Just seven years ago, Tom Cotton was fighting for his life in the casbahs of Iraq. And last week, the freshman Republican Congressman from Arkansas announced his candidacy for US Senate, with some pundits predicting Cotton might even find himself on the national ticket in 2016. If political observers could vote for rookie of the year, Rep. Tom Cotton would probably win hands down. In this exclusive interview on the eve of his maiden trip to Israel, Rep. Cotton explains why America is still at war, why he voted against the aid package for Hurricane Sandy, and what’s stopping the Mideast peace process from moving forward

T

om Cotton built his character — and certainly his biceps — as a boy, lofting bales of hay far bigger than himself from his daddy’s pickup truck on the family cattle ranch. Now a lanky war veteran and freshman congressman, Cotton faces a different type of heavy lifting in the aisles of Congress.

The nation’s capital is a world apart from Sunny Side farm off State Highway 28 in rural Yell County, Arkansas, where Cotton grew up, yet he couldn’t think of a better training ground to learn the value of taking responsibility for things larger than himself.

“In the depths of winter, when it was 20 degrees and hailing, snowing, or sleeting, you still had to go out and care for those cows, whether putting out hay, or getting them out of frozen ponds, or caring for a newborn calve,” said Cotton. “You learned a sense of duty and sacrifice and selfless service, which is important in all walks of life.”

Rep. Cotton spoke with Mishpacha from his office in the Cannon House Office Building, just two weeks before his maiden trip to Israel as part of a congressional delegation sponsored by the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation.

By coming to Israel, he will forgo some of his summertime workload on the family ranch, but it will be a working visit nonetheless for Cotton, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.

A battle-seasoned veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Cotton said he was looking forward to his colleagues’ reaction when they “physically see the straits that Israel faces, and what it means to defend a country like that from much larger and more populated neighbors.”

The Future is Now

If Cotton, at six feet five inches, comes across as strong in person, he is just as self-assured and articulate on the phone, never hesitating more than a fraction of a second, even when his voting record or positions are challenged.

He has also shown none of the natural reluctance of a freshman legislator to stand tall in front of his own party’s leadership.

Robert Costa of National Review noted that during a recent meeting among House Republicans on the immigration bill working its way through Congress, Cotton was not afraid to advise Speaker John Boehner, the House’s top-ranking Republican, to “tread carefully” before compromising with the Democrats, saying the two sides were galaxies apart in their positions.

Fellow Rep. Steve King of Iowa commended Cotton for having done his homework on the bill, but also for his guts. “He’s also resilient, and not easily discouraged by people who disagree. Usually, you don’t see freshmen get too far out front, but he’s emerging, sooner rather than later, as a leader in this Congress.”

Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post described Cotton as “popular among both conservative groups who prize ideology and establishment Republicans who worry about electability.”

If Rep. Cotton’s tenure in the House is short, it won’t be due to the sophomore jinx or because voters in his 4th Congressional District turned him out of office, but rather because he stands a strong chance of graduating to the Senate in November 2014. Cotton announced last week that he will challenge Democrat Mark Pryor in next year’s elections.

And that might not be Cotton’s only pivot in the current political cycle. The day we interviewed him, Politico’s Alexander Burns speculated on a Chris Christie–Tom Cotton ticket in 2016.

“That is news to me,” chuckled Cotton. “I would not expect to be on anyone’s ticket in 2016.”

Storm over Sandy

Christie and Cotton would provide quite a contrast on the campaign trail, with Christie’s corpulent figure matched by Cotton’s svelte strides, but such a ticket would certainly be geographically desirable by balancing Christie’s Northeastern base with Cotton’s Southern constituency. It might also be one of the party’s best bets to keep it from veering off onto the libertarian path favored by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, an early presidential frontrunner.

To get on with Christie, Cotton might first have to explain why he voted against the Hurricane Sandy aid bill, which provided funding to large parts of New Jersey in the aftermath of that massive storm.

Cotton was the only Arkansas congressman to vote that aid down, even though he did support disaster aid in his own home state following a late-December blizzard, as well as federal aid to counties stricken by a 2012 summer drought. Cotton denied he was playing favorites. He told his local television station KTHV that the Arkansas package was different because the money was coming from funds already appropriated through federal agencies like FEMA and the Department of Agriculture.

Cotton told Mishpacha that, to the contrary, Sandy aid was loaded with extraneous spending.

While damage estimates from Sandy — which hit the East Coast last October, were estimated at $20 billion, the final Congressional aid package approached $60 billion.

