Deliberately Walking When Others Sprint

All you need to know about Bob Good­latte is that he has a base­ball signed by Hank Aaron. The 11-term Vir­gin­ia Re­pub­lic­an has lots of base­balls auto­graphed by pros, but the one fea­tur­ing the power-hit­ting Hall of Famer is dis­played prom­in­ently un­der glass in Good­latte’s of­fice cof­fee table.

“I al­ways have base­balls with me,” he says. Ges­tur­ing to 20 oth­ers on dis­play along with the Hank Aaron prize, he adds, “These are just the Hall of Famers.”

Good­latte is like that. He has quietly and stead­ily col­lec­ted valu­able base­ball sig­na­tures over the years just as he has quietly and stead­ily ac­cu­mu­lated seni­or­ity and in­flu­ence in the House.

Be­fore he be­came chair­man of the Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee in Janu­ary, his na­tion­al pro­file had been re­l­at­ively low. Since then, he has presided over some of the most di­vis­ive is­sues be­fore Con­gress, in­clud­ing gun con­trol, im­mig­ra­tion, and sur­veil­lance by the Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Agency.

The rise was not without its stumbles. Good­latte told one re­port­er in early 2013 that he would not sup­port gun-con­trol le­gis­la­tion. The story went vir­al, and he nev­er made the same mis­take again. He is now po­lite when con­fron­ted by re­port­ers in Cap­it­ol cor­ridors, but he doesn’t talk pub­licly about his le­gis­lat­ive plans be­fore they un­fold as he wants them to.

“I find that it’s bet­ter to have more in­form­a­tion when you an­swer a ques­tion than less in­form­a­tion,” he said. “I like that give-and-take, but some­times I don’t like that it goes down the rab­bit hole, that either there’s a piece of in­form­a­tion that didn’t get con­veyed “¦ or it’s just go­ing in a dir­ec­tion that I don’t think gives the full pic­ture.”

This de­lib­er­at­ive ap­proach is per­fect for the Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee, where Good­latte, 61, has been a mem­ber since he came to Con­gress. Over and over, he says he wants the com­mit­tee to “get it right,” wheth­er he’s talk­ing about an im­mig­ra­tion over­haul or Con­gress’s re­sponse to the NSA leaks.

The meth­od can look like stalling to people who are eager for changes to the law. He has been ac­cused of slow-walk­ing im­mig­ra­tion le­gis­la­tion by ad­voc­at­ing a piece-by-piece ap­proach, re­ject­ing the rap­id pace the Sen­ate took on a ma­jor im­mig­ra­tion bill that was con­ceived, draf­ted, amended, and passed in six months.

Good­latte is fine with that char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion. He ar­gued earli­er in the year that an im­mig­ra­tion over­haul akin to the Sen­ate bill isn’t ready for prime time. His plan for the com­mit­tee to take up smal­ler pieces of im­mig­ra­tion law, such as visas for high-skilled work­ers, is “de­signed to make sure that people fol­low­ing this is­sue un­der­stand all of the is­sues that are un­der­ly­ing this,” he said. “There are hun­dreds of in­ter­lock­ing pieces.”

Walk­ing when the rest of the polit­ic­al world is sprint­ing can be mad­den­ing to ad­voc­ates for change, but it has paid off for Good­latte in oth­er areas. Last week, the House passed his com­plex and care­fully ne­go­ti­ated bill de­signed to rein in “pat­ent trolls,” com­pan­ies that ac­quire low-qual­ity pat­ents for the sole pur­pose of su­ing oth­er com­pan­ies that use sim­il­ar tech­no­lo­gies. The com­mit­tee had been work­ing on the bill all year.

Good­latte brought two dec­ades of work on tech­no­logy is­sues to the pat­ent bill. He was a ju­ni­or Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee mem­ber when the Re­pub­lic­ans took over the House in 1995 and then-Chair­man Henry Hyde, R-Ill., as­signed him to ne­go­ti­ate new copy­right rules for the di­git­al age. The res­ult­ing law, the 1998 Di­git­al Mil­len­ni­um Copy­right Act, is the corner­stone of in­tel­lec­tu­al-prop­erty pro­tec­tion for the In­ter­net today — and it was writ­ten be­fore movies were be­ing dis­trib­uted on DVD.

Good­latte says he isn’t much of a tech­ie com­pared with his son, Rob, a former product de­sign­er at Face­book. But he has joined oth­er Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee mem­bers, in­clud­ing former chair­men Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Jim Sensen­bren­ner, R-Wis., in mak­ing sure that Con­gress doesn’t fall be­hind in pro­tect­ing di­git­al in­nov­a­tions. He has served as the House Re­pub­lic­an chair­man of the Con­gres­sion­al In­ter­net Caucus for vir­tu­ally all of its 17-year his­tory. (Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Cal­if., is the cur­rent Demo­crat­ic House chair­wo­man.)

Hav­ing presided over that caucus since the In­ter­net was in its in­fancy, Good­latte is a fan of Web-based en­tre­pren­eur­ship. “But I’m also very in­ter­ested in the in­tel­lec­tu­al-prop­erty is­sues, and so they come to­geth­er, some­times clash, and some­times work to­geth­er. But either way, I think that is kind of the found­a­tion of the Amer­ic­an eco­nomy. You’re re­ward­ing people for their cre­at­ive­ness,” he said.

Good­latte has built up a lot of good­will among his col­leagues, which is no small feat on a com­mit­tee that has more than its fair share of pub­lic spats. Just last week, Rep. Sheila Jack­son Lee, D-Texas, de­man­ded that Re­pub­lic­ans ex­plain “this con­sti­tu­tion­al gobbledy-gock” dur­ing a hear­ing on pres­id­en­tial re­spons­ib­il­it­ies.

“I think you have to make sure that every­body has an op­por­tun­ity to be heard when we de­bate these is­sues and in the pro­cess treat dif­fer­ing view­points fairly,” Good­latte said.

Good­latte doesn’t shy away from par­tis­an­ship on some le­gis­la­tion — im­mig­ra­tion is a sol­id ex­ample — but he works to main­tain re­la­tion­ships with com­mit­tee mem­bers on both sides of the aisle and reg­u­larly con­sults with the three former chair­men on the pan­el — Smith, Sensen­bren­ner, and rank­ing mem­ber John Con­yers, D-Mich.

Smith, the most re­cent Ju­di­ciary chair­man, said Good­latte is “the ideal chair­man. He’s smart, thought­ful, and per­sist­ent.” They have been friends for al­most 20 years.

Did Smith give Good­latte any ad­vice when he handed over the gavel? “I don’t think he needed any ad­vice,” Smith said.

When asked the same ques­tion, Good­latte char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally paused. “Let me think about that,” he said. Then, he ad­ded, “Prob­ably the best ad­vice they’ve giv­en me I can’t share with you.”