Scott Brown left the truck back in Massachusetts.
At 9:30 Thursday morning, the Republican state senator who rode a truck-driving everyman image and a wave of Tea Party-stoked, establishment-financed frustration right up to the Senate seat of John and Ted Kennedy, stepped out of gate 43 in Reagan National Airport for his crash course introduction to official Washington.
"You know, I'm a routine guy, I like getting up and walking the dogs and getting a good workout, going down to the local diner for a good breakfast," said Brown in his first interview upon arriving in Washington. "Coming here and disrupting my routine, the transition is just a little bit overwhelming."
For all of Brown's studied out-of-towner modesty, he couldn't look more the part of Washington lawmaker. As he walked from the gate, he wore a gray suit, navy tie spotted with red horseshoes, and a blue shirt with a Ralph Lauren Polo emblem peeking behind his lapel. The 50-year-old's full head of hair achieved a perfect "Just for Men" salt-and-pepper look and his voice never rose high enough for anyone but his immediate company to hear him.
His immediate company in the terminal consisted of two seasoned advisers, including Eric Fehrnstrom, a fixture in the political world of Mitt Romney. The day ahead would have him in the company of Sen. John McCain, Massachusetts senior Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), then outgoing Sen. Paul Kirk (D-Mass.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and then Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), not to mention a shuffling retinue of four dozen cameramen, still photographers and print reporters.
In the moments just after he landed, though, he was alone, and took a moment to explain that his prior visits to Washington were mostly to watch his daughter, a college basketball player and former American Idol contestant, play against American University, or to visit the monuments "as a tourist."
"I'm a history buff," he said. "I love the Museum of Natural History."
Brown said there was some truth to President Obama's assessment that they had both surfed public discontent into office, but Brown said his victory had more to do with the way the Democratic Congress had behaved rather than any general economic malaise.
"People were frustrated with the lack of transparency and the health-care bill," he said by an airport Dunkin' Donuts stand. "A lot of it was done behind closed doors," he said. But he also acknowledged that his personal story of serially divorced parents and instance of adolescent shoplifting gave him something like Obama's against-all-odds appeal. He predicted that he and Obama "are going to find common ground."
He even said that he offered the president advice in a telephone conversation the two had after he won office. "I said one thing I've always liked about you is your sense of humor, Mr. President, so don't lose it," Brown said.
Brown said his model for governing would be McCain, who would also be the first appointment in a packed schedule of meetings that morning. "I have great respect for Senator McCain," he said of the Arizona senator, who was one of the first establishment players to support his seemingly quixotic bid against Attorney General Martha Coakley. "I've known him for a while, long before this, and you know he is a war hero and kind of a maverick independent thinker. While I want to be a Scott Brown Republican, I want to rely on everybody on both sides of the aisle," he added, "I've told my leadership already that I'm not a rubber stamp for anybody."
And Brown expressed reluctance to be associated at all with the Tea Party movement that helped elect him.
"There may be members of a certain group that supported me," he said, "but I had supporters from every walk of life. And to focus on one specific group is a disservice to the campaign -- it's inclusiveness in making sure that everyone has a voice."
As for his much-discussed joking during his victory speech that his two attractive daughters were "available," he dismissed it as "just dad being dad. For anyone to think that I would want to have anything bad happen to my daughters, it's abhorrent to think that."
Asked about Glenn Beck's suggestion on his radio show that Brown be fitted with a chastity belt before "it could end up with a dead intern," Brown said, "You know, name calling and all that stuff? I'm way past that. My daughters know that I love them and there is nothing in the world I wouldn't do for them."
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