Following in the Footsteps of Rogan’s Heroes

WASHINGTON — First impressions are important here. And the first impression people have upon visiting James E. Rogan’s new office in the fifth-floor “freshman ghetto” of the Cannon Building is to understand that this is a man who’d been dreaming of becoming Congressman Rogan since childhood.

This office, 502 Cannon, was once Lyndon Johnson’s, he says. Richard Nixon had a place just around the corner. John Kennedy was down the hall and Gerald Ford started here too.

Rogan, a 39-year-old Republican from Glendale, is handsomer in person than in photos, 6 feet and sturdy in his deep blue suit. His handshake is firm, his manner engaging. “Want to go for a walk?”

Down the hall and down the elevator and out the door. “Isn’t that a great view?” The Capitol Dome appears white and bright against a blue sky with cotton-puff clouds. “Every view of that building is a great view.”

He strides briskly into the park grounds, obviously thrilled to be where he is and what he is.

“Oh, I feel like a kid in a candy store to be in the Congress of the United States,” he says. He is a conservative whom rivals have portrayed as being too close to the Religious Right, but in the California Assembly he developed a good reputation among Republicans and Democrats alike. The theme of his conversation is about being bipartisan and pragmatic, about compromise not being a dirty word, about the allure and nature of power.

He tells of jogging while listening to an audiotape of a Nixon book. “He said that politics separates the men from the boys in one important aspect. Boys want to be something. Men want to do something.”

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Inside his office, political memorabilia cover the walls from floor to ceiling. There are vintage collectibles such as a “battle flag” from one of Teddy Roosevelt’s campaigns. More recent photos show Rogan posed with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush, plus a candid shot of him alongside President Clinton.

His passion for American history, he says, began during his childhood in the Bay Area. He started his collection as a fifth-grader in 1968. A classmate had given him a button promoting Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign as the Democratic primary rolled through California. The next day, Jim Rogan learned Kennedy had been shot and killed. He decided to save the button.

His favorite piece? The letters from Harry S Truman--and, mind you, that’s S without a period. As Truman himself once explained to young Rogan in a letter dated April 19, 1970. “The ‘S’ in my name stands for the first letter of the first name of each of my grandfathers.” His parents wanted to be impartial, and Truman said it could be used with or without a period.

That was the second letter that Rogan, as a 12-year-old seventh-grader, had received from Truman. He’d read in Truman’s book “Mr. Citizen” that the former president felt obliged to answer his mail. For a classroom assignment, Rogan had written a report about Truman and mailed it to him for his reaction. The second letter was to resolve a dispute with a teacher--”a jerk,” Rogan recalls--who not only questioned the punctuation of Truman’s name but insisted that the former president had died years before.

Another story concerns the photo of an 18-year-old Jim Rogan chatting with Hubert Humphrey. Rogan says that meeting occurred on his first trip to Washington. He had written to the former vice president and expressed the desire to meet one of his heroes.

As Rogan tells it, Humphrey gave him a 10-minute seminar on the dangers of “ideological purity” and the art and virtue of compromise. Humphrey, Rogan recalls, talked about how he’d learned in politics long before that “you’re better off taking half a loaf now, because you can always go back and get the other half later.” Not only is it true that you can’t win all the time, Humphrey told him; it’s also true that you shouldn’t.

Twenty-two years later, Jim Rogan has found himself using Humphrey’s lessons as an assistant majority whip, trying to win over colleagues who are unhappy with some of the finer points of the balanced budget agreement.

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There are more photos and more stories about the kid who wanted to be a congressman and the congressman who says he wants to reach across the aisle to get things done.

The Do-Nothing Congress is a label he loathes. Most of the people here, he suggests, work hard trying to slice those loaves of bread.

Back in the office once occupied by LBJ, amid the photos of the current occupant with more recent presidents, the thought occurs that maybe, just maybe, Jim Rogan will someday achieve the kind of boyhood dream once nurtured by the current occupant of the White House. Remember that photo of young Bill Clinton shaking hands with JFK?

Well, many people dream such dreams, especially here in Washington. Obviously the question is premature and, if asked, Rogan surely will smile and shake his head and say all the right things.

Still, it’s easy to understand why Rogan is thought to have such a bright future. Raised by a mom on welfare, he’s got the kind of Horatio Alger resume that surpasses those of Clinton and Nixon. Other pluses include the fact that he’s a family man with twin daughters and that he served as prosecutor and Municipal Court judge before seeking elected office. The long-ago conversion from Democrat to Republican probably won’t hurt him, and he ran for Congress partly at the urging of the man he replaced, GOP stalwart Carlos Moorhead. He was only sworn in here on Jan. 7, but the impression is of a man who’s going places.

As the visit ends, Rogan asks an aide to retrieve a copy of an article he wrote about his Truman letters for American Heritage, later reprinted in Reader’s Digest. Here’s how it begins:

“From the time I was a young boy, President Harry S Truman was my hero. To me, the former haberdasher and county judge epitomized the model public servant.

“I was such a fan that after reading that he walked at a rate of 120 steps per minute, I practiced his pace until it became second nature. To this day I walk with a ‘Trumanesque gait.’ ”

It’s taken him pretty far, pretty fast already.

Scott Harris is on assignment in Washington. His column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at [email protected]. Please include a phone number.