RUTHFULLY YOURS

As she walks down the corridor in the Rayburn House Office Building, she asks someone, “Are you coming to my hanging?”

The woman doing the asking is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, known to some as “Ily.” She is a congresswoman from Miami, elected in 1989. (It was a special election following the death of an incumbent.) She is a Republican, and a force, and a joy.

Why “hanging”? Her portrait will be unveiled, and hung, in the hearing room of the Foreign Affairs Committee. She was chairwoman of that committee in the previous Congress.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is a champion of democracy, freedom, and human rights — not just in Cuba, land of her birth, but in all the world: the Middle East, the Far East, it doesn’t matter.

When you walk into the hearing room, the first portraits you see are those of Henry Hyde and Dante Fascell. I remember them well. (Shades of Hamlet?) Hyde was a congressman from the Chicago area; Fascell was from Florida.

The room is absolutely packed — cheek to cheek, shoulder to shoulder. Eliot Engel, the New York Democrat, says, “I’ve been a member of this committee for many years, and have never seen the room this full. Not even for a holiday party.”

Several speakers note that the room is a veritable United Nations, an atlas of the world. In other words, there are people who come from the four corners of the earth.

The MC is Yleem Poblete, who was once chief of this committee’s staff. She mentions that the attendees include officials from Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel. Why am I not surprised? Those countries are threatened by wolves. They are exactly the kind of country to which Ileana lends particular support.

Israel’s ambassador says a few words. He is Ron Dermer, and guess where he grew up? Miami. In fact, his father was mayor of Miami Beach. So was his brother.

Charlie Rangel is present — handsome old devil. Seems to be handsomer now in his mid-80s than he ever was. I wonder whom he loves more: Ileana or Fidel?

“Everybody loves Ileana,” speakers say. And they are right. There are current House members here and former members. There are Republicans and Democrats. Ileana “reaches across the aisle.” She’ll work with anybody, to make what she regards as progress.

To many on the right, a Republican reacher-across-the-aisle is a sellout, a squish, a RINO. That’s not true of Ileana: who is, as anyone who knows her knows, steel.

Nancy Pelosi says a few words. Illustrating the honoree’s extraordinary energy and capacity for work, she points out that Ileana brought up her children while in Congress. “I had my children, then I came here.”

Mind you, Pelosi was not saying that she herself was a better mother than Ileana. She was complimenting, and marveling at, Ileana.

Dan Burton is here — the conservative Republican from Indiana, now retired from the House. He pays tribute to Ileana’s support of the Cuban people. And notes that the man in the Oval Office is nothing like her.

The applause for his statement is weak, on this bipartisan occasion. But the applause, of course, is dead right.

Eliot Engel grew up in the Bronx. He is what we used to call a Cold War liberal. Like Ileana, he believes in freedom, democracy, and human rights. He believes in American values. He believes in American power in the world. He abhors dictatorship.

Engel is more JFK than Teddy K. And he is nothing like the incumbent president. Obama is Edward Said’s Columbia; Engel is the Bronx of the 1950s.

How many Democrats like Engel are left? Under a thousand? (I exaggerate.) Why are they still Democrats? Habit, I suppose …

(Reagan did not change his party registration until he was in his 50s. He said it was excruciatingly hard — like leaving your church.)

It is a pleasure to see Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the former congressman from Miami. His brother Mario serves now. Mario, too, is present. These two, along with their two brothers, are sometimes known as “the Cuban Kennedys.” But I’m not sure there’s a Teddy in the bunch …

I trust you’ll know what I mean by this: Now that he’s speaker of the House, Paul Ryan looks younger.

One of the best speeches of the evening — I would not have expected this — is given by Howard Berman, the liberal Democrat from California. Berman retired from the House in 2013. His remarks about Ileana are smart, graceful, interesting, enlightening, and even touching.

He says that, when he first met her, he found that she was a lighthearted, happy-go-lucky lady. Which she is. Before long, he found out what she also is: steel.

Berman also gives us a story. After the 2008 election, he got a call from Barack Obama, the president-elect. Obama said to him, “Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has hung up on me three times. Could you ask her to call me, please?”

At this point, I’m lovin’ Ileana more than ever. She hung up on Obama? Three times? Wow, not very polite, but impressive.

Then Berman has to go and blow it for me: In Miami, there was a radio host (if I have heard correctly) who was infamous for prank calls. Ileana figured that these calls were from him.

