Perpetual Motion

For Tom Davis, the powerful and frenetic House Government Reform Committee chairman, government is a thing to be tamed.

If Congressman Tom Davis invited you into his office, the first thing you'd notice-after he asked where you're from and recited an encyclopedic breakdown of your district's recent congressional races-is the lack of bare wall space. Nearly every inch is covered with photographs, many featuring Davis and political celebrities, entertainment luminaries, sports kingpins. He would describe favorites-Davis with Sen. John Warner, fellow Republican and Virginian, whose seat he is believed to covet; Davis with rock star Jon Bon Jovi; a younger Davis receiving his high school diploma (from the U.S. Capitol Page School, where he was class president) from then-President Johnson.

But your eyes eventually would wander along the longest wall, up to the ceiling and next to the clock. There, you'd see something terrifically out of place: a 6-foot-long, 186-pound stuffed and mounted bull shark. In a room devoted to the cult of personality-Davis' and others-which chronicles a rise from Senate page to Republican Party star, you might look at the creature, turn to Davis, and ask, "What's with the shark?"

There's a story: Davis caught it during a fishing trip off the coast of Florida. But aside from that tale, there is a fact: No more perfect personal symbol could hang in his inner sanctum. The world's oceans contain more than 350 shark species. Almost all share a common trait: If they stop moving, they die. Unlike other fish, which suck water into their gills to extract oxygen, most sharks can take in water only by swimming forward so that it passes over slits on the sides of the head. The shark spends its life in constant motion, looking for prey, praying for air. Stop him and you stop him permanently.

So it is with Davis, whose decade in Congress has been marked by ceaseless motion. He ascended the Republican power hierarchy as a tactical savant famous for picking winning congressional candidates. In 2002, as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, he led the GOP to unprecedented success, picking up seats in a midterm election with a Republican in the White House for the first time in U.S. history. As chairman of the House Government Reform Committee-an unglamorous post, but one he fought for after proving his value to the party-he has tackled an incongruous array of issues: steroid use in professional sports, student loan administration, computer security, border security, Boston's "Big Dig" and disaster recovery plans at federal agencies.

It's as if he can't stay in one place or on one idea too long. And, unlike most Reform Committee leaders before him, Davis has attacked the most befuddling aspects of federal management, including government buying-especially of information technology and associated services-the civil service system and the perennial quest to "reform" the U.S. Postal Service. He's tackled them all with a zeal for governing that borders on frenzy and must leave Hill colleagues wondering, why bother?

This eclectic life of perpetual motion physically and psychically links Tom Davis to the fish on his wall. It also raises another question. If you swam along with him for one day, you might ask: "Where are you trying to go?"

Shark in the Water

It's 12:05 p.m. on May 18, and Davis still is on the House floor. The current vote is taking too long. At 12:30, he's expected at the National Press Club for a panel titled "Getting Serious About Cyber Security." He wrote the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act, giving his committee permanent oversight of how agencies protect their computer systems, and he releases annual report cards on agencies' progress.

Already, Davis has had breakfast with his wife (a Virginia state senator), worked out, began The Washington Post crossword puzzle, and met with the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. (The first three tasks are the most essential.) He promised NEA chairman Dana Gioia, a well-known Republican poet, support for the agency's $121 million budget request even though, as Davis put it, "I get a lot of grief" for supporting the NEA. Some controversial grants recipients-"whackos," he calls them-offend even the moderate constituents of Virginia's 11th Congressional District, one of the nation's most affluent.

At 12:07, Davis' staff is quietly in motion in his cramped office lobby. They answer phones, check schedules. At 12:08, he returns. "We all ready here?" Staff members don jackets, grab mobile phones. They flank him down the hall, like pilot fish hitchhiking on a whale shark, the species' largest member. An aide briefs Davis and hands him papers. The personal assistant pushes the elevator down button.

At 12:10, Davis powers through the parking garage in his Ford Escape hybrid SUV with navigational certainty and disregard for the brake pedal. He hits the button on his CD player and flies out of the garage onto Independence Avenue as John Williams' Star Wars theme fills the vehicle.

Staffers recognize the tune. Davis cuts off the song, advancing to the next track. Soft instrumental bars, then a woeful soprano. "Midnight. Not a sound from the pavement." "Do you know this one," he asks? "It's 'Memory' from 'Cats,' " someone responds. "Good," he says. Is he a fan of musicals? "Yeah, but not much of a musician." He punches the forward button and accelerates. Next, an instrumental intro. No lyrics yet. The car is silent. Seconds tick by, no guess offered. Davis looks pleased. He has stumped them. "It's from 'Cabaret.' " Next track.