“It would have been more appropriate for the previous Congress, in November or December, to do something more modest and very carefully tailored to the needs of the people in New Jersey and New York who were out of homes, and who didn’t have electricity and heat.”

Instead, the bill came for a vote in Congress in January, three days after Cotton was sworn into office, and included funding for fisheries in Alaska; salaries, benefits and renovations at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, and almost $18 billion for community development block grants.

“Most of my colleagues who voted no were regretful that it came to that point,” says Cotton. “This was not going to be spent on anyone’s home or electricity, and not in the New York metro area, and not even in the coming weeks or months, but years down the road. It just couldn’t have passed any cost-benefit analysis.”

Road Warrior

While some people might suspect a Southerner of harboring a lack of sympathy to the Northeast, Cotton spent some of his most formative years in that region as a Harvard undergraduate and law student.

“Some of the accents and some of the politics I found in Massachusetts were a little different, but one of the great things about college was that it was a place where people from all around the country and all around the world came. Eighteen year olds have, and share, a lot in common, wherever they are from,” Cotton said.

After earning a degree in political science, Cotton spent a year at Claremont Graduate University, under the tutelage of conservative scholar Charles Kesler, who lambastes progressive liberals for breaking faith with the Constitution and setting out to make a new, living Constitution and a new, unlimited state.

Cotton went on to Harvard Law, graduating in June 2002, just nine months after 9/11, a day that changed lives for many around the world.

America was at war and the Cotton family is no stranger to the military. Tom’s father Len served as an infantryman in Vietnam. Tom’s grandfather was a sailor in World War II. “I was too young when my grandfather passed away to hear stories about his service, but my father would sometimes hearken back to what it was like in the jungles in Vietnam.”

Cotton left his law practice and enlisted in the army in January 2005. “It’s not something my father pushed me to do. In fact, he probably didn’t want me to join,” said Cotton, noting his parents were proud of their son the lawyer, but supported his decision. “Even though they had a natural parental fear of what may happen to their child when he goes out to battle, I think that for us, military service is one of the defining things in our young adulthood.”

Cotton was responsible for a 41-man air-assault infantry platoon in Baghdad with the 101st Airborne Division. “My vehicle was hit probably four times and my specific company hit about a dozen or so,” said Cotton. “I try to drive safely in the United States because I must have spent eight of my nine lives in Baghdad.”

In August 2008, he volunteered to return to combat operations in Afghanistan, where he planned daily counterinsurgency operations for an 83-member team. He won an array of medals and received an honorable discharge in September 2009.

Picking His Spots

Overall, his army experience changed his professional outlook. “I realized upon leaving the army that although I liked some aspects of law practice, I preferred to work to be a leader of a team.”

But friends had other plans for him.

Arkansas legislator Michael Lamoureux, a close friend of Cotton from their high school basketball days, approached him about the Republican nomination for a US Senate seat from Arkansas. Cotton deemed that too large a leap and accepted a position with the global giant McKinsey and Company. There, he built a broad foundation in operations and strategy and sales and marketing in the fields of agriculture, energy, and health care.

“I think it reinforced a lot of the lessons I’d learned growing up or in the army: how to focus on the most important and urgent priority, how to communicate in a quick and clear fashion, how to work together in small teams, how to become knowledgeable quickly on new subject material, how to be professional and serve clients. All this also gave me more fluency in business concepts, which certainly is valuable in politics,” said Cotton.

But Lamoureux wouldn’t give up. When Cotton’s home county of Yell was redistricted into a Republican-friendly district after the 2010 census, he approached Cotton again. In the end, he ran for the seat being vacated by six-term Democrat Mike Ross.

Cotton beat his opponent by 22 percentage points, and is an early favorite to unseat Mark Pryor due to mounting anti-Obama sentiment in Arkansas. Democrats are already fighting back, trying to paint Cotton as an extremist, a title he clearly rejects.

Would obstructionist be a better description?

Cotton demurs. He says he holds to “deep and philosophical disagreements with the president,” adding: “I don’t hear many voices among the elected officials in Washington that say we should just oppose anything the president does or support anything he opposes. I don’t think that’s constructive. I personally don’t hold that view.”

He says the nature of politics is to approach each issue on a case-by-case basis and work where you can with allies. “I frequently find myself in the House working with liberal Democrats on areas of common concern,” says Cotton, citing as examples the passage of stiffer sanctions on Iran and two bills to codify the president’s delay of the employer mandate in Obamacare.

