For Leahy, happy days are here again

11/10/2006

By John Curran
The Associated Press

MONTPELIER -- Buoyed by Democrats' election night "tsunami," encouraged by the pending departure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and poised to take over the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Thursday that Congress, President Bush and the nation will all benefit from his party's return to power on Capitol Hill.

"In many ways, it's going to be better, not only for the country," Leahy said. "It's actually, in an interesting way, going to be better for President Bush. When you had a rubber-stamp Congress for the last six years, no matter what mistake the president made, no matter what mistake the administration made, nobody would call them on it.

"That has now changed," he said.

Elected in the post-Watergate Class of 1974, Leahy, 66, has been one of the White House's biggest critics in recent years, criticizing administration policy on the war in Iraq, U.S. anti-terrorism initiatives and encroachment on privacy rights.

The feelings were mutual: In September, he was branded a "ruthless partisan" in a Republican National Committee memo sent to party regulars in advance of the elections and posted on its Web site.

Although he wasn't on the Election Day ballot, Leahy was a winner by virtue of Democrats' seizing majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in what Bush himself called a "thumpin'."

Leahy fairly floated into his Montpelier field office for a briefing with reporters Thursday, hoisting a copy of a morning newspaper whose page one headline read: "Democrats claim control of Senate," but he said he wasn't one to gloat.

"I don't take any pleasure in anybody having a difficult time," he said of Bush. "I just want the president to realize he's got to listen to other voices, other than just Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. He's got to realize that the Congress is there, not as a rubber stamp but (as something that) could actually help him."

Under his Judiciary Committee watch, the federal government will abandon its proposal to begin requiring passports for U.S. citizens to cross the Canadian border, he said.

"We ought to be celebrating the fact that we have a country that loves us, that we can deal with, than to try to set up artificial barriers."

The Judiciary Committee, he said, will focus mainly on oversight and will favor "consensus" candidates for federal judgeships, not ideologues of either party, he said.

When Leahy returns to Washington today, it will be with more spring in his step than he has felt in years, he said.

"The last few times I've gotten on the plane to go back to Washington, they had to almost bring me out kicking and screaming. I'm going back very, very, very eager to get back. It's going to be the first time in a long time I've been this eager.

"I should probably be more restrained on that, but that's the way I feel."

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