OPERA – fiche sociographique - santé
Prénom, Nom:
Rodney Whitlock
Contact
Catégorie : Législatif
Staff du Sénat.
Républicain. Carrière transversale House to Senate.
Dates de naissance / décès :
1965-1966 ( ?)
Lieu de naissance :
Salem, Virginia
Genre : Male
Lieu de résidence (si DC avant l’accession à un poste retenu, avec si
possible l’année de l’emménagement à DC):
Arrive à Washington DC en 1994.
Formation :
BA/BS
MA/MS
PhD
Law degree (JD…)
Autre
B.A. Political Science, relation internationale, Roanoke College,
1983-1987
M. A. Political Science Appalachian State University, 1987-1989
Ph. D. Politcal Science University of Georgia 1989-1998
PROFESSION initiale :
Professor adjunct in Political Management
Professional Staffer
CARRIÈRE
- 1994-2005 : Legislative aide US House of representatives
- 2005-2011 : Health policy advisor Senate Finance Committee
- 2011-2012 : Health Policy Advisor Senator Chuck Grassley
- 2000- to present : Adjunct faculty George Washington University
W. Genieys, Operationalizing Programmatic Elites Research in America, OPERA : ANR-­‐08-­‐BLAN-­‐0032. 1 Sources biblio/bio, articles, divers.
Graduate School of Political Management
The George Washington University, Washington D.C.
Rodney Whitlock
Rodney Whitlock was born and raised in Salem, Virginia. He graduated from Roanoke College in
1987. He spent two years at Appalachian State University as an assistant coach with the Men's Soccer
Team, earning a Master's Degree in 1989. From 1989 through 1994, Rodney was in the political
science program at the University of Georgia. He completed his doctorate in political science in March
of 1998.
Rodney met Charlie Norwood in the summer of 1994 and handled debate prep during the
Congressman's first campaign. After the election, he joined Congressman Norwood's staff and moved
to Washington because he really couldn't think of a good reason not to. During his years with
Congressman Norwood, he managed the Patients' Bill of Rights. On October 7, 1999, it passed the
House by a vote of 275-151. He continued staffing the fight for a Patients' Bill of Rights, which passed
the House again in 2001. In February 2005, Rodney left the Office of Congressman Norwood to join
the Finance Committee Staff as a health policy advisor for Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa. He
was lead Senate staffer for the Medicaid provisions of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and the Tax
Relief and Health Care Act of 2006. In 2007, Rodney worked on the Children's Health Insurance
Program Reauthorization Act that passed Congress twice and was subsequently vetoed twice by
President Bush. He spent 2009 and 2010 deeply engaged in health care reform legislation. Late in
2010, he became the Acting Health Policy Director for Senator Grassley and shepherded the Medicare
and Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010 into law during his brief tenure. He remains Health Policy
Director for Senator Grassley now in the Senator's personal office.
In his spare time, Rodney teaches at The George Washington University in both the Department of
Health Policy and the Graduate School of Political Management. He has taught at the college level for
18 of the last 23 years. He is also a collector of antique air-cooled Volkswagens and a back-of-thepack triathlete. Rodney resides in Arlington, Virginia with his wife Sylvia, his son Matthew and
daughter Samantha.
Source : http://gspm.gwu.edu/rodney-whitlock consulté le 24 nov. 13
Capitol Hill: An Insider’s Guide–Dr. Rodney Whitlock,
Health Policy Director, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
In addition to my work here at the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, I am also a graduate student at
George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, pursuing a Master’s in
Legislative Affairs. This program has afforded me many wonderful opportunities thus far, including
the chance to learn from long time Hill staffers (not to mention a Congressman, Rep. Adrian Smith of
Nebraska, who co-taught one of my courses last spring).
I am continuously amazed at those House and Senate staffers whom I have met and learned from so
far, as they really are the glue that holds Congress together. They work extremely long hours, often for
incredibly low pay, and for the most part they are doing it because they believe in government service
and know that the roles that they play, though generally unseen, are vital to the function of the
legislative branch and our nation. They do the research, answer the correspondence from constituents,
they run the errands, they write the speeches, and in many cases draft the legislation; without them
Congress would cease to function (and it does function—sometimes better than others—but it does
function, regardless of what is often portrayed).
Given the important role played by staff members at all levels in Congress, and given the fact that I
W. Genieys, Operationalizing Programmatic Elites Research in America, OPERA : ANR-­‐08-­‐BLAN-­‐0032. 2 have unique access to some of those staffers, I thought it would be interesting to interview one of them
to discuss their job, how they ended up in DC, and how aware they are of the history of Congress as
they go about their daily business.
