Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress (40 page)

On the Hill, it seems, every politician carries with them the circumstances of their election. It haunts them like a trauma, like a childhood of abuse. Even if they’re not conscious of it, they remember where every campaign check and endorsement came from, and they never forget their enemies. While they have one eye on their reelection, they inevitably have the other on their back.

When Minnie ran for Congress as the self-made wife of a factory worker, she had few established players in her corner. A lot of politicians have a vast army of power brokers backing them: big businesses, alumni associations, interest groups, trade associations: more than a few candidates actually run for office with a sense of entitlement.

By contrast, when Minnie declared she was running for Congress, even though she was ahead in the polls, the head of the Democratic Party in her own district tried to bully her out of running.

“The unions here don’t want a skirt representing them,” he told her bluntly. “Go to Washington, and mark my words: you’ll get no support from us, and your husband will leave you.”

Until the fund-raising group Emily’s List stepped in, most of the support Minnie received was grassroots: a coffee klatch here, a PTA there. Meanwhile, opponents from her own party literally went through her trash, looking for anything personal she might have scribbled on statehouse letterhead so they could claim she abused the privileges of her public office.

As Minnie’s campaign struggled to kick into high gear, Vicki and Edna were moving to the Sunbelt. When Minnie called them in tears one evening at their motel, they literally turned their U-Haul around and returned to the Midwest. After that, they pretty much lived at campaign headquarters, straightening out Minnie’s budget, running to the printers for extra bumper stickers, organizing chicken dinner fund-raisers. During Minnie’s moments of exhaustion and insecurity at two o’clock in the morning, it was Vicki and Edna who sent out for pizza, held her hand, and told her bad jokes. Their loyalty was bulletproof.

So it was no surprise to me that Minnie wanted them beside her in the foxholes of Washington. Managerially, it was a terrible decision, of course. But as I sat in the Hawk ‘n’ Dove after work, watching boyish Hill staffers in suspenders smoke cigars and slap each other on the back shouting, “Dude, that Contract with America is awesome!” I knew I’d probably have done the same thing.

And Minnie was hardly alone. I quickly learned of two other freshman members who’d hired their best friends, too. In the viper pit of Washington—where your enemies pay good money to “negative research firms” to dig up dirt on you, where any misstep can land you before a phalanx of television cameras, and where your own young, ambitious staffers are often using their jobs as springboards to higher places—hiring trusted friends doesn’t strike some people as unethical but as a sheer necessity if they ever want to get a good night’s sleep.

While my office mates complained about their powerlessness in the office, I, as a writer, was pretty much used to it. Editors almost never took my suggestions, and after I wrote the articles they assigned me, they went ahead and cut them up any way they wanted, then waited until the next vernal equinox to pay me. Unlike my office mates, who had dreams of law school, White House jobs, or running for public office themselves, the only reasons I’d taken the job with Minnie were to impress people at cocktail parties, live out some high-minded ideals, and bore the hell out of my progeny. Once Vicki and Edna realized that I was playing for their team exclusively, I figured they’d get off my back. Until then, I just concentrated on my work.

The first week, Minnie telephoned me from the House floor. “I’m speaking in ten minutes,” she said. “Can you find me a pithy quote about power and responsibility that I can use to spice up my remarks?”

Since we didn’t have Internet access yet, I flipped open our one quotation book. In no time, I found a brilliant line.

There was just one small problem.

It was by Richard Nixon.

Then I found second great quote.

This one was by Machiavelli.

Although Machiavelli has some huge fans on Capitol Hill, I suspected he wasn’t quite the person Minnie wanted to be heard quoting on the House floor.

The third quote I found was the best yet: a real gem, short, powerful, and eloquent.

Unfortunately, this one was attributed to Adolf Hitler.

“So what?” Kiran cried. “Minnie can just say, ‘As a politician once said …’ She doesn’t have to name names. Who’s going to know she’s quoting Hitler?”

Zachary looked at Kiran in amazement. “Only every fucking Nazi, Klansman, and Aryan Nation yahoo in the entire country, you fucking moron.”

