Columnist Jon Ralston: Reid no stranger to this game

Sunday, Oct. 16, 2005 | 10:34 a.m.

They sat together at a private White House meeting a few weeks ago to discuss who President Bush would send up as his nominee to the Supreme Court.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid sat next to Vice President Dick Cheney, with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card nearby. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was there. The chairman and ranking Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy, respectively -- also attended.

Reid told President Bush that he should follow the same path he took in choosing a vice president.

"I said, 'Mr. President, you have your vice president here as a result of a search that he made,' " Reid recalled last week. " 'You liked the person doing the searching better than the people that he brought to you. You should do the same thing with your search for the next Supreme Court justice. Harriet Miers is the person who should be selected.' " And the rest is history, if Reid is to be believed. And history says he should be.

Only a few weeks after suffering a mini- stroke, Reid appears to have pulled off a masterstroke. The conservative movement has suffered a devastating seizure. The president's problems have metastasized. And the Senate minority leader, who is rarely innocent, pleads not guilty.

"I thought it'd all work out, and we'd have a pleasant hearing and conservatives would give each other high fives," Reid said last week on "Face to Face," a wry and knowing smile creasing his visage.

Could Reid actually have foretold the chain of events that have unfolded since Miers' nomination? Republican consultant Sig Rogich, who knows the senator well, suggested that Reid is "not that devious," a statement that will have some people who also know Reid well spitting up their Corn Flakes about now.

This is the Harry Reid few really understand, even some of his colleagues in Washington and the national media. Whether he is an evil genius or a benevolent manipulator, Reid's Clark Kentish mien disguises a Superman-like craftiness.

Does anyone ever wonder how someone like Reid has gotten where he is? He is the consummate political chess player, with each move usually calculated to set off others down the line. He sees the whole chessboard and moves the pieces in his head, whether he is dealing with Nevada or national politics.

Not all of his gambits pay off and he has been guilty of overthinking a time or two. He once thought converting a conservative Republican state senator named Bob Ryan to the Democratic Party would help swing a County Commission seat. No masterstroke that -- Ryan lost.

Meddler-in-Chief Reid loves to try to move the pawns around and he often causes hurt feelings with his activism. But he cannot help himself.

The senator's putative support of Jack Carter, if he runs against the other half of Harry Ensign, is classic Reid legerdemain. Reid and John Ensign have become frighteningly good pals since Ensign almost defeated him in 1998.

When Ed Bernstein ran against Ensign in 2000, Reid didn't lift a finger.

Ensign's fingers similarly were paralyzed when Richard Ziser ran against Reid last year.

Reid will do little more than endorse Carter if he runs against Ensign, but he will have placated Democrats and allowed his friend Ensign to raise a boatload of money. "He's President Carter's son, you know," Reid, wry smile appearing again, said in touting Carter's candidacy.

But what if Miers is confirmed and ends up being more conservative than the conservatives think she is? And what if Ensign wins and the Democrats miss taking the Senate by one vote, thus denying Reid the chance to become majority leader? Nobody plays this game better than Reid and he wins more often than he loses. But even the best laid masterstrokes can go awry.