Inside the Beltway

Rocking the nation

He might not be the most popular Republican among conservatives, but Sen. John McCain of Arizona is a favorite among young Americans.

One day after Mr. McCain went on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” to say regarding the filibuster struggle that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee “couldn’t quite carry it off” (the Republican said the far right and far left were interested only in “a battle to win supremacy,” not the fight over judges), we learned yesterday that he’s been chosen to receive Rock the Vote’s 2005 “Rock the Nation” award.

Other honorees at the June 8 awards gala will be former President Bill Clinton, who will receive the group’s lifetime achievement award, Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, and the band Black Eyed Peas.

Founded in 1990, Rock the Vote’s mission is to build “political power” for young Americans. Last year, 4.5 million more 18- to 29-year-olds voted than in 2000.

Help me, Rhonda

President Bush this week named Rhonda Keenum as White House director of public liaison — on top of everything else.

“She is living the life of a four-armed circus act,” says one acquaintance, observing that in the past year Mrs. Keenum and her husband, Mark Keenum, chief of staff to Sen. Thad Cochran, Mississippi Republican, became the proud parents of triplets — Katie, Rett and Mary Phillips.

How do they do it?

“We just do it, we don’t ask questions,” Mr. Keenum says of the couple’s hat trick, born on Sept. 17, 2004. “We have good help, but it takes the two of us when we are both there.”

Most recently, Mrs. Keenum served as assistant secretary for trade promotion and director general of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service, where she managed operations assisting U.S. companies in exporting and succeeding in global markets. Prior to joining the Bush administration, she was senior vice president of Edelman Public Relations.

Pipes and piano

That was White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and other Washington dignitaries filing past four spirited bagpipers — flown in hours earlier from Jordan — into the Great Hall of the Library of Congress for the 59th Independence Day celebration of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Story Continues →