Back when Senator Charles Schumer was a freshman from an embattled minority party, he used to say that if you put his distant predecessor Jacob Javits—the legendary liberal, antiwar, nonconformist Republican—into a centrifuge and spun it around, it would produce a pair of New York isotopes: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an intellectual who churned out sesquipedalian tomes on social policy, and Al D’Amato, a profane tactician who seemed to understand his office in purely parochial terms. Mr. Schumer wanted to reverse the process, reuniting political id and ego in one person.

“Out would come this thinker who did great legislative stuff like Moynihan, but who also did the good constituent work like D’Amato,” said a former aide. “That was his goal.”

Now, as he stands on the verge of a landmark legislative achievement as an instrumental mover behind a grand health care compromise, the question isn’t so much whether he reached that goal, but what the next one might be.

In an interview this week at his office in Manhattan, Mr. Schumer removed himself from the maelstrom for a moment and reflected, without an outward hint of individual ambition, on his ever-increasing influence.

“I love legislating,” he said, not for the first time. “And we had to create a majority so we could legislate.”

 

MR. SCHUMER IS now the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, occupying an office that was specially created for him by the majority leader, Harry Reid, to entice him to pass up a run for governor in 2006, and some of his recent moves—especially his very public push for a bill that includes a “public option” health care plan, over the more tactical caution of the White House and Mr. Reid—have raised inevitable questions about the ceiling of his ambitions. Mr. Reid, who faces reelection in reddish Nevada next year, is very vulnerable, according to the polls, raising the possibility of a rare opening at the pinnacle of the Senate.

“I’m not trying to gild the lily. I’m happy where I am right now,” Mr. Schumer said. “Harry Reid is my buddy, my foxhole buddy, and I am doing everything I can to help him get reelected. And I strongly believe he will be reelected.”

Still, as Cook Political Report senior editor Jennifer Duffy asks, reasonably, “How can you not think about it, given Schumer’s rise?”

The story of that rise coincides with the long narrative of the Democrats’ return to dominance in Washington.

“I was in the House for 18 years, and I would have stayed in the House, because I loved it when we were in the majority, but we lost the majority in ’94,” Mr. Schumer said. “And in the House, when you’re in the minority, it’s bad. It’s the first time I’m telling a reporter this, but I’ve been in the Senate majority, Senate minority, House majority, House minority. Only one sucks. I got tired of going to the floor and just beating up on the Republicans without any effect. So I said to myself, ‘It’s up or out.’”

 

IN THE  YEARS immediately after his successful challenge to Mr. D’Amato, in 1998, he was widely regarded within the fusty ranks of the Senate as a simple political animal—a little too vulgar, too much of the House.

“Chuck was a guy in a hurry, and it showed,” said the former leadership aide. “People respected him, and they knew they needed him, and they knew he was good for the caucus and they wanted to win elections, but I think there was some eye-rolling about his demeanor. But I think the Senate is a place that shapes people, for better or for worse, and I think to a certain extent the institution, and his desire to lead it, has wrung the ‘House-ness’ out of him.”

“I think it’s very difficult for senators from the Northeast to develop a broader national constituency,” said Robert Torricelli, the former senator from New Jersey, whose career paralleled Mr. Schumer’s for a time but was ultimately derailed by ethics investigations. “Chuck was viewed with some skepticism when he arrived, because his identity was so intertwined with New York itself. So I think he has overcome some handicaps.”

One of the largest of those handicaps was a sense, based on regional identity as much as anything, that Mr. Schumer was far to the left of mainstream Democrats. In fact, in his 2007 book, Positively American, Mr. Schumer outlined a governing philosophy fixated on middle-class issues, an attempt to shift the underlying justification for liberalism from abnegation to self-interest. One of his contributions to this year’s stimulus bills is typical: a $2,500 college tuition tax credit for families making less than $180,000 a year.