“Plus,” said Lee diplomatically, “I could see where some Jews and World War Two veterans might recognize it and get a little upset.”

Minnie called me back. “Did you find anything yet? Whatever you do, make sure it’s nonpartisan.”

In the end, the best I could find was a quote by Harry Truman, whom even the Republicans seemed enamored with. Even so, we got an irate phone call afterward from a constituent who wanted to know why Minnie had been on C-SPAN quoting “that degenerate fag novelist.” Apparently, the caller had confused President Truman with Truman Capote.

These were the type of people we were dealing with back in the district. Every day, we got bags full of letters, many of which had all the cheerfulness and penmanship of ransom notes. It seemed that anyone who had enough time to write their congressperson was almost, by definition, someone with way too much free time. We heard disproportionately from retired people, schoolchildren, conspiracy theorists, and the criminally insane. While the schoolchildren’s letters were charming, we rarely answered them since children don’t vote. The others tended to consist of laundry lists of misery. People would write demanding that Minnie do something about the industrial incinerator next door to their property, the potholes in their driveway, their children’s dilapidated schools, the pornography at their local video store, the noise emanating from the airport, the lack of affordable housing, and the high cost of health insurance. They would then conclude their letters by writing, “But above all else, I want you to lower my taxes. The government sucks. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I vote for any of you lying, thieving bastards.”

We’d have to log these letters in a database and respond with a form letter, thanking them “for sharing your valuable opinion with the congresswoman.”

Since Minnie had instructed me to “communicate to constituents on their level,” I tried to figure out exactly what this “level” was. While I made sure to slog through the
Congressional Record,
the
Congressional Quarterly,
and
Roll Call
each day in order to understand what was going on in Congress, I spent the remainder of my time boning up on those things that seemed to be of far greater interest to our constituents: namely, soap operas. I then followed up with a healthy dose of
Ricki Lake, Geraldo,
and
Sally Jesse Raphael,
then an intensive reading of the
National Enquirer, TV Guide,
and
People
magazine, before finally finishing off with a perusal of the Fingerhut catalogue.

For the first month or two, this strategy seemed to work. I not only figured out the difference between things like mandatory and discretionary spending, but how to explain them to voters in clear, simple, language.
(Mandatory spending is a fixed, regular expense
—
like your rent or car payments. Discretionary spending is what you decide to buy with whatever’s left of your paycheck.)
However, the more I began to think like our constituents, the less I cared about House legislation and the more I became invested in what was going on between Alan and Monica Quartermaine on
General Hospital.
While I still couldn’t name the head of the House Ways and Means Committee or explain how a filibuster worked, I did learn everything there was to know about Kathie Lee Gifford’s new spring sportswear line, the hidden dangers of liposuction, and how a kitten, a vacuum cleaner, and a parakeet could make for one uproariously wacky home video. In less than three months, I went from being a know-nothing to a total moron.

Ironically, while working on the Hill is never easy, I found that it was particularly difficult working for somebody who’d been elected to Congress largely because of her contempt for it.

One of the first things Minnie did upon arriving in Washington was to pledge that neither she nor her staff would accept any gifts or perks. At the time, both the House and the Senate were debating a gift ban that limited the freebies Congress could accept from outsiders, but Minnie wasn’t waiting. When the nurses’ union offered to take her to lunch, she declined. When direct mail firms sent her boxes of candy, she mailed them right back. When schoolchildren sent her cookies, she donated them to a local hospital. She was scrupulous. A free junket to Disney World, a round of golf at Pebble Beach, or a steak lunch at the Palm? No thank you. Other members might scarf at the congressional trough, but
she
was not for sale.

Our entire staff was extremely proud of this. Our boss was demonstrating the very strength of character that had inspired us to work for her. We felt righteous. We felt privileged. We felt profoundly just.

That is, until the HÄagen-Dazs lobby arrived.

