The Senator and the Priest

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “I don’t know of any freshman senator who had ever had an office like this,” Chris said with a touch of disapproval. She was even taller than my wife.

  “We Irish stick together,” I said.

  We were seated around my impressive desk. My wife watched and listened, her natural exuberance hidden behind what she called her “appellate face.”

  “You’ve seen the minority leader already?”

  “I was summoned to his holiness’s chamber for an hour pep talk, which was in fact a sage warning about all things I might do wrong. I assured him that I would always be polite to lobbyists and take nothing from them, not even a swearing-in party.”

  “He said that?” Chris asked, just a touch of the smoke of the hills in her voice. She was a tall, slender woman with the body of an accomplished athlete. A golfer and a marathon runner, it would turn out. Her husband was a retired Colonel who worked as a civilian in the Pentagon. She was given to pacing back and forth on the office floor, an outlet for a tremendous store of nervous energy.

  “I told him that I’d already declined three such offers.”

  “Well, that settles one office policy early on.”

  “We don’t do lobbyists.”

  “That’s very wise, Senator,” Manny said almost reluctantly, the music of the islands still strong in her accent. “They’d be very generous to you and your family, but they’d end up …”

  Manny was about my height, maybe a little shorter, as laid back and relaxed as Chris was manic. She hummed calypso songs when she was thinking. The only way to describe her figure was to say she was luxuriant. Her husband was a retired relief pitcher who had played for the New York Mets and now worked in Baseball’s national office in public relations. The leader had chosen two strong and attractive women to mother me. It was clear from the approbation in Marymarg’s eyes that she approved of both of them.

  “Owning us,” I said finishing Manny’s sentence.

  “Something like that … the first thing we need to decide is what to hang on the wall of these offices. The waiting room, first of all.”

  “I hadn’t thought much about that. The hangings should shout Illinois! Right?”

  “Preferably.”

  “What about some glorious color photos of the Prairie State by a Pulitzer-winning photographer? Put some of them in the main office? Change them every once in a while?”

  “That sounds striking. Would they be expensive?”

  “Get ’em wholesale.”

  “Free,” Marymarg spoke for the first time. “My daddy.”

  “And in my office same kind of pictures of my family. Also free. He’d hang them for free too.”

  “You’d be surprised, Senator, how many problems freshmen senators have with this issue.”

  “Your relations with the media?”

  “Back home? I don’t know anyone here yet.”

  That morning Leander Schlenk had struck again.

  CORRUPT BOOK DEAL FOR TOMMY

  Little Tommy Moran has already profited from his attempt to steal the senatorial election even though the outcome is still before the courts. The Examiner has learned that Tommy’s publisher has secretly awarded him a three book contract “in excess of seven figures.” His first book appeared to thunderous bad reviews all over the country and has already disappeared from the nation’s bookstores. The publisher is obviously hoping for clout in the United States Senate in the unlikely event that Tommy is actually seated.

  Dolly issued the usual denial. The contract was not a secret, the book was in its third printing and was in fourth place on the national bestseller lists.

  “Back home is important, Senator,” Manny said as they were prepping me for my role as a senator. “That’s where your voters are.”

  “Generally they are no more hostile than to any other public figure. They want to entertain the audience by trapping you. A couple are very hostile, particularly Leander Schlenk of the Examiner and a woman named Lupe Gonzalez of a Spanish language TV station. Both are probably in the tank with the former senator who is already running for reelection. And in turn Bobby Bill Roads is likely subsidizing both of them …”

  “An oil man from Oklahoma,” Chris was up and pacing, “who thinks his money can buy anything he wants.”

  “So far,” Manny continued, rolling her jet black eyes, “no one has proved him wrong.”

  “We have a tape of my pre-election interview on PBS …” I said tentatively.

  My wife handed it over.

  “Excellent. It will give us an idea of your style.”

  “Or lack of it.”

  Manny was silent for a moment.

  “Bad people,” she finally said. “There’s a lot of bad people out there. They blew up your car, right, and someone took a shot at you? We’ll have to talk later about your security here. The Beltway media are not much better. They’re also in decline as the papers curtail and combine their bureaus and focus more on features about people instead of news and analysis.”

  “You’re a hot property now, Senator,” Chris said, as she gave up her pacing. “Every small city paper around the country will want a profile on you. It should help your presidential visibility.”

  Ah, a trick question.

  “What was it General Sherman said?”

  “I will not run if nominated and not serve if elected?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You agree, Ms. O’Malley?”

  Herself was startled to be dealt into the game?

  “Huh? Oh, I wouldn’t divorce him if he tried that. I’d kill him.”

  They laughed uneasily, still not having figured my wife out. She went to the main office and came back with the coffee pot, cups, and rolls we had brought over. I was not worried that she would win my two school marms over. Rather I feared that she would make common cause with them against me.

  “So then we are generally reluctant to grant interviews that are not about issues and are not with major papers—L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Daily News, Boston Globe, and of course the Times and the Post.”

  “And maybe the Post Dispatch which is read in downstate Illinois,” I added, “and the Chicago TV stations and PBS.”

