Appreciation: Harry Reid has come a long way from Searchlight

WASHINGTON — Harry Reid has been the most unlikely of political leaders.

Consider the attributes of other modern senators who have risen to positions of outsized influence. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts was a soaring orator and the heir to a political dynasty. Lyndon Johnson of Texas had a booming personality he deployed to cajole or bully his way to a deal. John McCain of Arizona wields moral authority and an independent streak to help shape the nation's agenda, sometimes in defiance of his own party.

But Harry Reid, the son of hardscrabble Searchlight, Nev., seems constitutionally incapable of the Big Address. Even after nearly a half-century in politics, he shuns Sunday talk shows and black-tie D.C. dinners. He has a reedy voice and an awkward manner and doesn't seem to care much whether you like him.

And yet.

And yet Reid built in Nevada one of the most successful state Democratic organizations in the country. He played a role in encouraging a freshman senator to make a long-shot bid for the White House, forging a relationship with Barack Obama that would endure until both were poised to leave office in the next few weeks. As Senate majority leader, Reid muscled through the biggest health care overhaul in a generation — without the benefit of a single Republican vote — and a major rewrite of financial regulations.

Then, in 2013, when the GOP repeatedly used the filibuster to block Obama's appointments, Reid detonated what was known as the nuclear option. The rule change may sound arcane to, well, just about everybody everywhere. But inside the Senate chamber, it was an historic change, forcing the opposition to get 51 votes rather than 41 to prevent a nominee other than a Supreme Court justice from being confirmed.

Outraged Republicans warned Democrats the day would come when their roles would be reversed — when a Republican president would be submitting nominations to a Republican-controlled Senate. They said Senate Democrats would rue the day they had curtailed the most powerful tool of the opposition.

Which is just what is happening now, of course. The inauguration of President Trump in January will fuel the continuing debate among Democrats about whether their leader made the right call on that.

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Reid has been a survivor, the third-longest-serving majority leader in Senate history, and at age 77 leaving on his own terms.

He also has been a polarizing figure in a polarizing time, beloved by many of his fellow Democrats but openly disparaged by some Republicans for his parliamentary maneuvering and slashing rhetoric.

Since Democrats lost control of the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections, Reid has played opposition politics with an unrelenting fierceness that has made his relationship with Republican leader Mitch McConnell even more poisonous than it was before. (To be fair, McConnell, who like Reid is a master of the inside game, has a certain unrelenting fierceness of his own.) That's in contrast to Reid's close, almost familial relationship with his Democratic colleagues.

Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker is a congressional scholar who since 2008 has spent three six-month stints embedded in Reid's office. He says the Democratic leader was "almost pastoral" in his approach to his fellow Democrats.  He restored power to committee chairs, let them seize the spotlight and ran legislative interference for their home-state priorities.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar recalls when she was pushing tougher regulations for swimming-pool drains, an issue she had adopted because a Minnesota girl had been maimed by one. She explained to Reid how important the measure was to her and to the girl's family. It had been stalled in Congress for years.

"The dad would call me every single week," she says. "One other person believed in it, and that was Harry Reid." On the day the provision finally passed, with the leader's help, she went into the Senate cloakroom, called the girl's father and put Reid on the line.

That said, even his allies acknowledge Reid has some quirks.

For one thing, he's famous for ending a phone call by just hanging up without so much as a good-bye. And that's with his friends. "You'll be saying 'Thank you, Harry' or 'it's good to talk with you, Harry' and you realize he's not there," Klobuchar says. "That is so un-politician. It's anti-politician."

Still, when his official portrait was unveiled this month, the crowd that gathered to honor him included everyone from Hilary Clinton, still smarting from her wounds from the presidential campaign, to Vice President Biden.

Reid had come a long way from Searchlight.

Susan Page is the Washington Bureau chief of USA TODAY.