Older and Weiser

I think I can tell you some things about a member of Congress that will engender your respect, as they have mine.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen represents the 18th congressional district of Florida, drawn from parts of Miami-Dade County, including Coconut Grove where we lived.

She came to Miami from Castro’s Cuba as a child and became a naturalized American citizen.

She has a doctorate in education.

She is a wife and mother.

She became the first Hispanic woman and first Cuban-American of either sex elected to Congress in 1989.

She has risen through the ranks of her party to become the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.  Until Tom Lantos’s death a few years ago, both the chairman and ranking member of that committee were naturalized Americans.  How poetic is that?

She is an excellent politician.  In last year’s Democratic landslide, she easily defeated a candidate hand-picked by then-Democratic Campaign Committee chair Rahm Emanuel and campaigned for in the district by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

She is respected, indeed liked, by colleagues on both sides of the aisle.  I have watched her greet and be greeted by members of both parties with genuine affection during my visits with her on Capitol Hill.  This week, as our group left the Kirya (Israeli Defense Ministry) after our meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, we were ushered past a group of House Democrats waiting to meet with him.  I heard cries of “Ily”, (as she is known to friends) go up from the Democrats and watched while Majority Leader Steny Hoyer walked over to greet her warmly.

Hers is a familiar face to public officials in Jerusalem, owing to many visits here.   This week, she took Julie and me by the hand more than once to introduce us to a Shimon Peres or a Netanyahu, with whom she has met any number of times.

She is one of Israel’s staunches allies in Congress.  Her voting record on issues of importance to the Jewish state is exemplary.  She has consistently asserted Israel’s right of self-defense and defended it against slanderous charges.  Her speeches, press releases and media interviews remind Americans that Israel’s fight against terror also is our own.  Most recently, she has taken after the Obama Administration for presenting the Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland.  Robinson chaired “Durban I” and, according to Ily and others, allowed what was supposed to have been a conference on human rights to be turned into an ambush of Israel by its enemies in the Muslim world.

Our time this week with Ily was completely unscripted.  We shared long bus rides, group meals and “hang time” in the King David Hotel lobby.  In a group of 30 or so, you have the opportunity to observe one-another’s unguarded moments.  This week of traveling with Ily confirmed what Julie and I had suspected: she is comfortable being Ily.

Our meeting with Netanyahu took place at a long conference table; Israeli officials seated on one side and certain key members of our mission on the other.  The rest of us, including Ily’s husband Dexter Lehtinen (himself a former US attorney in Florida), sat in two rows of chairs that ran parallel to the long side of the table.  There were bottles of soda and water set on the conference table.  Just before Netanyahu entered the room, Ily poured a glass of soda and reached to hand it to her husband, who was seated behind her.

“Here, Dexie,” she said.  “Drink this.”

At that moment, she was just another wife caring for her husband before a meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel.

Filed under: Israel by Michael Weiser