

Besides his fight with cancer and decision to seek re-election, speculation about potential challenges to his chairmanship because of his medical condition have fueled additional news stories about Emerson.

In his 16 years in the House, Bill Emerson has not been in the news that often. He was in the minority for 14 of those years. He is not a big-time self-promoter, not a standard-issue, aggressive policy entrepreneur, and not another pretty face. There haven't been a lot of obvious reasons for him to make headlines.

Let's fact it: For a Member of Congress, getting in the news is nice. But it is a same that his illness, instead of his consistent legislative work, has made Emerson a more public figure.

Emerson is one of those Members of Congress who should have been a more public figure before now, and indeed should be better known among his colleagues. Emerson should be famous because he is the kind of lawmaker who makes Congress work -- the kind of workhorse who eschews flashiness or ideological posturing for legislation that improves the country and rules that improve Congress itself.

I knew a bit about Emerson years ago because he was the answer to one of the better Congressional trivia questions: he got his start in Congress as a 15-year-old page in the 83rd Congress -- the last time Republicans had a majority in the House. He was there, along with now-Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., when Puerto Rican nationalists sprayed the House floor with bullets from the gallery.

But I first met him and talked with him during the 103rd Congress, when he became a member of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, the reform committee created form a vigorous effort by Sens. Peter Domenici, R-N.M., and David Boren, D-Okla., and Reps. Bill Gradison, R-Ohio, and Lee Hamilton, D-Ind. The Joint Committee met actively throughout that Congress, and my colleague Tom Mann and I met frequently with Members and staff to brainstorm about ways to improve the operations of the House and Senate.

As is true with every committee, there are Members who spend a lot of time and effort on the deliberations and the product, and Members who don't; those who are workhorses and those are no-shows; those who try to do the right thing, regardless of partisan interests, and those who reflexively play the partisan, ideological, or ego cards. This committee had its share of unsung heroes, including Sen. Harry Reid (D) of Nevada, who challenged the then-popular Ross Perot's irrelevant and demagogic testimony when many other Members pandered to him, and who stood up for the Senate when others were taking the easy route of bashing it. Emerson was another.

He and Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., who became one of the committee's co-chairs when Gradison left the House, worked hard with Hamilton and other Democrats in an attempt to forge a genuine bipartisan reform bill. Ultimately, they found that a series of forces larger than they could control turned the issue more partisan and made genuine and serious reform of the House impossible as the 103rd Congress wound down and the 1994 elections loomed. The failure of reform efforts had something to do with the beating the majority Democrats took that November.

But the process showed Emerson's mettle and decency. He took his assignment seriously, and saw his goal as making Congress a better place. He was reminiscent of the young Pete Domenici, who did much the same thing in 1976 as a freshman member of a Senate committee that was charged with reforming the committee system.

Domenici was largely unknown as the time, although later he became a household name in the world of politics. Emerson, even if he becomes chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, will probably never reach that level of recognition or status. But he should get attention for more than just his cancer or the political machinations that flow from it. He is not the only Member of Congress who tries to work across the aisle or whose man goal is not posturing but legislating -- than God. Emerson is one of many Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, who are largely unknown outside the most avid C-SPAN audiences, but who are the backbone of the legislative process.

There are many of these hard workers in Congress now, but their numbers are dwindling. I wish Bill Emerson a speedy recovery from his lung cancer, not just because he is a good guy, but because we need his type of lawmaker around the House more than ever.