Looking at their voting records, there’s little to differentiate Rep. Mac Thornberry from his fellow conservative Texas Republicans. Like them, he votes against cloning and gay marriage, for tax cuts and to fund the troops in Iraq.

But the 49-year-old Panhandle congressman is more focused on the long term than members who live for the day-to-day, and he’s trying in small ways to surmount today’s bitter partisanship.

“He’s a good, reliable party vote for the Republicans, but he doesn’t have that attack mentality,” said Rep. Sylvestre Reyes of El Paso, a Democrat who serves with Thornberry on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committee.

That attitude has enabled him to build bridges across party lines, much as Texas lawmakers often did a generation ago.

Before 9/11, Thornberry sponsored the first bill to create a Homeland Security Department. These days, he’s seeking greater inter-agency cooperation in the government’s national security apparatus.

It’s not precisely a role one would naturally expect from the son and grandson of cattle ranchers, but it’s one he has sought since he became fascinated with military history in high school.

After college (Texas Tech) and law school (University of Texas), he headed for Washington, hoping to work for a Texas congressman on defense issues.

He landed a job with Rep. Tom Loeffler, then an influential member of the GOP leadership, later worked for Rep. Larry Combest and ended up on the congressional liaison staff of the Reagan State Department.

In 1994, he rode the GOP wave to unseat Democrat Bill Sarpalius. He got on the Armed Services Committee and, later, the Intelligence Committee. When Republicans held the House, he was often asked to preside over debates, a sign of respect for his abilities.

Though he backs the war, he supports greater diplomatic efforts and is frustrated with both sides in the battle over funding.

“We’re looking for a face-saving compromise in Washington,” he said. “It’s not a very good basis for future national security policy.”

So he spends a fair amount of time, seeking to engage both Democratic and Republican colleagues in discussions that go beyond the immediate issues being addressed in the day’s legislative battles.

“I’ve always been drawn to the longer-term national security issues because that’s where our national security is decided, not the day-to-day votes that we have or the press releases we put out,” Thornberry said.

Reyes praised his chairmanship of an intelligence panel that studied the treatment of terrorist prisoners at Guantanamo.

“Invariably, there were debates on issues – some more controversial than the others, some more political than others,” said Reyes, who now chairs the full intelligence committee. “Mac is pretty much down the middle. He has a very analytical approach to these things, and his reputation for working hard and working on these issues in a serious way is very helpful.”

In his committee work and on such ad hoc groups as the anti-terrorism caucus, Thornberry said he tries to put “small, noncontroversial things” into bills and to seek out like-minded people.

He cited his amendment to the intelligence authorization bill to require a specific list of the Arabic speakers assigned to various jobs.

“They don’t know how many there are,” he said. “How can you have an understanding of a place and a culture if you don’t start out with that basic understanding?”

In the defense authorization bill, he proposed funding private think tank studies on ways to improve inter-agency cooperation.

Similarly, in a recent article in the Ripon Forum, which bills itself as the “conscience of the Republican Party,” he urged creation of a nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Strategic Communication to spur private efforts to work with government to shape global attitudes.

He certainly has his anti-war critics. Americans Against Escalation in Iraq said his votes to back Mr. Bush make him an administration “lap dog.”

That’s not likely to be a problem for him since he won last year with nearly 75 percent of the vote.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. His e-mail address is: [email protected].