“No more than there are problems regulating the prayers in the Senate.”
I could hardly say that very few Senators ever heard those prayers.
“I also note, Judge Barnard, that you have ruled that school boards might mandate the teaching of intelligent design in the classroom biology courses.”
“I think that’s the only fair way to deal with the controversy, Senator. It’s the American way. It provides an opportunity for the children to hear both sides of the argument. I was quite disappointed when the Appellate Court overturned my verdict.”
“Thank you, Judge,” I said with my most charming smile. “You have been very clear and forthright.”
And destroyed your chances, I added to myself.
“Thank you, Senator, you are a very courteous and Christian young man.”
Titters from the media and from my own staff who hovered behind me.
I felt wretched. As a responsible member of the Judiciary Committee I had to ask the questions I did. She was a good and kind woman who should never have been appointed to the federal bench. The White House had sent her name over to us without any preparation at all. They knew we would turn her down. They wanted us to turn her down. They would pick up points and we would lose them. They played the race card in reverse. Dirty politics.
I would let the senior Democrat make that point.
“Will you want to talk to the media when we adjourn, Senator?” Robbie leaned over my shoulder and engulfed me in the smell of very expensive scent.
“I don’t think so. Senator McAfee has the priority.”
Wilson McAfee from Wisconsin was blunt.
“She is a lovely woman,” he said, “and honest and trenchant in debate. But she is not qualified to serve on the Fifth Circuit. The Administration knows that. They did not even prepare her to answer questions in a way that would resonate with the current state of constitutional interpretation. They played the race card again, this time to embarrass us.”
Black people would ask me hostile questions about “Marsi” Barnard every time I spoke to them in the months ahead. All the more reason to turn down more talks back home.
“They mouse-trapped us,” I said wearily when I had returned to my office.
“Maybe you should have crossed them up and approved her,” Chris suggested.
“Then they’d be back in a year with a Supreme Court appointment. How about the Black people out there?”
“They were embarrassed by her, Senator. But they also liked her.”
“So did I.”
“They laughed when she said you were a good Christian young man and you blushed.”
“I didn’t think any of the adjectives were accurate.”
That night Mary Margaret and I attended yet another Georgetown dinner party. We were both dead tired and irritable. I looked tired, but my wife in her new gauzy white summer dress looked like she had just returned from a spa. I complained about the contrast.
“My job is not boring. Yours is, poor dear man.”
“I feel very much like a poor dear man.”
The party was like a liberal caucus. I was praised for the courteous effectiveness of my questions. The White House was damned for its dirty political trick.
“They hoisted us on our own petard. We invented affirmative action to salve our liberal guilt. Race and gender, we said, deserve a discount to expiate for our past sins. So they provided us with both discount claims and then suddenly we had to argue what they always do—only ability matters. We will reject the very discounts which we have created.”
“But …” a woman columnist argued, “surely there is an upper limit to your discount?”
“Who sets that limit?”
No one had the answer.
As July wound down and my morale with it, the Conference Committee came alive again. The Belle charged in one day, denounced us for stalling, and presented a list of nonnegotiable demands. They were mostly trivial. We gave in on the health examination for green cards, warning that as the amendment stood it demanded such exams only from immigrants across the southern border. Obviously that would violate the principle of equal protection under the law and would quickly be rejected by the courts.
“You can have it if you want it, but it’s unconstitutional.”
“We’ll take our chances on that,” she snapped back.
I looked at José. He shrugged.
“OK. You got it. You want to place a little bet on how the courts will rule.”
“I don’t gamble, Senator. I’m a Christian.”
There were so many comments I might have made. I was too tired even to be mean. She could go back to her colleagues and claim a victory while giving us everything else we wanted.
After squabbling later in the day about wording we finally had a conference report to pass on to the whole Senate.
“Well done, Tommy,” the Minority Leader said to me. “A long and tough fight.”
I shrugged.
“White House made ’em do it.”
The bill was approved by voice vote in both houses on the last day of the session. That way no one could take the credit and, more important, no one would be blamed.
That night, as I was on my second whiskey, a hand-delivered invitation came from the White House to be present at the signing the next afternoon.
“They’re still Republicans over there, aren’t there?” Mary Rose asked sarcastically.
“They sure are,” her mother agreed.
I called the leader.
“I have to go over there,” he admitted. “It’s up to you.”
“Have fun,” I said.
“I called the White House and said that I had to catch a plane first thing in the morning.”
“We’re outta here!” I informed my cheering family.
Grand Beach was healing. At the end of our interlude there I was not exactly a new man, but at least one ready to return. The kids had a grand time with the cousins who all looked much older than they had the last time we saw them. Siobhan, Marymarg’s “little” sister, much to everyone’s sigh of relief was engaged. An MD who had done medical missionary work in Africa, she had violated the family custom of young marriages. Moreover, she was marrying a “foreigner.” But since he was Irish and also a doctor no one complained. For refined skills at the purest blarney he was at least the equal of Ambassador O’Malley.
