RUTHFULLY YOURS

Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio is a freshman, but you would not know it from his old-school office.

Instead of seeking space in the Hart Senate Office Building — the modern, steel-and-glass behemoth next door — Portman chose a row of rooms in Russell, the Beaux Arts relic on the corner of Constitution Avenue, across from the Capitol.

Russell has been bustling for over a century. John F. Kennedy, as a Bay State senator, huddled with Ted Sorensen nearby. Other lions, too many to count, have roamed these marble halls.

Portman loves the ghosts. You can almost hear them as he strolls into his private office. The click-clack of heels and the patter of polished black leather echo through the wall.

Portman, a soft-spoken man with sandy-grey hair, sinks into his couch. He points toward the mantelpiece. There sits a small bust of William Howard Taft, which the senator picked up during the move.

But Portman’s real hero is Taft’s son Robert A. Taft. Taft the younger, who represented Ohio in the Senate from 1939 until his death in 1953, was known as “Mr. Republican.”

Tracking down a bust of Robert Taft has been a challenge. Like many Senate greats, Taft has become just a few lines in the political-science textbooks, all but forgotten except among hard-core conservatives.

Portman promises to find a bust eventually. In the meantime, he has done what he could. For one thing, he got himself assigned to the same third-floor office that Taft used. He also tracked down Taft’s desk on the Senate floor. Portman pursued that ancient oak the way he does most things: with an easy grin and sharp elbows.

When the incoming freshmen arrived in Washington, the Senate historian informed them that they could request a particular desk. “Bingo!” Portman chuckles. “I asked them to find where Robert Taft etched his name.”

Sen. Al Franken, Democrat of Saturday Night Live and Minnesota, was in possession of the wooden prize. “Al Franken didn’t care much about Robert A. Taft,” Portman observes, his left eyebrow raised half an inch. “So I ended up getting his desk.”

For another minute or two, Portman riffs on Taft, mentioning some of his legislative battles. He then catches himself. He could continue like this for hours, he laughs. But he won’t.

Portman’s point, however, is more than nostalgic.

“Taft was a classic conservative,” Portman says. “Of all the Ohio senators, he is the one to whom I best relate. He was a little taciturn, I think, and not the greatest speaker. But he was clearly a major force here — a Lyndon Johnson type of leader in his own time.”

Portman is charting a similar path. It may be early in his first term, but he has high hopes for Senate Republicans in coming years. He is eager to help build the party’s numbers in 2012.

You may not have read much about him in the papers lately. Portman — a 55-year-old former congressman who served George W. Bush as budget chief — was one of the GOP’s high-profile success stories in 2010, a Beltway player with deep Midwestern roots. Yet since taking office, the comer has kept a decidedly low profile.

Other GOP freshmen, such as Sens. Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Rand Paul (Ky.), have produced their own budgets. Portman has not done that, but he has hardly been on the sidelines.

Portman is a fiscal expert, to be sure, but his focus since January has been economic. In early May, he authored the conference’s comprehensive jobs plan, a multifaceted growth memorandum. The document calls for tax cuts, a balanced budget, less onerous regulation, and free trade. Increased energy production, repealing Obamacare, and killing card-check are other key components.

Portman is the first to acknowledge that this sounds like boilerplate. He shrugs off the charge; evangelizing for the tried and true is something he enjoys, and he wishes others did, too. A recent Gallup poll backs him up: It shows jobs to be the top issue among all voter groups. For independents, a bloc the GOP needs in its corner, the employment issue dominates.

Still, peddling conservative axioms in the Age of Obama is no easy task. When Portman unveiled his proposal, it got little play in the national press. Both parties were consumed in a brawl over entitlements and spending. The high-drama fight was, as it has been for months, over Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, which seeks to reform Medicare, among other sacred cows.

Portman tells me that he respects Ryan and others for leading on the entitlement front. He says that debate more than merits the attention it has been getting. His aim, however, is to make sure that the party is also leading on growth, in terms of both its message and its policies. Obama, he says, knows how to talk up jobs, even if he does not know how to enable the private sector to create them. Republicans, he says, cannot rest easy.

Less than a month after Portman released his jobs agenda, Republicans are suddenly flocking toward it. Nervous following the disaster in western New York, where the GOP lost a ruby-red House seat, Republicans are reiterating the message that won them a slew of seats last year: jobs, jobs, and jobs again.

