The Senator and the Priest

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “I doubt they will this year. If my wife continues to work as a volunteer in my office, then our income will fall under the magic number. If my book royalties dry up, then we might start having tag days.”

  “Will these reforms be part of your platform in the Presidential election two years from now?”

  “I hope they will in the platform of the Democratic candidate next year, whoever it may be. However, I won’t be the candidate as I have said repeatedly. I also hope this amendment will serve notice on everyone in America that the inequality in our society is intolerable and that we Democrats intend to do something about it. It will also be a first step in restoring some sense of fiscal responsibility to the nation, so that our children and grandchildren will not be in hock to the Chinese and the Saudis and the Venezuelans for the next hundred years.”

  “Do you think you have the votes for the amendments, Senator?”

  “I refer that question to the Minority Leader.”

  “After the Thursday election, yes.”

  “Won’t these changes cause a decline of ambition in America?”

  “Gimme a break. If I earn an extra million dollars on a book and have to pay a little bit more of it in taxes, I’m still a lot better off than if I didn’t earn it. There was a lot of ambition back in the nineties when the proposed rates applied.”

  “The administration will say that increased taxes will hurt the economy.”

  “I didn’t notice a lot of increase in the economy during the last eight years of give-aways to the super rich.”

  “Aren’t you stirring up class war by turning the poor against the rich, by creating resentment against those who have worked so hard for their success in this country? Isn’t this amendment somewhat Marxist in orientation?”

  “Who are the poor? They’re the people who cut your lawns, who collect your garbage, who clean your homes, who sweep the sidewalks in front of your stores, who empty your bedpans and make your beds in the hospitals, who don’t own cars, who have to take public transportation to work, even in the worst weather, who have no life insurance, no health insurance, no pension plans, who often can’t get medical care in hospitals where they work, who can’t pay for the medicines to stay alive, who live in the homes that are the first to be swept away by storms, who can’t afford good education for their children. They are the people who are all around us, but we don’t see them. They are not about to throw up barricades in the streets or come after us with baseball bats. They are not revolutionaries. They are more likely to feel beaten down into the ground than resentful. All we’re asking is to give them a bit of a break, a better chance for their children than they themselves had. This is Marx, only to someone who hasn’t read him!”

  The last couple of sentences made one network and CNN. As usual we put it on our Web page and sent DVDs out to our mailing lists.

  “We could assemble a collection of these comments,” Mary Margaret suggested, “and send them to Chucky. They’d make great ad copy for the next campaign.”

  “If there is a next campaign … Doesn’t he get the newsletter?”

  “Sure, but, if you don’t object, Manny and I can cut them down a little and put them all on one disk.”

  “Fine,” I said without too much enthusiasm.

  They were all taking away from me the right to make my own decision about running again. Now that my wife was around the office most of the day, I had actually begun to enjoy being a United States Senator. I must be suspicious of that reaction.

  “You and Mommy are really happy these days, aren’t you, Daddy?” Maran, our wide-eyed little witch said to me one day while we were walking home from weekday Mass.

  “You smell good things too, sweetheart?”

  “Uhuh.”

  “What does happiness smell like?”

  “Like flowers.”

  I wasn’t sure that I liked my marital relationship being monitored by a good sniffer.

  After our first highly rewarding tryst in my hideaway—I was intolerably proud of myself that afternoon—I had an idea for the Distributive Justice Amendment. Only the brave deserve the fair, right?

  I walked over to the Leader’s office to see what he thought. He listened to me carefully, nodding his head as I talked.

  “We’ll have trouble with the teachers’ union,” he said.

  “And the ACLU and the AJC and the editorial board of the New York Times. But where else do they have to go?”

  “No place. They’ll all have to support you for reelection, regardless … Should you run of course … In Illinois they certainly don’t want Crispjin back … It might win some Catholic votes and some Black votes too … Yeah, why not … I’ll clear it with Hewitt. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it too.”

  The idea was to use some of the funds from our tax increases on the wealthy to provide a five-thousand-dollar tax grant to poor people so they could choose an alternative to public schools. The alternative school would have to be certified by some educational certification institution. No mention was made of religious schools one way or another. The Administration supported such ideas but never had to worry about implementing them because the Democrats would be afraid of the teachers’ unions. But in the fluid times between the last election and the next one, we might just sneak it by. Many Democrats felt just as I did. If the Catholic schools in the poor neighborhoods were providing better education, they deserved help in staying open.

  “Is this a payoff to the Catholic bishops so they won’t deny you the Sacrament?” a very angry woman reporter demanded at a press conference.

  “Only one bishop has denied me Holy Communion. If anything it is a payoff for the poor people who desperately want a little more choice. That seems to me to be a very liberal idea. The rich can make choices about the education of their children, why can’t the poor be given choices too?”

  “Doesn’t your proposal violate the wall of separation between Church and State?”

  “I don’t think you can base laws on metaphors. But there’s no mention of churches or religion in the proposed amendment.”

