Story Telling

When a politician walks into a room, according to Lyndon Johnson, the first thing you have to decide is who's for you and who's against you. Once you've made that decision you have to decide how to communicate with them. The most time-honored and most powerful form of communication with human beings is storytelling.  It's the same in every culture on the face of the earth. The most honored person in an Irish village was called the Shenachie who was the storyteller and the oral historian of the village. He was the accumulated wisdom of what it going on in the in the village and what has gone before. Good politicians are all good storytellers.  I've known some: Tip O'Neill, Tom Foley who was my mentor from the state of Washington was extraordinary storyteller. The best storyteller I  ever met was a member from Louisiana by the name of Billy Tousan.  Billy would talk almost continuously in stories. One of my favorites from him which I often used to begin speeches with was a story told me one day.  We were sitting on the floor one afternoon  and Billy told a story about Pierre Dugau who was a typical Cajun who had been out fishing in the bayous of Louisiana. As he came up to the dock with a boat loaded with fish, the game warden observed him and said, “Where  did you get all those fish, Pierre?”

 

Pierre rather matter –of –factly said ,”I just fished ‘em out of the water.” The game warden said, “Tomorrow I think I'll go out and see how you fish.”

 

Pierre said, “Suit yourself. Meet me at 5 o'clock tomorrow morning on the dock.”

The next morning the game warden appeared and climbed in the boat.  They rowed out into the bayous behind the cypress trees.

 

Pierre reached under the seat and took out a stick of dynamite. He lit it and dropped over this side of the boat. There was a thunderous boom and the stunned fish began to float up to the surface.  Pierre began to flip them into the boat. The game warden watched this performance and said, “Pierre, that's against the law in  Louisiana.”  

 

Pierre ignored him and keep throwing fish in the boat. The game warden said, “If you throw one more fish in the boat I'm gonna have to arrest you.”

 

 Pierre looked at the game warden, and reached under the seat for another stick of dynamite.  He offered the sputtering dynamite to the game warden and said, “Do you want a fish or do you want to talk?”

 

The point of the story is that people come to meetings sometimes, simply to talk and not to do anything.  I often use it as an introductory story before I give a speech because I want people to figure out what the mindset there really is. Are they there to do something or are they there just to sit listen to the proceedings?  When you find a good story is that has a point not aimed directly at the audience, they can perceive it. Jesus told parables, but very seldom, said to the people, “You're a sinner.” He talked often indirectly to them through stories.   Often politicians don't want to directly confront people with the truth that may be unpleasant or problematic, so they tell a story that allows the person in the audience to connect with the story and get the meaning without feeling attacked. It’s a skill that every good politician hones to a sharp point.

 

 

 

 

Why have intern and fellows in your office 8-6-2020

 

A couple of days ago a 26 year old French woman turned up at my house in rural France during the pandemic.  She is presently employed at the environmental protection office of the French Government in Paris.  I had not seen her since more than 5 years ago when she was an intern in my office. In 28 years in Washington I had about 400 interns in my DC and Seattle offices. 

As we were eating lunch, I asked how she got to be an intern in 2015.  She was in the US after a year abroad from University and she decided she would like to have the experience of being an intern in a Congressional office.  She did some research and drew up a short list of 5 offices.  Her top choice was the office of “Baghdad Jim”. I got that nickname by stating from Baghdad in 2003 that George Bush would mislead us into a war in Iraq that I thought was folly.

She submitted an application to the office along with her curriculum vita.  I looked at the application of all my interns and interviewed them if it was convenient.  I noted that she was from a French university and I had never had a French student so I accepted her without meeting her. 

My criteria for interns was not the standard set of criteria. I took people from outside my district in the US and looked for interesting backgrounds. I always checked what languages they were proficient in both spoken and written.  During the 2001-2010 I had an Arabic speaker almost every year.  Their job was to read the newspapers in the Arab world and tell me what seemed important to them. I had interns and fellows from 40-50 countries.  I occasionally took high school seniors who were recommended to me. I took kids from Foreign Service families who wanted their kids to come to the US. I took kids who families needed a little distance from their youngster. We would have a conversation in which I told them that if they caused me any problem, I was going to send them straight home. I never had a problem that I knew of. 

I thought a Congressperson has a job to train the next generation for entry into government and so I wanted to give these students a chance to experience the workings of an office, close up and personally. Today I have a loose network of people who worked in my office who now are spread all over the world.

I lived in Kinshasa, Zaire for a number of months when I worked for the State Department providing mental health services for official Americans.  I don’t remember the country where I learned the African proverb: You put a seed in the ground but you may never sit in the shade of the tree that grows from the seed.  For me interns were like planting seeds.

There is a budget director for a state in Brazil who wrote and administered the plan to cope with COVID19. Another just left a job at the American consulate in Frankfort after many years there. She is a German citizen.  Another of my German fellows was one of my Arabic Speakers who had lived in Cairo and he is now teaching in Liepzig. Ornanong  worked as the chief of the political section in the foreign ministry of Thailand. 

Having interns from outside my district and especially from foreign countries was very important to me as well as good for them.  The Congress fancies that it runs the world, and yet many members couldn’t find Kosovo on a map if their life depended on it.  I wanted these interns in my office to learn our form of government but also to challenge and teach me and my staff by the questions they felt free to ask.

I told all interns that the internship was their chance to learn and that no question was too stupid to ask if they didn’t know the answer.  Their questioning of my staff as to why certain things were done a certain way allowed my staff to rethink their certainties. I also tried to get them to believe that they could ask to do things that looked interesting on the Congressional calendar.  They could pursue their own dream if they saw a spot that seemed to lead in a direction they wanted to go.

