Capitol Hill's odd couple

Souder says Goodling pressured him against supporting GEAR UP. "'You can't do this,'" Goodling insisted, according to Souder. "'You shouldn't be delivering votes for the president's No. 1 initiative.'"

"That's a reasonable political argument," Souder says, "but it's not a substantive one."

Scarborough started hearing about GEAR UP. Knowing that he and Souder were of similar minds when it came to concern for the poor -- the two had worked together in naming a Justice Department building after Robert F. Kennedy -- Scarborough asked Souder to tell him about Fattah's amendment. Soon Scarborough was supporting Fattah's bill, and McIntosh, Upton and Peterson followed.

"Then Goodling was double-mad at me," Souder says.

Goodling's anger subsided soon enough; both Fattah and Souder point out that no one should be under the impression that their work on GEAR UP is the new standard for legislating.

"The reality is, 90 percent of the time on issues we're going to have disagreements and come from very different perspectives," Fattah says. "I have one of the most partisan voting records in the House, I've been an outspoken critic of the Republican majority, and one of the most ardent defenders of the Clinton administration" during the whole Lewinsky mess.

Indeed, after GEAR UP passed the Senate, and Souder was attending the White House ceremony at which President Clinton signed the Education Reauthorization Act into law -- at the time of impeachment's fever pitch, in October 1998 -- the Republican's top goal was to stay out of any photographs with the president.

But Clinton approached Souder and thanked him, noting that it took courage for him to attend. "Then Chaka pops up, and says, 'Mark was the key vote,'" Souder says, laughing. Clinton started riffing on education and "Chaka started calling photographers over."

There are other noteworthy examples of left-right cooperation in the often polarized House. In 1996, for instance, the civil rights interests of North Carolina liberal Democrat Rep. Mel Watt coincided with the libertarian views of Idaho's far-right Republican Rep. Helen Chenoweth, and the Chenoweth-Watt amendment on habeus corpus protections was born. But Watt warns against reading too much into their cooperation. "I remember people saying it was strange," Watt recalls, "but to say that it was some sort of coalition building with the class of '94 would be an overstatement. I don't even know what class she belongs to."

Souder hopes that reaching out to Fattah -- and into urban areas -- becomes the necessary next step in the Republican Revolution, what all-but-anointed GOP nominee Bush has been calling compassionate conservatism. "I hope it will be a pattern over time," Souder says. "If the Republican Party doesn't move on it, the Republican Party will go the way of the dinosaur. We need to work out creative ways to work with blacks and Hispanics. We increasingly seem like an isolated party. So [GEAR UP] is definitely something to build on. But I don't want to overestimate it." On whether this will be a paradigm for the future of the GOP, Souder says, "School's still out."

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