A Pilgrim’s Digression

Yesterday, myself and a co-worker, whom I shall call Dwight, ate lunch together in the Rayburn House Office Building cafeteria. When you first come to Washington, finding an inexpensive, but good place to have lunch on Capitol Hill is like finding a good lover in a crowd of high-priced, low quality prostitutes.

It takes wallet-depleting trial and error, and a willingness to occasionally taste something nasty, but when you find her you go back again and again.

The Rayburn cafeteria is a real find. It’s easily the best of the cafeterias in the House and Senate offices, and it’s also very cheap. The best meal is the turkey and dressing with mashed potatoes. For $5.50, you get a delicious, heaping plate of food plus a Diet Coke. Yesterday, for the same price, I got two stuffed green peppers in tomato sauce and a side of green peas.

The more interesting facet of eating in the Rayburn cafeteria is that it also provides you the opportunity to see a Congressman or Senator in their natural habitat, pontificating at the head of a table. I don’t claim any great expertise at recognizing them. The truth is, there are few of them whose faces I can attach to a name, even if I recognize them as Congressmen. I suppose it would be a bit hurtful to them to realize that if they were outside Washington, removed from the throng of their hangers on, stripped of their suit and lapel pin, few if any people would recognize them.

Yesterday, when I entered the cafeteria, I noticed Congressman Henry Waxman sitting at a table holding forth before three eager acolytes. At first, though I recognized the face, I couldn’t put a name to it, and I guessed the name of former Congressman Bob Barr, forgetting that he wasn’t in office anymore. But the two men do have similarly distinctive faces.

I didn’t mention the sighting to Dwight.  After I came through the checkout line, he was waiting for me, and as I approached, he asked, “Did you see Waxman over there?”

“Oh yes,” I said, making note of the name I couldn’t recall. “I noticed him.”

Later, Dwight went on to impart a particularly delectable bit of gossip about another Congressman’s sexual predilections, which I shall not repeat here. I am still a provincial at heart, easily shocked by tales of depravity.

Yet as talk drifted to other subjects, I found myself inevitably looking at Waxman. As he talked to the men at his table, Waxman looked around the cafeteria nervously, as if looking to see whether anyone had noticed him. Occasionally, his eyes glanced upon me looking at him, and he quickly looked away.

I’ve observed the same kind of nervous behavior from Congressmen of both parties. It’s as if they both want to be recognized, and not recognized at the same time. They would probably be offended if no one recognized them, but at the same time, perhaps in the back of their mind, there is the thought that every stranger like myself who makes eye contact with them could potentially pull out a gun and shoot them dead.

About two weeks ago, on my way to work at six-thirty AM, I saw Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) come out of a row house on a particular street on Capitol Hill (I don’t know if it’s proper to say the exact street, since he seems to live in the house) and get into a Toyota Camry with Oklahoma plates. I saw the same event occur again this week, which leads me to believe he lives in the house.

His reaction to my recognition of him was amusing, however. He came out of the house holding a paper cup of coffee, dressed in a dapper, light colored suit with a pale blue shirt and salmon-colored tie, and when he looked around and saw me walking up the street, watching him, he kind of hunched over and hurried into his car and pulled away from the curb in a hurry.

The second time he saw me, he did not hurry quite so fast, but he still had that same hunched reaction as if expecting me to approach him, which I would never do.

In the wake of a fleeing Senator or Congressman, one whiffs the scent of expensive cologne. This gives them away as someone of significance in this city. They smell good, and they dress better than anyone else.

It’s odd that any American who makes under $500,000.00 a year should feel represented by these men and women. They don’t look like us, they don’t act like us, and they seem to exist apart from everyone else. A sighting of one of them sometimes seems as rare as spotting an Ivory Billed Woodpecker. And then they are gone, leaving one to wonder who or what, exactly, one has witnessed.

These people really exist only on TV, and seeing one in person, in fine regalia and stinking of Calvin Klein’s Obsessionâ„¢ for Men, is like seeing a cartoon character apparently alive and walking down the street.

I’ve had a bit of fun here, at the expense of Congressman Waxman and Senator Coburn, but in reality I find that having seen them, I feel I can’t be particularly cruel to them or their colleagues.

I’ve sometimes wondered, if people who routinely rip apart politicians for their perceived intellectual, moral, or personal failings were actually employed in the same building as those they savage, would they be able to be so mean and vicious? If Mark Levin ate in the same cafeteria as Senator Durbin, for example, would he be able to go on his program and derisively refer to him as Little Dick Durbin?

OK. Perhaps that is not a good example. Levin is one of the most aggressive men on radio, and he is raking in the money via his vitriol.

But my point is, I often think that because we are so far removed from the people and events in the news, we can easily attack and criticize without thinking of them personally. Our politicians aren’t persons to us: they are just another actor on a stage, and of course when someone gets up on a stage we, the audience, feel like we have the perfect right to throw rotten tomatoes, if we so choose.

Of course, politicians often wittingly or unwittingly encourage the sense of unreality surrounding their profession. Thus a Liberal might refer to that embarrassing bit of stagecraft aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which prompted G. Gordon Liddy to gush about the way the flight suit straps showed off the President’s “manly characteristic” [note the singular]. A Conservative could refer to the ridiculous press conference regarding gas prices, a few weeks ago, held at an Exxon station down the street from the Capitol. Afterwards, the participating Congressmen and Senators climbed into their SUVs and drove the one or two blocks back to their office.

A little civility in our discourse wouldn’t hurt, though. Nor would it hurt to remember the humanity of the person we personally attack, or seriously wish violence and destruction upon. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.