We had become celebrities of a sort. Our family and friends wanted to hear stories about life in the Beltway. I complied, using all my seanachie skills, subject to correction for inaccuracy by Mary Margaret. The stories were greeted with laughter and cheers. We were surrounded by Democrats, Chicago Democrats, among bur own kind. Naturally they liked the stories.
Then came Labor Day and the party was over.
CHAPTER 23
THE CHRISTMAS break was almost as good as the Grand Beach break. I had only ten days of escape from my Senate office which I now considered a prison, from which I emerged for breakfasts and lunches and committee meetings, quorum calls, unpaid lectures around the country (for no good reason save for a sense of vocation), receptions and dinner parties, the last two somewhat more enjoyable because I was accompanied by Mary Margaret with whom I had a chance to talk that otherwise would not have occurred. She too was a prisoner of her office and the courts, Appellate and Supreme. In retrospect we were both out of our mind. We had been swept up in the madness of doing good. At least she received a decent salary for her efforts.
In a city of neighborhoods (and River Forest, if it wasn’t always a neighborhood, became one when the Catholics moved in), Christmas is a neighborhood event—front lawns dense with light displays, not all of them vulgar; kids’ Mass and midnight Mass at the local church, carillon playing Christmas Carols, carolers patrolling the streets, snow perhaps on the lawns (but not on the streets!), excited kids, candles in all the windows, wives and mothers and daughters exhausting themselves in their culinary efforts, God bless every one. Then there are pilgrimages to see t
he Marshall Field’s Christmas decorations—those pilgrimages have declined since the store acquired a New York name—and the Mayor’s Christmas Tree in the Daley Plaza (complete with a crib scene and a menorah and a “Deutchfest”) and the lights in Millennium Park.
I know that Christmas is like that all over the country, but in the intense community of Chicago neighborhoods it is especially magical.
Compared to Georgetown anyway.
The O’Malley clan is exuberant and by and large have married exuberant people, myself alone a partial exception. Even Shovie’s new husband from Ireland, for all his Trinity College background is a firm believer in craic, as the Irish call it—it’s not his fault that he looks like an IRA gunman. Their festivities are always exuberant, and their Christmases transcend exuberance and approach madness—though no one dares to take too much of the creature, a rule enforced by stern womanly disapproval. You don’t have to be exuberant and no one, not even my wife, minds if I stand at the edge, smile happily, and hum mentally while they are singing.
During that Christmas which marked the end of my first year in the United States Senate, however, I became as crazy as all the rest. I was happy to be back in my own neighborhood and my own kind of people, a place where the TV camera wasn’t picking up my every mood and my staff were not monitoring my every move.
I thought to myself as I sang an amateur duet with my wife that at last I had left behind the bleak Christmases of my childhood. I had learned, mostly because of Mary Margaret, how to celebrate.
Unfortunately for all of us, my brother showed up just before dinner on Christmas night.
The Ambassador heard the doorbell, slipped away to the door, and opened it.
“Good evening, Father,” he said in a tone of voice that commanded attention from the rest of us.
My heart sank. The wet blanket had arrived.
Everyone stood, stricken into immobility, as he entered the huge parlor, his jacket (no overcoat, not for the fire marshal on the move), covered with snow flakes.
“I expected my brother to be at his home with his wife and children and that I could join with him to celebrate the Feast of the Incarnation.”
“You must stay and have supper with us, Father,” my mother-in-law, as always gracious approached him and offered a hand. He did not take it.
“No, no, not at all,” he replied. “I know where I would not be welcome.”
Msgr. Ed, the Ambassador’s younger brother, broke the stillness.
“Please stay, Father. At Christmastime everyone is welcome.”
“I expected to find my brother and his family at home. The next-door neighbor said he was here. I will not intrude.”
“You’re not intruding at all,” the Ambassador insisted, making the invitation absolutely official.
“No, I will return to the Clementine house and say my Christmas breviary.”
And out the door he went, without a “Merry Christmas” or a word to me and my family.
The exuberant O’Malleys were still frozen in one place. There was cold fury in Mary Margaret’s green eyes. April Nettleton, Mary Margaret’s big sister, played “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen” on the piano and we joined in, hesitantly at first and then heartily. The Grinch was gone.
“I’m so sorry, Tommy,” my wife took my hand, “so very, very sorry.”
“You did nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “Nothing at all. I’m sorry that my brother threw a wet blanket on our celebration.”
“I’m sorry,” she hugged me, “that he has tried to throw a wet blanket on your life.”
However, the O’Malleys are nothing if not resilient. The celebration of the Lord’s birth began again. We who believe in Him have much to celebrate all the time, but especially at Christmas. I slipped away to the bathroom and returned to the celebration with I hope no signs of my desolation.
As we fell asleep in each other’s arms, Mary Margaret whispered to me, “I’ll always love you, Tommy. Never doubt it.”
That was, I thought, an effective response to my brother the wet blanket. But I was still in thrall to him. I probably always would be.
