Category — Politics as Usual

So now we get to the meat of the day; the “soy protein” as it were for vegetarians like me.  As I said in one of the first posts, all I entered with was a vague understanding that we’d be discussing broad categories such as the economy and the Let’s Move! initiative.  I was worried that since the gathering was pegged as a “women’s” online summit that there would be a pinking down of the information.  And I didn’t want the softer side of our economic crisis; I wanted to hear the facts, plain and simple.

And that’s what I got.

So thank you, White House.

The day was arranged by the Office of Communications and had about 15 or so speakers covering a wide-range of topics: from education to military family outreach to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.  The first 3/4ths of the day were briefings by the speakers (everyone from the First Lady’s chief of staff, Tina Tchen to Elizabeth Warren, who has to be one of the most dynamic, engaging speakers I’ve ever heard).  The final 1/4th of the day was a discussion on how the administration is utilizing online media as well as brainstorming about how they can do it better.

Because they don’t take the online world for granted.  I think they know that they might not be in power right now without the grassroots ability to organize and communicate quickly which is afforded by the Internet.  From day one, this administration has been about two-way communication, and while that’s a difficult task with 310 million people, they have to be commended by at least attempting to give the average American access to the ears of lawmakers.  And their focus on the online world is reflective of their knowledge that they need to leverage both — traditional media and new media — to get their message across.

So what is their message?  In a nutshell, it’s about helping the world become flexible enough to deal with the changes that have swept over it while the system stood rigid.

How does that apply directly to the various topics we discussed:

• Military: there is going to be ramped up support for military families — both those serving who are moving between active service and veteran status as well as their families back home (especially those who are off-base or who need to move and find new jobs due to their partner’s military status).  As the White House said, “1% of the population is serving, and 100% should be aware of their sacrifice.”  Because that is something the other 99% of us can do — support those who serve in the military.
• Let’s Move!: it’s the one-year anniversary of this initiative this week, and it’s limiting to think about it as a public health issue.  This is about infrastructure — are the parks and sidewalks in place so people can get the exercise they need?  Is our outside world safe so we can walk instead of drive?  This is about community development just as much as it is about taking care of our health.  And I loved the idea presented about the way little changes have big consequences.
• Health Care: we learned the bare facts of the new Health Care bill, and frankly, it was pretty eye-opening.  The main message is that if you like your insurance, nothing is going to change.  But if you are having problems, you finally have support.  A lot of the health care focus was about empowering consumers – insurance companies can’t try to confuse us anymore.
• Education: the administration is looking at a cradle through career agenda.  They want to support teachers so they can do their job, make greater accountability in No Child Left Behind, and bring more girls into STEM fields.
• Workplace: workplaces have to adapt to a different type of worker.  Women are wearing a lot of hats at the same time and workplaces need to be flexible.  The Administration is supportive of work sharing because it means we retain workers and in-house knowledge.  Productivity benefits from flexibility.  They want to help employers become more flexible.  There was a lot of emphasis on the Women Owned Small Business Program.
• Accessibility: 1 out of 4 homes do not have access — either logistically or financially — to broadband Internet.  And while we may scoff that having the Internet isn’t necessary, the White House would argue that as the world moves more and more online, we develop a deeper rift between the haves and the havenots.  We can’t make computers a priority in schools or communication and then not give people access to the online world.  And this is the way communication has moved, therefore, the system needs to be flexible and move with it.
• Economics and Personal Finance: there was a lot of talk about how we come out of a recession as well as what got us into a recession.  The emphasis is on making sure that the average consumer can be a careful consumer.  That companies can’t confuse us or give us the run-around.  That there is going to be a new bureau aiming to make sure the laws in existence are enforced.

One of the highlights of the day was when the President came into the room and spoke about how women have “a broader bandwidth of stuff to deal with.”  He looked at everything discussed as people issues rather than women’s issues.  We happened to be looking at them through the lens of women, but everything that affects women affects everyone else (since, as the President says, “women are at the intersection of the family.”)  He talked a lot about how women need to balance their own needs with career, keeping the family going, raising kids, worrying about finances.  It was moving to have the President recognize how difficult it is to “have it all” as well as the tremendous pressure — either out of necessity or desire — to still attempt to … well … have it all.

