View From The 11111 The Levins give their take on current events. HARRY KIRSBAUM Staffriter Washington, .D. C. hen nothing but bad news seems to come out of Washington these days, the Jewish News asked Sander and Carl Levin their views on what to expect in the near future. JN: Is there any sense that the country is going to crawl out of the grim news coming from North Korea and Iraq? Sander. Carl and I are not pacifists, but we both thought that [invading Iraq] unilaterally is a mis- take. We should try to work with the United Nations. I think that when we make it appear that we're going to go in regardless of what happens, we under- mine the chances of U.N success in inspections. North Korea is the same way. Our position is that it is a serious problem that needs a forceful effort with other countries to get the North Koreans to disarm. North Korea, in a sense, is a more serious threat, but is not a crisis. Iraq is a crisis, at the same time legislative bodies also has an effect on Washington's image. "The majority does more than rule the House," said Sandy, "It runs the place." The Republicans are very ideological and very conservative, he said, especial- ly since the 1994 Newt Gingrich revo- lution, when Republicans took over. "There are relatively few [Republican] moderates and they feel so intimidat- ed," Sandy said. "They're quite isolated and it's hard to identify them." Carl said 435 members running every two years makes the House much more partisan than the Senate. He called the political climate in the Senate somewhat worse than it's been, "but still not awful, no matter how much it appears when we're debating." Only 100 members serving six-year staggered terms makes for better rela- tionships in the Senate, and the fili- buster ensures it. "You can't get anything done in the Senate without getting some other peo ple from the other party," he said. "We operate on unanimous consent — 100 Senators have to agree on the process of everything unless 60 Senators vote to shut you up." With a Republican majority in the Senate, Carl gives up his powerful chairmanship of the Armed Services we're trying to determine the extent of the threat. JN: Will President Bush give a Cuban missile crisis-type speech before unleashing the troops? Sander: During the Cuban missile crisis, we knew the missiles were there. I think what the president does is more compli- cated. We're not sure what's there [in Iraq]. It may well be that we have information we haven't told the U.N., but we can't tip our hand. JN: Since 9-11, grim news from abroad got worse. How much worse did it get as far as the weight of what you were dealing with? Carl: Significant. We were attacked, it was like Pearl Harbor, but if you start adding two additional facts ... One, you're dealing with terrorist groups, not nations. That complicates it tremendously. They don't abide by any rules, no diplomatic relations. With nations, you can break diplomatic relations and you can send ambassadors home. There's plen- ty you can do. The other is dealing with weapons of mass destruction. Now you can get a crazy fanatic group that wants to drop anthrax, which is far more devas- tating than traditional weapons. JN: Is there any good news? Carl: In terms of being attacked by terrorist groups in the future, we can lessen the odds of success by Committee to Sen. John Warner, R- Va. Though they face each other across the aisle, Warner and his wife stop by a reception in the Armed Services Committee Room given after Carl's swearing-in ceremony. "We have worked together all these years on this committee together," said the energetic Warner on his way to the next reception. "We have some philo- sophical differences, but the key thing is we trust each other, we respect each other, and we're absolutely honest with each other." Inner Sanctum Their desks are neat, and their offices are large, an entitlement for years of service. Photographs, political cartoons, let- ters and old Michigan maps line the walls in Carl's second-floor office in the Russell Senate Office Building. A picture in his private office cap- tures the moment when Carl present- ed then-President Ronald Reagan with his high school yearbook. "I spent a couple hundred dollars on the chance that he didn't have his own yearbook, and I was right," Carl said. Pictures of Carl's father-in-law, Benjamin Halpern, who celebrated his 4 Sandy and Carl share stories in Carl's office. being smarter, by putting resources on the border. We can do a far better job of coordinating informa- tion and holding people responsible and account- able. There are things we can do to reduce the risk. On the other hand, if I can find in a very, per- haps, a weird way to be optimistic, I think people affected by terrorist groups want their kids to live normal lives. The terrorists win when we have alerts every day. This :fan also be a negative if people become lax. We in the government have a huge responsibility to harden our country, if you will, harden our infrastructure — do everything we can humanly do to thwart terrorist attacks and to capture terrorists without scaring people. 0 100th birthday in 1998 with President Clinton share room with other family photographs including their older sis- ter and best political adviser, Hannah Gladstone, who died in 2001. Halpern died in 1999. The walls also display letters written by Presidents Harry Truman and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a receipt for the loan of a musket signed by a man in 1776. The bookcases are filled with an eclectic collection and show signs of being well read with passages marked post it notes and paperclips. Along with books on Michigan, Detroit and American labor, Perestroika by Mikhail Gorbachev is found next to The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten. Wife Barbara said Carl has the abili- ty to leave the gravity of his office at the office. "He's been able to deal with these issues when he needs to, then cut them off when he comes home or wants to be with the kids," she said. "He's one who will take an issue and work hard on it — but if he's in a sit- uation where he can't do anything about it, he's able to lay it aside, shift gears and deal with ones that he can." His sense of humor, which borders on arid, is seldom seen in public. "I think he comes across to the pub- lic as a very, very serious person," she said. "He's got a very humorous side to him. And a very warm side that doesn't come across when he's on a Sunday news program talking about Iraq." Sandy's third-floor office in the Rayburn House Office Building is no different. Family pictures also line the walls, including his favorite taken six years ago at Carl's victory party when Sandy posed with Carl's trademark reading glasses on stage, next to his smiling brother. Displayed in his private office is a visitor's gallery pass to the House of Representatives used by his grandfather, Morris Levinson, on March 1, 1908. A thank-you letter signed by Pres- ident Clinton for helping to pass the China free-trade bill in May 2000 hangs beside a framed front-page copy of the Washington Post signed by vari- ous members of Congress, including co-sponsor and friend Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., announcing the bill's passage. "He was a leader in turning the Congress around in order to get bipar- tisan support," said Rangel, who serves with Sandy on the House Ways and Means Committee. "He's an out- LEVINS on page 70 1/24 2003 69