I returned a day early to conspire with Hat McCoy about our “Defense of Private Property” Bill. A city in Connecticut had exercised the right of eminent domain, not to build a highway or a bridge or even a school. Rather it confiscated a whole neighborhood of elderly but elegant homes from the people who owned them in order to build shopping malls and new homes which would bring far more revenue than the current property taxes. It was theft, pure and simple, greed by vote of a city council. The Supreme Court rejected a suit against the city council, ruling that there was nothing in the legislation about condemnation proceedings which prevented an attack on property from which a municipality might be able to squeeze more tax revenue. Several of the justices opined outside of the Court that Congress ought to change the law to prohibit such a misuse of power.
“That’s nonsense,” my good wife sputtered. “They could have found ample grounds to rule for the homeowners. They’re just showing off their restraint.”
Legislation was proposed in both Houses, but somehow never quite made it to the floor because lobbyists for the municipality organizations persuaded important people to drag their feet. Hat McCoy and I decided to join forces and go after those evil men who were stealing homes just to enhance their tax base. We both talked to our respective leaders and they agreed to call up our bill, which had cleared committee unanimously during the first week of Senate business. They would arrange for unanimous consent in their morning negotiations and bring it up.
Such cooperation was not all that usual in the Senate in our highly polarized era. The reason they were willing to cooperate this time around, according to Hat, was that national sentiment against what happened in Connecticut was overwhelming and that neither party could afford to seem to go against that sentiment. The White House was indifferent, probably because no one had called it to the President’s attention. We would strike before the lobbyists, not the most powerful to begin with. Finally we had drafted our bill—or rather our Legislative Assistants had with advice from scholars who specialized in the Court and covert advice from a couple of justices who have voted reluctantly to reject the suit brought by the victims of eminent domain. It said simply that the right of eminent domain did not extend to the condemnation of property to improve a municipality’s tax base.
“Slick,” my wife admitted. “You’ll catch the lobbyists by surprise.”
Mary Margaret and I had returned from snow-covered Chicago to snow-covered Georgetown with firm resolutions to amend our lives. I would restrict the number of speeches I accepted and she would not take as many cases. We both would instruct our respective schedulers to limit us to two dinner parties and one extra reception during the week. We pledged that we would have more time for our daughters, two of whom were now at Gonzaga Prep. We also meant more time for each other. I’m not sure we really believed that it would be that easy.
It wasn’t.
My staff had a party to celebrate my return. Robbie continued to stare at me with soft eyes of adoration. I didn’t like that, but I did not want to hurt her feelings. I wished there was some reason to fire her, but she was a first-class Assistant Press Secretary. I resolved I would not provide any encouragement. Unfortunately my hormones, never completely under control, began to protest my attempts to feign indifference to this readily available prize.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t come back?” I asked them.
Silence for a moment. Then Peter Doherty, my junior LA, said, “We were afraid you might do the smart thing and quit the job.”
No illusions about the Senate of the United States in my staff.
Peter reported from conversation with Hat’s LA that we would go with the bill on the Tuesday of the second week of the year.
Much to the surprise of most of our colleagues the Fairness for Private Property Bill was called up from committee in the first moments of Tuesday afternoo
n. There was an immediate quorum call to stall the process.
Hat ambled over to my side of the aisle like he wanted to make predictions about the outcome of the Super Bowl.
“This should be easy if we all keep our cool. I’ll speak fust, then you say a few words. If no one wants to reply, and unless their LAs tell them what to say, no one will, we’all will call for unanimous consent that there be a vote. It will be history before the afternoon is over. They can lobby against it in the house all they want and we may not get it out of conference till the end of August again, but no one is going to fight too hard against it.”
Once a quorum was established, the “debate began.”
“By unanimous consent,” the President intoned, “Hatfield” McCoy stood at his chair, “five minutes for the Senator from Kentucky.”
“This hyar piece of legislation, also called the McCoy-Moran bill—please note whose name is first—has a unique origin. It is sponsored by two Irishmen, one who kicks with his left foot and one who kicks with his right foot. This is clearly an ecumenical age, Mr. President. Its aim is to prevent local governments from stealing the property of ordinary citizens so that developers can put up malls and town houses and condominiums that will enhance the local tax base. The Supreme Court didn’t like what a certain municipality did along these lines, but bounced the ball back to us. Happen someone would try to condemn a little farm community along one of our lovely rivers in Ole Kentuck so that a developer could put up big box stores and pay the county more taxes than these poor farmers, those farmers would want to skin my hide off because I hadn’t protected them. This hyar bill would protect my hide.”
The President Pro Tem yawned, glanced at his notes, look out to see if I were standing and said, “by unanimous consent, the Senator from Illinois is recognized for five minutes.
“I do not know, Mr. President, if the distinguished Senator from Kentucky has ever visited the land of our common ancestors, but I say to him that there’ll be no need to kiss the blarney stone. He already has an ample supply of that commodity. I can add to his remarks that it is important we move rapidly on this legislation before unscrupulous developers all over the country make more pot-of-gold promises to venal and corrupt local governments so they can steal the homes of poor people, elderly people, and hard-working middle class people, all crimes that in my religious tradition call to heaven for vengeance.”
The Senator and the Priest Page 20