THE CHRISTMAS break was almost as good as the Grand Beach break. I had only ten days of escape from my Senate office which I now considered a prison, from which I emerged for breakfasts and lunches and committee meetings, quorum calls, unpaid lectures around the country (for no good reason save for a sense of vocation), receptions and dinner parties, the last two somewhat more enjoyable because I was accompanied by Mary Margaret with whom I had a chance to talk that otherwise would not have occurred. She too was a prisoner of her office and the courts, Appellate and Supreme. In retrospect we were both out of our mind. We had been swept up in the madness of doing good. At least she received a decent salary for her efforts.
In a city of neighborhoods (and River Forest, if it wasn’t always a neighborhood, became one when the Catholics moved in), Christmas is a neighborhood event—front lawns dense with light displays, not all of them vulgar; kids’ Mass and midnight Mass at the local church, carillon playing Christmas Carols, carolers patrolling the streets, snow perhaps on the lawns (but not on the streets!), excited kids, candles in all the windows, wives and mothers and daughters exhausting themselves in their culinary efforts, God bless every one. Then there are pilgrimages to see the Marshall Field’s Christmas decorations—those pilgrimages have declined since the store acquired a New York name—and the Mayor’s Christmas Tree in the Daley Plaza (complete with a crib scene and a menorah and a “Deutchfest”) and the lights in Millennium Park.
I know that Christmas is like that all over the country, but in
the intense community of Chicago neighborhoods it is especially magical.
Compared to Georgetown anyway.
The O’Malley clan is exuberant and by and large have married exuberant people, myself alone a partial exception. Even Shovie’s new husband from Ireland, for all his Trinity College background is a firm believer in craic, as the Irish call it—it’s not his fault that he looks like an IRA gunman. Their festivities are always exuberant, and their Christmases transcend exuberance and approach madness—though no one dares to take too much of the creature, a rule enforced by stern womanly disapproval. You don’t have to be exuberant and no one, not even my wife, minds if I stand at the edge, smile happily, and hum mentally while they are singing.
During that Christmas which marked the end of my first year in the United States Senate, however, I became as crazy as all the rest. I was happy to be back in my own neighborhood and my own kind of people, a place where the TV camera wasn’t picking up my every mood and my staff were not monitoring my every move.
I thought to myself as I sang an amateur duet with my wife that at last I had left behind the bleak Christmases of my childhood. I had learned, mostly because of Mary Margaret, how to celebrate.
Unfortunately for all of us, my brother showed up just before dinner on Christmas night.
The Ambassador heard the doorbell, slipped away to the door, and opened it.
“Good evening, Father,” he said in a tone of voice that commanded attention from the rest of us.
My heart sank. The wet blanket had arrived.
Everyone stood, stricken into immobility, as he entered the huge parlor, his jacket (no overcoat, not for the fire marshal on the move), covered with snow flakes.
“I expected my brother to be at his home with his wife and children and that I could join with him to celebrate the Feast of the Incarnation.”
“You must stay and have supper with us, Father,” my
mother-in-law, as always gracious approached him and offered a hand. He did not take it.
“No, no, not at all,” he replied. “I know where I would not be welcome.”
Msgr. Ed, the Ambassador’s younger brother, broke the stillness.
“Please stay, Father. At Christmastime everyone is welcome.”
“I expected to find my brother and his family at home. The next-door neighbor said he was here. I will not intrude.”
“You’re not intruding at all,” the Ambassador insisted, making the invitation absolutely official.
“No, I will return to the Clementine house and say my Christmas breviary.”
And out the door he went, without a “Merry Christmas” or a word to me and my family.
The exuberant O’Malleys were still frozen in one place. There was cold fury in Mary Margaret’s green eyes. April Nettleton, Mary Margaret’s big sister, played “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen” on the piano and we joined in, hesitantly at first and then heartily. The Grinch was gone.
“I’m so sorry, Tommy,” my wife took my hand, “so very, very sorry.”
“You did nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “Nothing at all. I’m sorry that my brother threw a wet blanket on our celebration.”
“I’m sorry,” she hugged me, “that he has tried to throw a wet blanket on your life.”
However, the O’Malleys are nothing if not resilient. The celebration of the Lord’s birth began again. We who believe in Him have much to celebrate all the time, but especially at Christmas. I slipped away to the bathroom and returned to the celebration with I hope no signs of my desolation.
As we fell asleep in each other’s arms, Mary Margaret whispered to me, “I’ll always love you, Tommy. Never doubt it.”
That was, I thought, an effective response to my brother the wet blanket. But I was still in thrall to him. I probably always would be.