  “But in fact, only Catholic schools provide alternatives for most poor people?”

  “Is that wrong? Do you want to punish the schools for trying to educate the very poor? Moreover with this law on the books, other groups, religious and secular, will undoubtedly form their own schools.”

  “Is it fair to demand that public schools compete?”

  “Ours is supposed to be a capitalist society. Why shouldn’t the public schools compete?”

  So it went. All the ideological forces weighed in against us. I dismissed them. “There are enough votes in both houses of Congress to approve this amendment. Let the courts decide whether it’s constitutional or not.”

  “I want to note,” I said in one of my remarks from the floor, “that every Republican administration since that of Richard Nixon has promised help to Catholic schools. Now it is Democratic senators that are supporting a measure to which the present incumbent has already paid lip service.”

  The New York Times editorial harrumphed that I was merely courting the Illinois Catholic ethnic vote.

  I took the opportunity to reply. Or rather to direct my assistant in charge of media relations to reply.

  To the Editors:

  It is interesting that your editorial writers see a Catholic ethnic plot behind the amendment to the appropriations bill proposed by Senators Hewit and Moran. Most Catholic ethnics with European backgrounds earn much more money than the limit for tuition grants. Hispanic Catholics have shown so far little inclination to seek alternative educational opportunities for their children. The group of poor people most likely to benefit from the Distributive Justice Amendment will be African-American. Should Senator Moran decide to seek reelection, he doesn’t need this amendment to gain their support. He is surprised, however, that so many who are eager to help the poor are opposed to the first major attempt to aid them in the last ten years.

  Cordially

&
nbsp; Mary Margaret O’Malley

  Assistant to Senator Thomas P. Moran

  The White House applauded this part of the amendment but condemned the “typical liberal trickery to increase taxes.”

  Their era was winding down and they knew it. Vouchers for private schools were something to add to the legacy.

  All four amendments to the appropriations bill passed at a session which ended at two A.M. three days before Christmas. The house, weary from the long wait, passed the bill by voice vote the next day, though some of their old-fashioned members protested that we had taken away their power to initiate tax reform.

  The president signed the bill on Christmas Eve. Senator Hewitt was invited to the signing. I had flown home with my family that morning. They didn’t invite me because, as they told the media, I had turned down a previous invitation. We nonetheless had a Christmas party at my house, a modest and quiet one, despite the presence of the O’Malley redheads. However, we did toast to “The Beginning of a New Democratic Era.”

  “If you decide to go for it,” the Leader told me, “you’re a shoe-in.”

  “Which ‘it’?” Mary Rose asked with mischievous eyes.

  “Either ‘it.’”

  CHAPTER 30

  “WELL, WHAT do you think?” I asked my wife as she lay content on the couch in the hideaway, her clothes in dishabille because of the vigor of my love-making.

  “You’ve got about six months to decide,” she said. “You should make up your mind tentatively before we go to Ireland this summer. Then confirm it when you go back and announce a year beforehand. That will keep all presentable Democrats out of the primary. Then the election campaign will begin on Labor Day, especially on weekends because of your responsibility here in this building. It won’t be as hard as it was last time, but you’d use the same kind of techniques and run now on your record. You have to hope that the Party nominates an effective candidate for the Presidency.”

  I reached over and tickled her ribs.

  “Cut that out!”

  “And you think I should do all these things?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said that’s the schedule you’ll have to follow … I said cut that out … We’ve already made love.”

  “Just a little afterplay.”

  “Oh, that!” she sighed. “Anyway, it’s your call. I’ll support you whichever way you go.”

  “But what should I do?”

  “It’s a free kick, Tommy dear.”

  I touched her breast.

  “That’s better … You have become an effective Senator. You like the job, though it wears you out. You can’t do it forever, but we’re not talking forever.”

  “I liked it more since you came on the staff.”

  “We can’t do this transgressive stuff back in River Forest. No secret hideaways there.”

  “By the time we’re finished with the next election, Marymarg, we will have an empty nest.”

  “They’ll all go to graduate school, Tommy, not such an empty nest.”

  “What about your career?”

  “In any objective measure,” she laughed, “your job is more important than mine. More fun too. I can still take the occasional case to keep my hand in. Besides I love the Court, but, Tommy dearest, I love the Senator more.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be much help,” I muttered, permitting my lip to touch hers. “Who wants freedom!”

  “There is,” she sighed, complacently, “the problem that you’ll probably be running against your brother.”

  “That won’t be easy … But I’m used to him by now. I declared my independence when I married you. He won’t take away from me anything I want.”

  “So the question is not what you should do, but what you want to do?”

  “I don’t want to risk your lives any more—you and the kids.”

  “So much miserable stuff, Tommy,” she said as she began to reassemble her garments. “But I think we’ve left that behind us.”

  “There’s still Bobby Bill and Leander Schlenk.”

  “Unless I’m mistaken the public is sick of hearing about them. And sick of the negative ads of the last six years. They’ve written H. Rodgers off as a poor loser.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m sure of it. This campaign would be a cakewalk.”

