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April 12, 2009

Clyburn's time has arrived

The State

Around the White House, some of President Barack Obama's senior aides have given House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn a nickname.

They call him Sage.

"He's an amazing man," Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest advisers, said in an interview Friday. "He's a man of extraordinary intellect, judgment and wit. He reads people very well. He's very wise, yet he's very humble too."

Jarrett said she and Obama check in regularly with the South Carolina Democrat - most recently, during her two-hour visit to his Capitol office after lawmakers adjourned for spring break - to talk about the president's ambitious legislative agenda and to feel the pulse of Congress.

"They know each other very well," Jarrett said of Obama and Clyburn. "They speak frankly and openly with each other."

Like many African-Americans around the country, Clyburn wept on the Nov. 4 night of Obama's election.

Obama's remarkable rise, Clyburn said that night, vindicated the Rev. Martin Luther King's dream that his children would "one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Clyburn, 68, has too much admiration for Obama's intellect and political talent to suggest that he is anything like a mentor to the charismatic leader who is 21 years his junior.

"This guy is very, very smart in more ways than one," Clyburn said. "He's smart because he has a high intellect, but he's also smart because he's an astute politician. He understands how to make complex things understandable to ordinary people. That is a key to his leadership. No one is suspicious of Barack Obama, because they understand him."

Yet, as Obama entered the House of Representatives chamber to deliver his first address to Congress in late February, there was Clyburn, walking by his side or just behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder and whispering in his ear over thunderous applause.

It was a striking scene: The nation's first African-American president, a trim Ivy Leaguer and a basketball player, and the highest-ranking black member of Congress, an older and stouter golfer who went to jail for civil rights sit-ins while attending a state university in the segregated South.

As Obama left the chamber an hour later, Clyburn guided him from one group of waiting lawmakers to the next.

When they reached the back of the hall, dozens of congressional pages, dressed in navy blazers and gray slacks, reached out to shake Obama's hand and thrust forward pieces of paper for his autograph.

Clyburn recognized Cameron Smalls, a page from Woodland High School in Dorchester. The congressman handed Obama his own program and asked him to sign it for the boy.

It was an experience Clyburn wanted to share and save.

RISING INFLUENCE

With an expanded Democratic majority in the House and a president who shares his activist approach to governing, at an age when many of his peers have retired - James Enos Clyburn's time has come.

"Jim is one of the most powerful people in the country, quite frankly," said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. "When they write the history of South Carolina politics, very few people will have had a more prominent role to play in Congress."

Clyburn's profile has risen along with Obama's ascendancy. The son of a Church of God minister and a beautician appears regularly on television and in newspaper articles, often to discuss Obama and his legislative initiatives.

Clyburn had a big hand in crafting and then moving through Congress Obama's $787 billion economic-stimulus plan, which for good or for bad is already destined to be one of the major measures of his presidency.

Friends and colleagues of Obama and Clyburn said they respect each other, but also speak their minds and feel free to disagree.

When Obama was deciding who to choose as his secretary of Health and Human Services - a key Cabinet pick who oversees one of the largest and most well-funded federal agencies - Clyburn promoted Dr. Wayne Riley, a prominent black physician and president of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn.

Looking for someone with better political connections and more experience in Washington, Obama instead chose Tom Daschle, the white former Senate majority leader.

Daschle's Cabinet candidacy quickly crashed and burned over his past tax missteps.

Clyburn said nothing, publicly or privately.

Clyburn did speak out during Obama's first visit with Democratic and Republican senators and representatives shortly before his Jan. 20 inauguration.

In front of lawmakers from both parties, Clyburn gently chided Obama about the urgent need to secure funding for J.V. Martin Junior High School, an old, dilapidated facility in Dillon, among the poor, largely black communities along the Interstate 95 corridor for which Clyburn has long advocated.

With Clyburn's help, Obama had campaigned at the school in the long run-up to his Jan. 26, 2008, victory over Hillary Clinton in the key South Carolina Democratic presidential primary.

"You and I and many other politicians used J.V. Martin (School) as a prop during the campaign season," Clyburn reminded Obama in the Jan. 5 luncheon at the Capitol. "Now it's time to give those kids and their families their props with a bold recovery package."

Less than three weeks later, with Clyburn's behind-the-scenes help, an eighth grader from the school, Ty'Sheoma Bethea, sat next to first lady Michelle Obama during the president's maiden address to Congress.

Now, Clyburn is battling Republican South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford in a high-profile struggle to devote part of the $700 million in disputed stimulus funds to rebuilding J.V. Martin and other outdated schools in their state.

INDEBTED TO CLYBURN

Ronald Walters, director of the University of Maryland's African-American Leadership Institute, said Clyburn delivered for Obama at a critical turning point in his contest with Hillary Clinton.

In spring last year, Bill Clinton had angered many Obama supporters with a series of baffling comments about race, including one in which he compared Obama's primary win in South Carolina with the Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1988 victory there.

The former president's remark, widely viewed as an attempt to minimize Obama's appeal in the general election, infuriated African-Americans in particular.

"When he was going through his impeachment problems, it was the black community that bellied up to the bar," Clyburn told The New York Times. "I think black folks feel strongly that this is a strange way for President Clinton to show his appreciation."

As he had done earlier in the campaign, Clyburn cautioned Clinton that such inflammatory comments about race could hurt Democrats down the road.

"He was one of the few politicians of any stature to speak out so forcefully," Walters said.

Though Clyburn didn't formally endorse Obama until early June, his neutrality helped the Illinois senator.

For long months, Clyburn quietly resisted relentless entreaties, from Bill and Hillary Clinton and their powerful allies, to endorse her for president, even though he had longstanding, close ties with them.

"Without doing very much, he opened the door for Barack Obama to win South Carolina," Walters said. "Obama owes him a great deal."

Despite Clyburn's official neutrality until his June 3 endorsement, friends say they knew where his heart was in the historic White House contest between Obama and Clinton.

Don Fowler, former national chairman of the Democratic Party and a longtime friend of Clyburn, backed Hillary Clinton.

"He never tried to get me to endorse Obama, but I knew where he stood even though he was not publicly committed," Fowler said of Clyburn.

A MATTER OF STYLE

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of Clyburn's six senior deputy whips, said Clyburn is a good listener who tries to bring people together and corral votes through cajoling and gentle persuasion.That style, Wasserman said, contrasts markedly with one of his well-known predecessors, Tom DeLay, the former Republican Texas congressman who became known as "the Hammer" as House majority whip after George W. Bush became president in January 2001.

"Tom DeLay got votes through coercion," Wasserman said. "Jim Clyburn gets votes by consensus."

Yet, those who go way back with Clyburn said he's always had a feisty, street-fighter's stubbornness when pursuing important goals.

Clyburn's longtime friends say Clyburn will do everything in his power to prevail over Sanford to grasp control of the $700 million in disputed stimulus funds and use the money for its stated purposes of helping schools and hiring cops.

"Jim is not going to let this thing die," Fowler said. "He will pursue this through legislation if he can and to court if he has to. He is not going to give up or quit. Jim Clyburn has never done that."