Women Know
Did some door-to-door canvassing on behalf of Women’s Voter Action Day on a recent Saturday. The weather was sunny, clear and exhilarating, and we were pleasantly surprised to find many women at home, no doubt doing the housework they hadn’t had time to do while they were at work during the week. This was a well-kept, working-class neighborhood. It seemed to me that people who live here must know how to budget their time and money. So it shouldn’t have surprised me to hear some very cogent thoughts on the state of the nation from the women who answered the door.
Glancing at my handout, I told them that so far we have spent $200 billion on the war. We talked about what this money could have bought if it hadn’t gone to war. When you live on a budget, you know that you have to make choices about spending. If I tell you I have to spend $500 on a new dress for a job interview, you might wonder about how I would pay the rent or gas or electric that month. And so these women thought about all the teachers and places in Head Start for preschoolers and health care that these dollars could have bought.
We questioned what we’d gotten for our $200 billion. Were we safer? Were the people of Iraq better off? One woman decried the deaths of Iraqi children. She was concerned and farsighted enough to think about what was happening to the people of Iraq as well as to Americans. Were we gaining friends around the world? Were Americans better liked or respected? And, as women, we wondered how we are going to pay off this debt.
When we elect our government officials, we expect them to manage the budget wisely, just as any woman or man must manage the household budget wisely. The women I spoke to could give some valuable lessons to our government leaders, if only they’d care to listen.
Get on the Bus
President Bush could learn a lot riding the bus. Not a campaign bus filled with his worshipful entourage and a bevy of media flacks. He should ride the Metro through Price Hill or Avondale or Over-the-Rhine.
He might learn a thing or two about the people he alleges to govern. He’d meet people on the way to work. People with low-level jobs like office workers, factory laborers and restaurant help, not lobbyists and beltway insiders. These are people who live from pay to pay. You see them lined up at the check-cashing places for an advance when the next payday fails after the rent is due. If they have air conditioning, they can’t afford to run it.
Bush could practice his Spanish. He could explain to our Latinos how reducing the capital gains tax would further their pursuit of the American dream. First, he would feel obligated as a public servant to examine their green cards.
The president might encounter recent dropouts from the middle class. A lot of them ride buses now. People who are now working two low-paying jobs to try to maintain a middle-class lifestyle. They shudder every time their children sneeze because they can no longer afford health insurance. They keep taking aspirin because the cost of a doctor’s visit or a prescription is beyond reach. Public health clinics are acceptable in emergencies, but with the budget cuts the wait is too long and the humiliation is too real. Yet they march on without complaint, firm in the belief they’ll be taken care of if they just keep working. They find perseverance preferable to whining.
These people deal every day with the hazards of a low-income lifestyle. They lose their children to the drug culture. They worry about gangs and violence and drive-by shootings that aimlessly kill and cripple innocent bystanders. These things don’t just happen on TV. They happen on their doorsteps.
Bush won’t meet the blind man hurt by the cuts in bus service. Years ago he bought a house on a bus line so he could get to work every day. Services were reduced, and now he has to walk two blocks and cross traffic. The president would smile, pat him on the shoulder and grin. An empty gesture from an empty man.
The president is out of his scope here. He never had to be so tough or resilient himself.
Of course, riding a bus poses some risk. A senior citizen might ask him to explain the ins and outs of these prescription plans. A Medicare patient might ask why she has to sign up for a plan if they just want to reduce the cost of her medications. Why does it have to be so complicated? Who invented this? And why is it cheaper to get the drugs from Canada? That is, if it were legal to do that.
Bush would have to refer the person to the drug companies. After all, they wrote the legislation.
But our fearless president will never see these people. If he did, he would tell them to tough it out, to work harder, to accept that their lives will get tougher as the rich continue to get richer.
Maybe we expect too much? The man never had to find a job for himself. Every single solitary thing in his life was arranged for him.
For him, the election is not about little people — it’s about the people who sponsor him, his elite from the upper echelons of the tax bracket, the ones who benefit from a reduction in the capital gains tax.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2004.