Gooseberry’s first two rules of politics

It is recommended the young politician not embark on any endeavor of public spectacle until he or she has acquainted themselves with the following list of conventions geared toward making their efforts utmost profitable. Failing to follow these simple rules could result in significant carbuncles, warts and vaporous discomfort. (In other words – the following is the first installment in a list of Gooseberry’s rules of politics.)

1. Things are neither as good nor bad as they seem.
If it’s happened once, it’s happened a thousand times -- a concerned citizen has just received an email instructing them to call their Congressman to warn them, unless they act right now, someone else is going to: die, lose their land, lose their home, lose all chance of livelihood, pass a kidney stone, allow all the babies in (pick your third world country) to starve, drown New York City in melted ice caps, kill the polar bears, end the free world as we know it, kill democracy, allow teenagers to run promiscuously rampant through the streets, cut down Ferngully, eat fast food, wear last year’s fashion, and so on and so forth. The next call tells the Congressman, if they act in a different way on the same issue that: cancer will be cured, everyone will get warm fuzzies, freedom will break out in Tibet, Timmy won’t fall in the well, our economy will suddenly be strong and will continue that way for the next eleventy-billion years, grandma will not have to choose between her heating bill or buying her medication.

The truth is there are no silver bullet proposals. No matter what is put forward, someone is going to benefit and someone is going to feel pain and neither is likely to result in heaven or hell. Reality falls somewhere in the middle, in a mundane place where neither angels nor demons tread. A place kind of like Montana.

2. Life always works out, even when it doesn’t.
In January 1997 three people were killed after flood control levees in Northern California failed to hold back a sudden inundation of snow melt caused by early warm rains in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was a horrible tragedy that never should have happened. Construction permits on the levees had been held up for several years waiting for the US Fish and Wildlife Service to provide consultation on potential habitat for the infamous endangered elderberry beetle which possibly, might, could, someday maybe decide to move into one of the elderberry bushes that literally had sprung up like weeds on parts of the levee. California Congressman Wally Herger introduced a bill that would have exempted flood control structures, like the levees, from consultation under the Endangered Species Act so they could be operated and maintained consistent with their original purpose to prevent this kind of tragedy from ever happening again. The bill went down in flames.

Western Republican Congressmen were livid, particularly because it was one of their own, a Republican from New York, that killed the bill. The day after the debacle, the congressmen marched into the speaker’s office and demanded retribution. At the same time the congressmen were shouting and yelling at Newt Gingrich, Speaker Gingrich’s staff pulled in committee staff and the staff of Congressman Herger to find a way to mend the fences ripped apart by the failure of the Flood Control and Family Protection Act of 1997. It was at that moment that I realized exactly how much fun working on Capitol Hill could be. “I have this bill called the Quincy Library Group Forest Health Act that I think everyone can get behind,” I heard myself say. The Speaker’s staff grabbed onto the bill and helped push through the first environmental bill to pass Congress in more than five years.

There are many ways to say the same thing. Look for the silver lining. Every time one door closes another opens. Thank God for unanswered prayers. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Just because you’re going bald doesn’t mean you’re not still sexy (ok, maybe that one is a stretch. But you get the idea). One of the best ways I recently heard it put is “Come what may, and love it.”