My overall take-away was that the administration’s heart is in the right place.  That the collective 310 million Americans is a fairly unmanageable beast, and we will never have complete adoration of every policy passed by the administration — I’m an enormous supporter of the President and even I am not enamoured with every idea he puts forth.  But that aside, the administration is staying true to their vision (yes, this is about their vision, not our own personal ones), and that is the only measurable aspect to a politician — do they remain true to their overall goals and attempt to work toward them?  And on that end, yes, the administration is doing a lot on their end to ensure that the transparency and communication they promised are being offered to the American public.

I don’t intend for this to become a political blog by any stretch of the imagination, but I loved thinking about this element of the situation: that the disseminating of information is an enormous game of telephone, with each site interpreting the ideas until it barely resembles the original message.  I loved walking out of there and thinking about not the people hearing the messages, but the spaces in between all of us, and what happens to the ideas when they travel over those spaces.  I walked out of that room looking at all of this as a writer, first and foremost, and as a consumer who often feels as if the news outlets aren’t giving me enough of the story.  I am an American who feels as if she is getting her most accessible information from The Daily Show. (Seriously, for those of you without a background in economics, how many to you understand the current financial crisis?  I certainly don’t.)

I am now on the press release list for the White House and sometimes, I’m going to sit in on phone calls.  I’d like to post my thoughts afterward under the new tag “Politics as Usual.”  If you want to skip them, I completely understand.  It’s sort of like how I feel about phone solicitors around election time.  The one difference is that I am not attempting to point out just! how! fantastic! this! candidate! is! for! you!  I am attempting to present just the facts, ma’am and give my opinion on them.  To make these big, amorphous ideas a little more concrete.  And sometimes I’m going to think the administration rocks.  And sometimes I’m not.

If you are non-American, I hope you read them so then we can discuss — what is our government doing that seems truly ass-backwards when compared to other nations?  What is our government doing that truly rocks-out when compared to other nations?  I give accolades for what I perceive to be applause-worthy.  But I’m also not shy about voicing criticism I feel as well.

So, yeah, like our government, I’m going to be transparent.  I’m a Barack Obama supporter, democratic voter, kumbaya-singing socialist in actuality, and a great lover of trying to understand things outside my ken as well as disseminating information.  Anything that comes under the Politics as Usual tag, unless noted, is based on information I got directly from the White House or another branch of government.  And I am not a huge fan of anything political — perhaps a product of my Washington upbringing — but damn, I love a good chunk of facts and debating them.

Hopefully, you will stick around and debate as well — because the only thing more boring that discussing the economic woes of the country would be if we all held the same political viewpoint.  Yes, I really do want to hear your point-of-view even if it differs greatly from mine (though let’s keep things polite since, you know, the whole kumbaya thing).

So, the Question: Sounds good?  Or has reading this post been as painful as a transvaginal ultrasound?  I’d like to hear your honest opinion — which I’m sure will vary from person to person and I’ll still do what I want to do, but perhaps I won’t subject you to all of the ideas I geek out on if you tell me you’d rather have a camera in your vagina that read this.

Personally, I’m finding all of this a lot more exciting than the insurance person who said yesterday, “now we need to talk a little more about your breasts and reproductive organs.  For instance, there would seem to be something wrong with them … right?”

Indulge me with more White House stories as I finish the post with my actual notes tonight.  The night before I went, I inscribed a copy of Life from Scratch for the First Lady and threw it in my bag.  You just never know who you’ll bump into over there.

Many of you might not know this, but the First Lady is a blogger (and a BlogHer) herself.  During the election, she wrote four posts for BlogHer, and the whole administration has been forward-thinking in using online technology to disseminate their message.

So, a book about a blogger who uses an online medium in order to connect with others?  It seemed like a clear fit for the First Lady. (And it’s a pretty light read; I have to imagine that her job is fairly stressful.  Perhaps she wants to unwind with a good book at the end of the night.)

