Spencer Abraham Is Running on Energy, Not Charisma

Now that President Bush’s energy plan has been pondered, penned and rolled out, the task of selling it to the American people falls in large part to a 48-year-old father of three who drives a green Chrysler minivan and jokes of having “a face made for radio.”

Spencer Abraham, the man who accepted the job of Energy secretary knowing precious little about energy, takes his place as promoter in chief for the plan designed to “finally put America on the right course,” as he likes to put it.

It was Vice President Dick Cheney who conceived the 105-point blueprint, engineered over pots of coffee at an ornate 19th century table in his office. Now Cheney cedes the spotlight to Abraham, a self-described “workhorse, not show horse” whose admitted lack of charisma helped cost him his Senate seat last year after just one term as a Michigan congressman.

Abraham, the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, wears his shoes until they wear out and gets haircuts when his staff reminds him. His idea of a good time is hot dogs with his wife, son and twin daughters in the food court of a Virginia shopping mall.

“It’s not a charismatic plan, so it doesn’t require a charismatic guy,” said William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine who served with Abraham on former Vice President Dan Quayle’s staff. “He is of working-class origins; not a glib talker. He’ll have a shrewd sense of how to sell this plan, as well as a real understanding of it.”

On the eve of the energy plan’s unveiling Thursday, Abraham was the only administration spokesman trotted out for the network news. Friday he made the rounds of morning TV news shows, delivering the party line that conservation alone will not solve the problem, that more energy sources must be generated.

And on the Op-ed pages of Friday’s Wall Street Journal, he sought to counter complaints that the plan is anti-environment and would only help big business.

“Americans love and want an unlimited supply of affordable energy, but they don’t like virtually each of the sources that provide it,” Abraham said in a recent interview. “Coal is too dirty, nuclear isn’t safe, hydropower kills fish, windmills threaten birds.”

His mission is to persuade the people otherwise. It is a job that comes with little power and lots of room for blame.

The Department of Energy, which then-Sen. Abraham sought to abolish in 1999, shares splintered authority with several other agencies. What it does command is often controversial: the nuclear weapon labs that came under scrutiny after security breaches at its Los Alamos, N.M., facility and oversight of the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal.

But his greatest challenge is likely to come this summer in California, when anticipated electricity shortages will cause the lights to go out, air conditioners to shut down and whopping utility bills to arrive in the mail.

Then Abraham is poised to become California’s pinata, the federal official who gets the stick because, Bush administration critics will argue, the federal government has failed to deliver the caps on wholesale power rates that Gov. Gray Davis and others have sought.

“The public is getting ready to be hit with a rate increase, and they are going to be mad as the devil,” said a former member of Congress familiar with energy policy who declined to be identified to avoid offending the administration.

Critics point to Abraham’s lack of energy background as his greatest weakness. But what Abraham brought to his post--and what should serve him well--is political savvy, his supporters say. He headed the Michigan state Republican Party during most of the 1980s and joined Quayle’s staff in 1990. He returned to Michigan to launch his Senate bid in 1993 and rode 1994’s nationwide GOP tide into office.

Abraham’s voting record generally reflected the GOP congressional agenda: He loyally opposed abortion rights and favored free trade; his environmental record earned him the Sierra Club’s lowest rating. But he made his mark by successfully challenging party leaders when they sought to reduce legal immigration to the United States.

He spent more time working in the back rooms of Congress than in its limelight. He likes to tell the story of one early turn presiding over the Senate when he forgot about the live microphone and was caught on C-SPAN humming the children’s song, “Do You Know the Muffin Man?”

His supporters note he’s a quick study, a Harvard-educated lawyer who has mastered the subject of energy in mere weeks. He starts work early and stays late, presenting his staff with checklists of things to do and ideas to explore. He has a knack for distilling an arcane science into language the public can understand.

He may need all the communication skills he can muster to confront one of his most awkward tasks: telling the nation’s most populous state it must solve its energy problem largely on its own.

“California keeps saying, ‘Why won’t Washington do something?’ ” Abraham said, reiterating his opposition to electricity price caps he believes will only prolong the crisis. But he added: “The first call I made as secretary of Energy was to Gov. Davis. . . . We’re not leaving any stones unturned.”

If Abraham was not practiced in front of the camera in his early career, he seems to be now. His performance has earned high marks at the White House, aides said.

Not much briefing was required before he traveled with Bush to Minnesota for the energy plan’s debut. He already knew the material, a staff member said. And he had gotten a haircut.