What surprised me the most was the fact that many members took no interest in talking or eating or drinking with their interns.  I heard again and again,” I haven’t even met my member.” For five years I had a dinner in my office for Australian interns as we watched the State of the Union extravaganza.   I let interns come and ask me questions, sometimes to the dismay of my staff. Mentoring takes time but has long term payoffs that you may never see.

One of my interns asked me one day how to get a job in Washington DC. I told her that she had to be ready to take a job that seemed below her skill level as a way of paying her dues into the system.  Promotion is always possible. A few weeks later an entry level job on the front desk opened up in DC.  She was almost finished with college, so I offered her the job. If she would leave college and finish her degree in the summer in addition to working for me.  She took the job which she felt was below her skills but stuck at it until the job of coordinating all my legislative correspondence came open.  She was promoted but still felt that handling all the mail was not using all skills so asked for some substantive work.  I was chair of the subcommittee on income security and family support and I gave her several issues. She did well.  She decided to get a master’s degree at night, so she worked doubly hard.  Then a spot in the US senate came open and she moved to the Senate where she was responsible for the work of one of the subcommittees on Health, Education, Labor and Pension committee.

Now she is a special assistant to the Prime Minister of New Zealand.  Neither she nor I ever imagined that would be her path. 

Bright and hard working young people need internships to figure out where they may fit in the governmental process. They have no real idea what government is all about, so they need to have a chance to explore the possibilities.  An English Major from a middle western university came to congress in 1989 and was assigned to the HIV-AIDS issue.  She knew nothing about it but worked hard and mastered it for my purposes.  She decided to get a Masters’s degree at John Hopkins in Health management.  She is now high up in the hierarchy of one of the medical specialty societies.  In her wildest dreams she never anticipated the career course. 

One caveat: the Chinese say that if you save a man’s life you are responsible for him forever. Interns come back for letters of recommendations.  I’ve written 7 in the month of July. My modus operandi is simple.  You write the letter you want in my voice. I reserve the right to add or subtract.  Send me an updated resume and a recent picture in case I can’t remember your face from 5-10 ago. I just got a thank you today from a young man in South Dakota who got a job in health care. 

Mentoring is the biggest secret that no one tells you about the job as a Congressperson.  You will never know whose life you have changed.  I don’t know how many people have told me of things I said to them in the past that resonated in the future.

As we mourn the loss of John Lewis I sat next to him for 12 years on the W&M committee and watched as he helped hundreds of people see a brighter horizon for themselves. They say, “A person dies twice: once when they pass away, and they pass again when they stop telling stories about them.  Mentor’s stories are long. If you want a legacy this a sure fire one.   

 

 

What is a French Holiday? Celebration of the Assumption

 

Every day I go to the store at 8:30A M to get one of the two NYT that come to Lesparre in rural France. My second wife said she could tell I was on the hunt for the NYT ,no matter where we were traveling in the world. Croatia, Italy or some African country were all the same she said.  “I was like a bird dog looking for a pheasant in the brush.”

In France I have been buying and painfully translating the Sud Ouest from Bordeaux.  It is a regional paper that tells us what is happening in the SW of France. One day I noticed the International New York as I picked up the local paper. There was only one so I felt it was a sign from the universe that I should stop reading on line. I started going to the only place I could find that sold real papers. If I got there at 8:30 sometimes there were 2 papers, some days only 1.  So my plan each day was to get a croissant and an expresso at a nearby boulangerie at 8A M.  Then I could be first in line to get into the store and make sure I got the paper.

The prize of the week is the SAT-SUN edition which includes the world’s greatest anti-Alzheimer’s treatment in the world, THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE FOR SUNDAY.  I set off on the 15 of August to get the prize. I was first and there was a paper.  I checked the date and it was 14 August ; yesterday’s paper. I checked around and no one had an explanation for the failure.  

I went home, crestfallen but determined to try today and be sure to be first in line. There were others confused yesterday.  They were looking for foreign newspapers also.  This morning I was first in line and quickly walked to the kiosk.  There was a NYT.  The problem was that it was the same paper I rejected yesterday because now it was 2 days old.  Not even fit for the bottom of the proverbial bird cage.

There were other confused customers looking for Italian, German or Spanish news.  We accosted politely a store employee but he had no explanation. I ventured the possibility that the failure was due to the fact that August 15 is celebrated as Assumption Day and perhaps that might explain the failure to deliver international papers. The puzzled clerk brightened and agreed maybe that explained the failure. “Try tomorrow”, he suggested.

Living in a country for a long time forces you to learn some of the cultural practices. On the back page of the local paper each day there is a statement of what holy day it is or what Saint’s day it is.  I read that column each day which is how I knew it was the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. 

7 August  St.Gaetan died in1547 : 11 August St.Claire was born in Assissi in1193 and died in 1253: 12 August St. Clarisse founded a monastery in the 7^th Century: 13 August St. Hippolyte who was an anti-pope 217-235:  14 August St. Eviad died in 958 in a monastery in Switzerland: 15 August Is the Fe’te De L’Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Everyday has a holy aspect assigned to it.  In case you are wondering today is St Armel’s day  an evangelist in the 7^th century

This Saintly start for the day is followed by the events that have occurred on the Saint’s day in history. On this day in 1977 Elvis Presley died.

Every village has a church built before WWII or restored after war damage. My village of 650 souls has Church of St Peter.  I been a resident here and off and on for 4 years and the Mass has never been said here. There is a sign on the door that tells you where mass is being said In a nearby church. Itinerant priests move from place to place on Sunday. France is a Catholic country. The religious history is deep but today it is often only a patina EXCEPT when it comes to important holidays.

You don’t get your paper on a holy day.