  “That will make our work a lot easier.”

  “Our Chicago people created a pretty good Web site for the campaign. You might want to look at it. We could put any of our stuff on it. They tell me it gets a lot of hits.”

  “We’ll surely coordinate with them. Those sites become more and more important. Maybe you could write a little message every week …”

  “Why not?”

  “You can’t expect to write everything yourself. You’ll need a speech writer and one of your Legislative Assistants will draft the bills you will propose … Oh, I forgot, Senator, you’re a writer … I’m sorry …”

  “Da nada. Let’s have the speech writer.”

  “Did the minority leader indicate anything about your committee assignments?” Chris continued the interrogation.

  “I think he said that he thought Judiciary and Armed Services would have room for me.”

  Dead silence.

  “You asked for them?”

  “And got them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what that means, Senator?”

  “Along with this office?”

  “I think so.”

  “Manny, our new Senator is really a hot property!”

  “Don’t let it go to his head,” my wife murmured, as she cut the rolls into conscience-salving little bites.

  “The leader will expect loyalty, you understand?”

  “He knew he’d get it anyway. We Irish are a clannish crowd.”

  They were beginning to like both of us.

  Did that matter? You bet your life it did.

  “The size of a Senator’s staff grows bigger every year,” Chris began her main lecture, doubtless carefully rehearsed. “In the absence of any other system, he has become an ombudsman for his constituent
s against the federal government. You will receive a huge amount of mail every day, some of it hate mail …”

  “Round file.”

  “Right! Much of the mail from constituents who think they have been cheated by the federal government, and in many cases are quite properly angry. They expect us to get their lost Social Security check, to pay for the damage a Postal Service truck did to their front lawn, to prevent the IRS from hassling them about taxes already paid.”

  “Ward committeeman work.”

  “That will take a lot of time and people in your office, mostly smart young people who like the idea of working for a Senator for a while. They will normally handle these kinds of complaints themselves. They will call the offending agency and investigate the case. You’d be surprised at how responsive the bureaucracy is when they get a call from a Senator’s office. Only rarely will you have to intervene. Most of the time, our young person will straighten out the mess and write a letter in your name to the constituent and sign it with one of the robot signatures we will have available. An enormous amount of mail will come in every day. Only a small amount will reach your desk. You may have to sign two or three letters every day and personalize them with a little note. The only alternative is to do hands-on mail, which would drive you crazy!”

  “Crazier.”

  “You will have several legislative assistants who will coordinate with the LAs of other Senators on matters of joint interest and on drafting legislation. They are very bright young lawyers, just out of law school, who are desperately eager to earn a name for themselves. We have to moderate them a bit.”

  “Better you than me. When I was a Mr. Mom, I couldn’t moderate three sweet little girls.”

  “I assume you’ve already received invitations?”

  “First one is tomorrow night.”

  “Soon you could have six invitations for every night. Sometimes you can do two, a reception in late afternoon and a dinner party every night. There are also lecture invitations that would add to the burden. There are some parties and receptions to which you should go and an occasional lecture you should accept. For the rest we can provide quite acceptable excuses, hand written by our robot … Unless Ms. O’Malley you would want to handle this responsibility?”

  “Marymarg … God forbid! Can your robot provide a handwritten note for me?”

  “It would be happy to try …”

  “Good robot.”

  “You will also need a scheduler, Senator, in addition to this gentle robot. Someone who will try to see that you don’t find yourself caught in two places at the same time. Uh, Marymarg, she will need to coordinate with you.”

  “Maybe we can have an electronic calendar on our respective computers. That’s how we kept himself from getting lost forever in Kendall County.”

  She refilled the coffee cups.

  The conversation droned on. I was growing weary. However, I had to let them go on with all the dreary details of how a well run senator’s office is run. They seemed to know what they were doing, thank heaven, because it would take me years to figure it out. Finally I tried to absorb the rules about our hiring and firing policy and sexual harassment in the office.

  “It is unlikely, Senator that you will harass anyone …”

  “Wouldn’t know how,” the good Mary Margaret observed.

  “Which does not mean that charges won’t be made. However, even among the staff there have to be clear-cut rules.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “Anything more? Manny.”

  “I think we’ve covered all the bases.”

  “We are honored to be asked to serve you, Senator. And we’ll do our best not to seem bossy …”

  “Irish men are used to it. Usually they don’t even complain. I am the one who is privileged to have such good staff planning. Otherwise I’m not even sure I could find my way from here to the Senate Chamber.”

  “Marymarg, it’s hard to read your face …” Chris said carefully. “I hope you are not offended by our detailed instructions for the Senator.”

  “It’s my lawyer face, which is much less revealing … I’m glad some people are taking charge of him, especially people that know what they’re doing and I’m fascinated by the complexity of a Senator’s life. It would seem that like the monarch of England and perhaps the father of the family, he reigns but does not rule. I promise to stay out of your way. I don’t believe in Mom and Pop shops. I may show up occasionally to cadge a lunch …”

  Then Chris said something that I would later learn Chiefs of Staff rarely say to their Senator’s wife.

