The Politician by Andrew Young Read Free Book Online

office. Equipped with used federal chairs and desks (I found old Helms papers in mine), the place was furnished in a drab government style except for the personal items people added to the décor. I put up a framed tourism poster from the 1930s that showed the U.S. Capitol and declared, “Your National Capital Beckons You.” Some of the people in the office worked every day on constituent issues like passports and Social Security concerns. My job involved working with state and local governments and helping citizens with complicated issues.
    Everything you can imagine flows through a senator’s local office, from immigration appeals to reports about unidentified flying objects. One lady left rambling messages about her sexual fantasies—all of them involved Senator Edwards—on the office answering machine every night. Agents of the Office of the U.S. Marshal eventually paid a visit to her trailer and asked her to stop making these calls. She didn’t. We heard almost as oftenfrom a federal inmate who wrote the senator on ten-foot stretches of toilet paper. Every sheet was filled with his carefully penciled grievances about the government. Each time one of these communiqués arrived, I got a kick out of watching an intern try to use an official stamp to record receipt of the letter without tearing it.
    Most of the real business I did required me to steer questions to the right federal agency or untangle red tape. People who had seen campaign ads saying that Senator Edwards was going to Washington to use his trial lawyer experience to be an advocate for the little people called to seek clemency for relatives on death row. I did a lot of listening and a lot of sympathizing but could offer them very little concrete assistance.
    I was so gung ho that I worked overtime almost every day and often left the old building so late that when I tried to take the elevator to the street level, it would get locked and I would be trapped inside. I’d use the emergency phone and call for help. The officers who responded probably thought I was crazy to work all alone so late into the night. In fact I was just a young, ambitious guy who saw a real opportunity in Edwards. At every chance I volunteered to do more, so when everyone else turned down the job of driving the senator when he came to town—picking him up at the airport, ferrying him around the state, bringing him back to the airport—I grabbed it.
    Having been around politicians my whole life, I understood that when they travel, major political figures need an assistant—usually called the “body man”—who will be available during every waking hour. (You’ll know him when you see him because he’s the one who has to collect every gift or piece of paper handed to his boss and has a Sharpie marker at the ready for the hordes of autograph seekers.)
    The person chosen for this job is granted a high level of trust and responsibility, and a good performance can lead to big opportunities. President Clinton’s body man Kris Engskov became head of public policy for Starbucks. Reggie Love, body man for Barack Obama, has become a genuine celebrity in his own right. Since trust brings with it a sense of duty and responsibility, the job also encourages a fierce kind of loyalty that is rarelyseen outside of families. The body man can develop a sense of mission and commitment that is practically fanatical, and his sense of duty, to a boss who may influence the fate of the world, could lead him to overlook, indulge, and even enable things he might not countenance in another person. For example, David Powers, who served President Kennedy, never uttered a word about JFK’s many relationships with women other than his wife. Likewise, many of the people who served Governor and then-President Clinton knew about his affairs and said nothing.
    I wanted to set a new standard for body men. Whenever the senator was flying in, I would call the airline and arrange for an agent to meet him at the