I am not entirely naive about politics: in 1971 I was given a brief course in government operations in Washington, D.C., the most intensive course of instruction I’ve ever been involved in. Days began at around 5:00 a.m., and rarely ended significantly before midnight. We met with a shrink daily for attitude adjustment, as well as with very high officials in the legislative and administrative branches of government. At the conclusion of the course we were expected to be effective lobbyists. The training has assuredly increased my effectiveness in helping to shape public policy on occasion. I am speaking as a former, and I think effective, environmentalist.

But I’ve never been an elected official. Couldn’t be. Wrong personality entirely. I can only read about that kind of a life. And read I do. A splendid short piece landed in the “Commentary” section of the Sunday Register-Guard (Jan. 10), reprinted from the Hartford Courant. It’s by Chris Murphy, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut. He speaks of his experiences as a successful politician.

“I love being a member of Congress. Every morning I get to pick up the paper, read about what’s wrong in America and then walk to work to try and fix it. Yet the daily demands of the House leave little personal time. Most weeks, Saturday and Sunday are my only full days back in Connecticut, and they are packed with fairs, town halls, constituent meetings and political events – the kind of face-to-face retail politics that are the bread and butter of any elected officials’ job. Weekdays in Washington are equally frenetic, a mix of meetings with constituents, committee hearings, policy briefings, votes on the House floor and answering phone calls.”

That’s where I couldn’t cut it. It would drive me crazy. But wait, Congressman Murphy says, it gets worse.

“On top of all the official duties of a congressman, I and my colleagues find that more and more of our time is spent on our re-elections, largely raising money. On any given day, the foot traffic to and from the national Republican and Democratic campaign offices is constant, and the conditions under which we labor are pretty depressing. At the Democratic offices, I sit in a room with cubicles, surrounded by freshmen and veteran legislators, feeling more like a telemarketer than a member of Congress. And I’m told that every year the room gets more crowded. It’s clear that this problem won’t correct itself with time.”

That part of Murphy’s problem has been resolved. Connecticut has adopted public campaign financing, leaving Murphy free to talk to his family, carefully read pending legislation, or maybe to invite a Republican across the street for a beer and perhaps develop some mutual understanding. That may sound dumb to some people, but hey, it can happen. When I was a wild raging tree-hugger I might spend all day trying to pound an opponent through the pavement, he trying to do he same to me. After the hearing or whatever we could and not infrequently did go have a beer. I generally found his company to be superior to that of my ‘friends’. My opponent didn’t have to be told what it’s like in the trenches. We sometimes became quite friendly toward each other. Outside the hearing room, that is.

I knew one Congressman reasonably well. His initial campaign was against an incumbent of the other party. This was Utah. The district was the southwest corner of the state, a rather big corner extending south all the way to the Arizona border from Salt Lake City, and covering a big chunk of the western part of the state. I lived in Cedar City at the time, a small town maybe 50 miles from the Nevada border, and 60 or 70 miles from the Arizona border. Not much population at all down that way. Gorgeous country, though.

Wayne emulated the campaign method of a successful Florida Senator. Wayne walked from the southern end of his district back to Salt Lake City, talking to whomever might choose to hike for a while with him. Long hike. Took weeks. Had a support vehicle – I don’t think it was a VW Microbus, but something like it in support. Anyway, I joined Wayne at some ungodly early hour and we set off afoot northward along back roads. (There was an Interstate going that way but that’s wanting in intimacy.) I talked about what was on my mind. Wayne was interested but of course didn’t commit to anything. That’s okay, I figured I was passing on problems and a take on them and he would do as he saw fit. At least I had a chance to bend his ear. Wayne grew increasingly agitated. Where’s his support vehicle? He wanted his breakfast, and he wanted me to have my ride back to town. “Not to worry,” I told him. “It’s my day off and I’m a walker in any case. Now I’m into it, it’s a nice day for a hike, it’s my day off and I’ve nothing better to do with it.” We walked about twenty miles before that vehicle showed up. Wayne apologized (unnecessarily) all over the place, invited me into it for breakfast. Oatmeal with the candidate inside his truck. Wayne won. I was always pleased as punch to see the Congressman. He didn’t seem to mind my presence.

The point is, there are decent politicians. Wayne Owens was one of them. I met several others in my time at the nation’s capitol. Some of astonishing integrity. There are also decidedly indecent ones. Well, selection is up to the electorate. The decent ones need a better shot at doing their jobs, meaning more time for the job at hand. The legislators I don’t like take orders from somebody else and don’t need to worry about understanding what they’re doing. Congressman Murphy of Connecticut says public campaign financing is the road to better legislation and administration.

There is a seeming contradiction in what Murphy says in his commentary. He says that when the elected official is talking to a potential donor, the quid pro quo rarely happens. Too easy to detect and punish, he says. On the other hand, toward the end of his article, he says “big campaign donors control too much of the agenda”.

I shall deal with that seeming contradiction in my next column.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 8:07 am and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.