One Sunday morning in the spring of 1999, China's ambassador to Washington, Li Zhaoxing (李肇星), was waiting to appear on the NBC news show Meet the Press, when a man suddenly accosted him in the studio, yelling, "Don't take the weakness of this American president [Bill Clinton] as the weakness of the American people!"
Then, the man grabbed the envoy, pulled him close and repeated those words slowly for emphasis.
The man later explained to reporters: "It shows that if you stand up to a bully, then you control the bully. If you kowtow to the bully, the bully will run your life forever."
That man, it turns out, was none other than Tom Delay, the majority whip of the US House of Representatives, according to news reports last year.
The incident reflects one side of the personality of DeLay, the most powerful man in the House and perhaps in all of Congress. DeLay, the Republican who represents Texas' 22nd District, just south of Houston, is a dogged, excitable politician whose job is to round up enough votes to make sure that the Republican Party's positions are approved by the House.
He is also one of the most energetic and successful fundraisers in Congress and a sharp politician with an encyclopedic grasp of the House members, their districts and their wants and needs.
His effectiveness in leveraging fundraising and an acute political instinct for getting things done in the normally unwieldy House have earned him the nickname, "The Hammer."
The walls of his US Capitol office, symbolically, are lined with half a dozen bullwhips.
Pro-Taiwan voice
In addition, DeLay, 54, is also one of the strongest supporters of Taiwan in Congress as demonstrated last weekend, when he hosted President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) during the president's two-day stopover in Houston en route home from his five-nation visit to Latin America.
"He's one of Taiwan's most forceful voices in the House of Representatives," said Chen Wen-yen (陳文彥), the president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a leading Taiwanese lobbying organization in Washington.
"Taiwan is lucky to have Tom DeLay speaking for them. I think he's very courageous in having hosted President Chen. He didn't have to do that, but Tom DeLay is somebody who, if he believes in something, he goes all the way," he said.
DeLay did not start out as a particular fan of Taiwan. Born in Laredo, Texas on April 8, 1947, he spent most of his childhood in Venezuela, where his father worked as a drilling contractor. After graduation from the University of Houston, he bought a pest control business, Albo Pest Control. His experience with what he considered onerous government regulations running that business pushed him into politics. He won a seat in the Texas Legislature in 1978, and in 1984 was elected to Congress, riding on the coattails of President Ronald Reagan's landslide reelection.
While his staunch conservative anti-communism made him an anti-China activist, it was his political and personal loathing of president Clinton, whose impeachment battle he ran, that led him to his activism on behalf of Taiwan.
The event was Clinton's 1998 state visit to Beijing and Clinton's pronouncement of his "three no's" policy (No independent Taiwan, no "two Chinas" and no membership in international organizations requiring statehood) that infuriated DeLay, prompting him to introduce a resolution in the House condemning Clinton's actions.
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