More Prof Than Politician

Institute of Politics Director James A. S. Leach speaks quietly and slowly. But at moments of humor, he leans forward impulsively, makes his hands into fists, and shows an impish grin.

It was at a serious moment, though, that Leach, who served 15 consecutive terms in the House of Representatives, said that elected office “should not be considered a career.”

Indeed Leach, who left behind a record as a moderate Republican from Iowa, does not sound much like a congressman. Asked whether he, like Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger, would invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Harvard, Leach responded by criticizing Bollinger—not for the invitation, but for his remarks, in which Bollinger called Ahmadinejad a “petty and cruel dictator.”

“It was a low moment,” Leach said of Bollinger’s introduction of Ahmadinejad. “I can’t tell you I would have been enthusiastic about inviting him to speak, but I was certainly dismayed at the comments” made by Bollinger.

Leach’s concern for academic courtesy is characteristic, colleagues say, of a nature that displays more of the professor than the politician.

“His academic demeanor made him stand out,” said Christopher Cox, current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a 17-year Republican member of the House. “He always wore sweaters.”

Leach, who accepted a one-year appointment at the IOP in September after former director Jeanne Shaheen left to run for U.S. Senate as a Democrat from New Hampshire, was known as one of the most progressive Republicans in Congress.

Tony J. Leon, a fall IOP fellow and former opposition leader in South Africa, said he was pleased to find that Leach is not a “smashmouth.”

“He speaks with a quiet voice but commands a lot of authority,” Leon said.

True to form, Leach wore a slightly rumpled sweater in hisinterview with The Crimson and insisted, quietly, that his transition to academe had not been difficult.

“It’s probably been more seamless for me than for many,” he said, adding he had not been tempted to become a lobbyist—a popular and lucrative option for former representatives.

Leach began his Washington career as an intern for a young Donald Rumsfeld, then a congressman from Illinois. Leach said he sought out Rumsfeld because both of them had been on the wrestling team at Princeton, 10 years apart. “There’s kind of a wrestling fraternity in life,” Leach said.

Leach’s interactions with Rumsfeld tell the story of two Republican political careers that followed very different paths. Rumsfeld, who stepped down as defense secretary after the congressional elections of 2006, has faced fierce criticism for his role in the invasion of Iraq, while Leach developed a liberal record on international issues. He was one of only six House Republicans to vote against the 2002 authorization for the use of force in Iraq.

Leach described that decision as unpleasant but unambiguous.

“It was awkward, but I had no personal choice but to disagree with him on the Iraq war,” Leach said. “I thought there were way too many counterproductive dimensions.”

Rumsfeld did not return phone messages left at his Hoover Institution office.

In his time in Congress, Leach also took progressive positions on the environment and on gay rights. He won an award from the Sierra Club in 1999 and an endorsement from the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy organization, in 2006.

Leach’s positions have occasionally brought him into conflict with his own party leadership. In 1996, he voted against the GOP’s nominee for speaker of the House, citing ethics concerns about then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

Despite those tensions, Leach helped to push through one of the biggest banking reforms in U.S. history, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. The legislation allowed banks to affiliate freely with securities and insurance firms and included new privacy regulations for financial institutions.

“Jim always had good reasons,” Cox, the SEC chairman, said. “He didn’t always convince everyone he talked to, but he never lost an argument.”

Former Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.), a House colleague of Leach for 26 years, said Leach’s quiet manner had helped him carry off disagreements with his Republican colleagues.

“If he were some kind of firebrand with his voting record, there would have been tension,” said Shaw, who is a fellow at the Institute of Politics this semester.

In his new role as director of the Institute of Politics, Leach is spearheading an initiative to increase student voting in primaries. But above all, he said he hopes to maintain continuity in the Institute’s programs.

“The best thing I can do is to be unnoticed,” he said.

Asked to compare Leach to his predecessor, IOP Student Advisory Committee President Elizabeth M. Grosso ’08 said she could see differences between Leach, a legislator, and Shaheen, a former governor. Shaheen was always thinking ahead to the implementation of policy, Grosso said.

Shaheen said the IOP was lucky to have Leach as her successor, but she added that she had not worked with him closely enough to describe the differences in their leadership.

—Staff writer David K. Hausman can be reached at dhausman@fas.harvard.edu.