Warren Rudman: Gramm-Rudman, David Souter, and the Hart-Rudman Warning

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Warren B. Rudman was born in Boston in 1930 to a family of Jewish immigrants from Germany, Poland, and Russia and spent most of his life in New Hampshire, settling in Hollis. He attended Valley Forge Military Academy and Syracuse University, earned a Bronze Star as an Army captain in the Korean War, and graduated from Boston College Law School in 1960. By 1970 he was New Hampshire's attorney general. In 1980 he defeated Democratic Senator John Durkin, who resigned days early so Rudman could take office before the new year.

In the Senate Rudman paired fiscal and defense conservatism with support for abortion rights and gay rights and opposition to a school prayer amendment. He co-authored the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, whose sequester forced automatic cuts when deficit targets were missed, and served as vice chairman of the Iran-Contra committee. With White House chief of staff John Sununu, he promoted his friend David Souter for the First Circuit and then the Supreme Court, later writing that he suspected Souter would not be the conservative the Bush administration expected. After leaving the Senate, he co-chaired the Hart-Rudman Commission, which warned of a mass casualty terrorist attack on U.S. soil before September 11. He died of lymphoma in Washington in November 2012.

• Bill Clinton offered him the post of Treasury Secretary in 1994 to replace Lloyd Bentsen.
• Ross Perot sought him as a running mate in 1996, and John Kerry put him on his 2004 vice presidential shortlist.
• He chaired the President's Intelligence Advisory Board under Clinton and George W. Bush and received the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001.
• At Paul, Weiss he represented Carlos Hank Rhon and obtained a letter from Janet Reno disavowing a National Drug Intelligence Center report on the Hank family.
• He co-chaired the Albright Stonebridge Group with Madeleine Albright and sat on the boards of Raytheon and Boston Scientific.