Hazel....

This is an excerpt from the book I will endlessly write and never publish.

I'm printing it here because it relates to what we've been talking about, namely how elected officials behave once they've been elected.

In my days as a Chief Executive Officer, I prided myself (hubris actually) on being a "man of the people". I proudly proclaimed an open door policy and any citizen that wanted to see me could do so as long as I wasn't already occupied. All were welcome into the "inner sanctum".

The trappings of a small town Mayor are intoxicating. How ego-fulfilling is it to have a councilman bring his out-of-town nephew into to meet you and insist on having your picture taken with the little...er...ah...person? How heady is it to have the local Cub Scouts ask to have their picture taken with you? Pretty neat huh?

As you can see, it was not only good management to meet and talk with citizens, it was good politics as well as a tremendous shot of ego gratification, so it was with a great deal of personal self-satisfaction, that I instructed my secretary to usher into the inner sanctum an elderly lady and her ever-present companion, her dog.

The lady's name was Hazel and she was somewhat of a fixture around town. Everybody recognized her and Spanky. Spanky should have been a Collie. In fact, he looked every bit like a collie with the tan and white long coat and the beautifully shaped collie snout, but fate cruelly mixed Spanky's collie genes with the genes of a basset hound. As a result, Spanky had very, very short legs.

When Hazel came in I offered her a seat and then came around to the front of the desk to talk to her. She was very concerned about the sidewalks on the the streets that she used commonly as routes to the drug store, the grocery store and the Senior Citizens Community Center. Some of them, she said, had large cracks in them or were uneven (because of frost heave I assumed) and Hazel was very afraid she would fall and break a hip. I assured her I would have the Public Works Department look after those sidewalks right away and told her we would like to replace more sidewalks but we also wanted to keep from raising taxes so we were only replacing a few per year.

She thanked me and then said, "You know, I didn't expect you to listen to me because, you know...I didn't vote for you." That took me aback for a second, if only because I wasn't expecting it, but at the same time it flashed back to the memory of election night.

That night, while there was a rowdy celebration going on in my house, I had taken some guest's coats up to the bedroom and was walking down the stairs by myself, for the first time that evening, I was alone when the sobering (literally, I think) thought occurred to me that I wasn't elected Mayor for just the folks celebrating downstairs at the moment, I was elected Mayor FOR ALL the citizens whether they supported me or not.

And that's what I told Hazel. "Hazel, that doesn't matter. I'm your Mayor too." I think she actually blushed.

As she prepared to leave, I figured I had one more chance to endear myself to her. I could play with Spanky. I leaned over and petted him and he responded by jumping up on me and placing his paws just above my belt line so I could pet him. I happily did so.

But soon, I noticed that my hands were covered in something like....like...oil? "Gee Hazel, it looks like Spanky got into some oil somewhere, I've got it all over my hands.", I said.

Without hesitation, Hazel replied, "Spankys got the mange."

I've always considered that incident to be a cosmic lesson that unless my motives were pure, I'd be punished....sooner or later, I'd be stricken for my insincerity and hubris. It's a lesson that has served me well over the years although I'll have to admit that I have, from time-to-time, fallen off of the humility wagon.

I sometimes wonder if persons elected to higher offices have ever had the same kind of "grounding" experiences. I wonder if they've been filled with so much cocktail napkin conventional wisdom about how to win campaigns and staying on message that they wouldn't recognize such a moment as an object lesson when it happened.

Too bad.

I think every politician needs a lesson in humility like that....maybe more than once.

note to Al and alwayshope....great responses, I'll address them directly in another post.