Rodney Whitlock, the Director of Health Policy for Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), is currently one
of my professors at GSPM (this is my second class with him), and he graciously agreed to be the first
volunteer in what will hopefully be a series of such interviews I’d like to conduct with both staffers
and members of Congress for our blog. He and I sat down on Friday, November 18th for a one-on-one
chat, and I think you will find his answers both interesting and entertaining...enjoy!
JH: What is your name and title?
RW: Rodney Whitlock, Health Policy Director for Senator Chuck Grassley, Adjunct faculty member
in both George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, and in the
Department of Health Policy in GW’s medical school.
JH: Where did you go to college (undergrad and graduate) and what did you earn your degrees in?
RW: Undergraduate was Roanoke College in Salem, VA and I was a Political Science and
International Relations double major.
I got a Master’s in Political Science from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC and a PhD in
Political Science from the University of Georgia...Go Dawgs.
JH: Were you always interested in working in DC and in government/politics ? If not, what had you
originally intended to do with your life and how did you end up here in DC ?
RW: No, I didn’t plan on this path...I had planned on being in my 20th year on a faculty of a small
college somewhere in America by now, but there were no jobs in that field at that point. It was during
the first Bush (George H.W. Bush) recession and so faculty members who should have been retiring at
that point didn’t, and so I volunteered on a congressional campaign; when he won, he asked me to
come with him to DC, and I couldn’t figure out a good reason why not to go, so here I am.
My first job in DC was as this congressman’s (Charlie Norwood) assistant and was his go to on just
about everything and then I moved over exclusively to health care. I eventually moved over to the
Senate Finance Committee where I worked for Senator Grassley and then I moved here to his personal
office.
JH: What is your favorite kind of history and favorite historical period ?
RW: In thinking back to my undergraduate history courses, I always found World War Two history to
be most interesting. Also, post-WWII America, which flows somewhat into what I’m teaching now. I
had a professor of history in college who used baseball as a metaphor for post-WWII America and the
changes it underwent. All the baseball teams in 1946 were located in the upper-right hand corner of
our country...the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns were as far west as teams were then. There
weren’t any southern teams either. But as things kept developing across the western and southern parts
of the country, more baseball teams sprang up too.
I always enjoy the use of metaphor and analogy as a teaching tool because it makes better sense in my
head, as well.
JH: Yeah, when I was teaching I always tried to incorporate metaphors and anecdotes as often asI
could because it helped my students make those connections too. Great...OK, next question. How
conscious are you of the history of Congress in your job?
RW: Because this body is built on precedents and precedents are a part of history, you can’t possibly
ignore it. That is something that on that level, none of us get very far away from the history, if you are
W. Genieys, Operationalizing Programmatic Elites Research in America, OPERA : ANR-­‐08-­‐BLAN-­‐0032. 3 defining it in those terms.
There’s a George Santayana quote that is a good way of putting it: “Those who do not remember the
past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.” I’d like to think a lot of us here keep that in
mind...because it’s what we do. Very little new goes on here...it’s all built off of what previously
happened and if you don’t pay attention to that you’re going to make the same mistakes.
Since 1980, the Democrats have held the House, Senate, and White House (simultaneously) for only
four of those nearly 32 years—two year stretches twice. I think that the two year limit they ran into
were both under very similar circumstances. And I don’t think I’m being partisan with that, more like
stating relative fact.
The other thing on the historical side that you can’t miss in this joint is that every member is in a line
behind someone else who used to serve here before them. Every desk in the Senate was sat in by
somebody else. This place...I described this to my brother’s in-laws in Canada. I described it by saying
that I work at an active museum—this is both an office and museum all at the same time. You have to
have serious blinders on not to realize that.
You guys (meaning USCHS) do a great job...I was wandering over to Rayburn one day to meet
someone and they called to say they were going to be late, and so I started to wander the hallways of
the Capitol more slowly and looking at some things along the way. There was a photo of a dirigible
landing on the East Lawn. But the dome is still the same dome and the staircase is still the same
staircase.
I’ve traveled to Japan and I was struck by the “oldness” of things there. There are places there where
you have centuries of undisturbed history—not so much in America. But this, the Capitol, is one place
here that you have that level of history. You don’t have that in most other places in this country. You
have to actively try to ignore the history here to miss it.
