A Caring Politician
Remembering one's purpose.
One Girl Revolution by Superchick blared from the speaker at five a.m. It was a work day on Capitol Hill. U.S. Representative Mizou preferred to jolt awake to an empowering tune. Congress was in session. Ten-hours scheduled. An average day.
As she stepped into the car, she thought back to her first session in the one hundred and umpteenth Congress. “Five elections and nearly ten years have passed,” she told the air.
“Yes, ma’am.” The car service driver looked at her in the rearview mirror. He saw that her device was active and she spoke to her assistant remotely, not to him.
The driver was used to being ignored by Congressional Representatives. Elitism and class separation came with working in the swamp.
Only a few blocks remained between the car and the Capitol when a self-driving car side-swiped the Lincoln Continental.
“I voted against those things,” Mizou said. “They’re dangerous.”
The driver was not sure if she was speaking to him, but offered, “Let me call you another car. I have to stay here to file the report.”
“Never mind. I can walk the last couple of blocks. I’m not as old as Nancy Pelosi.” She laughed at her own attempt at humor.
When she entered the office, she was met by two assistants. They worked in a synchronized effort to take her briefcase, devices, and jacket.
“We heard you were in an accident. Are you okay?”
“Of course,” she looked to her primary assistant. “What’s the prep for the first meeting?”
“A closed budget meeting.”
“Of course,” she said again. She grabbed a folder and thumbed through the printouts as she settled into her oversized office chair. She spent the next five hours in required meetings. Then her thirty-minute lunch passed arguing with the party whip.
As she walked back to the office her assistant told her, “The cancer kid and his parents are waiting in your office.”
“Of course,” she hated constituent meetings while Congress was in-session. “That’s today?” she confirmed as she rounded the corner to her office.
The young parents and their bald son waited for her. She pasted on her best fake smile and told her assistant softly, “Let’s get this over with.”
Five minutes asking the parents about the child’s health care. Two minutes making small talk with the cancer kid. Three minutes asking the parents if they needed help with anything at all. Ten minutes was the maximum time spent with any non-donor constituent.
“Number Two,” Rep Mizou called to her secondary assistant. “Please be sure this wonderful family gets whatever we can provide.”
The child giggled and his parents smiled. When his mother winked at him and took his hand, he giggled a second time. Thinking of the number he associated with his own poo, he whispered to his mother, “Number Two.”
Mizou’s primary assistant was setting up her light, microphone and streaming camera for a live interview on one of the news networks. The Rep forgot which one. Frankly, she didn’t care. No matter what the topic or which network, her talking points were already set. The colleagues from the other party were evil, the urgency to act out was now, and civilization itself would collapse if you dared to disagree with her.
She noticed that the family was still sitting there in her office. She snapped, “Number Two!”
The child giggled again and realized that Representative Mizou had not listened to his request.
He asked, “Can you sign this cap for me?”
Number Two looked to Mizou for direction. The child was unsure about his request which appeared to be ignored.
The Rep held out her hand. Number Two handed her a marker. She grabbed the cap from the child and signed the visor. She pushed them out of her office as she said, “Thank you for coming. Let me know if you need anything else.”
As she pulled her office door shut, she heard the cancer boy say, “She doesn’t care about me. She had her turd help us.”
The child’s mom quietly said, “Politicians are very busy. We’re lucky she met with us.”
The child’s words rattled in Mizou’s brain as she fixed her makeup in a mirror. National live interviews were frustrating because the panel members typically stood by for 30 minutes to offer maybe two minutes of sound bites in four 30-second snippets.
After her appearance on camera, she was exhausted. The rest of her day was filled with meetings, committee hearings, and one-on-ones with party leaders. She thought, that kid’s mom was right, politicians are very busy. Her primary assistant and Number Two remained in the office closing down the electronics and securing confidential files.
“Number Two. Please come in here.”
Number Two rolled her eyes at the primary assistant before responding, “Yes Ma’am.”
“Why did that cancer boy call you a turd today? Did you do something mean?”
“No Ma’am.”
“Why then?”
“You don’t have children. When they are young most parents tell them to call peeing, Number One, and shitting, Number Two. So Number Two is a turd.”
“I see. Are my briefings ready to go home with me?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
The unvarnished impression of cancer boy rolled through her mind on constant repeat as she rode back to the DC apartment.
When Mizou opened her door, she thought that she heard that little voice echo out loud in the empty apartment.
“She doesn’t care about me.”
Representative Mizou sat down in a comfortable chair and cried. She considered the past decade and how she had arrived at her current position of power. The compromises she had to make. Give away nine things to get one. Justify overlooking one to help many. Sacrificing her ideals of service to gain more personal power. Power to do more good, she justified to herself. There was bound to be collateral damage in the exercise of power.
It was nearly three a.m. before she prepared for bed. She was tired but also felt a renewed determination to care. Due to the innocent impressions of a sick child, she decided to embrace the idealism of her early career. She realized two truths in her crisis of conscience. First truth, helping one person at a time was the only path to arrive at helping the many. Second truth, compromises in legislation destroyed her personal integrity.
She set a new song to awaken her at five a.m. Michael Buble’s version of It’s a Beautiful Day. When she approached her car, she made eye contact with the driver. The same man who had been driving her around for months.
She asked him, “Please tell me your name. I don’t think that I have ever known it.”
He smiled and chatted with Representative Mizou for more than ten minutes about the previous day’s accident on the short ride to Capitol Hill. It was going to be a beautiful day.