A Hardball Player for the Senate

Growing up in Waterville, Me., George Mitchell was best known as “the brother of Johnny, Paul and Robbie Mitchell.” Overshadowed by his basketball- star siblings, George decided to excel in other ways. Last week he attained a pinnacle of sorts when he was chosen majority leader of the U.S. Senate over two colleagues with more seniority, Hawaii’s Daniel Inouye and Louisiana’s J. Bennett Johnston. In that role, Mitchell will be the Democrats’ most visible counterpoint to another fellow with Maine connections: George Bush, of Kennebunkport.

Mitchell, one of the Capitol’s most adroit phrasemakers, may prove more than a match for Bush in articulating his party’s agenda. The next President will find the new majority leader less interested than his predecessor, West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, in parliamentary procedures, more skillful in forming coalitions, and equally unwilling to let Congress play a fall-guy role if the President tries to extricate himself from his “read my lips” campaign promises not to raise taxes. Says his friend and mentor Edmund Muskie: “George is a liberal but one who can win the support of many people because he’s pragmatic.”

Mitchell’s owlish demeanor and mild manner mask a wrought-iron will. Democrats were impressed by his tough televised responses to Ronald Reagan on the Iran-contra scandal and his unblinking stare-down of Oliver North during hearings on that sordid affair. They were also swayed by the $12.4 million he raised as director of the 1986 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, when the party recaptured control of the Senate.

Mitchell campaigned with a full-court press that would have done his brothers proud, cadging six to eight Senators a day, extracting ironclad promises, not simple assurances, of support. He was aided by his colleagues’ misgivings about Johnston’s ties to Big Oil interests and Inouye’s lackluster television style. Though Johnston made an issue of Mitchell’s Northeastern liberalism, it fell flat, even with moderate and Southern Senators who have been trying to prod their party more toward the political center in the wake of Michael Dukakis’ defeat.

Since Bush occasionally gives Mitchell a ride back to Maine aboard Air Force Two, he has already had a chance to take the measure of the Democratic leader. Mitchell is publicly hopeful that the new Republican Administration and the Democratic Congress can work together because “the nation’s problems are serious, the challenges are great,” foremost among them the budget and trade deficits. But he warns that “if the President chooses confrontation, we will confront him.” Mitchell’s strategy for the Democrats is to await Bush’s lead on the budget, allowing him to take the heat if he is forced to renege on his no-tax pledge. George Bush is about to discover that although George Mitchell didn’t make it playing round ball, he knows a thing or two about hard ball.