Bruce Reed: Head in D.C., but heart never left Coeur d'Alene

COEUR d’ALENE — Imagine routinely reporting to work in the West Wing of the White House, right above the Oval Office and conferring nearly every day with the most influential man in the world.

Such was the case for Coeur d’Alene High School graduate Bruce Reed, who served two terms as chief domestic policy adviser for former President Bill Clinton. A young, adolescent-looking Reed worked with Clinton on such weighty topics as welfare reform, crime reduction and balancing the budget.

It was a time, he said, that still seems like a dream.

“Walking through the gates of the White House is the greatest privilege in the world,” he said.

Yet Reed, a 56-year-old father of two, is anxious to leave the power and perils of the Beltway and return to his western roots.

Reed was born in Boise while his father, Scott, served a brief stint as an assistant U.S. attorney. He then moved as a toddler with his sister, Tara, and his cause-oriented, political-activist parents to Coeur d’Alene.

Reed was baptized into the sphere of Democratic Party politics early. When he was 8, he worked on his first campaign, for former U.S. Sen. Frank Church.

“My mom (former state Sen. Mary Lou) didn’t become a candidate until my sister and I left the house, but she liked to run everybody else’s campaign,” he said. “So she had us knocking on doors from an early age. I worked at every county fair trying to hand out Democratic bumper stickers to guys in pickup trucks. I learned about rejection right away.”

Still, the thrill of political battle got into his blood and became the first of two motivations that would drive his future.

The second was writing. For as long as he can remember, Reed wanted to be a journalist. He and his sister produced a couple neighborhood newspapers when he was 12, and he focused on writing all the way through public school beginning in the sixth grade.

It was also in the sixth grade that he met his future wife, Bonnie LePard.

“She was very popular so she didn’t get around to going out with me until we were juniors in high school,” he said.

Reed said he didn’t land in Coeur d’Alene by accident. As a young couple, his parents traveled the Pacific Northwest in search of the most beautiful place they could find. They arrived in Coeur d’Alene, swam in the lake, and cast a permanent anchor.

“It was the greatest possible place to grow up because there was so much to do,” Reed said, noting not much of that appeal has changed in his mind.

“It was a better-kept secret back then, but it’s all pretty much the same,” he said. “It’s always been a small town where everybody was glad to be and nobody was in a hurry to leave. It was easy to get to know everybody but big enough to have a wide range of friends.”

Reed spent his summers playing Little League baseball and flag football or going on fishing trips all over the state with his father. And, of course, campaigning for one political candidate or another at his mother’s behest. In winter, he played hockey on the lake.

“My dad taught me how to fall through the ice and survive,” he said. “So I was a big skater.”

Reed said he was the captain of the hockey team in graduate school though he never mastered a slap shot, because if you tried that on Lake Coeur d’Alene the puck would most likely sail into the unfrozen water of Casco Bay.

At CHS, he played on the tennis team, served as student body president and graduated in 1978 as a valedictorian, Bonnie as salutatorian.

“The teachers were great,” he said. “It was the kind of place where you could push yourself as far as you wanted to go.”

With an eye still on journalism, Reed attended prestigious Princeton University, which had a reputation for a fabulous writing school.

He graduated and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Reed headed to Oxford University in England.

“Personally, it was a fabulous experience,” he said. “Living outside the country and having a chance to travel and having more time to think about what I wanted to do with my life before I actually had to do it.”

Halfway through the experience, Reed returned to Idaho and married Bonnie.

He graduated with a master's degree in English, “which meant I was virtually unemployable.”

The Reeds flew in 1982 to the East Coast where Bonnie enrolled at New York University’s law school and he searched in vain for a job as a magazine journalist.

So Reed decided to meld his two professional passions and head in a different direction. He sent queries to U.S. senators and got a response from a newly elected Al Gore from Tennessee. Reed suddenly had a job and a future in politics at the highest level.

He wrote speeches for Gore for five years. In 1988 Gore decided to run for president against Michael Dukakis and Jessie Jackson for the Democratic nomination.

“We finished third. It wasn’t a very good campaign, but I was totally addicted by presidential campaign politics,” he said. “So I began looking for another candidate.”

Through his involvement with the Democratic Leadership Council, Reed met Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, joined his team in 1990 and moved to Little Rock where they launched a presidential campaign.

In 1992 Reed was assigned to the campaign plane, “so I traveled all over the country campaigning with Clinton,” he said. “When he was elected, my first two bosses wound up being president and vice president of the United States.”

Reed stays in touch with Clinton, and in fact refers to himself as a “Clinton lifer.”

“He was the most gifted politician I’ve ever seen. Working on policy for him was like sitting on the bench and watching Babe Ruth,” he said. “He’s an incredible speaker and thinker and strategist. A natural.”

One of Reed’s proudest White House memories is standing in the Rose Garden and watching the Welfare Reform Act, which he crafted for Clinton, being signed into law.

Reed has since worked for national foundations and served two years as Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff. But it’s time for a change, he said.

“We never expected to stay back East as long as we have. We thought we were just passing through town in Washington,” he said. “We’re coming back here some day. There’s nothing like August in Coeur d’Alene and there’s no better place to spend Christmas. We still get together with friends from high school.

“Our kids, who we denied the privilege of growing up in a beautiful place like this, have adopted Idaho as their home state. We live in D.C., but they consider themselves Idahoans.”

Reed figures he has bragging rights about his origins and doesn’t hesitate to tout the Northwest.

“We’re thrilled every time Boise State or Gonzaga show the rest of the country how it’s done.”

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Know a longtime local we should feature? Send your suggestions to Ric Clarke at clarke_ric@yahoo.com.