Along with congressional district statistics and baseball trivia, lyrics are among Davis' obsessions, as is procurement policy. Every spring, he travels to Cambridge, Mass., to indulge two of his passions with good friend, fellow music hound and the putative godfather of procurement reform, Steven Kelman. In a generational collision of policy wonks, Davis and Kelman team up as the "The Fogies" and challenge Kelman's graduate students at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to a rock 'n' roll trivia face-off. Davis bombards the future public managers, who call themselves The Youngbloods, with late 1950s and early 1960s rock lyrics. "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" by Gene Pitney, for example. The Youngbloods counter with hard-core rockers of the late '60s-Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix.

Kelman is Davis' procurement policy soul mate. The two met when Kelman, then the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Clinton administration, was behind a Democratic push to let state and local governments purchase from the General Services Administration's schedules contracts. GSA negotiates the contracts using the federal government's huge demand for goods and services to get rock-bottom prices. "I was morally offended that there were these mostly local governments getting terrible prices for a bunch of things," from information technology to fire trucks, Kelman recalls. Behind the scenes in Congress, the pharmaceutical industry was blocking efforts to open the schedules. Drug companies had no interest in selling more product at low schedule prices. The drug makers had almost universal support from Republicans, Kelman says. Except one.

Davis will buck his party's line. He often supports federal unions. He has had on-again off-again relationships with gay and lesbian groups. He favors giving the District of Columbia, a Democratic stronghold, voting rights in Congress. The procurement fight was a first glimpse into his passion for federal management, which also can trump his party loyalty. "I remember thinking, this guy actually knows a lot about procurement," Kelman says. And he did. Before he came to Congress, Davis chaired the Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County, Va., widely regarded as one of the best-run counties in America. He learned who buttered his bread-government contractors and career civil servants. While a board member, Davis also was general counsel for PRC Inc., a federal technology contractor. He absorbed the nuances of business inside the Beltway.

Kelman says Davis champions unsexy issues partly because of this background. But Davis also craves knowledge. It's not enough to master the art of landing a committee chairmanship. He truly wants to know, and usually does know, how the behemoth he oversees works.

He also likes to win. His first push to open the schedules sputtered. But in 2002, Congress passed legislation, co-sponsored by Davis, letting other governments use the contracts. His biggest legislative achievements are laws to "modernize and streamline"-his words-the procurement system: The 1996 Federal Acquisition Reform Act, the 2003 Services Acquisition Reform Act and the 2005 Acquisition System Improvement Act. A former Davis aide describes his unusual legislative palette this way: "Someone once said, 'He's the only Republican who likes government.' "

Keep Government Out

At 12:29, Davis sits in the Holeman Lounge of the National Press Club, a mid-size ballroom filled with tables. He devours his meal and joins the cybersecurity panelists at the dais. Most of America's digital networks, which control dams, electrical plants and nuclear reactors, are owned and run by corporations. The networks are under attack. Panelists are asked, "How can 'we' fix the problem?" A mix from the public and private sectors, they say little that's controversial. Davis listens and reads papers in a binder he brought along. His face registers approval, disapproval. He takes notes, once on a napkin.

Halfway into the program, the talk turns to the federal government and what it can do to protect America's networks. Isn't the Homeland Security Department supposed to execute a national cybersecurity strategy? Davis stops reading. He looks at the audience. The Homeland Security Department has enough problems without worrying about the nation's networks, he declares. He gave the department an F for its security policies. How could it set and enforce policy for the nation, much less the entire government, which earned a D+? Only the White House and the Office of Management and Budget have the "clout," the "juice" to force agencies to behave, he says. "Bureaucracies are governed by turf. They are governed by turf fights." Security policy, he says, has to be issued "centrally."

The observation mirrors his position on procurement rules: Agencies should pool their buying power on big contracts and eliminate redundant purchasing. This is why he boldly told Treasury Secretary John Snow in March that the department should kill a massive telecommunications contract, Treasury Communications Enterprise, and buy through GSA, along with all other agencies.

