Stuck

One of the best ways to understand me is to remember that my career began in the Clinton Administration.  My first job that required a decent shirt and tie was on the Clinton/Gore Campaign of 1992.  I held jobs in the White House, the Department of Justice, for the First Lady.

My life in and around Washington, D.C. for those eight years was as fulfilling and remarkable as you might expect.  I was young and naive, sure, but even so, I recognized the unique opportunity I'd been given.  Not everyone gets that special chance.

And so I was a true believer.

I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about the year 1998.  1998 was, without question, the hardest year in Washington for me.  For everyone.  It was the year the year a half-rate blogger broke the story of Monica Lewinsky.  It was January.  Most of us didn't believe it.  

Then we slowly grew to understand: the affair had happened.  Clinton himself testified before the grand jury about the affair on August 17, the day after my birthday.  

For months and months after that, I had no idea what to do.

This was the leader of the free world -- the President of the United States!  Our guy!  In some ways, it was harder on those of us from Arkansas.  He was practically family!  And he'd had an affair with an intern!  An intern!  In the Oval Office, for God's sake.  What had he been thinking?  Why?  Why?  

The self-righteous finger-wagglers started in right away.  Actually, they'd started earlier, but now they had material to work with.  The impeachment process started.  It was a dark time.  

And not just dark because the big boss had done something stupid.  Dark, because we all had to bear the same weight.  I was just a low-level staffer -- nothing special.  There were a few hundred kids just like me running around the various branches of the federal government, political appointees just out of college or putting themselves through school.  And none of us had the answer.  None of us knew what to do.

I didn't know anyone personally who quit because of it.  I knew of some people who immediately put their resumes on the street and started looking.  I had some friends who knew folks who quit.  

I don't know about anyone else, but I remained conflicted for a long time, even after the impeachment trial in Congress.  The easy answer is, I stayed with it because I enjoyed the work and I was putting myself through school.  

I was married to my first wife at the time.  1998 was the beginning of the end for us, really.  Hard to say why in any specific way.  It just was.  But part of me stuck with it because of her, too.  She worked in the Administration as well.

Part of me stuck with it because I had nowhere else to go.  Or I didn't think I did.

And then in 2000, a political hero of mine, James Carville, published a book called Stickin': The Case for Loyalty.  It's a good read, even if you don't care for Carville (and my admiration for him has bobbed up and down over the years).  

The book is about loyalty in general, but in the first chapter he explains why he stuck with Bill Clinton during the low points of 1998.  The part that spoke to me at the time -- and speaks to me even more today -- is the part where he is talking to his little girls and trying to explain things.  

"There was a time in your Daddy's life when he had a good friend. And that good friend did a bad thing. And your Daddy did everything he could to try to forgive the bad thing and remember that this was a good friend. There will be times in your life when you are going to have good friends that do bad things. If you can, your father would like you to try to forgive the bad thing and stick with the good friend.

"But the most important lesson that I want you girls to take from all of this is that your father know that you are good girls. And your father knows that sometimes in life even good girls do bad things. If that ever happens to you, the thing I want you to remember the most is that you come tell your Daddy about it. You know for sure that he'll stick with you."

For me, that advice is all the more relevant today.  I have a daughter, and I would tell her, and my son, pretty much the exact same thing.

The power to forgive is extraordinary.  It is far greater than the power to destroy, the power to ridicule and minimize and make small the life of others.

By no means was President Clinton a "good friend" to me.  But the things I got from working for him for eight years were far, far greater than his personal transgressions.

Don't get me wrong.  To this day, I'll meet someone, and the instant they hear I worked for the Clinton Administration, the blue dress jokes start. 

Last week I wrote a post about a man named Steve Galvin.  He's running for City Council in District 8.  

Turns out that Mr. Galvin lied to the Tampa Bay Times.  When asked if he had a child, he said, "no."  When asked if he'd ever been sued, he said, "no."  Turns out those are both not true.  

Galvin's admission came a day after he told a Times reporter that the case had been dismissed. It had wrapped up years ago and "everything was dealt with," he insisted. He'd denied being involved in any litigation, he continued, because he didn't consider a legal demand for child support "being sued."

Confronted with court records from Orange County, Calif., Galvin said he hadn't wanted to tell anyone about the three-year child support battle or his son, who turns 8 next month. "I didn't mention it because I didn't want to go through this pain publicly," he said.