The View From a Senatorial Mailroom

Washington is a town full of corrupt and cynical and arrogant sons-of-bitches who think everything of their own careers and nothing of the people they are supposed to serve.

For two months this summer, I was one of those s.o.b.'s. I interned for my senator in Washington, D.C. and bought into the defeatist atmosphere that hangs in the halls of Congressional office buildings. Yet in the midst of all this, I somehow emerged with a stronger belief in the potential of our democratic process and its bureaucracy.

First off, let me assure you that when I began my internship, I wasn't some pie-eyed idealist. I had interned in Congress before, on the House side, and I knew that there was much that was wrong with the way our government operated.

Still, I was surprised by how uninspiring government work could be, even in the office of my senator, one of the Northeast's most powerful politicians. Xeroxing, filing, opening the 700 to 1,000 pieces of mail we received each day, answering phones and other clerical tasks formed the bulk of my assignments. It was about as thrilling as a PBS documentary on the mating rituals of the three-toed tree sloth.

Even the more interesting task of writing replies to constituent mail was nothing more than an exercise in bullshitting. Desperately needed entertainment came in the form of kook mail from headcases and bigots, and phone calls from weirdoes claiming to be such luminaries as the Queen of Egypt.

What a joke. I was overwhelmed by the hypocrisy of it all. Our job as interns was to be as helpful and respectful as possible, but as soon as we got off the phone or finished a flowery two-page letter that sounded nice and said absolutely nothing, we'd start sniggering.

And it wasn't just the interns. Oftentimes we'd hear the staff complaining about some constituent who was busting their chops. And then our mentors would turn around and have us walk the senator's dog or get their lunches. Everyone was guilty of condescension and arrogance.

In the face of all of this pessimism, you'd have to have a skull made of titanium to resist becoming jaded. My own cranium lacking any metallic elements, I happily joined in all of the sarcastic remarks and the hooting at painstakingly scrawled letters. Eventually I was caught between guilt and disdain. On the one hand, I was guilty of complicity in this huge racket. On the other, the American people didn't deserve my respect; each day we were flooded with constituents' petty concerns and poorly articulated requests. Whiners, the lot of them.

But something happened to change all of that.

A constituent, Mr. Smith (obviously not his real name), had written a letter complaining about the Clinton budget proposal, lamenting the heavy tax burden he expected to bear. It was literally about the 500th letter we had received that week on the subject, and I hauled out the usual assemblage of tired platitudes and empty euphemisms, like "this is the time for all of us as Americans to pull together in the face of adversity."

This time, though, I added a little something of my own:

"Personally I think you should just suck it up like the rest of us."

Ha ha. But the joke was on me a few days later. After I had edited it, printed a final copy, and sent it out--complete with a staffer's forgery of the senator's signature--my supervisor noticed the photocopy I left on her desk. She discovered that I had neglected to delete my little addition.

Luckily my supervisor was able to have the letter yanked before it left the Senate mailroom. When she pulled me aside to tell me what had happened, my face went white and I fell back against the wall as she warned me to never let this happen again. The press had a field day, she reminded me, with that White House postcard that a volunteer had seen fit to use for their own opinion on homosexuality.

I rode the subway home that day, feeling rather queasy, imagining headlines of my own making. I almost kissed that recommendation goodbye. But then I thought, what if I was Mr. Smith? Regardless of whether or not I agreed with the senator's position, I'd at least expect a respectful reply from my elected representative. Now before you roll your eyes and start calling me a sap, hear me out.

I saw it all. I saw just how deplorable my attitude had been up to that point, and I was genuinely ashamed of myself. All I seemed to care about was my resume, about my own individual career, and not about public service. All this in spite of how much I always blabbed about how government can work if we elect the right people.

Why was I doing this internship in the first place? Was I trying to get some practical experience in public service, which might someday be my life's work? Or was I only doing this for a potential employer? If the latter, I'm a complete heel; if the former, I'm due for some serious attitude adjustment.

I had forgotten that no matter how tedious my work was to me, it still meant something to someone like Mr. Smith. All those letters I wrote constituted the closest connection many of the senator's constituents would ever have with him. My callousness was precisely what Americans believe is the problem with government today. None of our leaders care about the ordinary American citizen, or so many believe. And even if they do, they're hopelessly out of touch with the problems that directly affect him or her. I had now become part of the problem.

So then where did that leave me? I saw the government bureaucracy at work first-hand, and I also knew from personal experience how easy it is to lose sight of one's ideals working on the Hill, even as an intern. Yet I still wanted to believe that government can work. What possible reasons could I offer myself to maintain my faith in American democracy?

There's a certain safety in cynicism. Moral courage and indignation aren't even worth our time, we say, since morals and ideals are a load of crap--this is a cop-out of the worst kind because not only does it relieve us of any responsibility, but it also provides a false sense of superiority. We, the cynical, are blessed with the infinite wisdom to not buy into the bunk that's force-fed to us by tired high school civics teachers. The rest of you are fools. This is what I felt as an intern this past summer, and I know I'm not alone.

I have no illusions about the "justice" of the American democratic process, and I'm sure not many others do, either. But we can't let ourselves take the easy way out and throw up our hands. Like it or not, government is a indispensable part of our lives. And it's up to us to take charge of the system, instead of letting it take charge of us. If we don't, our cynicism will remain as proof of our own complicity. Rather than blaming the system, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.