  As she had often said of her mother, my wife was rarely in error and never in doubt. As time would prove, this time she was in error.

  “Come on,”she said, adjusting her bra. “We should get home. Dan Leary is going to take out our eldest on their first real date.”

  “So we get a look at him. He’s Dan now? Is that significant?”

  “Probably.”

  I didn’t want it to be.

  Dan turned out to be a big, handsome kid, a good six inches taller than me with unruly black Irish hair and the gifts of both wit and laughter, a combination of both sides of our alleged family structure. He did not seem ill at ease with us, despite his black eye. He treated Mary Rose with infinite respect and her parents with great courtesy.

  “I collected this souvenir,” he said with an easy laugh, “from a Harvard guy on the field of combat.”

  “Daniel,” Mary Rose said, as though she were admitting a fault in her date, “plays rugby. He says it is the ancestor of the NFL.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “They get five points for a touchdown and they have to literally touch the ball down and two points for a PAT but they have to kick it from where the player crossed the goal line.”

  “And is not nearly as dangerous as the NFL,” Danny chuckled. “Except when you play Harvard.”

  “A very well-behaved young man,” I said to the rest of family when they had left.

  “Totally cute,” Maran opined.

  “Extremely gorgeous,” Marytre agreed.

  “Time passes too quickly,” Marymarg said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Well you didn’t have to put up with such a big galoot anyway.”

  Her tears turned to laughter.

  The next week I called in Chris, Manny, and my three legislative assistants.

  “I know all of you are wondering whether I will run for reelection. I am too. All I can say now is that I have an open mind on it. I have not made up my mind not to run. I will tell you off the record when I come back from the summer recess and make my formal announcement in November as our crazy Illinois primary requires. I won’t keep you guessing any longer than that. I must say again what I’ve said many times before. If I have become at all an effective Senator the credit goes to you and to the rest of the staff. Thank you for your help and support.”

  “What does herself think?” Chris asked.

  “She pretends to be neutral and even persuaded herself that she’s neutral. But she’s not, she likes her job here too much to be neutral. But she genuinely says that it’s up to me.”

  “As it should be,” Peter Doherty commented.

  “The Examiner reports a state-wide poll showing Crispjin ten points ahead with only eight points undecided,” Manny said, “but we know what confidence we have in their polls.”

  “Ten points ahead,” I said, “and after spending maybe fifty million dollars over the last five years. Hardly worth all the money.”

  “I’d guess that in a real poll,” Manny said, “you’d be ahead. They’re afraid of too obvious a distortion.”

  “I’m going to run, if I run, on my record. I kept my promises sort of thing. Only way to do it.”

  “And the rules are the same this time,” Chris asked, “no attack ads, and no personal requests for donations. This time we add that you don’t start the campaign till Labor Day.”

  “And you’ll have to fly back and forth because of your Senate duties?”

  “Precisely … If my record isn’t good enough to get me reelected, then I don’t deserve it.”

  “We’ll draw up some preliminary memos about your record and draft some materials for the Web page and the e-mail mailings, just in ca
se.”

  “That’s a good idea, but I want to make it clear, my decision is still in doubt.”

  “That’s the way it should be,” Chris said as she stood up. “And like Marymarg we’re all completely neutral.”

  “Sure!” I said with my best witty Irish grin.

  My heart sank as they left the room. Their reactions had been perfectly correct. But they had invested many years of their lives in my career with complete selflessness. I did not want to let them down.

  I called Mary Margaret’s cousin, Margaret Mary Antonelli Corso at her law office in Chicago.

  “Hi, Cousin,” that lovely Sicilian woman said. “What’s going down?”

  “How’s your file on the Examiner coming?”

  “I have twenty absolutely clear issues of falsehood in reckless disregard for the truth. You want I should seek relief?”

  “Not quite yet … How are the kids?”

  “Flourishing! … From what your wife tells me your eldest finally brought a date around the house, rugby player of all things … Serious?”

  “Maybe … My best to himself … See you at Easter.”

  I asked myself as I hung up why I had made that call. No point in it. My instincts said that I should win easily, Rodgers Crispjin had become a bore. Yet a tiny voice in the sub-basement of my mind warned me that there would be one more dirty trick, this one perhaps decisive.

  The next day Leander Schlenk struck again.

  WILL TOMMY QUIT?

  Rumors are circulating under the Dome that cute little Tommy Moran, now pumped with pride in his role as Majority Whip, is thinking of giving up on the United States Senate, a decision which will be greeted with a sigh of relief both by Senators and by voters in Illinois. The recent scientific survey by the Examiner has acted like a bucket of cold water in the face for the swaggering little man who appears to think that he owns the Senate. Rather than risk a stinging defeat by the resurgence of Senator H. Rodgers Crispjin, it is said that Tommy might accept a vice-presidential nomination if it were offered to him or a cabinet position, though it is not certain which post would be low enough for Tommy’s meager talents. Stay tuned, this should be an interesting year.