scribble, scribble, scribble…

Two things happened to me yesterday (I mean, more than two, but two that have any bearing on this post): For one, I watched the State of the Union address in its entirety, this being the first one of my adulthood that I could stand to listen to and look at without getting angry. And several hours before that, I interviewed a source who mentioned, in a discussion unrelated to any major policy issue, that she’d worked with legislators a fair amount and that they really appreciate getting letters from their constituents.

I guess that makes sense! I’m still young enough to have bought Nevermind when it was released, so, you know, disaffected, and I come from an industry (newspapering) where letters from the public are a thing to be feared or at least mocked. So I’d unconsciously assumed that the only people who wrote letters to senators and representatives were senior citizen cranks, and that nobody cares, Moby, nobody cares.*

But I thought about what my source said, and it occurred to me that maybe legislators are just as frustrated with the public’s lack of engagement with them (or at least the public who isn’t nuts’s lack of engagement with them) as the public is with their seeming disconnection from us. Or even if that’s not the case, the sort of person who goes into politics probably has the sort of ego that likes getting messages from other people, and also wants some of those other people to like them.

Anyway, then the SOTU came on, and it really drove home for me that, yeah, President Obama had decidedly not promised to do everything himself if we elected him. And I’d agreed with the whole “we have to do this together” sentiment in theory, but—like a lot of other people, I suspect—once he’d won the vote I kinda started hoping he could just take it from there on his own. I mean, I passed out flyers for one day. Wasn’t that enough?

No, it wasn’t, so today I’m embarking on a new tradition: I’m writing my three federal legislators—both senators and my congresslady—once a month. I’m just doing one letter, copying-and-pasting, and switching the names because these aren’t Christmas cards, for crying out loud, but that’s three more copies of the same letter than I’ve ever sent out before. I’m going to try to keep it meatily short (today’s letter is a little more than 600 words, about the length of a newspaper column), and I’m going to do my best to sound sane, and I’m going to stick to it. And who knows? Maybe it won’t make a damn inch of difference, but at least these three people who make major decisions for me will have an idea of where I stand on them.

I think you guys should do the same thing! Here’s how to find your representative, and your senators should be easy enough with the Google. And my letter is after the jump—feel free to tell me what a doofus I am if you think I’m a doofus.

*The reference is here, around minute three, and ought to be a meme.

Dear [legislator's name here],

Yesterday someone who’s worked with government for a long time told me that legislators really want to hear from the people they represent, that we’re not ignored, and that we’re not an irritation. In the spirit of believing her, I’m writing you and [other legislators' names here] today.

Listen: You need to get some kind of health care reform passed. I mean, there are a lot of things you guys need to do, but this one is paramount.

I got married in 2008, my wife and I just bought a home, and we want to start a family. We’re self-employed, so we have individual catastrophic coverage. That means that we pay entirely out of pocket every time we see a doctor, and that we’ll have to buy additional coverage when we decide to have a child (and time the conception very carefully!). It also means that, should we somehow lose our current coverage, and God forbid should one of us be diagnosed with something bad, we might never find affordable coverage again, without going to work for someone else.

I know that doesn’t sound like a tragedy, and believe me, I’m glad I don’t have a tragedy to report. I’d like to never have an insurance-related tragedy to report, in fact. I think it’s enough to say that we like working for ourselves and that doing so shouldn’t be strictly the province of people who already have money. Wanting to make our own way, and wanting to have a family while doing it—these are wholeheartedly American ambitions. Too many people today are scared away from starting their own businesses largely because of the cost of health care, and the dangers inherent in buying individual coverage. The United States should be encouraging entrepreneurship, if for no other reason than that it forces a person to have a greater stake in what happens to our country, instead of passively submitting to the whims of a faceless board of directors, implemented by executives who are out of touch.

I’m not asking for a public option or free handouts or anything right now but some kind of substantial reform, such as the passage of the imperfect legislation stalled in Congress right now. It would be a foot in the door toward further improving our health care system in the future, and if it doesn’t happen now, I’m worried it won’t again for another decade. The president has made it clear that he trusts you and your colleagues to get something done, and although I understand why some people are calling for him to take a harder hand in directing events, I really appreciate that instead of trying to rule from on high, he appears to want to let our government work as it ought to. He’s reaching out to the American people and asking you, our representatives, to accomplish something that will help so many of us.

To be honest, I don’t entirely share his faith in all of you. It’s nothing personal, but I’ve watched so much of what I believe—what I know—makes this country extraordinary get subverted in the name of politics, especially in the new millennium, while so many people looked on and did nothing. I want to believe that the United States isn’t yet broken beyond repair, but I need to see some evidence. I need to see some courage; I need to see some compassion; I need to see that you guys aren’t all just playing a game while the rest of us get ever more frustrated.

Please don’t let me down, and please do whatever you can to make this moment in American history one that future generations can look back on with pride, and not embarrassment. I’ll be writing you again soon. Thank you.

Yours,
Josh Wimmer