The Fool on the Hill

‘Democracy is the worst form of government…... except for all the others’

Sitting in Congressman Kennedy’s office on day one of my internship was a somewhat surreal experience – I was nervous enough without Kennedy family photos peering down at me. I sat there not quite knowing what to do or who to approach until a staffer grabbed me and took me into a meeting, throughout which I said little but compensated by nodding a lot.

There really is no such thing as a typical day on Capitol Hill – I had the chance to attend press conferences with the Congressman, make notes on committee hearings and attend office meetings but I also spent a lot of time fulfilling the more prosaic office duties such as answering the phone or opening the mail. The most important lesson I learned from all this was that although in my own head I couldn’t help considering a committee hearing on energy policy as something pretty important that for the office the most important tasks I fulfilled were opening the mail and answering the phone. Why? Well this brings the office into direct contact with the voters, so while I may not relish my third telephone conversation of the day with Jim from Providence, the office does. If they need to know what’s happening at a committee meeting or press conference they can just turn on C-Span (Capitol Hill’s TV station), rather than waiting for the intern to arrive back with some hastily scribbled notes. When they sent me to committee hearing this was as much for my value as their own, so I can only thank them for giving me so many opportunities like this.

That’s not to say I didn’t learn anything from answering the phone and mail on a daily basis. Harold Ickes described Washington as a ‘city of hand wringers’ persistently postulating on every issue under the sun – committees, committees about committees, think tanks all trading in the currency of policy and influence; sometimes it’s important to listen to Jim from Providence.