House Speaker John Boehner underscored this point at his latest press conference. Boehner did not back away from the Ryan budget, but he did emphasize that jobs had to play a renewed role in the Republican agenda.

Speaking with reporters, Boehner urged Republicans to return to what Portman calls “classic conservatism” — the low-tax, high-growth stuff that has always drawn people to the party.

“Just because we’ve proposed it in the past doesn’t mean it is not a good idea,” Boehner noted. “I think the package that we have represents a lot of traditional ideas along with new ideas about how to let the private sector create jobs.”

Portman agrees. He has been hammering this theme since Washington was knee deep in snow and he was in a transitional office, far away from Russell’s shadows. “This is the central issue of our time because it relates to everything else,” he says. “If we don’t have a strong economy, and we are not creating jobs, we will not be able to make progress on the deficit and the debt.”

Portman frames growth as not simply a business issue, but one that is integral to American exceptionalism. “I saw this when I was the United States trade representative,” he says. “I traveled the world representing our great country. Sometimes, in public, officials of other countries would be critical of us. Then in private, they would all say the same thing: We need American leadership.”

“That means democracy-building, human rights, anti-corruption, and transparency,” Portman says. “It also means opening markets and creating opportunity.”

Portman began to make his jobs pitch at the first Senate Republican retreat earlier this year. He was asked to speak at the closed-door session at the Library of Congress, to share his story from the trail, where he used jobs as the keystone of his message, and won in a swing state.

Portman told his GOP colleagues that championing jobs is not only a solid place from which to build policy, but also good politics. “I talked about the need for Senate Republicans to have a consistent message on jobs, tied to the context of the debt, health care, and everything else,” he says. “I suggested that we needed a Senate consensus.

“Four months later, we finally had that consensus,” Portman smiles. “It took a while. Some members were not supportive of everything in the initial drafts that I sent around; others wanted to add things. But we eventually got to a consensus of 47 senators. Not everyone is wildly supportive of everything in there, but they all said that this is something that they can get behind.”

#pagePortman says the members of Congress have an obligation to do more than throw punches at each other over the looming $14 trillion national debt. Addressing the economy itself, and not just government spending, is instrumental to the recovery. “We cannot simply cut our way out, we have to grow our way out,” he says. “The top concern for every American is how we are going to get this economy moving again. That was the top concern in 2004 and 2008, and it will be in 2012. Sometimes our candidates miss that point.”

Portman is taking his plan beyond Washington. In long phone conversations and private meetings, he has spoken about his effort with numerous 2012 presidential contenders, from Mitt Romney to Jon Huntsman to Tim Pawlenty, among others.

“I advise them that this is the central issue,” Portman says. “I know that this plan may not be the plan they are comfortable with, but you need to have a plan and explain it in straightforward terms to the American people, without Washington jargon and political talk.”

“We are in a very tough global economy,” Portman continues, “and America has to change the fundamental structures of our tax system, regulatory system, health-care system, legal system, and trade posture, in order to get back on our feet.”

Such talk has earned Portman chatter as a potential vice-presidential nominee and even, from conservatives such as NR’s Jay Nordlinger, hopes for a Portman presidential bid. Portman, of course, says that he remains focused on his upper-chamber work.

In coming months, Portman pledges to speak up and ensure that Republicans “do not miss the boat” on jobs as they make a concurrent argument to voters on entitlements. “I am a strong believer that good policy is good politics,” he says. “It’s easy to complain about the unemployment rate, but voters want you to be for something, not just against the Democrats. We are now offering something positive and constructive, seven consensus points.”

Portman knows a few things about how federal and state burdens can rattle a business. Growing up in Cincinnati, he spent summers working at his father’s forklift dealership. Since then — at Dartmouth and the University of Michigan Law School, and then in his twelve years in Congress, followed by a stint in the George W. Bush administration — he has often recalled those days at the Portman Equipment Company.

“I wish my Democratic colleagues would go out and talk to people in the trenches,” Portman says. “People are making decisions about whether to hire or not, and the cost of doing business is a huge part of that calculus. What has been coming out of Washington — the regulations, the mandates — have made it harder for companies to stay here.”

Democrats, Portman says, can demonize the GOP platform all they want, but ultimately companies will “vote with their feet.” Unless Republicans polish their jobs message, voters, he warns, will do the same.

— Robert Costa is a political reporter for National Review.