Mariannettepower in 2nd Congressional District
May 30, 2008 10 Comments
Okay, so at the cost of revealing I’m not as brave as I would like to be, I have to admit I am a person who has fears, and one of them right now is Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
The bottom line is I believe it’s necessary to investigate thoroughly the character of any woman who seeks a position of power in any arena, be it business, teaching, the medical profession, politics, you name it. Full disclosure: the uneasiness I suffer at the prospect of any woman in power stems initially from the seventeen years I spent in an all-female grade school, prep school, and college, both in this country and abroad, not to mention many years in jobs with female (as well as male) bosses. So I speak from the point of view of one who has had countless opportunities to observe how women operate and I have come to the conclusion that it takes an unusual man to remain uncorrupted by power but it takes an even more unusual woman to do so. As we look at women who have been drawn to the political scene over the years, we find some who rise above the predilection of their sex but we can also find just as many, perhaps more, who do not. There is a joke (from I’ll bet the sixties) that whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men. This I believe is true. But I strongly disagree with the punch line that says, “Fortunately that’s not difficult.”
I have no proof that Mariannette Miller-Meeks lets power go to her head, but there are a few instances of behavior on her part which give me pause.
I e-mailed Mariannette Miller-Meeks some time ago and asked if I could send her some questions to answer. After a bit of back and forth correspondence with her campaign manager, I finally received an e-mail from Ms. Miller-Meeks impressing on me the fact she had just returned from Washington and stating she would not answer any questions in black and white (nor did she offer her phone number,) because she prefers to speak to people in person, face to face as it were, so that they may see her sincerity, or words to that effect. She suggested I attend a venue where she would be available. There was, by the way, no sensitivity on her part to the possibility I might be an older “shut-in” or unable to drive.
So I proceeded to find out what I could about Ms. Miller-Meeks from her website, where I discovered she wants to cut federal spending and reform taxes and fix health care (she’ll get no argument from me on these initiatives although it’s unclear from the website how she plans to accomplish them.) Interestingly enough, the information at her site steers clear of certain social/family values issues on whose bandwagon so many candidates seem to be heedlessly jumping (and that was almost a relief– that she did not feel the same obligation!) I also found out how she left home as a teenager and made her way in the world and joined the military and eventually attended medical school…..these are all very admirable accomplishments and I am convinced Ms. Miller-Meeks has a high IQ and lots of ability and is ambitious and successful.
All well and good, but still I found myself troubled, as if something I needed to know was missing, and I felt somewhat mystified… I started to put the pieces of my puzzlement together when I heard Ms. Miller-Meeks speak at The District Two Convention in April.
First of all, Ms. Miller-Meeks and the other District Two candidates for Us Representative were scheduled to speak in the afternoon. Peter Teahen and Lee Harder were present earlier in the morning, talking to constituents and circulating, and not long after Ms. Miller-Meeks arrived, the time frame for speeches was changed to accommodate her schedule (she had just rushed to convention from a medical meeting and had to rush back.)
After some confusion as to which candidate should speak first, Ms. Miller-Meeks spent her allotted minutes in a list of comparisons to Loebsack, cheering herself on with praise about her success in getting ahead, in being in the military, in being a doctor, in being a wife of twenty-five years with two children. It was a speech based on the topic, “Who is better? I am!” Except for the embarrassment of her poor grammar in referring to herself repeatedly as “They,” it was a very effective pep talk and I noticed many women in the audience egging her on. She said very little about how she planned to cut federal spending, or lower taxes and the cost of health care while making the latter more available to us all.
I came away from the convention not knowing much more about Ms. Miller-Meeks than I did before…. except that I discovered she is very energetic and speaks well and fast and likes cute ideas like the white coats and pink (yes! PINK!) stethoscopes around the necks of supporters at her booth (so much for those of us with white coat phobia)…. and forgive me, I couldn’t help remembering the fitting quote from Mark Twain that the only people who should be allowed to employ the “royal we” are “kings, editors, and people with tapeworms. “
The next opportunity I had to glimpse what makes Ms. Miller-Meeks tick was her interview on Steave Deace’s show. Here again, Ms. Miller-Meeks showed remarkable verbal skills, in fact she herself emphasized how good they are, something about some family “dynamic” involving children and husband… My problem is not with her skills but in the way she seemed to be using them in the interview. Instead of answering Deace’s questions, Ms. Miller-Meeks jumped through hoops with words to do everything BUT answer his questions. She stumbled badly on the abortion issue–don’t worry about how we might react to your answer, Mariannette, just tell us how you feel! –so that it must have been evident to all but the least perceptive listener that she was just plain avoiding the question.
She showed overall a great reluctance to answer many of Deace’s questions. Instead it seemed she used her verbal skills to restate his questions and twist them slightly (or more so) into the questions she would have liked him to be asking her. She did this nearly effortlessly and pleasantly and without appearing to be aggressive, but still she did it, and that is fact. Afterwards, when I thought about the interview in its entirety, I realized it was really not as much an interview as it was a monologue. Ms. Miller-Meeks used her enviable verbal skills to make herself unreachable, in fact almost invulnerable, and I wondered if the reason no listeners’ phone calls were accepted was that she had used up so much time talking. At any rate, it was an amazing feat and I would think Ms. Miller-Meeks would be much sought after as a participant in a filibuster.
However, a US Representative has more to do, we hope, than filibuster. A US Representative is in Washington to serve us. If Ms. Miller-Meeks is going to be an effective representative she is going to have to listen to somebody besides herself and talk about something besides herself. She is going to have to answer people’s questions in whatever form the questions take, and she is going to have to learn to accommodate herself to other people and to situations where she is not in control. Part of a doctor’s job is telling people what to do (er… making recommendations,) and I am not certain that is necessarily appropriate training for the people’s representative, much of whose job often involves listening to what your constituents would like to have you do.
Frankly, I find Mariannette Miller-Meeks intelligent, competent, aggressive, and self centered. I have yet to see any indication that she has as big a heart as she does a head, particularly since I remained wholly unconvinced by her display of emotion (as in: sorry, I may get a little emotional about this) when she was talking about the plight of underprivileged children. Well aware that her audience would not have been able to see tears in a radio interview, Ms. Miller-Meeks was considerate enough to warn us and imply that she might be about to shed them.
And so Ms. Miller-Meeks has left me to ponder the Power of Tears, not to mention the ramifications of Tears AND Power.
Hold those thoughts, everybody, when you go to the polls to vote.
