On this date in 1973, in my second year in Washington DC, I sent President Richard Nixon a telegram.
It said,
"Congratulations on the 10th anniversary of your sudden return from political irrelevance. Be sure to lay a wreath for Lee Harvey Oswald's indispensable help in advancing your career to its present eminence."
I was told by my friend the Capitol Police Sergeant that this reckless action meant I was now on a Secret Service watchlist. Possibly so. I have never been able to get a Civil Service job. Though doubtless there were other reasons then, and still other ones now.
I was in Houston the day JFK was shot; hadn't gone downtown to see him the night before he went to Dallas. I had already shaken his hand on September 12, 1960. This was following the speech he gave before meeting with Protestant ministers in an outreach that historians say defused the Catholic issue then and thenceforward in American political history. And I was sitting high up in Rice Stadium in 1962 listening as he announced the space program. Partially inspired by Kennedy, I later came to Washington to work. The result proved rather less glorious than I intended.
For the last thirteen years I have been a contract technical writer on government software development projects, translating between the engineers and the users with manuals, or the engineers and management with reports, as the case may be, for such varied agencies as the State Department, the Patent and Trademark Office, Fannie Mae and the Labor Department.
Toward the end of that time I got divorced. I was the lesser-income spouse. (My ex is a GS-15 Civil Servant while I had been the one with the flex schedule to take care of the kids, do the shopping and fix dinner; I also lost two of those years to separate back surgeries.) Of course, my economic situation worsened as hers improved. (After divorce the higher income ex-partner customarily goes still higher and the lower goes lower yet on the income scale, though the genders are usually reversed from our case.)
I was left with more debt from the household in the divorce than I could carry. Three years after the finalization, I still get calls from debt collectors wanting several tens of thousands of dollars that I never personally had and didn't spend alone. Unfortunately, I neglected to go bankrupt before the credit card companies changed the law further in their favor and have been unable to do so since.
And I have discovered that, for the purposes of being disqualified for federal contracting (not even Defense or Fatherland Security, just regular federal), debt is the new gay. Under J. Edgar Hoover being gay was considered blackmail material leading to a low security rating, unless you were him. Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all had their tussles with Hoover and, at best, emerged with draws. Hoover could spot potential blackmail because he used it so well himself.
Now, I have never been sued nor gone bankrupt, have no judgments against me and have not run from any debt. I have simply declined to a position where I have been unemployed for the past year and am now applying for disability with a constellation of degenerative, unspectacular medical conditions so multifarious as to distract even me. No job, no retirement, no IRA, no 401-k, no insurance, no inheritances, no trusts, no savings, no assets, no jewelry, no bonds, no stocks, no car, no real estate, no gold in the sock under the bed, no rich relatives to co-sign or lend me out, nothing. A renter with a few books and a 10-year-old computer.
But the credit record I have is deficient enough to condemn me in the eyes of those who hire contractors to do work that once was performed in-house but which, under persistent Republican loathing for Civil Servants, has been subcontracted as the ranks of actual supervising federal employees are thinned out. Half a dozen times in the last year I have made it through the body-shop interview and the client-site interview with flying colors only to be told at the last minute,
'Oh, sorry, the client says new government contractor hiring practices say your low credit rating has stopped them from being able to hire you.'
Oddly, bankruptcy is supposed to be even worse on your federal record. Can't see how. In any case, you are said to fit a dismal litany. Unreliable. Deficient. Out of the mainstream. Suspect. Almost certainly degenerate. (And they're using credit references to keep people from getting insurance these days too. Make sure you never fall off the back of the economy, kids, or you may never get back on!)
It was said of Barry Goldwater in 1964 that he thought everybody ought to have sufficient gumption and belief in the free enterprise system to go out and inherit a department store like he did. That was a sad, sad election and a hollow triumph for Lyndon Johnson. Subsequently Johnson lost his nerve and refused to defend his viciously unsuccessful war electorally, trying to seem above it while still controlling it. This stance led directly to his succession by the Sage of San Clemente who was spectacularly, but characteristically, lying when he sold himself as the anti-war candidate.
My littlest sister said of this November day in 1963 that it seemed to her, watching the reactions of her elders and the solemn voices on TV, that hope had died in America. We might or might not have been on the brink of something wonderful; but whatever it was, we were suddenly and brutally deprived of it. One of the evidences of the reverberating blow this was to the national psyche is that voter turnout has never since been as high a percentage of eligibles as it was in 1960. (It is thought 2008 will be the next-highest.)
But this year offered clear proof that generalized, widespread political hope is back. Bill Clinton ran as the Man from Hope, but the dose of it being dispensed by Barack Obama is to the Arkansas variety as hooch is to water. Like Jimmy Carter, Clinton offered a cheerful dash of competence and that was useful; but Obama's transformative abilities transcend, though they include, competence.
My belief since this time last year has been that Obama is going to be the great president that Kennedy was not allowed to be. And I know that President Obama is already being, and will continue to be, protected by a tightly-woven garment of prayer offered daily by the good spirits in America who want to insulate our nation, ourselves, him and his family from tragedy. One dimming of the light was surely more than enough of a price for this country to pay since WWII.
And despite the infundibulated nature of my career I have been incredibly blessed. Many anonymous friends have assisted me in maintaining a sobriety as improbable as it was necessary. Cousins, siblings and close friends have helped me way beyond the call of duty and to the limit of their meagre means in my economic distress. And if I never work again, I have accomplished what they paid me to do, in an honorable and satisfactory fashion, for as long as they let me do it.
But this day is always bitter, and always makes me look back to how different things could have turned out. But then, as one of those minor poets said,
"The saddest words of tongue or pen are these: 'It might have been.'"