The moderator presses Davis. Shouldn't the government ensure that the companies running critical networks are doing so safely? For the first time during a grueling day, Davis smells blood. "Oh, man," he replies. "Look. You don't want the government coming in here." It will pass laws requiring companies to disclose network attacks and then people will line up to sue them, "in some county where the biggest source of employment is jury duty." This is his boilerplate appraisal of government intervention, the one he also gave five professional baseball players when they testified about anti-steroid legislation: "The last thing you want is us making policy. We don't do things very well anyway."

'Flat Earth Society'

At 3:53 p.m., Davis sits at a sturdy wooden table in the Speaker's Lobby, outside the House floor. He prepares to speak against an amendment by Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., to add a "buy American" requirement to the Homeland Security appropriation bill. It would require that more than half the components in any product the department buys be made inside the United States. To Manzullo, chairman of the Small Business Committee, this protects jobs. To Davis, it screws things up. He sits, but doesn't stop moving. He does the Post crossword as a staffer hands him talking points. He wants more examples of products that Homeland Security couldn't buy. He reads the amendment, shakes his head. "It's the Flat Earth Society," he scolds. It ignores the reality of the global market and "invites retaliation from other countries."

"You can't get too emotionally invested," Davis muses. "You'll need the guys you vote against later." Then why care so much about procurement? "Because it's my committee's jurisdiction. This amendment will mess up the procurement system." Manzullo will hold up "some gas mask made in China" and say it's unconscionable that U.S. companies lose out on their own government's business. But if foreign products are what the government needs, the government should be able to buy them, Davis argues. His aide reads an e-mail. "DHS reminds me that BlackBerrys are made in Canada." Davis looks up. "That's good," he says. "I may hold yours up on the floor."

"We're up next," the aide says. Davis rises. He turns to the aide. "Let me have your BlackBerry." On the House floor, Davis lets loose: "This restriction would have a devastating effect on the Department of Homeland Security's ability to buy the most high-tech and sophisticated products at a reasonable price to support our critical antiterror efforts. . . .The restriction would cause customs and border protection problems in purchasing the best aircraft, the best camera equipment, the best surveillance equipment from the world market to protect our borders." Hoisting his prop in the air for emphasis, he adds: "BlackBerrys, something that most members use and are used widely throughout the government, are a Canadian product."

Davis leaves the floor, his eyes gleaming. While the "buy American" measure passed on a voice vote, he explains that in conference committee with the Senate, it will be ripped out. Sailing through the subterranean passage connecting the Capitol to the Rayburn House Office Building, he picks up where he left off on the House floor. People like Manzullo "want the procurement system to subsidize companies that can't compete," he says. They "think the procurement system is a jobs program." People abuse the system all the time, he says. He'd like to give performance bonuses to any contracting officer who brought a procurement in on time and under budget. But appropriators won't give federal managers the authority. "A good procurement officer is worth his weight in gold."

The Shark's Wake

Before the day ended, Davis met the Honduran ambassador, who is running for vice president of his country, and held two more meetings, one with officials of the National Baseball Association, another with Basketball Commissioner David Stern. Each wanted to know what legislative prescription he might offer on steroid testing. Statistics compellingly show that the more athletes use steroids, the more kids do the same. Davis can't abide this. Baseball, not unlike procurement, is a system, with rules that work best when followed. Ideally, teams would police themselves. But since they won't, they need to be controlled.

A week and a day later, on the afternoon of May 26, Davis is in overdrive. It's been two days since he and congressional colleagues introduced legislation requiring all professional sports associations to test players for steroids. A few days earlier, the Treasury Department announced that it was canceling the controversial telecom contract. Did he single out Treasury to make an example? "Absolutely," he says. They tried to step outside the system. "You have to stop it before every other agency asks for the same thing."

Procurement, steroids legislation, building a 21st century government. For what does Davis hope to be remembered? His eyes stop. This seems to throw him. What one thing? It will be a lot of things, he says. His work in the District of Columbia, imposing a financial control board on the city and sponsoring urban revitalization legislation; the closing of Lorton prison in Virginia; electronic government legislation; raising technology's profile in government; procurement reform; postal reform, maybe. "We walk and chew gum," he says of his committee. "It's broad-based."

And after Congress? He won't work in the executive branch. Does he want to run for Senate? "It depends. If the seat is open, that's certainly something we would be looking at. . . . That certainly is an option. But there are a lot of options." Davis smiles, and excuses himself. His aides follow him down a short corridor, then to a long hall to the Senate side of the Capitol. He is going to meet with Virginia's John Warner. He walks, and talks, and disappears into the sea of bodies.