Brian Schatz the senior senator from Hawaii has lived a charmed life.
And he knows it.
“I’m knocking on wood,” he said, as we begin our conversation online. Wearing one of those muted, tasteful aloha shirts that signals “Not a tourist,” Schatz, who was born in Michigan and grew up in Hawaii, has served in the Senate since 2012 and seems happy being right where he is.
At 53, a typical politician in the Senate might be eager to flash a sense of ambition. Think Cruz, Hawley, Booker, Kelly or Whitehouse; And before being plucked by Trump, Rubio and Vance.
But with Schatz, there’s no seven- or even 14-year itch, no desire to rise to the executive level, say, as governor of Hawaii.
“No,” Schatz said adamantly. “I will do this job as long as I have the permission of the voters. This is the only job I want, and I love it.
“Being in the Senate already exceeds any reasonable professional expectations I ever had,” said the former head of Helping Hands Hawaii. “I don’t need to cook up a new ambitious plan. I just want to do an excellent job for Hawaii.”
I pressed to make news. So if not governor, then certainly not the presidency?
“No, none. Zero,” he said. Did his fellow Punahou alum Barrack convince him of that?
“No, it’s just not for me,” Schatz said.
But that’s news too, publicly rejecting public ambition and higher office.
“If you want to rule that out, that’s fine,” he said. “I’m very comfortable with that.”
That’s the Schatz style. The understated statesman. It reminded me of my old boss, Rep. Norm Mineta, who later showed his ambition by becoming Sec. of Commerce under Clinton, and then Sec. of Transportation under G.W. Bush.
But Mineta’s guiding light was the Japanese proverb, “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”
Mineta was a strategic nail. He kept his head down. But he made his way through the politics, most notably in Congress, winning historic payments for Internment victims of World War II.
Schatz seems to work the same way. He doesn’t stick out. He doesn’t go on many national talk shows.
“I’m willing to speak up on national issues,” Schatz said. “But my basic approach is, if someone else can say it, and would say it, then let them say it. If I have something unique to add because of my expertise, or because of my passion, if it’s a climate issue or a native rights issue, then I’ll do that. But I am not addicted to being on cable TV.”
He said he gives a floor speech in the Senate once a week, but tries to add value “rather than echo what the algorithm is already saying.”
As he put it, “I have no desire to be a household name in Cleveland.”
Schatz would simply rather be close to his constituents, 6,000 miles away from Washington, listening to them.
What Constituents Are Telling Him
“The main thing is the cost of living,” Schatz told me during his summer recess in Honolulu. “I think one of the reasons it’s so acute for people in Hawaii is it’s not just the price of gasoline; it’s that the price of oil impacts utility costs as well.
“People are really getting hurt by this, and although I think I can do something about the cost of healthcare and food and housing, there’s not much I can do about the cost of fuel until this war is over.
“So, that’s on a lot of people’s minds, and it’s probably the first time in my tenure in the Senate that the first thing that a lot of people are talking about is foreign policy.”
When I talked to Schatz, the U.S. was hitting a double milestone—six months of a war that is costing billions, plus a National Debt that rose to over $40 trillion dollars.
“They are related,” Schatz said. “Now the United States is resilient, and we have come through much more difficult times than we are in. It always feels like we’re on the precipice, but that’s because democracy is not a guarantee. And has to be maintained with vigilance and patriotism.”
That means voters need to show up at the polls for the midterms so there’s no question about the direction of the country.
Schatz said it was an “opportunity to recalibrate as it relates to the Iran War and the way we’re managing the fiscal affairs of the U.S. government.
“Rarely does a person come up to me and say, ‘Please cut my federal taxes.’ What they say is, ‘Don’t cut my Medicaid. Please preserve the Affordable Care Act.’ Everybody understands that the way out of this is to spend less on this war of choice, and reverse some of these tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations that have ever existed in human history.”
(Part 2 will be published next issue.)
EMIL GUILLERMO is an award-winning journalist and commentator. A former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” he was also on the editorial board of the Honolulu Advertiser. He has written a column on Asian American Filipino politics and culture since 1991.
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