Why I Must Never Go into Politics

Six months ago I was sitting on my back porch watching the toddler smear cream cheese on the dog when I received a Facebook message from a person I had never met. She did not really explain who she was or why she was contacting me specifically, but I guessed it was because she'd read the recent Flagpole article about my first attempt at local politicking since the run-up to the Gulf War years before. Her message only said that Jody Hice, the “Freedom Caucus” Congressperson for the 10^th district of Georgia, was attending a donor breakfast at a doctor’s office early the next morning, and did I want to go jump him?

Jumping people is a hobby of mine, and there was actually something I wanted to ask Congressman Hice. So, even though I had never ambushed a federal representative before, and especially not at a gastroenterologist's office, I agreed.

The next morning I showed up in the parking lot of the doctor’s office at 7am. Waiting for me there were the stranger who had contacted me the previous night, and five other people I also didn’t know, but who seemed to know each other. We parked our cars in a far-off corner of the lot and huddled together, trying not to draw attention to ourselves while we discussed what to do. Except for the one guy dropped off by George Soros, we were all totally new at this (I kid, I kid). Should we position ourselves in front of the door in a group? And which door? It was not at all clear how to proceed.

“If we all run up to him and start yelling at him, he’ll just run away,” I said. “We need to get one person to, like, engage him in a calm conversation, and then once he’s embroiled in that, the rest of us can approach him.”

“OK,” they said, “You go do that.”

I walked away from the cars and stood on the sidewalk out front of the door of the big shiny doctor’s office. I paced back and forth, opening and pretending to look at and then closing my Nokia phone, trying to seem like someone with terrible gall-bladder issues in case the workers inside were wondering why I was there and why I seemed so agitated. I started to think for the very first time about what I would say when Jody Hice arrived, how I would approach him, and that’s when I realized that I had no idea at all what Jody Hice actually looked like. How would I know who he was? I should have thought about this more carefully before I agreed to it, I realized.

“Oh well,” I told myself, “He’ll be a middle-aged white guy in a suit, for sure. I’ll just look for one of those.”

Right then, a middle-aged white guy in a suit got out of his BMW and began walking toward the entrance to the office. “Oh no,” I thought. “Is this him?”

I approached the man, smiling widely. If I went on the offensive, maybe he would think I was part of the donor event, put there to welcome him. “Hi!” I yelled as I neared, “Are you going to the Jody Hice breakfast?”

“I sure am,” he said.

“And is this because you are Jody Hice?” I nearly said, but then didn’t.

“Are you going?” he said.

“Yes I am!” I shouted. I stuck out my hand. “My name’s Robin!”

“I’m Steve,” he said, shaking my hand. “Do you want to go in together?”

“Uh, no,” I said, holding up my flip phone, “I’m just going to stand out here and look at my phone!”

“Oh,” he said. “OK then. See you inside.”

Dammit. I looked over at the rest of my group. They were making “What’s going on?” gestures, so I walked back over to them. “That wasn’t him,” I said.

“What’s Hice do?” asked one of the group. “Isn’t he a doctor?”

“He’s a reverend,” I said.

Bowtie.

A small door on the side of the building opened and a pale young man in a viciously pressed blue suit stepped out. He had a cellphone pressed to an ear below his neatly trimmed, inoffensive brown hair, and was wearing a bowtie. He looked like every intern struggling to keep up with his boss as he rushed down the hall to the paper shredder in every movie about Republican scandals that I had ever seen. “That’s him,” I said.

I turned around and started walking stiffly toward him. I still had no idea what I was going to say, and I was so nervous I genuinely feared I'd throw up. I stepped up on the walk that led to the side door, and the aide, startled, opened his mouth to say something. At that moment a shiny grey car pulled up and a man who was obviously not just any old man but who instead was a Congressman got out of the backseat. He smiled at me as he walked toward me, but his eyes were uneasy. Hice, citing security concerns, has not had a truly public town hall in Athens yet.

“Reverend Hice,” I blurted before I could think or he could speak, “Will you pray with me?”

Wait a minute. What? “Will you pray with me?” is not on any of my lists of potential things to ever say to anyone, yet I had definitely just said it. Once again, my mouth had ignored all my pleas to check with the rest of me before hopping on the bypass around the traffic in my brain. And now I was just as surprised by my request to pray as Hice clearly was.

Amazingly, he stopped walking and turned away from the aide at the door to face me. Perhaps Hice the politician can run from his constituents, but Hice the reverend cannot run from a prayer request. It's like rules for vampires, maybe, only opposite. Hice moved closer to me and gave me his full attention. “Of course,” he said, holding out his hands.

I can curse the Christians for sticking us with Trump for a good long while before remembering that I am also a Christian. It is a terrible time to have just become a Christian in America, especially after being such a noisy atheist all those years. I imagine my friends, talking about me when I’m not around. “She what? Has she become a Nazi, too?” But I am a Christian, and because I am a relatively new one, I don’t know the mechanics or etiquette of a lot of basic things that people raised in the church take for granted.

“Oh no,” I thought. “I’ve never prayed one-on-one with a stranger before, and now I have to do it with the Reverend Congressman out here in the parking lot in front of everybody. What am I doing?”

