LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW / Barbara Boxer : A ‘Cockeyed Optimist’ in the Ultimate Cynical Men’s Club

The junior senator from California, a half-year into the job, reports getting 10,000 letters a day, which Barbara Boxer says, with considerable pride, is “the most of any senator in history.” It’s not all favorable, but she takes the volume alone to be “a great sign.”

You can take the former representative out of Marin County, but Boxer, 52, still believes in consciousness raising: “People can say, ‘Barbara, everyone hates you,’ and I can always see something great. What I see great is that they’re talkative. They’re writing to me, they’re calling me. Sometimes, it’s praise, sometimes, it’s criticism. Sometimes, it’s anger, sometimes, it’s love. Across-the-board. We’re making this connection.”

Whatever one thinks of Boxer, there is a delicious irony in her now being a member of what remains, despite tokenism, the nation’s stuffiest white male club. It was Boxer who was featured in the national media leading a charge of her female colleagues from the House to the door of the Senate, demanding to be heard on the Anita F. Hill matter. Now, less than two years later, she has settled in happily as a member of the gentlemen’s club, elected Western Region Deputy Whip by Democratic senators, and appointed to key committees on banking, the budget and the environment. Don’t get mad, get even.

Curled up in a chair in her San Francisco office with lace anklets and a no-nonsense pantsuit, she is ever a study in contrasts. At times shrill, she can even turn off the faithful, but a self-deprecating smile often seems only a long breath away. She can be emotional and a bit too quick with her opinions, as when she discussed immigration, but she was open to an alternative approach. She is a Clinton loyalist but seems on the brink of sternly denouncing his waffling on gays in the military.

Her enthusiasm for solving a long list of seemingly intractable problems, from stagnation in the California economy to the abortion issue, seems irrepressible. Maybe at times wrong, but never jaded, Boxer, who is married with two adult children, evidences an optimism not often found in one who has spent 10 years in the House and six years on the Marin County Board of Supervisors. She’s worried about the future of the republic, feels the debt is close to unmanageable and suggests that the Eddie Murphy movie, “The Distinguished Gentlemen,” is a fairly accurate picture of Capitol Hill politics. Still, she insists the Clinton program will lead to significant economic progress in the next few years and predicts that Dianne Feinstein, her Democratic colleague who is up for reelection next year, will face no serious obstacle.

“I’m always an optimist,” she confesses, and why wouldn’t she be when she delights in getting all that mail--any mail--but particularly the “really sincere sit-down-at-the-computer-and-tell-Barbara-what-you-think” kind. So keep those cards and letters coming.

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Question: You expressed much enthusiasm about the prospects for change after your and the President’s victory last fall--are you disappointed?

Answer: I knew it was going to be hard. I’ve been there for 10 years in Congress. I’ve seen the politics. I’ve heard the happy talk, telling people what they want to hear. So I can’t say I was disappointed. You have to have a lot of patience when you’re turning the ship of state.

Q: Some people detect a fatal flaw in Clinton’s trying to be all things to all people, as opposed to you. I don’t think anyone has ever criticized you for not being clear on what you stand for.

A: I don’t see any fatal flaw. I see a man who’s trying to change the country. He’s trying to bring along with him as many people as he can. Now, one of the things I think is happening is that Bill Clinton is a very intelligent person, and he does a lot of his thinking out loud. We all listen to it.

Q: As co-chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Military Conversion, you’ve emphasized saving the California economy by converting the defense industry: retraining, creating new jobs, stealth buses and so forth. Is it possible that this approach is doomed, the California economy is bloated and there is nothing wrong with its shrinking?

A: It will shrink. And it is shrinking.

Q: Might it not be good if people who came to the state for jobs left the state?

A: Some will. I think what we’re trying to do is soften the blow. But when you transition from a military-based economy to a civilian-based economy and you don’t pay any attention, as George Bush didn’t, and the blow of base closures on top of it, there’s just so much that can be absorbed.

If you could build a bomber, you could build a bus. We used to want to buy a lot of bombers. We had a big market for bombers. Now we have big markets for buses. And we really have very few companies in this country that build a bus from start to finish.

Q: But the history of efforts to get these companies converted is that while they are terribly good at making bombers, they are not good at making buses.

A: I can’t think of anything better to be doing than working on California’s economy, and making sure that we don’t lose a very talented work force. And I don’t agree that conversion is a failure. I’ve seen too many successes. Why on earth would we want to miss an opportunity to be able to buy a bus from an American manufacturer?

