Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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J.J. Sez

Monday, January 15, 2001

Ok. Here we are. Inside one week to Inauguration Day and things are beginning to fall into place. The most powerful phrase in the English language here in the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) offices is: "J.J. Sez �"

Jeanne Johnson Phillips, the executive director of the inauguration committee, runs this place. One would make a mistake if one thought that because J.J. is blonde, and comes from Dallas that she is of a type.

In the three-plus weeks that she has had charge of this thing, she has established herself as a person who can run a meeting consisting of, mainly, middle aged men (some with guns), clearly explain what she has in mind, and then let them figure out how to do it;

Two minutes later, she can stop in someone's office to enquire after an employee's sick child and offer a staff van if the employee needs to run home for a few minutes thus soothing both parent and child.

A large number of strong people have been working long hours with no days off to help put this thing together. Many of those people have their own businesses or manage a large organization outside of PIC.

Take, for example, me. I sit in my den, watch old cowboy movies, and write Mullings; the absolute master of all I survey. And I do some serious surveying, boy. I survey the piano, the TV, the closet (which is a high-risk subject to bring up, as the Mullings Director of Standards and Practices thinks people can just drop everything to clean out three years worth of useless software boxes, old sneakers, ties which no one ever has or ever will wear, and a really swell collection of canvas tote bags which no one ever has or ever will use), and a CD player which, for some reason, recently stopped playing anything past the second-and-a-half cut on any disc which means I listen to the same Neil Diamond song over and over.

Actually, when you think about it, if you listened to EVERY Neil Diamond song ever recorded you might still think you were listening to the same Neil Diamond song over and over.

But, I digress.

Yet. In spite of the exalted position which I hold at Mullings, here I sit at PIC, just another worker-bee - and glad to be among all the other worker-bees.

All of which is to say that when the decibel level begins to rise as these smart, strong, powerful people a make their cases, the magic phrase: "J.J. Sez," tends to be followed by � silence, broken only the sound of heads nodding in assent, and the furious scratching of felt tipped pens on legal pads.

Documents began circulating here on Saturday headed with the word, "FINAL" in bajillion point type, bolded and underlined.

Sunday, new documents began circulating headed: "FINAL - REVISED" which has led to some interesting discussions on the existentialist nature of a document which was FINAL prior to being REVISED, among the many worker-bees with advanced degrees in philosophy.

Mary Leonard's Boston Globe piece on Bill Clinton's future as a 54-year-old ex-President contained these harrowing words for Democrats interested in politics whose name doesn't happened to be Clinton: "In the view of many Democrats, [Bill Clinton] remains leader of the party," said Peace Corps head Mark Gearan.

Need more? How about this from Mark Barabak's LA Time's piece on the racial aspects of who will be the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee: "By moving to install Terry McAuliffe, a confidant of President Clinton and prodigious fund-raiser, top Democrats have angered many black leaders and other liberal activists who are heading opposition to the nascent Bush administration. And the move signals Clinton's intention to continue to play a major role in party politics."

For the hundreds of people with way too much extra time on their hands who wrote in to find out what had been edited out of Friday's Mullings the answer is: Nothing. I was trying for some hilarious construct including the words Delhi and deli regarding the curried chicken, but I couldn't make it work.
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Copyright © 2001 Richard A. Galen

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