Portrait of a politician.

• Author: Shively, Neil H.
• Position: Former Wisconsin Assembly speaker Thomas A. Loftus launches new book entitled 'The Art of Legislative Politics' - Includes related articles - Cover Story

LEGISLATOR, AUTHOR AND NOW AMBASSADOR TO NORWAY, TOM LOFTUS OF WISCONSIN HAS A WEALTH OF EXPERIENCE AND A WAY WITH WORDS THAT MESH NEATLY IN HIS ENTERTAINING BOOK.

When Tom Loftus was playing it by the seat of his pants during his record four terms as speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, he would flash that smirky Norwegian grin and mumble something about leading by the philosophy of Zen.

It wasn't all wacky, light stuff. The concept was that after things unraveled and became chaotic, the solution would find itself. Often enough, it seemed to fit.

In his new book, The Art of Legislative Politics, (CQ Press, 171 pp. softcover, $18.95), Loftus only mentions in passing his mirthful flirtation with Zen. But he does describe enough episodes where it seems to fit that, in retrospect, we wonder if he actually knew something about the ancient discipline (year 520) in which one aims to grasp intuitively what he cannot grasp rationally.

The press at the time was amused, figuring Zen was just a Loftus cover code for: We're making this up as we go along.

"That's exactly what it was," laughs Representative David M. Travis, former majority leader. "If you sit back and do nothing long enough, something will happen."

Something happened for Thomas A. Loftus. But it was un-Zen-like, purposeful and deliberate. After 14 years in the Legislature, he ran for governor in 1990, lost in a landslide to popular incumbent Republican Tommy G. Thompson, went off to Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, wrote his book and helped Bill Clinton get elected president of the United States, chairing his win in Wisconsin in 1992.

A scholar, thinker and architect of programs such as putting the bite on absent fathers delinquent on support payments, Loftus was expected by some admirers to land in a White House job designing Clinton's welfare revisions.

Not on your life. Loftus had his eyes on the land of his forebears. By mid-1993 Clinton nominated him to become ambassador to Norway.

LEGISLATOR AS AMBASSADOR

Loftus, his wife Barbara and sons Alec and Karl have been enjoying Oslo and the magnificent American ambassador's residence there for about 18 months now. The ambassador has found new challenges in trimming the embassy's outposts, working with the Russians on nuclear power safety at Norway's northern border, making the endless rounds of receptions endemic to the diplomatic corps and, of course, hosting American dignitaries including Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Norway Winter Olympics in 1994 and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger this winter.

He has learned a lot in the land his paternal grandfather left for southern Wisconsin. When he was home at Thanksgiving 1994, his lecture to an Edgewood College government class was all about Norway's natural resources and its unparalleled designs to export not only its North Sea oil, but natural gas and hydroelectric power. Hardly a whisper about the day-to-day drudgery of dealing with Americans' visa problems - the tough ones that get to the ambassador's desk.

As Alan Rosenthal of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers says in the foreword of The Art of Legislative Politics, it is unusual - practically unheard of - for a legislator to win an ambassadorship. But Rosenthal, who helped push him toward writing the book, says Loftus is ideally suited for the role.

Loftus is a rare bird. Son of Margaret and Adolph, who sold farm machinery, he enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in the rich farm country around Madison. Barely a "boomer," and now almost 50 (April 24, 1945), he got his first whiff of the Legislature in 1973 when he landed a job on the Democratic caucus staff writing speeches for legislators. He had finished college at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and at the nearby Whitewater campus, where he had flunked out once before heading for the U.S. Army and a stint as a military policeman.

He quickly moved up as aide to the Assembly speaker, Madison lawyer Norman C. Anderson; there he got the jump for his first race for Assembly in 1976 when veteran Representative Dave O'Malley gave him two years' notice he wouldn't run again. Loftus began planning immediately to succeed him.

THE WAY TO THE TOP

In his book, Loftus' story of planning and running that campaign for entry-level elective politics is among the most valuable of universal lessons.

Loftus came up during the heyday of the Democrats' 24-year reign in the Wisconsin Assembly and bolted to leadership in just four years. Not only did his job as aide in the speaker's office prepare him for his tenure at the top, but he also played nursemaid and strategist during a tumultuous challenge to his predecessor as speaker - Ed Jackamonis - by recalcitrant conservative Democrats in league with minority Republicans.

That wasn't a pretty scene. Much of the legislative drama isn't pleasant stuff. But Loftus manages in the book to make it light and interesting.

Imagine, during the siege of Jackamonis' leadership, Loftus and a colleague - John Norquist, finance committee chairman and now mayor of Milwaukee - holding a glass to the connecting door of a Capitol office, trying to eaves-drop on the opposition, maverick Democrat Tom Hauke.

"This may work in the movies, but we didn't hear anything clearly," Loftus writes. "We took two beers from the refrigerator in that office and left."

In the episode to keep Jackamonis in power, Loftus describes his role: "Like the guy on Ed Sullivan who keeps the dishes spinning on top of those sticks, I just tried to keep it going so nothing would break."

He can turn a phrase, and that was one of the charms that made him a favorite "go-to guy" for reporters when he was in power. Often enough, he knew what was going to happen and sometimes would even tell us.

Rosenthal hits the nail on the head when he writes in his foreword: "I believe that if Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegone, Minn., were writing about the legislature, it would read like this book by Tom Loftus of Sun Prairie, Wis."

Loftus says he understands everything Keillor says. (I still wonder if his 1990 campaign for governor might have been better received had he strolled across the Wisconsin political stage Keillor-like, instead of hammering a hard-line "government-for-sale" pitch against Governor Thompson's well-heeled juggernaut.)

AN INSTINCT FOR LEADING

"He was a leader by instinct, rather than one who over-analyzed any...