Representative Mom: Balancing Budgets, Bill, and Baby in the U.S. Congress - Hardcover

Molinari, Susan; Burkett, Elinor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385492200 ISBN 13: 9780385492201

Verlag: Doubleday, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

A memoir of the former congresswoman, traces her political career, family life with Congressman Bill Paxton, and hosting of her own CBS-TV morning show

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Cowriter Elinor Burkett is the author of <i>The Right Woman,</i> a book about radically conservative women, <i>The Gravest Show on Earth,</i> about the AIDS crisis, and with Frank Bruni, <i>Consumer Terrorism.</i>  She was nominated for a 1991 Pulitzer Prize for her work with the <i>Miami Herald.</i>  She lives in Hobart, New York.

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, funny, and human story of an ordinary working mother's adventures in extraordinary places: Susan Molinari, the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in the U.S.  Congress, now host of "CBS News Saturday Morning".<br><br>She was the youngest person ever elected to the New York City Council.  After her election to the U.S.  Congress, she quickly rose to a leadership position, becoming the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in that body and one of the most popular politicians in the country.<br><br>Her appeal lay in her commitment and in her personality.  <i>USA Today</i> praised her as "one of the most visible baby-boomer advocates for women's issues." <i>Entertainment Weekly</i> said Molinari has "a smile so wide that her eyes have to close to make room for it on her face." She was the keynote speaker at the 1996 Republican National Convention, an early and forceful advocate for intervention in Bosnia, and a

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By my second full term in Congress, I was ready to have a life outside my office, and that life gradually came to revolve around Bill Paxon. After my breakup with John, we began seeing more and more of each other, falling into a comfortable routine of popping into each other's offices, which were near each other, and going out to dinner with mutual friends. Bill knew that I was hurting from the end of my marriage, and he was there for me as a friend. I wasn't ready for anything more. I didn't want to get involved. I didn't trust the closeness.

Plus our lives were complicated. We were both frantic with committee work and obligations to our constituents, and Bill was in the middle of redistricting. Everyone knew New York was about to lose three congressional seats, and most people were already writing his political obituary. So while I licked the wounds of my failed marriage and learned how to be an effective member of Congress, Bill was in the thick of trying to save his political career.

That career wasn't just a job to him. It was his entire life. When I was still trying to figure out what to study in college, he was ignoring his college homework to plan his first run for Congress. He grew up in a small town out in the farm country near Buffalo, which made him more a midwesterner than a New Yorker. Politics was his family business. His dad was a lawyer who had became active in the Republican party and wound up as a county judge. His mother, the real political animal of the household, was a force in the party in that region of the state.

In high school, while other boys were reading Mad magazine or Playboy, Bill was studying issues of the National Review. Other kids dressed up like sixties wanna-bes; Bill hung a Nixon poster in his school locker. He licked envelopes, volunteered on campaigns, and waited for the day he could run for office himself. Bill was just out of college when he decided that day had come, and he announced his intention to run for a seat in the Erie County legislature. The county Republican chairman did everything possible to dissuade him. The party needed to win the seat, and the chairman wasn't sure a novice in his early twenties could do it. He was so desperate that he asked Bill's mother to run instead, then called Bill and told him his mother had agreed. Crushed, Bill called home and asked his mom if it was true that she had decided to run against him. She was incensed. "He called, but I said no," she said. "It's ridiculous. You're going to run, and you're going to win." For years he's joked that if his mother had made a different decision, she'd be serving in Congress instead of him.