You didn’t know there was a HÄagen-Dazs lobby? Me neither. Apparently, it’s actually a lobby for dairy subsidies or sugar subsidies or some such thing, but I never learned exactly what because as soon as the lobbyists began wheeling little ice cream carts through the hallways of Longworth and happily handing out as many free chocolate-coated ice cream bars as anyone could carry, they were besieged by staffers. “Ice cream, ice cream!” legislative assistants shrieked to their colleagues. All along the corridors, you could hear staffers yelling, “Gotta go!” then hanging up on constituents in mid-sentence in order to dash out of their offices and chase after the ice cream cart. “OhmyGod. They have a flavor called Dark Belgian Chocolate,” somebody squealed.

“Hey, I’ll trade someone Vanilla with Almonds for a Sorbet and Cream!”

“Let me in! Coming through! I’m an ice cream
specialist!
This is an emergency!” yelled another, barreling into the fray.

The scene was savage. It was hysterical. It brought a whole new level to the term “feeding frenzy.” And Kiran, Lee, Zachary, and I had every intention of joining it.

“Not so fast,” said Vicki, bodily barring the door. “You know the policy. No freebies.”

“But, IT’S ICE CREAM,” we fairly wailed.

“I made a promise,” said Minnie matter-of-factly.

“Have you no heart, woman?” cried Lee, as we watched the entire office across the hall load up on frozen novelties.

“Minnie, for fuck’s sake,” cried Zachary. “For the love of God, let us eat an ice cream bar.”

“Nothing doing,” chuckled Minnie.

“But Minnie, think of it this way: If I was the average voter,” I said, “frankly, I’d be more inclined to vote for you if I knew you were bought and paid for by the ice cream industry.”

“Nice try,” said Minnie, leaning against the door frame.

“You know, this is a violation of our civil rights,” said Kiran. “What happened to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?”

“What happened to you getting back to work?” said Vicki. “That’s it, people, move it upstairs.”

Just then Bruce, my cohort from across the hall, came in with his arms full of ice cream bars. “Hey, guys?” he said. “You don’t happen to have any spare room in your freezer, do you? Ours is full-up.”

Back in the annex, Zachary picked up a dictionary and hurled it against the wall.

“I don’t fucking believe it,” he said. “Minnie hires her two best friends—a lesbian couple—pays them a combined salary that’s equal to her own—but won’t let her staff eat a free goddamn ice cream because she’s afraid
that
might cause a scandal back in the district? What kind of fucking drugs is
she
taking?”

Salaries were increasingly becoming a sore point with us. When Minnie had been in the statehouse, she’d won people’s hearts by returning her pay raise to the taxpayers each month. Now, she hoped to score points with voters by returning most of her congressional budget to them as well. This required her to run her office as cheaply as possible.

While attempts were made to limit our office supplies—often, it was easier to borrow a pen from another office than to requisition one from the politburo Edna had set up—the best way to trim costs, of course, was to pay the staff as little as possible.

Hill salaries are notoriously low. They are also a matter of public record, published yearly in a dense little government book. After Zachary got ahold of a copy, we often took turns reading aloud from it to see where we stacked up. Virtually all our friends in other offices, we discovered, were earning more than we were in comparable positions.

Worse yet, they knew this. Everybody on the Hill did. Because all the other staffers spent their lunch hours exactly like we did—looking up everybody else’s salaries to see how theirs compared and which poor bastards got paid the least. “You guys work for Minnie Glenn?” they’d hoot whenever they met us at Hill happy hours. “Our condolences. Please. Allow us to buy the next round.”

What galled us most, however, was that while we were all paid on the low end for our positions, Vicki and Edna were paid roughly the average for theirs. Living together, they enjoyed a combined income equal to Minnie’s.

Meanwhile, Kiran began house-painting with his cousins on weekends to make ends meet, while the newest legislative assistant, Tim, started deejaying at college parties after-hours. Ironically, any time my phone bills were higher than expected, I found myself trolling for freelance writing assignments all over again. To keep from defaulting on his student loans, Lee moved back in with his sister, agreeing to baby-sit her two kids in exchange for free rent, thereby earning himself the degrading new nickname around the office of “Nanny Man.”