 

IMMEDIATELY AFTER Barack Obama’s election, when many Democrats were talking about the New Deal and a sea change in the nation’s attitude toward activist government, Mr. Schumer was pushing a list of comparatively modest legislative priorities: reforming immigration, re-regulating the financial industry, a plan to reduce dependence on foreign energy sources. These issues, as he saw it, were capable of winning a broad consensus, and swift political dividends. “Health care is not one of them,” Mr. Schumer said. “That’s why I had recommended that we wait a little bit and not do it early on.”

Once it became clear that health care was Mr. Obama’s priority, however, Mr. Schumer inserted himself aggressively into the debate, staking out what he discerned to be the likely median point of opinion in the Senate: creating a health care provider, initially funded with public capital, that would compete in the marketplace like a private company—a concept Mr. Schumer calls the “level playing field.” To win moderate support, he later incorporated an escape hatch: States would be able to opt out of the public plan if they chose. Despite the compromise, Mr. Schumer’s plan was voted down in the Senate Finance Committee, leading most commentators to declare the public option dead.

But he stubbornly refused to drop the issue, saying that out on the Senate floor, his plan had a good shot at winning a filibuster-proof 60 votes. When Reid sounded less certain, Mr. Schumer went on MSNBC to say that he was urging the majority leader to put the public option into the Democratic bill. Last week, Mr. Reid announced he would do just that.

Though they seem to have worked, Mr. Schumer’s pressure tactics reportedly rankled both the majority leader and the White House. According to Politico, Mr. Reid questioned his subordinate’s taking to the airwaves. Mr. Schumer played down any divide, saying that he was genuinely close to both Mr. Reid—confidantes of both men say that’s true—and Mr. Emanuel, a hard-driving personality with whom he shares some notable similarities. He said that rapid-fire, process-driven press coverage has made it more difficult to move substantive legislation. “It’s not just that it’s a battlefield, who’s winning and who’s losing,” Mr. Schumer said. “It’s a dynamic, unfolding process.”

An illustration: Senator Joe Lieberman announced last week that he’d prefer no bill to a bill that included Mr. Schumer’s proposal, and plans to round up the necessary votes once again were clouded.

“The House can much more script where it’s going because they have a Rules Committee that says this amendment is allowed and this amendment is not allowed,” Mr. Schumer said.

The Senate is different. “You can’t really … I mean, I’ve had some people in the White House saying”—his voice went up an octave and increased slightly in nasality—“‘So what’s the exact game plan for when we go to the floor?’ You can’t have one, because anyone can introduce any amendment at any time, and the members react to it.”

 

MR. SCHUMER SAID said he was hopeful that the debate will move to a relatively quick resolution, because, in his view, the relentless focus on health care has crowded out priorities he’d hoped to address this year. He’s moving a far-reaching immigration bill, cosponsored with Lindsey Graham, through the Judiciary Committee, and he hopes to get to the pressing issue of financial regulation before the midterms. “The key is the systemic risk regulator,” he said, adding that he’s not sure if that responsibility will be taken over by the Federal Reserve, as some advocate, or an entirely new agency.

Handicapping the Senate’s internal politics is notoriously difficult. Most observers say that the most logical rival to Mr. Schumer, if the majority leader’s post were to open up, would be Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, who ranks second in the party hierarchy. Mr. Schumer might expect to have the votes of many of 14 senators he elected as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, while Mr. Durbin would be able to count on the support—explicit or implicit—of Mr. Obama, a close ally back when they served together. But Mr. Durbin and Mr. Schumer are close friends—in fact, they share a famously dingy apartment when they stay in Washington—so the personal dimension of the competition, if there is one, would be extremely thorny. (Mr. Durbin’s spokesman did not return phone calls.)

There are, of course, ways to leave a profound Senate legacy without holding the office of majority leader. Mr. Schumer’s model Jacob Javits never did; neither did Ted Kennedy. Yet no one who knows him doubts that the hypothetical has crossed his mind. If there’s one thing Chuck Schumer appreciates, it’s the value of a good plan.

editorial@observer.com