Damn. Can’t win ’em all.

Finally, Berman notes how tough it is when your party loses control of a house of Congress. This happened to his party after the 2010 elections. Berman had been chairman of this committee, Foreign Affairs. Ileana was to be the next chairman. And she made the transition as easy, as painless, for the Democratic staff as humanly possible.

One after the other, people want to give testimony about Ileana. There’s David Mermelstein, a Holocaust survivor from Miami, and a leader of Holocaust survivors. There’s Harry Wu, the great gulag survivor from China. (There, it’s called laogai. Same thing.)

And there’s Antúnez, the Cuban dissident and democracy leader. Readers of my columns are well familiar with him. “Antúnez” is the nickname of Jorge Luis García Pérez, and he is one of the bravest and most admirable men in Cuba. Let me not leave out his wife, Yris, who shares all his burdens and trials.

For years, they have been in and out of prisons, and for years, they have had the living hell beaten out of them.

What’s Antúnez doing here in Washington? I have learned that the Cuban dictatorship likes to have its dissidents out of the country, rather than in. They are less trouble that way. They can stay out of the country, as far as the dictatorship is concerned.

This is what another great man, Juan Carlos González Leiva, told me when I interviewed him last year. (For that piece, go here. González Leiva is the blind Cuban lawyer who has devoted his life to the island’s freedom, and of course paid terrible costs.)

Now and then, I’ll see Cuban dissidents in a beautiful ballroom in Oslo, during the Oslo Freedom Forum, or in some beautiful room in Washington, such as this committee room. They must suffer from mental or emotional whiplash.

One day, they’re in some fetid cell, or being beaten by state security agents (or both). The next, they’re in the lap of Free World luxury. And then, by their own choice, they go back to the cell, or back to the risk of the cell.

At any rate, Antúnez gives a rousing speech here, with a translator at his side. Later, I shake a hand that has been brutalized countless times by the Castros’ agents, as has the rest of his body. It’s a great honor.

One of the last of the speakers, paying tribute to Ileana, is John Bolton — The Man with the Mustache, President George W. Bush called him. He is spirited and funny.

I don’t know if he’ll ever run for office — but he’d be terrific on the trail, in my opinion.

The “Lehtinen” in “Ros-Lehtinen” is Dexter Lehtinen, an American of Finnish extraction, obviously. He is an hombre: a Vietnam combat vet; a Purple Heart recipient (who deserved the thing); an MBA; a crack lawyer; a onetime state legislator; and so on. He gives touching remarks about his wife, the congresswoman.

You can never tell about other people’s marriages, even if you think you know. But he strikes me as a real helpmeet. And to see the two interact is sigh-making.

Last to speak is the honoree — the portrait-sitter — herself. She talks of coming to the United States from Cuba when she was eight. “I couldn’t speak a word of English. My critics say I still can’t.” She pays tribute to her parents, “who are not here physically, but in spirit.” And she also turns to the portrait of Dante Fascell, above her, thanking him.

Fascell, when he was chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, made room for Ileana. He didn’t have to. He was also a Democrat. But he did. And that, says Ileana, was a great boost to her.

I hear a young man say, “Half the room went to FIU.” He means Florida International University, the school in Miami.

At last, the portrait is unveiled. Ileana is looking good, in a bright green jacket. She is wearing that very jacket on this very evening, I believe — a nice touch.

Everyone knows that Ileana is energetic. She has been compared to the Energizer Bunny. But I like to say that Ileana’s energy is not merely physical — it’s not busyness, or hyperactivity. She has a moral energy. A moral persistence or perseverance, a refusal to tire or give up.

I myself get weary of countering the same lies over and over again — particularly as they relate to Cuba and the Castro dictatorship. The liars and mythmakers never tire. They’re at it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They can wear you down.

They can’t wear down Ileana — who rises to the occasion, time after time, insisting on the truth, and sticking up for the vulnerable and voiceless.

I believe that’s the phrase Speaker Ryan has used: Ileana sticks up for the vulnerable and voiceless.

The imprisoned leader of the Venezuelan opposition, Leopoldo López, has a slogan: “El que se cansa, pierde.” “He who tires, loses.” No one has to worry about Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She is a great American, a credit to this country. As long as there are enough people like her, we’ll be all right.