In the late summer of 1989 I was crisscrossing Capitol Hill looking for a job. I had just graduated from college with a degree in English Literature, and I had no real idea what I wanted to do with my life. But William & Mary was only a few hours from Washington, D.C., and I seemed to think that lots of people went to work on the Hill right after college. I was correct. Eventually, I managed to get an interview in a senator’s office for a job answering phones and greeting people in the reception area. I didn’t get the job. So, I offered to work for free in the mail room. After two weeks as an unpaid intern, I was offered a job in the mailroom of the office of Senator John Warner, of Virginia. I stayed in Senator Warner’s office for four years, never holding a position of great responsibility or dealing with policy, but as an aide-de-camp to the senator, and in a variety of administrative positions. I think I got much more out of the experience than Senator Warner got out of me - my productivity was pretty lackluster - but I was a willing and happy team member, and I usually showed up where I was supposed to be at the right time.
Those were the days before Newt Gingrich became the Speaker of the House. He famously fostered in the Congress a cut-throat culture of political non-cooperation in order to advance party interests, even if they were not related to a particular policy or legislative goal. Congress has never recovered from the institutional damage that began in those days after 1994.
But I left Senator Warner’s office in the summer of 1993, and I remember a very different kind of political culture on Capitol Hill, especially on the Senate side. I’m sure I have idealized it a bit, but I remember a ready bipartisanship, especially around matters to do with defense and foreign relations. I remember active assertions from the Hill that the Congress is a co-equal branch of the government (along with the executive and judicial branches), and should be expected to assert its authority to make legislation to address matters of significance. I remember how important was the relationship between Senator Warner and his Democratic counterpart on the Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn, of Georgia, and how frequent was the communication between the two, whether or not they were in agreement on a matter. An article that was published at the time of John Warner’s death pointed out that “above all else, … Warner was an exemplar of the days before ideological rigidity gripped the GOP.” (Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine, 26 May 2021). John Warner was a Republican who held moderate views on abortion, was scorned by his party for voting in favor of gun restrictions, and made known his strong opposition to the authorization and use of torture during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2016 he very publicly endorsed Hilary Clinton for president.
Around the time John Warner died in 2021, I told a number of people the story of the day in 1990 that L. Douglas Wilder (a Democrat) was inaugurated as the first Black governor of Virginia, outside the Capitol building in Richmond, the city which had, of course, served as the capital of the Confederacy. I happened to be with the senator that day as he was headed toward the VIP area in which he was to be seated with other dignitaries. As we neared a security checkpoint, he leaned over to me and said, “Stick close to me and act like you are my security. This is a historic day, and I want you to see it up close.”
During those years that I worked on Capitol Hill, I also sang in the Choir of Men and Boys at Washington National Cathedral, which sits high on a hill on the other side of Washington. Someone quipped once that I spent my time moving between these two hills: one sacred, the other profane. I laughed, but I didn’t really like the joke; I didn’t see the work I participated in on Capitol Hill as ignoble in any way. People used to assume that working on the Hill made you cynical about politics, but in those days it did not have that effect on me or the people I worked with. We felt that we were doing our part to keep the machinery of American democracy working, even if it is ungainly, messy, and frequently in need of attention or repair.
As I look back, I suspect that John Warner held a somewhat romantic view of America. Maybe such a view was easier to hold back then, especially if you enjoyed the many privileges that he had enjoyed in his life. I don’t know. But I know that my own view of America was shaped significantly by Senator Warner and the experience of working for him in the Senate. I’d cite two other great influences on my view of America. The first would have to be my own family-of-origin story which charts a path from uneducated, working-class, Slavish-speaking children of immigrants in Brooklyn, through a couple of generations, to whatever status I enjoy in the world today, which would surely seem outrageous to my grandparents. The other influence would be whatever small portion of this nation I have seen in its wilderness and its national parks, and which tells a much bigger story than can be dreamt of from the brownstone stoops of Greenpoint.
But politically, I keep coming back to John Warner, who cared deeply about this nation, his constituents, his family, and his staff, and whose life and example provided me with a certain kind of tutelage in civics, a model for citizenship. We staff members used to roll our eyes whenever the senator resorted to telling a certain joke at public events. He’d often repeat this little story about the time that he was bragging to his family that he’d been called by some admirer a “model senator.” His daughter, maybe still in middle school at the time, responded that she had only recently learned the definition of the word “model." “It’s a greatly reduced version of the original,” she said authoritatively.
It seemed to me that John Warner actually modeled a kind of reasonably principled, often practical view of what it meant to contribute to the governance of this nation; a view that was built on the assumption that cooperation was required, at least at some stages of the process. And I think the most challenging moments of his career that I can recall are those times when he felt he needed to push back against reflexive cooperation with his own party, for the sake of his conscience and good judgment.
It matters who shapes your political views and the landscape of your political expectations. I suppose I am being nostalgic here - and nostalgia can be dangerous and misleading, so I should be careful. I was extremely fortunate to have been schooled a little bit in American politics by the likes of John Warner. More than anything, I think he shaped my view on what politics could look like, and how cooperative governing is the responsibility that grows from a good practice of politics.
Cooperative governing that grows from a good practice of politics is harder to find these days than it used to be. In my opinion these attributes are nearly completely absent amongst a large swath of American politics, much to the detriment of our common good as a nation. By way of encouragement, I want to point out that those attributes have not disappeared entirely, which makes it easy for me to decide to vote for Kamala Harris next week. I find her, by far, the more encouraging of the two candidates who is seeking the office of the presidency.
Departing staff members in Senator Warner’s office were usually presented with an American flag that had been flown over the US Capitol. Mine is in storage at the moment, but I know where it is, and I treasure it and all the best of what it stands for.
Cooperative governing---let's hope we see it again.
Much needed thoughts these days Sean, thank you!