FISHING FOR CONVERTS

By JAMES CARNEY/WASHINGTON

Dick Armey, who emerged last week as Washington's biggest obstacle to a minimum-wage increase, is the kind of guy Americans say they want in Congress. After 11 years in Washington, the former economics professor still drives his Ford pickup to work, refuses to wear a tuxedo to obligatory gala dinners and is a connoisseur of drive-through meals, which he devours between meetings in his north Dallas district. (McDonald's hamburgers are more efficient than Wendy's, Armey says, because "they don't drip.") He is as likely to quote Popeye--"I yam what I yam," he told a town-hall gathering in April--as his idol, Nobel-prizewinning economist Milton Friedman. And as a devout libertarian conservative, the House majority leader steers by strong convictions--against farm subsidies, in favor of opening U.S. borders to more immigrants--even when those convictions put him at odds with some of his party's powerful interest groups.

Most politicians in Armey's position would have mellowed by now. Earlier this year, Newt Gingrich put Armey in day-to-day charge of legislation, in part because the Speaker's high negative ratings were dragging down House Republicans as well as their party. But as Armey proved last week, when he rallied conservative Republicans behind his opposition to the minimum wage, the Texan sees more virtue in taking a stand than in compromising. The leader's job normally goes to someone with patience, flexible principles and an instinct for horse trading. In other words, it's not an obvious assignment for Armey, an ideological purist with a reputation for razor-edged one-liners who says he would much rather go bass fishing than spend another hour negotiating with President Clinton. On a recent visit to his district, Armey hopped from town-hall meetings to Rotary Club luncheons, warning his constituents to expect the worst out of Washington this spring and summer. "You're gonna be frustrated," Armey told a group of military academy alumni in Irving, Texas. "We'll argue all year long."

In Armey's overwhelmingly Republican district of affluent suburbs that sprawl like a cattle drive across Red River valley farmland, that kind of talk usually goes down well. At a town-hall meeting, Armey, dressed in his trademark dark suit and cowboy boots, got riled when an atypical constituent accused him of gutting environmental-protection laws in order to give corporate polluters a break. "I'm not gonna take a lecture that I need to compromise," Armey fired back. "I've got compromise fatigue." The voter was booed down.

Armey, who grew up on a farm in North Dakota, has a long history of going his own way. When he was 18, he ignored the recommendation of some high school teachers, enrolled in small Jamestown College in North Dakota and went on to earn a doctorate in economics at the University of Oklahoma. In what he describes as "a terrible period in my life," he butted heads with liberal faculty members at several universities before successfully running for Congress in 1984 as a political amateur against a popular incumbent. After a rocky start (he tried bunking in the House gym to save money until he was ejected by Speaker Tip O'Neill), Armey first showed talent as a legislator in 1987 when he won bipartisan support for a bill establishing an independent commission to recommend military bases for closing. He rose so rapidly through his party's ranks that after the 1994 elections, he ran unopposed for the job of majority leader. But he continued to show a defiant streak, sometimes to the point of crudeness. He has suggested that Hillary Clinton was a "Marxist," told Democrats in the House that Bill Clinton was "your President" and (he says unintentionally) referred to an openly gay colleague, Representative Barney Frank, as "Barney Fag."

Yet Armey is too skillful a legislator to stand by his all-or-nothing creed to the point of coming up empty-handed. Despite his vociferous opposition to agricultural subsidies, Armey agreed to the recently passed farm bill, even though it maintained federal payments to big sugar companies. "I had to take what I could get," he says. And he has even come to appreciate Dole, Washington's master deal cutter. "One reason is because my daddy raised me around workhorses and not show horses," Armey said at one of his recent district meetings. "I have come to like Bob Dole."

Before his stand on the minimum wage, some conservatives were grousing that Armey was selling out the revolution by deferring to Dole. But whether his critics are conservatives or moderates, Armey never doubts himself. "I don't do stress," he tells voters. Well, he may not feel it, but he knows how to give it to his party.