I returned a day early to conspire with Hat McCoy about our “Defense of Private Property” Bill. A city in Connecticut had exercised the right of eminent domain, not to build a highway or a bridge or even a school. Rather it confiscated a whole
neighborhood of elderly but elegant homes from the people who owned them in order to build shopping malls and new homes which would bring far more revenue than the current property taxes. It was theft, pure and simple, greed by vote of a city council. The Supreme Court rejected a suit against the city council, ruling that there was nothing in the legislation about condemnation proceedings which prevented an attack on property from which a municipality might be able to squeeze more tax revenue. Several of the justices opined outside of the Court that Congress ought to change the law to prohibit such a misuse of power.
“That’s nonsense,” my good wife sputtered. “They could have found ample grounds to rule for the homeowners. They’re just showing off their restraint.”
Legislation was proposed in both Houses, but somehow never quite made it to the floor because lobbyists for the municipality organizations persuaded important people to drag their feet. Hat McCoy and I decided to join forces and go after those evil men who were stealing homes just to enhance their tax base. We both talked to our respective leaders and they agreed to call up our bill, which had cleared committee unanimously during the first week of Senate business. They would arrange for unanimous consent in their morning negotiations and bring it up.
Such cooperation was not all that usual in the Senate in our highly polarized era. The reason they were willing to cooperate this time around, according to Hat, was that national sentiment against what happened in Connecticut was overwhelming and that neither party could afford to seem to go against that sentiment. The White House was indifferent, probably because no one had called it to the President’s attention. We would strike before the lobbyists, not the most powerful to begin with. Finally we had drafted our bill—or rather our Legislative Assistants had with advice from scholars who specialized in the Court and covert advice from a couple of justices who have voted reluctantly to reject the suit brought by the victims of eminent domain. It said simply that the right of eminent domain did not extend to the condemnation of property to improve a municipality’s tax base.
“Slick,” my wife admitted. “You’ll catch the lobbyists by surprise.”
Mary Margaret and I had returned from snow-covered Chicago to snow-covered Georgetown with firm resolutions to amend our lives. I would restrict the number of speeches I accepted and she would not take as many cases. We both would instruct our respective schedulers to limit us to two dinner parties and one extra reception during the week. We pledged that we would have more time for our daughters, two of whom were now at Gonzaga Prep. We also meant more time for each other. I’m not sure we really believed that it would be that easy.
It wasn’t.
My staff had a party to celebrate my return. Robbie continued to stare at me with soft eyes of adoration. I didn’t like that, but I did not want to hurt her feelings. I wished there was some reason to fire her, but she was a first-class Assistant Press Secretary. I resolved I would not provide any encouragement. Unfortunately my hormones, never completely under control, began to protest my attempts to feign indifference to this readily available prize.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t come back?” I asked them.
Silence for a moment. Then Peter Doherty, my junior LA, said, “We were afraid you might do the smart thing and quit the job.”
No illusions about the Senate of the United States in my staff.
Peter reported from conversation with Hat’s LA that we would go with the bill on the Tuesday of the second week of the year.
Much to the surprise of most of our colleagues the Fairness for Private Property Bill was called up from committee in the first moments of Tuesday afternoon. There was an immediate quorum call to stall the process.
Hat ambled over to my side of the aisle like he wanted to make predictions about the outcome of the Super Bowl.
“This should be easy if we all keep our cool. I’ll speak fust, then you say a few words. If no one wants to reply, and unless their LAs tell them what to say, no one will, we’all will call for
unanimous consent that there be a vote. It will be history before the afternoon is over. They can lobby against it in the house all they want and we may not get it out of conference till the end of August again, but no one is going to fight too hard against it.”
Once a quorum was established, the “debate began.”
“By unanimous consent,” the President intoned, “Hatfield” McCoy stood at his chair, “five minutes for the Senator from Kentucky.”
“This hyar piece of legislation, also called the McCoy-Moran bill—please note whose name is first—has a unique origin. It is sponsored by two Irishmen, one who kicks with his left foot and one who kicks with his right foot. This is clearly an ecumenical age, Mr. President. Its aim is to prevent local governments from stealing the property of ordinary citizens so that developers can put up malls and town houses and condominiums that will enhance the local tax base. The Supreme Court didn’t like what a certain municipality did along these lines, but bounced the ball back to us. Happen someone would try to condemn a little farm community along one of our lovely rivers in Ole Kentuck so that a developer could put up big box stores and pay the county more taxes than these poor farmers, those farmers would want to skin my hide off because I hadn’t protected them. This hyar bill would protect my hide.”
The President Pro Tem yawned, glanced at his notes, look out to see if I were standing and said, “by unanimous consent, the Senator from Illinois is recognized for five minutes.
