An Army of One
DONNELLY, TOM
An Army of One Floyd Spence, 1928-2001 BY TOM DONNELLY FOR FIVE OF THE SIX YEARS that Floyd Spence chaired 4 the House Armed Services Committee—six years ending just months before the...
...To anyone who believes the post-Cold War world will be kinder or gentler," he said, speaking of Rwanda but prefiguring what lay ahead in the Balkans, "the hatred against humanity we see on display ought to give us pause...
...It was an outrage, he thought, to put U.S...
...For all his political disappointments, Spence loved being the chairman of the armed services committee...
...And remember to push the button...
...Though they considered themselves heirs of Ronald Reagan, they styled themselves "cheap hawks," and saw the Pentagon as a wasteful federal bureaucracy...
...Yes sir...
...And sitting next to the chairman, facing a packed hearing room and occasionally the glare of C-SPAN lights, and shepherding a committee of almost 60 members is an intoxicating experience...
...forces have undertaken over the past decade...
...Though he was one of the first southern conservatives to switch his affiliation from Democrat to Republican— he did so in 1962, two years ahead of senator Strom Thurmond—he was in some ways out of step with the GoP by the time of the Republican Revolution of 1994...
...Always is for me," he said...
...An Army of One Floyd Spence, 1928-2001 BY TOM DONNELLY FOR FIVE OF THE SIX YEARS that Floyd Spence chaired 4 the House Armed Services Committee—six years ending just months before the congressman's death on August 16—I served on the committee staff, doing policy work and writing speeches for the chairman...
...At meetings in the committee's hearing room, he loved to point with his gavel to the words emblazoned on a brass plaque in front of the great chairman's chair, from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: "The Congress shall have Power . . . to raise and support Armies, . . . provide and maintain a Navy, . . . make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces...
...But as the months passed, the new administration retreated from this commitment, and Spence, his health problems mounting, became increasingly troubled...
...Yet repulsed as he was by the increasing violence of ethnic wars, Spence was also angry about the feckless way the Clinton administration employed the American military...
...Once it came, he relished it...
...Spence" had a dedication to military affairs and the well-being of people in uniform so consuming that it provides not just the essential measure of the public man, but also a yardstick against which to assess the conservative movement, the Republican party, and the state of American politics...
...Indeed, by the time I joined the committee staff in April 1995, it already was clear that Spence and a few other defense-minded backbenchers were fighting a frustrating battle against their own leadership as well as the Clinton administration...
...Differences over defense spending soon widened the distance between Spence and the new Republican leaders...
...Good morning, Mr...
...Eventually, it fell to me to be the lead staffer at a full committee hearing...
...My role involved me in the wrangling over policy that has been incessant in the post-Cold War years, with every national-security issue up for grabs...
...For Spence, whose defense program was simple and clear—"Mo' money"—the realization that his ostensibly conservative allies had no wish to restore the defense funds cut in the early Clinton years was deeply shocking...
...The duties aren't all that demand-ing—keeping track of the correct order of members' allotted speaking slots and pushing the egg-timer device that limits each member to five minutes—but the penalties for failure are unpleasant...
...Gingrich's revolutionaries represented a younger generation of conservative politicians, a post-vietnam and even a post-Cold War cohort who came to Washington intending first and foremost to reduce the size of government, restrain spending, and lower taxes...
...soldiers' lives at risk without any idea what victory was or how to achieve it...
...he said, raising his eyebrows toward the room...
...It was thus an amalgam of tradition, experience, patriotism, and his idea of the fundamental responsibility of the Tom Donnelly is deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century...
...While many aspects of the chairman's very full life were outside my purview, i gained a deep understanding of his driving concern as a politician...
...An honor, sir...
...Floyd Spence's dedication was rooted in the culture of his native South Carolina and developed in his own military service—in the Korean War and in the Naval Reserve from 1947 to 1988—and his three decades in the House of Representatives...
...Though otherwise entirely loyal to Speaker Gingrich and his successor, Dennis Hastert, and too good a party soldier to make a public spectacle of his dissent, Spence quietly drew the line at voting for budget resolutions he believed were inadequate...
...Remember it...
...Pretty good, huh...
...The person i always think of as "Mr...
...Spence was an early and enthusiastic Bush supporter, and the South Carolina primary propelled Bush to the nomination over senator John McCain...
...and it required me to make a close study of my principal's habits of mind, use of words, and animating ideas...
...Spence," I said as he approached the chairman's seat...
...First time, isn't it, Tom...
...The fundamental breach between the political generations remained even after President Bush came to office this year...
...federal government...
...Indeed, had Newt Gingrich and the other new House leaders been more interested in defense affairs, they might well have brushed aside Spence, the most senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, and substituted one of their own lieutenants...
...Yet Spence's support was energetic because he believed the Bush campaign's promise that "help was on the way" for the military, which he understood to mean the realization of his long-deferred desire to significantly increase defense spending...
...Characteristically, he expressed his unhappiness mostly in private, though it occasionally was visible in committee hearings...
...Alas, few of Spence's colleagues felt the weight of those words as he did...
...He had particular disdain for John Kasich, the spiritual leader of the budget hawks, who had combined with the ultraliberal Ron Dellums to lead the fight to terminate the B-2 bomber program...
...During his two decades in a seemingly permanent Republican minority in the House, he never anticipated such a privilege...
...Spence often found himself caught in the middle in policy terms as well, especially in regard to the many constabulary missions U.S...
Vol. 6 • September 2001 • No. 47
