" Personnel is policy," goes the old adage, and congressional Republicans tend to believe it. That's why many of them are so steamed over the decision by House speaker Denny Hastert to hire as his new senior adviser for foreign policy and defense someone whose last job was as a registered foreign agent.
Hastert's hire, Nancy Dorn, possessed pretty solid GOP credentials prior to her descent into Gucci Gulch: assistant secretary of the Army during the Bush administration, special assistant for legislative affairs in the Reagan administration, and a Republican staffer on the House Appropriations Committee in the 1980s.
What threw GOP staffers into a tizzy last week was the news that Dorn, while a lobbyist with the firm of Hooper, Owen, Gould & Winburn, had represented the government of Pakistan as well as Hutchison Port Holdings, a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company with close ties to the Chinese government. Dorn has also been identified as having represented the AFL-CIO and the government of Azerbaijan, though she assures THE SCRAPBOOK that such work was handled by others in her lobbying firm.
Still, it's not as if Dorn were representing the Little Sisters of the Poor. Pakistan has been a leading recipient of nuclear and missile technology from China. As for Hutchison Port Holdings, its owner is a Hong Kong tycoon named Li Ka-shing who is closely allied with the government in Beijing. The company made news a few years ago by purchasing ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. This provoked protest from Republicans like Trent Lott, as well as Democrats like John Breaux. Dorn, while a lobbyist, worked to assuage their fears that U.S. national security was threatened by Chinese ownership of these ports.
Obviously, lobbying work has never disqualified anyone from future government service. But it nonetheless speaks volumes about Hastert that he would hire Dorn. It reinforces the impression that his vision of foreign and defense policy has as much to do with commerce as it does with global strategy (there's a reason he's known as the congressman from Caterpillar, the global heavy equipment company in his district).
It also shows how little Hastert cares for appearances. He had to know that hiring Dorn would be controversial, given her client roster, and would incense a number of his GOP colleagues. Indeed, there were a number of people he could have hired who have never taken money from shady clients. Precisely what set Dorn apart from all of them remains a mystery.