While I met her husband, the President, the First Lady was nowhere to be seen.  Before I left, I asked a staffer if she’d be able to give the First Lady my gift and she said she’d be happy to walk it over to her office.  So my book — like the many famous biographies lining the walls of the White House library — is currently inside the most important address in Washington, D.C.  Who knows if it was actually deposited in the First Lady’s hands and if she’s happily reading about how Rachel Goldman is teaching herself to cook, but it’s a fun visual to daydream about.

Okay, so if it’s good enough for the White House, don’t you want to get your own copy?  Or send a copy to a friend and tell them that they now have something in common with the First Lady?

(Yes, you must endure me talking about the White House for at least a few more days so I can buy myself more time in typing up these notes.)

Last Friday, after I got everything set up for the White House visit, I took the kids out sledding.  As the Wolvog was about to go down the hill, he paused and said, “are you going to ask the President if he takes his kids to school?”

I got confused for a moment because I happen to know the middle school principal at the school that the Obama girls attend, and I thought he was referring to that degree of separation between ourselves and the First Family.  I couldn’t comprehend how he even knew about my connection to that principal, especially because it has been a few years since we last emailed together.  The last time we saw each other, I was still pregnant with the twins, so they certainly hadn’t met her either.

“Why would I ask that?” I finally questioned.

“Because that’s his only rule.  He takes his kids to school.  And keeps it cool.”

Guess Fred Armisen makes a very convincing President Obama to a six-year-old.

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The Weekly What If: What if you had to be trapped in an elevator for hours (in a precarious, nerve-wracking situation) with a celebrity or public figure.  Who would you choose and why?

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The Grateful Said will go up this weekend.  And I’m still finishing getting Creme posts onto the list.  Things keep getting thrown off by all of our snow storms.

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And now, the blogs…

I Won’t Fear Love is back with a post about missing a space and missing a person.  About having the calendar turn again and finding yourself facing an anniversary.  But it is the last line that almost killed me: “Four years ago I was still just a pregnant woman.”  Go read the whole post.

Riding the IVF Roller Coaster has a post about being initiated into the fertile club.  She explains how out-of-sorts she feels discussing pregnancy: “I’m not one of them.  I felt so uncomfortable.  I felt on the spot.  It felt so strange to hear these people being so relaxed and almost flippant about procreation. ”  She muses on the people feeling as if they all have something in common when she feels so different from them.

Diary of a Man Infertile Woman has a gorgeous post which brings together a story about trying to get better in gym class with her latest ultrasound which revealed cysts that are benching her this cycle.  It is about fighting a new nemesis that feels very much like your old nemesis.

Lastly, Fierce and Nerdy has a post announcing her pregnancy following IVF that she tries to write three different ways, and finally realizes that all she has to say is an expression of her happiness.  Though, she does a damn fine job also describing the uselessness of worrying.

The roundup to the Roundup: President Obama is still keeping it cool.  Answer the Weekly What If (I’m leaning towards Stephen Colbert — I think he’d be entertaining while trapped and probably deflect the anxiety with humour).  The Grateful Said will go up this weekend.  And lots of great posts to read.

Yes, it is unbelievably shallow of me to first give you this — the stories behind the day — and then give you the actual meat of what I learned while I was there, but, come on, don’t we all pick up People magazine at the doctor’s office before we pick up the Time magazine?  Aren’t you shallow, flighty things like me?

No?

Well, pretend you’re a shallow, flighty thing like me for the day, and I promise that I’m working on typing up the brilliant things I heard.

Last Thursday night into Friday morning, BlogHer asked if I could attend the Women’s Online Summit at the White House.  Why yes, I could drop editing a manuscript for the day and go hang out with brilliant people.  I knew we’d be covering topics as broad as the economy to health care, all from a women’s perspective.  Which I feared would mean the “pinking down” of information.