  “Some day we might want to have you around all the time.”

  That was a real compliment for the O’Malley woman. The flush that spread across her face showed that she realized it.

  “That probably wouldn’t work, but it’s nice of you to say it.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I say something to you and the Senator about your children?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “They’ll be going to Gonzaga and Ursuline.”

  “The oldest to Gonzaga this year. Two of them next year.”

  “Both fine schools. Our kids are there too. It’s difficult to be a teen and a Senator’s child. Our kids are quick to say ‘stuck-up.’ The child must be careful not to talk about their father or any of the perks, like ice cream socials at the White House or tickets for early viewings of new films.”

  “Our kids,” Marymarg said firmly, “will never go into the White House for ice cream socials or anything else. They’re Republicans over there. We don’t take any favors from anyone, unless it is a bigger office with a nice view and the right committees and great staff, and neither will they. We’ll make that clear to them. They’re adventurers. They like new things and new people. No one will ever push them around a second time.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “They’re throwbacks to Irish nobility or Phil Sheridan’s cavalry riding down the Shendanoah.”

  We had a heart-to-heart with the kids when we returned to our new home. They listened impassively.

  “Like we don’t know those things already,” Mary Rose said with a frown.

  “We totally will not be pompous,” Mary Ann protested.

  “Who’s going to hang out in bars with creepy boys anyway,” Mary Therese, our nine-year-old sophisticate, added to the consensus. “We got more sense than that.”

  “Really!”

  “Point taken?” Marymarg pursued the issue.

  “Yeah.”

  “Fersure.”

  “Totally.”

  I don’t know what else we expected.

  Manny asked my wife to put in a few hours several days later to help them sort out mailing lists, e-mail addresses, and the Internet.

  “We worked it all out,” she reported back to me. “All you have to do is to write a reflection of some sort every week and we’ll put it on our Web page, send it out on e-mail, and mail to our list of major donors, if we have one.”

  “Sure we do. Chucky keeps it … I don’t want to see it.”

  “Who says you have to? Chucky also gave us a list of people, not necessarily all major donors, who deserved more than a robot letter and an answering call if they phone. If they tell you someone is on the line they will also add that that person is on Ambassador O’Malley’s list. I also gave them a list, a short list, of people who should have your personal phone number. Like Dolly and Tina and that bunch.”

  “My brother?”

  “He’ll be flagged for a call back.”

  “How did the work go?”

  She frowned as Mary Rose did when we tried to promulgate our new rules. “Fine. They’re very able women and already dedicated to you. They say you have the best Web page in the Senate, though we have to keep updating it. The Internet is the new big thing in politics and it doesn’t cost much.”

  “They expect you to work with them on it?”

  Again the frown.

  “Why not? I can do it all by
phone or by e-mail.”

  Later in the office I was informed that my wife was a remarkable woman and that I was a very lucky man. I didn’t disagree. They had bonded already.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE NEXT day I attended a seminar at Wie House out in Virginia, a civil war hospital and an old Virginia landmark with elegant porches around the whole building. The Brookings Institution would spend the day teaching the five freshmen Democrats (four men, one woman) how to act like Senators. The Republicans had far more elaborate seminars, but then they had the task of civilizing the poor white trash that they had elected. Or so I told my wife that night as we cuddled in bed. There was also a parallel session for senatorial spouses. The good Mary Margaret declined with thanks. She had an appearance before the Supreme Court.

  We were taught about the mores and the customs of the Senate—“unanimous consent” (that the leaders of both parties granted consent in the name of the rest of us to call up a bill for consideration, a process which involved intense haggling and trade-offs), senatorial courtesy, the right to put a “hold” on a nomination, seniority (you have to stay around a long time to build up privileges, “hideaways,” small private offices just off the floor of the Senate where those with power or seniority could read, write, think, sleep and possibly make love in private without fear of interruption, save for a quorum call).

  However, the main focus of the seminar was on how an up-to-date senator in the television age should behave. He should first of all remember that the camera was everywhere and that he was on stage all the time when he was out of the sanctum of his office (or the hideaway if he was fortunate enough to have one). He should never carry a briefcase, but rather swagger confidently down a corridor with aides all around him to carry his impedimenta. He should never turn to an aide because that would make him look weak. Rather the aide should whisper in his ear and he should nod, as though he already knew what he was being told, though in all probability he did not. He should never pick his nose, scratch himself, rub his eyes, yawn or shut his eyes in public. He should avoid obesity which looked terrible on television. If he were to appear on one of the morning programs or the Sunday morning shows, especially the Jim Russell program, he should always practice with his staff beforehand in the Senate TV studio. He should never use obscenity, scatology, vulgarity or blasphemy in his public comments and never take the name of God in vain. He should never counter-attack the media even though for the most part they sought to destroy him for their own fame or pleasure. Sarcasm or irony were dangerous and should be used rarely. He should never be caught on camera in sustained and apparently unnecessary conversation with an attractive young woman, he should always be polite to other Senators though he might despise many of them.