The establishmentarian: if Democrats win control of the House, Steny Hoyer will have Tom DeLay's old job. Some things will change. Some won't.

• Author: Roth, Zachary

In May, the Milken Family Foundation, a nonprofit education organization, held a reception on Capitol Hill to honor supporters in Congress. Teachers and education administrators from around the country--excited at getting to play at being bigshots for the day--stood drinking warm white wine and talking mainly to the people they had arrived with, waiting for the chance to snap a picture with their elected official of choice. After a while, a foundation executive called the room to some kind of order, and introduced Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). The avuncular northern-California liberal ambled, cane-assisted, to the small podium, and began to deliver his prepared remarks on education policy. Most of the crowd strained respectfully to listen, but there was noise coming from the adjoining front room as new attendees arrived, and soon people were holding fingers over lips and shushing each other. Miller wrapped up, and was followed by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), a slight, ferrety former orthopedic surgeon, who similarly struggled to command the crowd's attention.

When House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was introduced, he was wrapped in a platonic but full-bodied embrace with Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.). "I'll be right with you," Hoyer called from the depths of Lincoln's neck. The senator, who looks like a soccer mom, is neither attractive nor unattractive enough for this to have been awkward, and the crowd roared with delight. As Hoyer strode to the podium, he passed House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), a politician with a reputation for schmoozing perhaps equal to Hoyer's own, and the two literally slapped each other on the back simultaneously. "Do you have the votes?" Hoyer asked Boehner, apropos, it seemed, of nothing except a shared love of the legislative process. Once in front of the microphone, Hoyer milked the Lincoln moment a little longer ("I've got enough time to be hugging beautiful women from the United States Senate,") then got down to business: "There are no more important people in American society than its teachers," he declared slowly and firmly, and, for the first time, the crowd burst into spontaneous applause. They had come to Washington to see a show like this.

If Hoyer, 67, appears to have an extra spring in his step lately, there's a good reason. As the number-two Democrat in the House, he'll likely become majority leader if Democrats win control this November. And if they don't, he'll be well placed to capitalize on Democratic disappointment by challenging Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for her job. Either way, then, Hoyer seems assured of entering 2007 as one of the most powerful elected officials in Washington, yet one of the least known outside of it.

As the Milken performance suggested, Hoyer can often seem almost a caricature of an old-school politician. A large, broad-shouldered man with a shock of silver hair, he favors well-tailored though not ostentatious suits, and the American-flag lapel-pin that since 9/11 has become de rigeur for elected officials and Fox News commentators everywhere. Hoyer's wife died of stomach cancer in 1997, and the reception room of his office displays a framed version of the slightly sad photograph favored by virtually every unmarried member of Congress: Hoyer, grinning gamely, with his dog. "If you had to go to Hollywood and cast a politician, you'd pick Steny," a Hill staffer once told a reporter.

Like a lot of politicians, Hoyer uses humor both as an icebreaker and as a kind of weapon. "So you're doing an expose on me?" he asked when we met at the reception, then winked and hit me in the chest, in a way that seemed intended to be playful. (I noticed him wink twice more, at two other people, over the 15 minutes that followed.) Later, as I sat down to interview him at his office in the Capitol, I asked if I could use a digital recorder. Sure, Hoyer replied, then told me, deadpan, that the room contained a machine that would erase the recording anyway.

Since entering Congress in 1981, Hoyer has forged an identity as a centrist, particularly on foreign-policy issues, that has helped make him the leadership's unofficial liaison to the Blue Dog Democrats--a group of the caucus's more conservative members--but has at times created tension with the more liberal Pelosi. On the day last December that she publicly backed a call from Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.) for withdrawal from Iraq, Hoyer released a statement declaring that such a policy "could lead to disaster." And earlier that year, he angered the leader by supporting a bill being pushed by the credit-card industry designed to make it harder for people to declare bankruptcy.

This conservatism has not won him friends among liberal bloggers--who argue that Democrats should have the courage of their convictions on basic issues of war and peace and economic fairness. But if Democrats do indeed retake power next year, keeping the party united will be crucial to many of the tasks that they'll confront--from working to fix disastrous Republican legislation to conducting the vigorous oversight of the Bush administration that has been all but nonexistent over the last six years. Because many of the House's more conservative Democrats--not to mention its Republicans--simply trust Hoyer more than they do Pelosi, he stands to play a crucial role in holding the often fractious party together, and in working with the GOP, where possible, to pass legislation and hold the president accountable.

It's less Hoyer's centrism that may cause problems for Democrats, and more what might be called his establishmentarianism. As the studied bonhomie of his public style suggests, he is in many ways a throwback to an earlier style of politician. He's been politically active since the early 1960s, and his initial rise owed much to his mastery of the clubby machine politics that dominated his home county, and much of the Democratic Party, through the end of that decade. In the 1970s, as that system yielded to one dominated by interest groups and grassroots activists, he adapted, building rock-solid relationships with all the major Democratic constituencies--the labor, civil-rights, environmental, and women's movements. And throughout his career, he has earned a reputation for maintaining good relations with as many players as possible. "Mr. Hoyer's policy is that you've got to listen to all sides. Never close the door to anyone whether you agree with them or disagree with them," says Bill Cable, his chief of staff. When I asked friends and former staffers which issues Hoyer seemed to feel most passionately about, most spoke instead about his political skills. "He cares more about process than issues, per se," says John Moag, who worked for him in both the Maryland state Senate and the U.S. Congress. "Good process ultimately produces good policy. This is a guy who's been compromising his whole life because he knows that's how it gets done."

In some ways, a leader with a healthy respect for Congress's traditional procedures would be a breath of fresh air after the last decade, in which Reps Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Tom DeLay (R-Texas) rode roughshod over almost a century of established legislative norms. But the flip side of Hoyer's obsession with process and old-fashioned relationship building is a reluctance to think strategically about changing the ways that Washington operates--even when doing so would benefit Democrats. Over the last year and a half, Hoyer--a protege of Tony Coelho, the former California congressman who revolutionized Democratic fundraising in the 1980s--has led an aggressive effort to raise money from K Street lobbyists. Even more important, he has seemed unwilling to fundamentally rethink the unhealthy relationship between lobbyists and legislators that currently drives our political system. If Democrats are not only to regain power, but to maintain it and govern in a fairer and more responsive fashion, they'll need to unite behind root-and-branch reform. But the evidence suggests that Hoyer lacks the political vision, and the will, to do so.

The player

Hoyer was born in New York City in 1939, and lived there until he was nine. His stepfather was in the Air Force, and, after a stint...