Q: The answer is quite obvious: Those people had a guaranteed market for their bombers, some of which didn’t work. Are you willing to give them that guarantee for their buses? Then, I’m sure, they will perform enthusiastically.

A: Well, you’re completely twisting the reality. You don’t buy buses that don’t work, and you don’t buy bombers that don’t work.

Now here’s the issue. We make investments. Taxpayers do. We make them in infrastructure. We make them in a military budget. We buy a lot of things for our country. And we build a lot of things--sewer systems, water systems. That’s the nature of our capitalistic society. The private firms don’t buy the buses, and they don’t buy the concrete to build the infrastructure. So the question is: Are we going to buy these things from the Japanese or are we going to be able to work in partnership with the private sector so that we can buy the things that we need here?

Q: As with Sen. (Dianne) Feinstein, your emphasis seems to be on beefing up the border patrol as crucial to solving the immigration problem.

A: That’s one of my initiatives. But there were a few others.

Q: There’s not on single word that I can find from you or from Sen. Feinstein on enforcing the labor standards so that people are paid the minimum wage and are covered by worker’s comp -- which might make undocumented workers less attractive to employers. There’s not anything about employer sanctions in enforcing the law that you’re not supposed to hire undocumented workers. So your approach isn’t demand - oriented. It’s supply - oriented.

A: I think you’re raising a very good point. And, frankly, I hadn’t concentrated on it before. But I think it’s a good point and I will, in fact, look into it and see what is under way to enforce the labor laws because, first of all, it’s an outrage that they would be exploited whether they are documented or undocumented, American citizens or not. It may stop some of these people from hiring undocumented workers.

Q: In terms of women in the House, we see what could be considered a reversal on abortions for women. (The Hyde amendment disallows use of government money to pay for the abortions of the poor. An attempt to overturn the amendment failed recently) Did that surprise you?

A: Well, that wasn’t a reversal. That was a continuation of an entitlement we have fought bitterly. We made an ounce of progress with rape and incest, but that’s certainly nothing compared with what we need to do. No, what shocked me was the debate. It was terrible. This fight for our reproductive rights is rough, it’s tough, and it’s very symbolic of women in this country.

Q: Of course you have women on the other side of the issue.

A: Well, not very many in the House itself. In the Senate, if they are on the other side it won’t be something where they’d lead the fight. So the vast majority of women in the House and Senate are pro-choice.

Q: Do you think that there is progress as a result of the election of women and the year of women and all that?

A: Well, again I find that question difficult to answer, since we’ve been there, relatively, a very short time. But I feel that women have made a tremendous difference in the United States Senate, and if you talk to my pals in the House, they’d say the same thing . . . .

Q: The public seems really angry. And they turn on people like you and on the President very quickly.

A: Well, I don’t look at it as people turning on you. I really don’t take it personally at all. If you think that, you go crazy. I think that people are frustrated because they see these deficits, they see the recession, they’re worried about the economy, they’re worried about the violence. And they have every right to be worried. And they want action, and they want it now.

I am getting more than 10,000 letters each day, the most of any senator in history, and that’s just in Washington. And that doesn’t even count what I get in my district every day. Some of them are for Clinton’s plan, some of them are against Clinton’s plan. Some of them are for gun control, some are against gun control. I’m not even talking about those that are organized by business or labor, I’m talking about really sincere sit down at the computer and tell Barbara what you think. I look at it as great sign.

Q: Do you have a fear deep down that the country is just not governable anymore?

A: I don’t have fear about that, but I think this is the toughest it’s ever been. And I worry about money politics today, and all the things that are problems to the system.

Q: Is it different over on the Senate side than on the House side?

A: There’s no comparison. It’s a smaller place. It’s a more personable place. With very few exceptions--there are a couple--there’s a lot of respect for each other. Your arguments can get very strong but there’s always that bottom line. Respect.

Q: You don’t think there’s an institutional resistance to women?

A: No. And I want to talk about that because I expected it. But I have to tell you that I think that Anita Hill was such a trauma and learning experience for the senators that they just changed on the dime. I’m writing a book abut women in politics and I interviewed Barbara Mikulski (senator from Maryland) about this, and after the Thomas/Hill hearings were over, she and Al Gore teamed up and they held a series of discussion groups with experts on men and women communicating for the senators and their spouses. And she gave Al Gore a lot of credit ‘cause he felt it was very important.

Q: So you feel at home in the Old Boys Club?

A: I will feel at home when everything starts going well.