JH: Now you have kind of already touched upon this next question with the answer you just gave, but
how do you, for a lack of a better word, “interact” with history on a regular basis in your job?
RW: In as much as you respect the history, you know the history, I think it’s something that helps you
focus on what you do. You don’t want to be a tourist in your own job. You don’t want to be wrapped
up in your own supposed self-importance that you lose touch with what you’re doing here. It really is
something to see the paintings of Clay and Calhoun and La Follette...all the people that came before
us. The focus is that just because you’re doing this, it doesn’t make you important. People have done
this for decades even centuries before you, so just shut up and do your job. It helps you refocus on
what you do which is important, I think, not who you are.
JH: Alright, so, what is your favorite story or anecdote about congressional history or a congressman
that you’ve heard since coming to work on the Hill?
RW: OK, so it was the Patient’s
Bill of Rights days, probably sometime in 2000, and we were sitting in the Speaker’s lobby which will
live in infamy” photo on the wall there that started a conversation. And so John Dingell pipes up that
he was on the floor of the House for that speech by FDR and I was like “no way...holy cow.” It’s that
kind of connection where you have this historical lion of the Congress and the most important event of
the 20th century—the bombing of Pearl Harbor leading to our entry into WWII—and that connection
is right there in from of you...it’s absolutely jaw-dropping.
JH: Wow, that’s awesome. We just gave Dingell and Inouye our Freedom Award last night [November
17th] and they both spoke–it was great. OK, what is your proudest moment working in government?
**Whitlock prefaced his answer by explaining that that is a word—proud or pride—that can make a
lot of people on the Hill uncomfortable, simply because it is service and they’re not there to stand
back and look at what they’ve done and feel self-important**
RW: For me, it’s every day. That if you believe that the job we do here is service, and you’re doing
W. Genieys, Operationalizing Programmatic Elites Research in America, OPERA : ANR-­‐08-­‐BLAN-­‐0032. 4 something to make the world better—and this can mean the world at-large or the world of an
individual—that even though I may not succeed every day, but I at least come to work trying to
achieve the goal of trying to make somebody’s world a better place.
A very specific moment that I’ll throw out...the day Norwood (Congressman Charlie Norwood, R-GA)
passed away. I walked over to his office to join my former colleagues in mourning. And while I didn’t
actually work for him anymore, there was somewhat of a chaotic situation there, I picked up a ringing
phone and said, “This is Charlie Norwood’s office.” Just because I was part of something in his 12
years in office, it was just something...I think we, we had a lot of good times together. There was just
some level of closure for me, having been there on day one, answering the phone, and then doing it
there again an hour after he passed.
JH: I really like that story...thanks. OK, last one...if you were trying to inspire young high school and
college students to come to work in government, what would you tell them? Especially since so much
of the media coverage of Congress tends to focus on the negative and the hyper- partisanship rather
than on anything positive, which could serve to turn some of them off from wanting to pursue such a
career down the road.
RW: I do think there is, I mean, the core concept here is service. From the members to the folks
answering the phones, we are all serving in a representative government. And no amount of barking
and yelling that you will see and hear on CNN, FOX, or MSNBC makes this place any less of a
representative government than it was during the 1st Congress. So, if you believe in service and you
want to be involved in public policy, turn off the TV.
JH: (Laughing) Yes, I’m sure that would definitely help! Well, that’s it, thanks so much for doing this.
I really enjoyed getting a chance to sit down for a one-on-one interview with someone who has
basically seen it all in his years on Capitol Hill. I was very intrigued as well as inspired by many of his
answers; I found him to almost be reassuring at a time when it does become all too easy to only see
what doesn’t work or what is wrong with the institution of Congress, rather than the good it does on a
daily basis, exemplified by the work done by Rodney Whitlock and the tens of thousands of hardworking staffers just like him.
Hopefully, you have all enjoyed this exchange, and I hope you found it both entertaining and
insightful. Congress is an institution, and as such it requires far more work and man power than just
the 535 members of the House and the Senate in order to carry out its daily business, something that
can be too easily forgotten these days.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on this interview and any other ideas you may have for future
ones. Next week, we’ll be posting an interview with Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) as the second
in this new series so be sure to keep an eye out for that.
Source : http://uschs.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/capitol-hill-an-insiders-guide/, consulté le 28 oct. 13
Sources additionnelles :
CQ PRESS first street ; LinkedIn.
W. Genieys, Operationalizing Programmatic Elites Research in America, OPERA : ANR-­‐08-­‐BLAN-­‐0032. 5