Although critics have called his tactics too confrontational, he has earned the respect of his counterpart on the Democratic side, Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Conference.  "I consider Adam one of the best Republicans," Mr. Emanuel said. "I think he's a worthy opponent. He does his homework. He doesn't just get up there and wing it. He knows his stuff. He's a sharp communicator."  Mr. Putnam was out front again this week as House Republicans closed ranks against the Democratic leadership's proposal to tie emergency financing for the war in Iraq to a timeline for withdrawal. The bill narrowly passed along party lines.  But he concedes that his job has become increasingly difficult with the spate of problems afflicting the Bush administration. "When those guys mess up, it taints all of us," he said.  The future prospects of his party in Congress rest in no small measure on how he handles the challenge, and he is candid in his description of Republican failings.  "We were tied up in our own petty issues," he said. "Middle Americans stopped listening to us."  Among Mr. Putnam's priorities, he said, are "turning the lights back on in the idea factory" and getting the Republican message out in an age in which the methods of communication are evolving.  It would be a daunting task for even the most seasoned member of Congress to turn Republican fortunes around, let alone the second-youngest representative. (Patrick McHenry, 31, a North Carolina Republican, is the youngest.)  Mr. Putnam's opponents have sought over the years to use his age against him. Mr. Putnam, who is from a wealthy citrus-farming and cattle-ranching family in Bartow, Fla., first ran for public office as a 21-year-old. He beat a 69-year-old opponent who used Mr. Putnam's 10th-grade yearbook picture in campaign literature and accused him of wanting to go from the "frat house to the State House."  After four years in the Florida House of Representatives, he decided to run for Congress upon discovering that several older potential candidates had no interest in the job. Again, his opponent made his youth an issue.  "They never said, 'He's too young,' " Mr. Putnam said. "The code words were, 'He doesn't have enough life experience.' "  He won handily, and on the day he was sworn in, Mr. Putnam recalled, he rushed up the front steps of the Capitol, only to have a police officer grab him by the shoulder. The officer gestured at the Congressional pin on his lapel and demanded: "Where'd you get that pin?"  "I worked very hard for that pin," Mr. Putnam responded.  The police officer realized his mistake: "You must be the new kid from Florida we've been hearing about."  The new kid gained traction early. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert asked him to organize a weekly meeting of a small cadre of backbenchers, dubbed the "Putnam Group."  "He's a fresh face for us," Mr. Hastert said. "He's got an ability to talk to people, to listen, to deal with problems in a common-sense way."  Representative C. W. Bill Young, 76, the Republican elder statesman of the Florida delegation, said Mr. Putnam had the potential to become House speaker.  "If I stay around long enough," Mr. Young said, "I'm going to vote for him."  Married and the father of four, Mr. Putnam began his climb up the leadership chain early last year during the Republican shake-up after Majority Leader Tom Delay's resignation. Mr. Putnam became policy chairman of the Republican Conference and, less than a year later, with Democratic takeover of Congressional leadership, he moved up to become conference chairman, edging out Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia by a handful of votes.  He quickly ran into controversy when he waged a full-throated attack against Ms. Pelosi's use of a military transport jet — larger than the plane used by her predecessor, Mr. Hastert — to fly between California and Washington, accusing her of "an arrogance of extravagance."  It turned out that the House sergeant of arms, not Ms. Pelosi, had asked for the plane because of the distance involved. Mr. Putnam remains unapologetic, saying he was only responding to news reports.  "I always thought it was reporters' jobs to confirm their stories," he said.  The episode earned him the enmity of the speaker's office, as well as others who accused him of partisan showboating.  "It is up to Congressman Putnam's constituents to decide if he is an effective representative," said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, "but a key question to ask is whether his priorities are delivering for his district, helping our troops in Iraq and our veterans, or trying to get his name in the newspaper by resorting to cheap partisan tactics and over-the-top rhetoric. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be the case."  Another seminal moment for Mr. Putnam was the House debate over the nonbinding resolution on President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq. As the chairman of the Republican Conference, he distributed talking points, set up a rapid-response room to challenge Democratic assertions and coordinated a succession of speakers.  Although Republicans lost the vote, Mr. Putnam insisted that they had "won the debate" and now takes special glee in Democratic fractiousness over the war.  He is merciless in his criticism of the Iraq bill that Democrats passed Friday, calling the vote "little more than a political charade and an exercise in arm-twisting."  "The Democratic leadership has turned the people's house into a personal bazaar of horse-trading and wheeling and dealing," he said at a session with reporters last week. "What is the point here? What purpose are we serving?"  Clad in a navy-blue suit, his slim frame relaxed, he seemed in his element as he dished out another biting soliloquy about his Democratic colleagues, his age forgotten in the moment.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A23 of the National edition with the headline: A Republican Up-and-Comer Vows to Revive His Party. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
At 32, Representative Adam H. Putnam, Republican of Florida, has become the unlikely mouthpiece for the beleaguered minority in the House.