Freeze Frame

Capturing the character of the kinetic Tom Davis.

Sometimes a photographer neatly captures the character of his subject, as James Kegley has done for us with his cover image and inside-the-book pictures of Congressman Tom Davis, R-Va. The tousled hair, the rumpled shirt, the quizzical but determined look-all bespeak the restless energy he exudes in the flesh and in his work. It isn't easy to keep up with Davis as he rushes from one task to another, chairing his committee, learning, persuading, leading his colleagues toward measures he thinks will bring about better government-but Kegley rushed along with him one day and chronicled the man in motion.

When we needed time another day to shoot our cover photograph, Davis' staff agreed that Kegley and two assistants could arrive an hour early to set up a red backdrop in the offices of the House Government Reform Committee, which Davis chairs. The congressman rushed in, running late, with staffers who said he could spare only six minutes. Reluctant people tend to get into the swing of photo shoots once they begin, and Davis ended up giving us an extra four precious minutes.

You can tell from Davis' ties-which featured elephants on both days with Kegley-that he is a committed Republican. In 2002, as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, he engineered a pickup of seats for the GOP, the first time that's ever happened in a mid-term election with a Republican in the White House. He recently went on the attack against financier George Soros, a big Democratic donor. But in Shane Harris' article, Davis the legislator comes across less as a partisan than as someone who wants to make a difference on an eclectic list of issues ranging from procurement policy to steroids abuse by baseball players.

The House Government Reform Committee is hardly among the most glamorous of congressional panels, but Davis asked for its chairmanship, in part because the committee deals with issues of concern to his Washington-suburbs district: civil service and postal reform, acquisition policy and information technology issues. He has been an important force in reforming government's procurement systems.

Davis, one might say, runs the risk of giving lawmakers a good name-though it's an uphill task when Congress is languishing at an approval rating of just 33 percent among the American public. He's in the game for the thrill, and the importance, of improving the public sector's performance and the fortunes of the American people, and one can hope that he does not soon join the swarm "downtown" from Capitol Hill in the lobbying gold rush.

Just as an aside, Jeffrey Birnbaum's recent Washington Post report that nearly half of exiting lawmakers go into big-bucks lobbying of agencies and their former colleagues-and that the ranks of registered lobbyists here has doubled, to about 35,000, during the past four years-joins Fear Factor and the runaway bride media-fest in the decline-of-civilization category.

This month we publish the first of a series on the military services, with a sobering look at the Navy's mismatch of budget, ambition for the fleet and mission transformation. In the Navy and in big-ticket, Internet-in-the-heavens satellite programs, military ambitions are outstripping available resources.