“Both of those pieces of legislation got anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of the Democratic caucus,” says Cotton. “So there are areas where we have common cause even if we do have the philosophical disagreements.”

We’re Still at War

A few weeks ago, Cotton raised hackles on the House floor during debate on a bill to defund the National Security Agency, when he frankly told his colleagues that America is still at war. Doesn’t that run the risk of placing him at variance with growing numbers of voters who are weary of war and who view the Middle East as a faraway place that doesn’t represent a direct threat to America?

Cotton sticks to his guns. “It is a truth that we’re still at war. It’s a regrettable truth and a truth that I wish were not the case, but it is a truth that we have to recognize. We need to worry today about places like Libya and Syria and Mali and Yemen, for the same reason we needed to worry about Afghanistan in 2000. What Afghanistan was in 2000 is what Syria, Libya, Mali, or Yemen, or numerous other countries might become in 2013 or 2014 — a safe haven in which terrorists can plan and launch devastating attacks on American interests and allies abroad.”

Nevertheless, what does the congressman who rejected a entitlement-laden $60 billion Hurricane Sandy have to say about the more than $1 trillion the US has spent in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did America get its money’s worth?

“It’s not just the trillion-dollar expense. It’s the over 6,000 killed in action that America suffered and tens of thousands of wounded. Those are very serious prices to pay,” says Cotton.

“But those are prices that every American generation has borne for over 200 years to ensure that the next generation of Americans can live in freedom, live in security, and have the opportunity for a better future. It was certainly a burden that I was proud to bear my very small part of and I know that my soldiers were very proud to bear their small part of as well.”

Maiden Voyage to Israel

When Rep. Tom Cotton arrives in Israel this week as part of a 24-member Republican House delegation, his visit falls on the heels of last week’s trip by 37 Democratic members of Congress.

What makes his first ever visit to Israel different, says Cotton, is his combat experience in Iraq, where he planned and led daily combat patrols in heavily populated areas, lasting at least six hours at a clip.

Israel certainly faces the same constraints in the West Bank, and sometimes in Gaza, and Cotton says, “That’s something that I don’t need to be in Israel to know. The IDF, along with the US, are the most humane and moral fighting forces in the world. If anything, both go beyond the dictates of international law and conventions to try to protect civilian casualties on the battlefields.”

In your position on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittees on the Middle East, what issues are you confronting that concern you the most?

“My ongoing concern certainly is the growing footprint of al-Qaeda throughout the Middle East and northern Africa. The administration often claims that al-Qaeda has been in retreat. Unfortunately, if you simply look at the amount of territory they control or influence, this does not appear to be the case. You have a growing al-Qaeda presence in places like Libya, in Syria, in Yemen, and I worry about Egypt now with the continuing unrest in that country. Egypt, being the largest Arab country, as well as the one with the deepest philosophical traditions, exerts a tremendous amount of influence throughout the Arab world, and as a partner to the peace treaty with Israel, this raises serious concerns that we’re trying to keep tight watch on.”

What would you do differently from the Obama administration?

“Well, the president seems to have finally concluded that America’s interests are clearly implicated in Syria. It would have been much better for him to have seen this two years ago when al-Qaeda was not so thick on the ground and we had a better chance of working with Western-oriented, indigenous Syrian rebels who are rising up against the Assad regime. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. It just means it will be harder. In the meantime, we have a secretary of state who is engaged in a somewhat quixotic attempt to reignite or restart the peace process. This is something that Israel has been happy and willing to do for decades but they’ve never had a willing partner for peace. So I worry that we’re not focusing on the true crises, in places like Syria and Egypt, while generating a lot of pressure on Israel to make concessions they otherwise might not make in a peace process that unfortunately is likely to come to the same stalemate as it has in the past because they don’t have a willing partner for peace.”

Do you support a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis?

“In principal, but there are many caveats to that. Israeli governments now for some time have said that any Palestinian state has to be demilitarized. Israel has to have certain security guarantees, that there has to be respect for the rights of Israelis who are living in Judea and Samaria. So I certainly don’t think it should be unilaterally declared or imposed by international organizations like the United Nations or the European Union. It should be something that is decided through open and fair negotiations by the people of Israel as represented by their government, by the Palestinian people as represented, hopefully by a nonviolent and willing partner for peace, not a Hamas-infested terrorist organization.”

(Originally featured in Mishapcha Issue 472)