Then I remembered that one of the two reasons I became a Christian is because of people like Corrie Ten Boom and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Quaker abolitionists on the underground railroad. “You really do believe that faith can provide the language and the courage that can change things,” I told myself. “So maybe you should just…pray.”

I put my hand on his hand and closed my eyes. “I am so afraid,” I started. I could feel myself getting emotional, which surprised me. "You really are afraid," I realized.

There was a rustle as the other people in the group walked up. “I can’t do this right now,” I thought. “In 30 seconds Hice is going to run off. These people want to talk, too. Plus, are they Christians? Is this making them uncomfortable? Are they like 'sure, leave it to the Christian to suck up all the yelling time'? Should I keep going?” I wish I had kept going, but instead, I burst into tears.     

Nobody said anything while I stood there fanning my face with my hand. Hice and the rest of the group stood clustered in front of me in bipartisan awkwardness, all of them making sure to look at something other than the person struggling to get ahold of herself. After several long, excruciating seconds I managed to start talking to Hice about Trump’s collusion with Russia, which had been obvious to careful readers of Russian newspapers since at least the early '90s. I talked about Carter Page and Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, sounding normal and calm as I explained my concerns. But inside my head, the constant meta-track of anxiety that never left me cranked itself up to 11.  

“Oh my God what kind of person segues straight from 'Let's pray' into 'Flynn's connections with the FSB have been common knowledge for decades among scholars of post-Soviet realpolitk'? A lunatic? A hypocrite? A sociopath? He'd never believe that everything you're telling him now is exactly what you were planning to say in that prayer you couldn't manage because you're really just the useless emotional female he assumed you'd be, and because that prayer request was just a trick to begin with. Would the prayer of a person who was really sincere include a breakdown of all of Carter Page's travels since the early 2000s? So of course he thinks you're a sociopath, which is hilarious, because obviously HE's the sociopath here, not you. But what if you're wrong, and both of STOP THINKING ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND JUST DO IT! 

"Because look. Robin? This is it. When your children ask you years from now, ‘mom, what did you do,’ you can point and say ‘this.’ You have got to be as convincing as possible. You have got to get him to listen to you because this is your one best chance to stop what you know is coming, and you're already off to a terrible start with the crying. But there really are lots of good reasons why he should listen to what you have to say about Russia. Pick the two he's most likely to care about and lead with those. I know! ‘I lived in Russia’ and ‘After the fall of Communism, I supported missionary work in Russia.’ Yes, say that.”

“I lived in Russia for a long time, and did missionary work after the fall of Communism,” I heard myself say.

“FUCK!” I yelled at me while talking calmly to Hice about his Oversight Committee. “WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? The missionary positions you had in Russia are not anything you want to tell the reverend about! And now you're like 15 sentences past it. Is it too late? What should I do?”

What I should have done was stop right there and say, wait, that wasn’t what I meant to say. But I was so keyed-up and discombobulated and nervous and embarrassed that I didn’t. I just kept right on talking.

“Welp,” I thought later, getting back in my car, “Jody Hice is the kind of Christian who has no idea that ‘what you do to the least of these, you do to me’ was Jesus' TL;DR of the whole thing before he had to head on out, and you are the kind of Christian who lies about missionary work. Good to know.”

*

Later that afternoon I was drinking a Tropicalia on the back porch and wiping cream cheese off the dog.

“You can think on your feet maybe a little too quickly,” I told myself. “You’ll just blurt out no telling what all. You have got to get ahold of yourself if what you want is to help.

"But then on the other hand, being a Christian is not the only thing you’re new at. Being a stick in the wheels of our representatives is, too. Should you really be this hard on yourself? Maybe with more practice, you’ll get better. Maybe you’ll learn how to get rid of that little anxiety man who lives in your head and provides a ceaseless running commentary on every single thing you ever do, including what you're doing right now.”

“Shutting him up would be a relief for so many reasons,” I said out loud to the dog as I added one more prayer to the list.

*

Hilarious Coda 1: Right before Hice scurried away, I invited him to attend my church with me. To my complete astonishment, Hice agreed. Maybe it was because I put him on the spot in front of a bunch of people holding up their cell phones, or maybe I was too cynical about where his heart really lay. 

When he later attended both the 11am service AND the first and last Sunday school class I was ever in charge of, I found out which of those options it was.  

Hilarious Coda 2: The little anxiety man in my head is long ago dead; resting in pieces in the backyard where I buried him, and which hasn't been mine for years. Doing things exactly like what I did in this story even though I was never not afraid managed to finally accomplish what all that therapy never quite could. It snuffed that man out, and even better? Not only did it not cost a dime, it paid dividends I'm still living off of today.

Best of all, though, it might have helped rid us of 3 other little men who spent too much time in my head and caused me anxiety, but who are for sure not buried in any backyard they can pin on me. I didn't send Hice, Isakson, and Perdue packing all by myself, but my voice made the "NO" we all shouted one voice louder. It was something worth doing. I'd probably still be afraid, but I wouldn't hesitate if I had to do it again. 

So I'm not hesitating. I am joining all the people who still show up even though they're afraid, and I'm doing it again. Because this time especially, I have to. All of us do.