“I do not know, Mr. President, if the distinguished Senator from Kentucky has ever visited the land of our common ancestors, but I say to him that there’ll be no need to kiss the blarney stone. He already has an ample supply of that commodity. I can add to his remarks that it is important we move rapidly on this legislation before unscrupulous developers all over the country make more pot-of-gold promises to venal and corrupt local governments so they can steal the homes of poor people, elderly people, and hard-working middle class people, all crimes that in my religious tradition call to heaven for vengeance.”
“Will the Senator from Illinois yield?” Jeremey Cline from Oregon.
“The Senator from Illinois gladly yields to the distinguished Senator from Oregon.”
A small man from a small town in eastern Oregon who wandered around the Senate with the perpetual frown of someone who thinks someone else is trying to put something over on him.
“Will the Senator from Illinois please explain the reason for all the rush about this piece of legislation? Why didn’t we get a chance to read it before today and to discuss it?”
“The Senator from Kentucky already explained the urgency. We fear an epidemic of such misuse of the right of eminent domain all around the country unless we act quickly. Moreover as the Senator from Oregon doubtless remembers we had extensive debate on this legislation before the holiday recess. Comments were, I’m sure the record will show, quite favorable. There simply was no time to vote on it. My colleague from Kentucky and I think it is important that we complete Senate action on the legislation before we are caught up in the tumult of legislation that we will have to consider as we prepare for the election in November.”
“Thank you, Senator.”
I noticed that both leaders had enough dependable men on the floor to win easily. During the voting men moved in and out of the Senate to signal the clerk, thumbs-up, thumbs-down how they wanted to vote. There were only a handful of thumbs down. No one loses many votes by opposing venal local governments and greedy developers.
We carried the day. I was elated. Immigration and eminent domain were two promises I had made during the election campaign. I had delivered on both of them. As long as there was a semblance of bipartisanship in the Senate, one could move quickly on an important issue.
There were some handshakes of congratulations. The two leaders appeared together to commend us.
“We’d better watch it,” said my guy, “these two connivers might have their eyes on our jobs.”
“I don’t think so,” said Hat’s guy, who was notorious for the fact that his wit was a vestigial organ. “Still they work well together.”
“It’s the blarney, Senator.”
At the door of the chamber, Robbie waited with a warm smile of congratulations.
The woman was flirtatious, but it was hard to prove it. Also very distracting. My imagination was unruly whenever she was near.
“Will you speak to the media, Senator?”
I looked at Hat.
Why not?
“I want it to be clear to everyone,” Hat began, “that I have not been taken in by this conniving Democrat from Chicago. However, he’s not a bad man for a Democrat. He’s a man you can work with on matters that pertain to the common good of all Americans.”
“I’m delighted by the passage of the McCoy-Moran bill and to have my name on with that of Senator McCoy. I think many of our colleagues who are running for reelection will be happy when they realize how popular this act is.”
“Do you think Senator it will be signed before the November election?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised at all.”
There was another celebration in the office.
“All you guys want to do is drink champagne on the Senate’s time!”
“Not bad, Senator,” Chris said, “not bad at all. You work well with folk from the mountains.”
“As long I’m a going along with whatever they a telling me to do.”
“It will probably be the last victory until the next session in January.”
“I know that, Chris, so everyone enjoy your champagne.”
My personal phone rang. I picked it up. I knew who it would be.
“I’m not sure, Senator, that I could vote for you again. What kind of Senator is it who keeps two promises during his first year in office?”
“A Senator who gets the best legal advice possible from a member of the Supreme Court bar.”
We both laughed. How long had it been since my wife and I had laughed together.
Chris’s prediction was correct. The election was close, but we lost. Democrats have to win by substantial majorities in key states or one way or another they lose. That’s just the way things work out. We picked up a couple of seats in the Senate. We were in striking distance. When we adjourned for the holiday recess, the Minority Leader caught me in the dining room after I had lunch with Mary Rose, who had walked over from Gonzaga.
“Bye, Daddy. The Boss wants to talk to you.”
“That child gets more like her mother every day,” he said to me.
“Funny, I noticed that too.”
“You’re moving up in seniority in both committees, Tommy.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, though maybe I’ll get to ask my questions earlier.”
“I’m wondering if you would be willing to become part of our leadership team, Assistant Minority Whip for a start. You’re affable and charming, but you’re also as tough as they come. We need people like you in the Congressional leadership. We could offer you one of those hideaways where you can work on your books.”
“I’d be happy to do so, Senator. I’ll learn more about how the Senate works.”
“Our day is coming, Tommy, our day is coming.”
When I told my wife about the new job on our way to a reception at the British Embassy, I said apologetically that I knew I should have asked her first.
“Tommy love, you knew what I would say. You don’t have to ask me anything when you know what I will say. I’m proud of you!”
I realized that she thought I was much better at the job than I really was. She thought I was becoming a power in the land. I didn’t want that to happen, but I didn’t want to disappoint her either.