Mama's little girl is all grown up and asking people for money!
I flew in to DC early on the first day and met one of my wonderful and amazing friends, Clare, for lunch near the White House. Clare is busy saving the world from climate change through her position as the Special Assistant to the Special Envoy for Climate Change (really, the title is not a joke!) in the State department. Hillary Clinton is her boss's boss, how cool is that!?! The rest of the day was taken up by last minute studying of my primary assignments and a dinner with all the trip participants.
It was not the most beautiful day, but the White House was still impressive.
The next morning we had a meeting at the Universities Research Association's DC office to assemble the packets of information we were going to give to our offices and to do last minute coaching on "the message". Then we were set loose on the capitol! I went to approximately 10 offices over two and a half days including the three I was assigned to as a primary: Braley, Giffords and Pelosi. I went along to the other seven to keep the conversation flowing and provide moral support for the person who had the primary assignment.
The office I enjoyed the most was Bruce Braley's, in part because my cousin Caitlin, his communication's director, made sure his legislative staff took care of me and took me to meet the congressman himself, which is rare. The vibrant office was overflowing with people talking to each other in every available space. Caitlin pulled us into the congressman's room to meet him. He was very friendly, genuine and enthusiastic. He was particularly concerned with physics education and how to get people interested in the subject, particularly in the rural areas of his district where the high schools may not be able to offer physics every year due to lack of demand. He was interested to find out about ways that the excitement of research could be brought into the class room through communications technology. I left with a very favorable impression and was happy to read this account of the health care wrangling which credited him with giving teeth to the reform. The rest of his staff was excellent and asked that we keep them informed of any way they can help us, which is especially nice considering that there is no high energy physics being done in their district.
Perhaps the most interesting visit was with the staff member in charge of science policy for Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Senator Hutchison was engaged in a vicious primary battle for the republican governor candidate in Texas. It had devolved into a how-wacko-conservative-can-you-get fight and Hutchison was getting pummeled. She is a strong supporter of science and the ranking republican on the senate committee for science funding and hence a very important person. Her staffer really just wanted to vent for 45 minutes about how frustrated he was for his boss, both with the democrats for health care and with the conservative elements in his party for being wackos. He obviously believed in her and was sad to see her get so demoralized, particularly because many of the hits she was taking were for earmarks, which she always viewed as the way she protects and takes care of Texas. We briefly got around to discussing science, in which we learned that he was from Downer's Grove, a town near where I grew up, and that he had attended the Fermilab Saturday Morning physics as a high schooler, something that I participated in as well. The physics didn't take with him, however, he ended up an economist. At the end of the meeting he told us that if there was anything we saw in the budget once it got to their committee that we didn't like, to let him know because "they could take care of it".
The group getting ready to take a photo on the capitol steps.
The Hutchison visit was in the Senate buildings which were much nicer than the House equivalent. With granite and gilt in abundance, the place felt spacious and calm, or stagnant, depending on your opinion of the Senate. The House offices, by contrast, were like a network of beehives. With the exception of a few offices and corridors, the place hummed, nowhere more so than the underground cafeteria where we ate lunch most days. The petitioners in town to visit their Representatives, along with the staff and quite a few military officers congregated in the crowded space while on break, lunch or in between visits. Whenever I had time to kill between meetings I could find someone else from our trip waiting around.
The last noteworthy visit was, of course, with Nancy Pelosi's office, which was in the capitol building itself. My secondary and I walked through the security on the side door and requested our visitor's badges. We then got directions on how to reach the Speaker's office and got lost within two minutes. We got lost three more times before finding the elusive office, including going down one hall that we were quickly ushered out of by a man who looked like he was plainclothes security. Finding the office was so tricky because the building is full of narrow corridors and hallways that appear to lead to nowhere. When we finally found the non descript entrance to the Speaker's quarters we walked through a small doorway into a hall with large ceilings, many doors and a young man sitting behind a desk in the middle of the hall. It felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland.
Another view of the capitol building. No foaming-at-the-mouth crazy racists protesters that day.
The young man directed us into a narrow elevator and which took us to what must be the attic, judging by its decidedly not grandiose decor and short ceilings. After waiting a while, the harried science policy staffer took us to a conference room to hear us out. Well, sort of hear us out. He explained at the beginning that Senator Bunning's obstructionism had turned the day upside down for various reasons and so to not be bothered if he checked his blackberry while we were talking. I think he spend 50% of the time listening and 50% of the time blackberry-ing. Nancy Pelosi is very strong on science and we did not need to convince him of the value of basic research. So he uncritically nodded in agreement with everything we said and I spoke fast to get in all in before the end of what we knew would be a short meeting. He did ask interested questions about the baguette LHC incident, which, incidentally, I heard was actually not due to an errant baguette dropping bird. After fifteen or twenty minutes were were back down the elevator, past the young man at the desk and on our way out of the building.
A mock-up of Hubble and an afternoon snack.
Other highlights of the trip included visiting the American Indian Museum and the Air and Space museum, visiting the high security DOE offices outside of DC to report on our visits, having drinks with my cousin and spending more time with Clare. All in all it was a good trip but I am holding my breath until the budget gets passed, which, given the pace of Washington these days, might take a long time. It was enlightening to see the way the government works, and I am now sure more than ever I do not want a career related to politics.
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