Senator Boxer packs a mean, partisan punch
WASHINGTON -- Two Washington rituals occurred last week -- the presidential inauguration and the confirmation hearings of a high-profile nominee. Like solidly constructed plays, these D.C. dramas offer predictable thrills. But they are worth watching to see any new wrinkles the players can bring to their roles.
President Bush's manifesto of an inaugural address, calling for freedom with more repetition than Aretha Franklin, dominated the pageantry of Inauguration Day. Earlier in the week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings into Condoleezza Rice's nomination as secretary of state were marked by the sharp confrontation between Rice and Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, who seemed to take the whole committee by surprise with her forceful questioning.
Boxer's was the strongest voice in hearings that are usually dominated by the committee's long-serving foreign-policy grandees -- such as the Republican chairman, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana; ranking Democrat, Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware; and Democrat John F. Kerry of Massachusetts. Boxer served notice that, having just been elected to a third term with her highest percentage so far, she is eager to fill the role of the Senate's most outspoken Democratic partisan.
The fact that the new Democratic bullhorn hails from California -- rather than Massachusetts, New York, or some other corner of the Northeast -- signals just how much the Golden State has changed since the '70s and '80s, when it was often Republican territory. Bush's values-based conservatism may have solidified his party's base in the South and Sunbelt, but it handed the biggest state to the Democrats.
Boxer began her term by offering to be the first senator to refuse to ratify the results of the Electoral College and force a debate on the presidential election. In 2001, Democrats in the House could not get a Senate sponsor to open debate on the 2000 election -- a scene dramatized in Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." This year, Boxer's vote to open up debate made her vilified as an ally of Moore, whose tactics many critics viewed as unfair.
But Boxer seemed unbothered, explaining she only wanted to give voice to those complaining about a lack of voting machines in urban areas of Ohio. And immediately afterward, she began setting her sights on the Rice nomination.
Rice, of course, is one of the Bush administration's stars. She is fluid and telegenic, and aware that Senate hearings are usually a performance for viewers at home, rather than an exercise in fact-gathering. So when Kerry introduced the subject of the fruitless six-nation talks on North Korean disarmament, Rice offered a perky reiteration of the aims of the process ("It has the advantage of having the parties in the region work together on a serious security problem . . ."), rather than discuss ways to curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Kerry did not let her off the hook, but much of his questioning -- like that of Biden, who might have been secretary of state if Kerry were president -- came in the form of a foreign-policy tutorial. Conveying both disagreement with the administration and awareness of the complexities of America's challenges, the two senators sometimes seemed to be talking to themselves more than to Rice. They came off like members of the tenure committee at an out-of-the-way college.
Boxer was on the attack from her opening statement, accusing Rice of misleading the country into war and then fecklessly blaming the CIA.
"I . . . will not shrink from questioning a war that was not built on the truth," Boxer declared. "Now, perhaps the most well-known statement you've made was the one about Saddam Hussein launching a nuclear weapon on America with the image of quote, quoting you, 'a mushroom cloud.' That image had to frighten every American into believing that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of annihilating them if he was not stopped. And I will be placing into the record a number of such statements you made, which have not been consistent with the facts."
Rice deftly changed the subject, accusing Boxer of questioning her character. "Senator, I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. It's not in my nature. It's not in my character. And I would hope we could have this conversation . . . without impugning my credibility or my integrity."
This was probably the type of rebuke that many of the men on the panel were fearing if they had attacked Rice too vigorously. But Boxer kept on punching.
In the process, she gave the Democrats a bitter partisan as relentless and unyielding as Republicans Tom DeLay of Texas in the House and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma in the Senate.
Old-fashioned political meanness is relatively rare on the left these days. Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin is far more liberal than most of his colleagues, but he puts his causes ahead of attacking his opponents. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York are the Republicans' favorite whipping boy and girl, but they are primarily deal-makers, more popular with their GOP colleagues than the grass roots of either party would believe possible.
Boxer is something else again. And this month, she has been living up to her name.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.