Bill won that first election, and five years later he made his bid for the state assembly and won again. His grand plan, however, was to get to Washington. Even while he plodded through the snows of Albany, he was plotting his next move. He figured that Jack Kemp, who represented Buffalo, would eventually run for the presidency and that he could take Jack's seat. The only problem with the plan was that it presupposed that Kemp would remain in Congress until the mid-1980s, when Bill thought he'd be ready. When Ronald Reagan was nominated in 1980 and the rumor spread that Jack was under consideration to be his vice presidential running mate, Bill was shattered. His plan seemed ruined. Reagan's decision to tap George Bush, then, made Bill's career. By the time Kemp left the House in 1986, Bill had built up his base and established himself with nine years in the assembly. He sailed into Congress as a disciple of Kemp's, another true believer in cutting taxes and fostering economic growth.

Bill was an early and ardent conservative who was advocating welfare reform and privatization long before those positions became part of the national debate. He fought the unions over the privatization of a county hospital in the late 1970s, when he was still in his county legislature. He proposed limiting welfare benefits in the early 1980s, when he was still in the New York State Assembly.

Bill was precisely the kind of man I'd avoided my whole life. He was entirely too nice. As the wounds from my first marriage healed, however, nice gradually became more attractive. He was secure and strong enough to make me feel stronger. And he never felt threatened by me, which successful women will understand is a major miracle. Maybe it's because he was raised by an incredibly strong mother, but when wonderful things happen to me, he's always excited with not a hint of jealousy or resentment. I get to bask in his unselfish joy.

Neither of us remembers precisely when our casual dinners became dates, and we were probably "going out" long before I realized it. When I did, I panicked and broke up with him. Bill, however, found a perfect way to get me back. One morning he called to tell me that George Bush had invited him to a state dinner for the president of Brazil. Did I want to be his date?  How could I resist?  I'd been in the White House plenty of times, but I'd never been to a state dinner.

We arrived at the White House feeling very grown-up. But when we reached the receiving line, Mrs. Bush pulled Bill aside. "Do you know who you're with, Paxon?" she said. Bill was very formal. "We're grateful to be at this dinner," he replied. Barbara Bush interrupted. "No. I mean as your date. You take care of her."

Barbara Bush wasn't the only matchmaker in our orbit. Congressman Ray McGrath, an old friend of my father's, was a wonderful, gregarious guy from Long Island. He clearly had his eye on Bill and me as a couple long before I was ready to contemplate the possibility. Whenever he saw us together on the floor of the House, he'd grab our hands and start sermonizing, "Dearly beloved . . ." and offering to marry us right there in the midst of the debate.

For months after Bill had decided to marry me, I gave him an impossibly hard time. The first time he mentioned marriage was one New Year's Eve in New Hope, Pennsylvania, when I asked him if he had any wishes for the coming year, and he responded, "That you'll marry me." I did not even reply. But as things happen, by the time I was ready, in the summer of 1993, Bill had stopped talking about marriage. He'd spent ninety-nine percent of our relationship pursuing me, then he kept me waiting for months. I obsessed over the problem. Doesn't he want to marry me?  Aren't we going to get engaged?  But Bill is a planner, and he had decided, for some reason even he doesn't remember, to wait until the end of the session, which was in August.

On the afternoon of August 5, I was in a meeting in the Speaker's office, when Bill sauntered in casually. He bantered awhile about whatever issue we were discussing and then excused himself to go back to the House floor. Almost as an aside, he asked me to meet him there when I was done so that he could catch me up on the day's goings-on. When I caught up with him, he steered me over into a corner where the Florida Republican members usually sit. A defense spending bill was being debated, but most members were watching it from their offices, so the place was pretty empty. Then Bill got down on his knees, held out a ring, and asked me to marry him. He caught me totally and completely off guard with what I later learned was a well-orchestrated plan.

He had, in fact, thought carefully about where and how he should propose, and had chosen the House floor because that's where we had gotten to know each other. He had chosen the hour because he knew that his friend Michael McNulty, a Democrat from Albany, would be in the Speaker's chair. Mike had been forewarned, and was ready to gavel me down if my answer was no.

An hour earlier, knowing that I was in a meeting, Bill had called...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Doubleday
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0385492200
• ISBN 13: 9780385492201
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 291
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar