There are moments in life that burn into your memory. One for me is standing in the middle of the Democratic campaign headquarters in Austin, Texas, watching a punk rock band walk onto our makeshift stage, then their lead singer brush back her colourfully dyed hair from her face before yelling "Hello Texas. What a beautiful day for democracy" and then hit a cord on her base guitar.
This is not a story about that girl, although much of it revolves around her; this is a story about three key themes. The first two involve what is colloquially called 'Washington' by media outlets too lazy to make a distinction between a city and politics. This story explores the role of access and excess in the functioning of the United States government and Congress. By access, I mean the ability of people to influence policymakers of all varieties; and by excess, I mean the behaviours that happen in that environment that both make and corrupt our political culture.
The final theme is more personal and perhaps easier for most people to relate to: the pain that comes from loving someone with a mental illness. However, before we get to any of that, perhaps I should catch you up on how I got here.
I was born and raised in small-town Wisconsin, in a middle-class white-bread family with a strong evangelical faith. My father was a butcher and my mother a school nurse. For those who are not familiar with the American political landscape, this is a recipe for devout conservatism and voting for the Republican party.
So you ask: 'How does a nice boy from the Republican heartland end up in a Democratic campaign headquarters in Texas?' I think you can firmly blame that on the University of Wisconsin--Madison. Madison, like a lot of government towns in America, is a little island of blue Democratic voters, in a sea of Republican red. I never really thought about my politics until I went to college, but I quickly came to realise that my personal ideals of access to education and healthcare which I had always held, but never conceptualised, did not hold in the modern Republican party. I gravitated to the Democratic side of student politics and ended up on the far left even in that rarefied air.
Fast forward four years and I was graduating. I had very good grades, but not quite good enough for what I needed. I applied for law school at Harvard, Yale and Stanford and was accepted to all three, but without funding. I had been on a full-ride academic scholarship at UW-Madison and my family would never have been able to support me, so when I was offered a fully funded place at the University of Texas Law School in Austin on the condition I work my summers in the Southern Poverty Law Center, I accepted without regret.
Austin is a lot like Madison in many ways, another Democratic city in a Republican state. I still wanted to be involved in politics and dabbled a little more in student government, but I was over the pointless intrigue and self-aggrandisement. I had volunteered to do some doorknocking in Wisconsin and the midterm elections were coming up. So I did my research, found a representative whose politics I liked (Representative Stephen J. Kearny III for those playing at home) in Austin and called up his office to offer my services. I guess they trust you a bit more when you're twenty-two than eighteen, because they put me in charge of the whole door-knocking effort, coordinating the volunteers and training them. It was more than I had expected, but it was fun. The seat was never in doubt, but I would like to think I helped in taking him from a fifteen to twenty-point margin.
All was quiet for the next year, then I got a call from the Congressman's office telling me they were helping out with a presidential primary campaign and asking if I would like to be a field organiser. I looked up their candidate, somewhat fell in love with him on the spot, then called back the office and said I would do it. I must admit our candidate got destroyed in Texas, but he still won the Democratic nomination. I even got to go to the nominating convention. There was really no prospect of winning Texas in the general election, but my Congressman was the chairman of his Texas campaign and the south-west finance committee. There really was not much difference between the Democratic presidential campaign in Texas and Stephen's re-election campaign. We worked out of the same office and organised for both.
At some point, the campaign director worked out I was working many more hours a week for them than I was sitting in law school, and insisted they put me on salary. Due to some loophole in some campaign finance law, they put me on the books for the Congressman's campaign, not the presidential campaign.
And that brings me back to standing in the campaign headquarters. Our presidential candidate had just declared victory. The Congressman had done his spots on CNN and MSNBC. All that was left was to party.
The band kicked into their first number. Call me a child of the nineties if you will, but I love grunge and punk, and this band was right up my alley. It also did not help that their lead singer was straight out of my fantasies. She was tall, with curves in all the right places, long legs with big black boots and fishnet stockings. She had on a short tartan skirt and a tight-fitting black shirt. Her hair was long and dark, with streaks of fluorescent green in it. And best of all she was playing a massive black bass guitar. I do not know why, but female bass players have always been a bit of a fetish of mine.
They worked through their set and our cohort of teenage volunteers danced around. Finally, she announced their last song and kicked into a rendition of "Change the World" by The Offspring. Those of you who have never heard that song might want to stop now and listen, because this may not make sense otherwise. The teenagers were going wild thinking they were being praised for their efforts in getting a progressive president elected. On the other hand, as a devotee of mid-nineties American punk, I knew that she was having a go at their idealism.
As they hit the last chord I clapped heartily and made a beeline for the makeshift bar in the corner. I was in the middle of asking the seventeen-year-old bartender for a beer when, to my great surprise, the goddess of the stage stepped up beside me and asked for a vodka and coke. I only realised I was staring when she raised her eyebrow (which to my delight had a bar through it) and said "What are you looking at?"