What do I mean by “pinking down” information — you know how tool companies put out inferior tools with a pink handle on it because they think women want pretty pink things while they repair their house?  Well, I don’t want the pink version — I want the hardcore metal tools that are going to get the job done because I am serious as all get-out about home repair.  Yes, I’m a woman, but I don’t need my tools to look pretty — I only need them to get the job done.

Which is different from tools that are made with my small hands in mind, that know that my body is built differently from a man and my strength is in my legs rather than my arms.  Tailoring a tool to a person is not the same as pinking it down.

So I was fearful that a Women’s Online Summit could be the pinking down of information, but happily realized within seconds of the day beginning that not only was the information not pinked down, but that the inclusion of the word “women” was merely a lens with which to view the same information that would be presented at any Online Summit.  Major accolades to the White House for starting these conversations with various groups, answering questions, and asking for feedback and ideas for helping disseminate information to the American people.  And what I learned transcended America because the ideology is applicable across the world when looking at women’s place in society.

But I digress from the shallow, flighty portion of this post.

So, over the weekend, I couldn’t say anything beforehand, so I was all casual with rearranging things for Monday, telling people that I had this “thing” I had to be at.  But in my head I was screaming, “That thing is the hite-way ouse-hay!” (I said it in Pig Latin because that’s in code and therefore, I wasn’t actually mentally telling them.)  Because, come on, it’s amazingly cool to get to go to the White House.  If life were a big game of Monopoly, I have already gotten one of those green properties for speaking at the Congressional briefing last year.  Going to the White House would be like acquiring another green property. (I’m not sure what the third green property would be … hanging out with SCOTUS?)  I felt a little out-of-my-body all weekend.

Josh and I devised this bat-shit-insane driving/parking plan that would enable us to drive home together out of the city.  So I started driving into the city, pausing to pee at a Shell station (the man almost said no, but he could see the desperation in my eyes), and I was nearing Walter Reed when traffic slowed to a crawl.  I was watching the clock, watching the seconds ticking closer to 8:45 am when I had to be at the White House gate or miss out on the optional tour.  I was not going to miss the optional tour.  I willed the other people to drive, drive, will you please just driiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.  I cannot tell you how painful it is to be stuck on Meridian Hill, seeing the Washington Monument before you, and knowing that you cannot get through the wall of cars to your destination.

I was playing Green Day, which wasn’t helping (especially when the CD ended and “American Idiot” restarted, and I realized that I had gone through the entire CD while I sat in traffic), so I turned it off and did this rocking back and forth motion in the seat as my car inched ahead as if this was going to make the sea of cars part.  I finally parked the car at 8:45 am up in Dupont and called my contact at the White House who told me that I had 10 minutes to get there.

So I tried to get a cab.  The first one pulled over to tell me that he was off-duty.  WHY THE HELL DID YOU PULL OVER THEN?  It was easier to get a cab going in the wrong direction, so I hailed another one, apologized to the driver for the fact that we were going the wrong way, and begged him to get me there in time.  He told me it wasn’t possible.  I told him that I needed him to make it possible.  And like a moment out of a movie set, Khan made it possible.  The man defensively drove through the city, depositing me at the gate in exactly 10 minutes, earning double the cab fare for himself.  Worth every single penny because the group started moving the moment I shut the cab door.

We went through security and entered the East Wing of the White House.  Because we were running late, we got to keep our coats and bags with us.  It was Monday — normally a tour-free day in the White House — so it was quiet and empty of other groups.  Right when the tour began, Bo, bounced by with the grounds keeper.

We walked through the East Wing and got to see the ballroom and the library and the Vermeil room.  It was emotional to walk through the red room and touch the silk on the walls of the green room.

I got teary looking at some of the art — it is all so familiar to you if you grew up in America — and here it was, right in front of me rather than in a book.  It is mind-blowing to think about the history of the space.

After the tour, we walked over to the Executive Office Building for the actual meeting.  There were 25 of us there from various sites.  I can’t really go through the speaker list since our information needs to be unattributed, but we were briefed on the issues by an incredible group of people.  I’ll go through all of that in a later post because there is so much to chew over in the 14 pages of notes I took.  I’m obviously a major supporter of this administration, so it’s not surprising that I was happy to hear about the policy work.  But even if you aren’t a major supporter of this administration, I think it’s important to hear how they are thinking about women within the big picture.  I think they need to be applauded for that even if you don’t agree with the way policy plays out.

