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For Chuck Schumer, a turn at center stage

By Jason Horowitz,January 30, 2013

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Joint Congressional Committee… (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA )

Even for Chuck Schumer, this has been a month of high visibility. As the master of ceremonies for President Obama’s second inauguration, the senior senator from New York introduced the president’s address with a rabbinical cadence that evoked, for “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart, “post-Shabbat service announcements.” Schumer also presided over the luncheon at Statuary Hall in the Capitol with jazz hands and toasts. (“Slainte. L’chaim. Salud. Cent’anni.”) He concluded by directing attendees to the next event: “It’s now time to head to our next happy stop — the presidential parade.”

Casual viewers who tuned in to watch the festivities could have been forgiven for mistaking Schumer for the president’s Borscht Belt footman.

Actually, he’s become the president’s right-hand man on Capitol Hill.

That’s a remarkable development.

During Obama’s first term, Schumer groaned about the president’s naivete in espousing post-partisan “come together” platitudes. He anguished over the president’s tendency to cave in to Republicans. He bemoaned the president’s decision to push for health-care reform before ensuring that the economy was on a solid footing. He wanted to crush the opposition, not compromise.

On Inauguration Day, though, the senator looked pleased by the president’s pronouncement of an assertive and almost Schumeresque progressive agenda. The man who publicly took the oath of office Jan. 21 had learned many of the hard political lessons that Schumer already knew in January 2009, when Obama was sworn in for the first time.

But Schumer, too, has taken a new direction. At a time when Republicans are feeling battered and need a path back to electoral viability, Schumer has embraced Obama’s old bipartisan religion in a move to realize the president’s second-term agenda, and in the process attain so-far-elusive legislative accomplishments to solidify his power and status in the Senate.

In the past, the media-hungry Schumer might have simply elbowed his way onto center stage, a move common enough that his colleagues came to dub it “getting Schumered.” This time, the president is focusing on bringing along the public and giving Schumer room to work the Senate. Other Democrats are signing on, and key Republicans are eager to work with him.

Schumer is not one to let the opportunity slip away. On Monday, he led a bipartisan group of top lawmakers during a jampacked news conference, unveiling a framework for immigration reform. That night, he was instrumental in securing bipartisan support for a $60 billion relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy. On Tuesday, he appeared with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to tout bipartisan support for the immigration package. On Wednesday, the duo had a return engagement at a Politico Playbook breakfast, where McCain said Schumer was assuming the role of the late senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts as the Democratic lion able to bridge the partisan divide. Later that day, Schumer said at a gun-control hearing that “as we meet here today, I’m having productive conversations with colleagues on both sides of the aisle” to introduce new legislation.

In his long ascent to power, Schumer has distinguished himself as one of the most aggressive, politically calculating and effectively partisan Democrats in the country. As chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) from 2005 to 2009, he fought to build, guard and expand the Democratic majority that he aspires to, and in many ways already does, lead. The 2010 reelection of Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), whom Schumer calls his “foxhole buddy,” temporarily took the brass ring of majority leader off the table. But as this month has demonstrated, it hasn’t sapped his ambition.

(Schumer, loath to upset his budding relationships with Republicans, declined an interview request.)

Grumbling in the caucus

At the Monday morning news conference on immigration, Schumer, who spent much of last year excoriating Republicans for alienating Hispanics, said, “we do not want immigration as a wedge issue” and lauded McCain as “the glue in our group.” He nodded emphatically as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) spoke. According to people familiar with the talks that produced the outlines of an immigration proposal, the New Yorker made concessions to help get Rubio on board and persistently appealed to the young Cuban American senator and presumptive 2016 presidential candidate.

Asked at the news conference why the senators were getting out in front of the White House’s immigration announcement on Tuesday, Schumer said, “It seems to me, at least, that the Senate is the most fortuitous place to move forward first.”

And what of Obama’s own vision for immigration reform, and his assertion in Nevada that “my hope is that this provides some key markers to members of Congress as they craft a bill”?