Congressman Mike Conaway - 11th District of Texas

Washington, Jan 3, 2007 - Swearing in congressman Mike Conaway on a national day of mourning for President Ford, U.S. District Judge Robert Junell said Ford "would have approved" because the Tuesday mock ceremony represented business of the late longtime Michigan congressman's beloved House of Representatives.

With 75 spectators watching in Junell's courtroom in the George Mahon Federal Building, the judge opened the 4 p.m. event by joking he considered the alternative of holding it in his Pecos courtroom.

"But a number of you said you didn't want to drive to Pecos," Junell quipped.

He acknowledged Conaway's wife Suzanne, daughter Stephanie Kidwell and mother Jean Conaway of Odessa before swearing in the Midland Republican to his second two-year term. The ceremony officially will be repeated Thursday in Washington.

During a 4:30 p.m. reception at Hilton Midland Plaza, Conaway said the Capitol of Ford's 1949-'73 congressional service was more conducive to bipartisanship in part because air travel was more difficult then and representatives stayed in Washington more.

As a result, he said, their coaching of youth athletics together, socializing and becoming friends led to more collegiality in their work.

Conaway said after taking his oath "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," that members like Ford laid the groundwork for today's federal legislators, whose work "affects lives in Midland and the nation and sometimes across the world.

"We see far into the future because we stand on the shoulders of giants," he said.

Ford was Republican minority leader when appointed vice president in 1973 to replace Spiro Agnew, who had been indicted for taking bribes while governor of Maryland, and assumed the presidency when President Nixon resigned the next year in the Watergate scandal's culmination. Conaway said he hopes for improved bipartisanship as Democrats take control of the House and Senate.

As the 239th of only 246 people who have served in Congress since Texas joined the Union in 1845, he said, he has been able to do things he could only have done while representing the 11th Congressional District, including visiting American troops four times in Iraq and once in Afghanistan and meeting Cuban officials in Havana.

If people in the courtroom had had those experiences, he said, "You would come back and love this country even more than you already do. I'm proud we still produce really hard men and women who stand between us and our enemies."

Conaway reported telling President Bush in an early December visit to the White House with other Armed Services Committee members that the "war on terror" is mis-named.

He said "war on global jihadists" would be better because it more accurately identifies the enemy.