Washington’s power brothers

Thanks to Lucchino’s intervention, Harold is set to take the mound on Aug. 29, temporarily evening the score between a pair of siblings whose relentless overachievement has now taken them to Washington’s highest reaches.

Harold, 54, a former Yale Law School dean, is writing policies for detaining suspected terrorists, which the administration describes as a diplomatic priority. Howard, 57, is the country’s chief public health officer, directing the government response to swine flu and promoting disease-prevention efforts.

A few weeks after each man was sworn in, Harold made the trip across town for his first visit to Howard’s seventh-floor suite at the Department of Health and Human Services. Harold marveled that the office had a shower, a panoramic view of the Capitol across the street, and enough wall space for what Harold concedes is his brother’s larger collection of diplomas, degrees, and certificates. Howard, a former associate dean at the Harvard School of Public Health, is licensed to practice internal medicine, hematology, medical oncology, and dermatology.

“Howie is board-certified in four fields, which apparently is very rare. I took the bar in three states,’’ said Harold, acknowledging their mutual ambition.

“People regularly get our names confused and think I’m the lawyer and he’s the doctor,’’ said Howard, in what is believed to be their first joint interview since the Edgewood Echo at Edgewood School in New Haven covered Howard’s run for sixth-grade class president. (His winning slogan: “Go for Koh.’’)

“In fact,’’ added Harold, “one colleague of mine was watching C-Span and sees Howie in Sweden or something, giving a paper about malignant melanoma or something, and said, ‘I had no idea Harold had such range!’ ’’

Both brothers have drifted between academia and government throughout their careers. In 1993, Howard received then-Boston Mayor Ray Flynn as a melanoma patient at Boston Medical Center; his successful treatment and authoritative press conference presence caught the attention of local political leaders.

“It’s not always a pleasant circumstance seeing a doctor or lawyer, but they have the ability to put things in plain language and effectively communicate,’’ Flynn said.

Not long thereafter, Howard - who had previously led a statewide antitobacco campaign from his hospital perch - was named Massachusetts commissioner for public health by Governor William Weld. Harold says his brother’s example inspired him to leave a Yale teaching job to become President Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for democracy.

“I was talking to Howard and said, ‘Why did you stop doing direct cancer treatment in favor of public health?’ and he said, ‘With a healthy body you don’t get sick,’ ’’ said Harold. “So I thought maybe what I should do is focus more on the causes and less on the symptoms. What are the root causes? Rule of law, democracy.’’

The brothers trace their earnest patriotism to both parents and their ambition to their late father, who they say motivated them to academic success and public service. Their father, Kwang Lim Koh, had traveled to Harvard as one of the first Koreans to study law in the United States; their mother was an aspiring anthropologist interested in the consequences of industrial development.

When they moved to Cambridge in 1951, the newlyweds had trouble finding a landlord who would rent to them. “They said no dogs or Asians were allowed in the apartment,’’ recalled Hesung Chun Koh, Harold and Howard’s mother.

The couple became leaders of the small community - she estimates only a dozen Koreans lived in the Boston area at the time - and their home a hub for visiting academics and dignitaries from Korea. They helped to launch a Korean studies program at Harvard and established the nonprofit Korea Institute.

“We were very sensitive about what our children would face,’’ said Mrs. Koh, now 80 and chairwoman of the East Rock Institute in New Haven. “My husband encouraged the children to go into the sciences. Because it’s an exact science, there would be less prejudice.’’

Once they turned 5, the Kohs’ six children were expected to keep diaries so their father could coach them on essay-writing techniques.

At breakfast, they took daily turns delivering prayers and reading letters from relatives in Korea. Breakfast meetings became an inviolate part of the family schedule: When their father began commuting on a 3:58 a.m. train, the children were expected at the table by 3 a.m.

On Saturdays, they gathered for family-council meetings, the chairmanship rotating among the children.

After South Korea’s first free elections in 1960, Kwang Lim Koh was rewarded with the post of ambassador to the United Nations and, shortly thereafter, ambassador to Washington as well. When the government was toppled by a coup, he challenged the junta at the risk of his career. He ended up being blacklisted; the Kohs could not return to South Korea without expecting imprisonment.

“So he made the point to us that you’ve got to serve a government that lives by its principles, and I think that’s been both of our inspiration,’’ said Harold.

The family moved from Cambridge to New Haven, where both parents took teaching posts. Since then, Howard and Harold have spent nearly their whole lives shuttling between the two cities. Their father died in 1989.

“I went to Yale and Yale Med School, and then ended up teaching at Harvard,’’ said Howard. “He went to Harvard, and ended up teaching at Yale.’’

Whenever the Harvard-Yale football game is in New Haven, the brothers host a large party at their mother’s house. “We each root for the people who pay us,’’ said Harold.

Harold returned to Yale at the end of Clinton’s term, and after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks he became a persistent critic of the Bush administration’s legal theories around the handling of detainees and the war in Iraq.

Some of those writings, which embrace the idea of international legal norms, inspired aggressive opposition when he was nominated by President Obama. Opponents said Koh would sacrifice US sovereignty for “transnational jurisprudence.’’

At Harold’s Senate confirmation hearings, his brother’s expertise helped inform his favorite example of the need for global frameworks. No single national solution, Koh said, would be enough to stop the spread of H1N1 and other diseases with cross-border reach.

Seated in the hearing room, his mother girded to hear one particular claim popular among her son’s critics. Social conservatives have asserted that Koh’s support for a women’s rights treaty could eventually abolish Mother’s Day.

“If someone says Harold is against Mother’s Day, I want to know who that is!’’ said Mrs. Koh. “It doesn’t make any sense. He brings me so many gifts.’’