There were a lot of names on the list I had received that I knew would become big deals. John Boehner of Ohio would end up as Speaker of the House. Rick Santorum, of Pennsylvania, would become a Senator and then lose in the 2012 primary for President. I had a fellow Marylander, Wayne Gilchrest from the Maryland 1st (basically Maryland's Eastern Shore area), also a Republican, and I resolved to make sure I met him. The saddest to me was Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a certified hero from the Viet Nam War, the last Navy 'Ace' who shot down five MiGs. He spent 20 years in the Navy and 14 years in Congress, before being caught taking bribes and sent to prison. What an incredible waste!
It was an overwhelmingly Democratic House. There were 270 Democrats (plus Bernie Sanders, who might as well have been a Democrat) and only 164 Republicans. For the time being, at least, the Democrats were calling the shots. I knew that in four years there was going to be a major upheaval, one of those cataclysmic watershed events when the voters would 'throw the rascals out!' Right now, though, the Democrats called the tune.
I looked over the brief bio pages on us wonderful folks. I wasn't the youngest guy in the crowd, but I was close. It looked like most were about 10 years older than me, and a few were quite a bit older than that. The oldest was a guy named Dick Nichols of Kansas, who was 64. The youngest was Jim Nussle of Iowa, who was only 30. I was a year older than Tim Roemer, two years older than Dick Swett, and three years older than Rick Santorum.
I briefly wondered about my fellow classmates. Were they sitting there in their rooms, reviewing their bios and wondering about me? Who was this punk kid? Did any of them know anything about me? Had they read, or even heard about my books? Did they read the business magazines, or only political stuff? Or had they seen the news about the billionaire investor who wanted to play at being a Congressman? To be fair about it, the only reason I knew any of them was because of what they would become. Probably the biggest difference was that these guys probably had at least a semblance of an idea about what they were doing here.
Realistically, I was probably the most famous of the newbies. Following the election, I had made the covers of both Fortune and Business Week. (I missed the trifecta; Forbes not only didn't have me on the cover, they didn't even mention me on the inside!) Fortune had Geoff Colvin write a follow up piece to his original cover article back in the summer of '86, called 'Mister Buckman Goes To Washington' and basically updating the bio piece from before. Thankfully, a large separate piece also wrote about the future of the Buckman Group, with bios of Junior and Missy, and details about the planned joint venture, Marquardt/Buckman Investments. Junior and Missy were really earning their paychecks! (Dave Marquardt got top billing? Trust me, my ego could handle it! This was going to make me a shitload of bucks!) Business Week only had me in a photo about a quarter of the page on the front. Inside I was simply a one page photo and blurb in an article overwhelmingly about the politics of the next Congress. Nowhere was it mentioned that I didn't have a fucking clue what I was doing.
The average Congressman starts out as a local politician, a city councilman or county commissioner, maybe a mayor or state senator or district attorney, with a touch of ambition and a desire to do something right. He learns the tricks of the trade at a lower, less expensive level, builds contacts and gets to know the right people. Then, when an opportunity opens up, he pulls the trigger and goes for broke. The guys, and it is mostly guys, who had showed up here with me were the winners. In theory, some of them would eventually run for a more important office, usually Senator or Governor, and maybe if the gods of politics smiled at them, leverage that up to President. For the life of me I couldn't remember a Congressman who went directly from the House of Representatives to the Oval Office. The best I could come up with was Jerry Ford, who was picked by Tricky Dick to replace Ted Agnew when Agnew went to jail. Ford went from Congress to being Vice President. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Obama had all been Senators at some point. Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 43 had been Governors. Bush 41 had been a Congressman, but had then become an Ambassador and Director of the CIA before being tapped as Reagan's VP. After Obama, they all changed too fast to notice or care.
Technically, we didn't have to be at the hotel until Sunday evening, when the festivities officially started. We drove down Saturday evening after Marilyn and the kids went to Mass at Our Lady of Grace. Then she hustled around to move them out, and we drove down for a late supper and just spent the evening blessedly alone. Sunday we slept semi-late and then went down for breakfast, skipping the normal early-breakfast-and-a-full-morning-of-news-shows routine we enjoyed. That was when I realized that things were going to be different. Between the time we got off the elevator and the time we got to the restaurant, we were approached by two different men in suits, dressed quite a bit nicer than we were, with invitations to lunch, one from the American Petroleum Institute and the other from the Heritage Foundation. I pocketed both invitations with a smile but declined to commit myself.
The lobbyists were out in full force, and I hadn't even been sworn in yet, which wouldn't happen until the new Congress convened in January. The API I knew as the major lobbying group for the oil companies. The Heritage Foundation I had heard of; they were a conservative 'think tank', but I didn't know where their funding came from. After we were seated, Marilyn asked, "Who were those guys? Do you know them?"
I smiled and shook my head. "No, not yet, but I'm sure I am going to soon enough. They're lobbyists."
Her eyes opened wide at that. "Already!? You're not even sworn in yet!"
"I think that is way down the list of things they care about. Just wait, we'll probably be hit up by a defense lobbyist on the way out of here."
"Is that legal?"
I shrugged and smiled. "Define legal!"
She gave me her exasperated look. "Carling!"
I had to laugh. "From what I've learned over the years, legal and illegal, or right and wrong, aren't the major concerns of Congress. I think it's more along the lines of getting caught and not getting caught."
She smiled at that. "If they're as cynical as you, you'll fit right in!"
"Scary thought, isn't it? On the plus side, as long as I'm willing to sell my soul to Satan, I won't ever have to pay for a meal again in this town! As many times as I've been in this town, I don't know how anybody can actually afford to live here!" I remembered back on the first go, being sent to a conference in Washington back when I was a humble chemist. My per diem for food wouldn't cover three fast food meals a day, and I got royally chewed out about eating in 'expensive' restaurants - like the one at the hotel where the conference was held!
In many ways, this was what led so many otherwise fine Congressmen into trouble. Unless you are bunking on the floor of a tenement slum, apartment rents are astronomical. If you plan to bring the family and put the kids in local schools, it just gets worse. The D.C. school system is a national disgrace, so everybody puts their kids in private schools, which are also ridiculously expensive. The suburbs, like Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and Alexandria, are some of the most expensive in the nation. If you want to live in the suburbs, you end up living an hour or more away, just to keep the cost down.