So, I’m listening to someone brief us on education issues (who looked and sounded so much like my friend’s husband that I was getting a little doppelgangered out by it), when the door next to me opened and the President walked in.  My body reacted involuntarily by half-standing and gasping loudly.  I plopped down in my seat and the President made a mock gasp back at me and we all laughed.  I half-stood again, plopped down in my chair, finally stood up all the way, and he told us to be seated.

And then he spoke — brilliantly — for a few minutes.  And I was trying to stay in the moment, but it’s sort of like looking at the sun.  My heart was pounding so loudly that it was placing a thump over every few words.  Finally, he wrapped up and said, “I’d like to go around the room and meet all of you.”  He shook my hand first, staring straight into my eyes, and you realized exactly why he’s the President.  Because the rest of the room melts away and he makes you feel as if you are the only person in there.  He’s charismatic and funny and low-key.  He makes you feel so comfortable and so safe.  When he said, “nice to meet you, Melissa Ford,” I could literally hear a Greek chorus of all my ancestors performing an ethereal melisma.

The President left the room and we all were giddy.  When we took a break, I seriously considered not peeing so I wouldn’t have to wash my hands (but memories of catheters past drove me to the stall).  But we got back down to business and finished the briefings and discussions.  I seriously cannot tell you how much I wish every American could have been there to hear the information.  I left the building at 5:15 pm with my brain buzzing, my mind full; already digesting the 3000 ideas that were popping around.  For the first time in a long time, I felt smart.

I got in another cab, happy to see that it was driven by a woman, and she asked me how I was and I screamed, “I just met the President!”  I mean, Khan was great to drive like a maniac through the city and deposit me on time.  But after a really great day, you want a woman to unwind with and talk.  As we drove back to Dupont, she told me in her beautiful Eritrean accent about seeing the First Lady right when they got here.

And that was possibly the theme of the day — we are all just people, moving over the surface of the earth, trying not to negatively affect others, trying to do well for ourselves.  And we come together in these strange formations — cab driver and passenger, President and writer — townspeople meeting and then parting, bearing witness to each other’s moments.

Back in 2008, I wrote about how the twins and I all voted for Obama.  I held them up so they could press the button, and then we erased it and the next one went, and I cast the final vote.  I wanted to give them that experience of being part of that moment.  And that’s what I thought about when I tucked the Wolvog into bed the night before I went to the summit.  He cuddled under his blanket and gave this little smile while he said, “have fun at the White House tomorrow, Mommy!”  And it blew my mind — the bridging of that moment from then to now.  As I shook the President’s hand, I could visualize my hand pushing that button.  And now he’s here in front of me.  And what an amazing world we live in where moments like this happen.

President Barack Obama drops by the Women’s Online Summit in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Jan. 31, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

That’s the door he walked through on the far left of the photo, and I’m sitting in the first seat on the far left.  I cannot be blamed for gasps.

Actual write-up of the briefings and a possible cool opportunity for you (yes, you!) coming soon.

Seriously, I live it and I can’t believe how my life goes sometimes.

A longer post will follow tomorrow after I get a moment to breathe and untangle my thoughts (plus I have over 100 photos).  Last Friday (as in 4 days ago), I found out that I was going to the White House for an online summit with 25 other bloggers, editors, and site managers.  I was there representing BlogHer. (Thank you, BlogHer!)

For those curious about how I comported myself when I met the President, I embarrassed myself as I do in front of all famous people.  But the story of the day will have to wait because life just became insanely busy for the day and we’re out of yogurt so I have to do the organic-food-store run.  The Grateful Said will go up next Sunday.

But seriously, it was one of the most amazing, thought-provoking, awe-inspiring days of my life, and I walked away with my mind racing  at the rate of 3000 ideas per minute.

I still can’t believe I was there.  Story to come soon…