Category Archives: Writing

It was coming up on year three. Capitol Hill was a strange home. I don’t mean home in the sense of where I slept, though I had slept at the office a few times. No, my renovated townhome in the H Street corridor did not feel like home. The chamber, the lower house, the tunnel to the library. This was now my home. Or it was up until my idiot resigned in disgrace. Still felt like my idiot, at least. He was now owned by the press and the FBI. Not a great call to get your daughter into Cornell by buying the tennis coach’s boat for a quarter of a million dollars. Come on. Cornell, even. There’s nothing wrong with sending your kid to the highest tier state school. It’s practically a law that they accept the children of the sitting congressional reps. Stupid. But here I am. The idiot was my first winning ticket after a seven year losing streak. Not that it was seven election years, but there was that first off-schedule race that I couldn’t jockey to within fifteen points. Embarrassing, looking back. Those are the races you either get creative or stay away; I didn’t do either. But hey, they say winning is one percent talent and ninety nine percent persistence – or at least I’ve heard those idiots at 538 say it. Yes, it’s true, here I am, the picture of resentment. “Surrounded by idiots” is the fool’s non-mea culpa mea culpa. That’s me. My dad called me a fool for getting into politics, but he was an asshole. So here I am, wondering if I can even fix phone lines at the congressional campaign committee in this town at this point. I can’t go back home. The state capital is so far from a real city that it makes DC look like Hong Kong. I’ll get on someone else’s staff, of course. “No, I didn’t have any fucking idea that he was doing that.” “Yes, I’ve been on that boat, but I didn’t check the registration or records of sale. Would you?” I had all my tidy answers. Sure, I knew my guy didn’t worry about the rules. I figured that’s just what anyone who thinks their job is to make them thinks. Legislative Assistant. Chief of Staff. Should have really gotten clear about which one of those very attractive titles I held to put on my resume. Not like anyone is going to be calling the jail house for the reference. I’ll put the prison number in the cover letters anyway, for the laughs. “Did you know his daughter? Think she would have gotten into Cornell on her own?” That’s the only one I’ll lie about.