All Too Human by George Stephanopoulos

Author:George Stephanopoulos [STEPHANOPOULOS, GEORGE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO009000
ISBN: 9780316041928
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2008-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

While we were striking a small blow for free speech on one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell was announcing a victory for public safety on the other. After seven years of trying, the Brady Bill was about to become law. Named after James Brady, the Reagan press secretary shot and paralyzed by a bullet meant for his boss, the bill would require a five-day waiting period and background check for handgun purchasers. Despite Reagan's eventual support for the bill, President Bush had vetoed it twice. But on Thanksgiving eve 1993, the National Rifle Association's Senate filibuster of the bill crumbled, and we immediately invited Jim and Sarah Brady to the Oval for a public celebration. For me, this victory was especially sweet. Seven years earlier, I had sat with Sarah Brady in the office of my boss, Congressman Edward Feighan, to help draft the original bill. Now my new boss would sign it into law, and I was certain it would save lives.

I knocked off early, and as I walked home through an Indian summer mist that afternoon, I couldn't believe how much I had to be grateful for that Thanksgiving. I had the job of my life, and I was doing better at it. The whole administration was getting the hang of governing, and we were getting things done. The next morning, I'd be on a plane to New Orleans for another celebration. James Carville and Mary Matalin were getting married — another incongruous couple, another lavish public ceremony. Republicans and Democrats flew down to the French Quarter to march in the Dixieland wedding parade led by trumpeter Al Hirt. A “second line” of Thanksgiving tourists joined in, toasting the new couple with plastic cups of beer.

Many toasts later, Mary introduced me to a man who'd often made my life miserable over the past year. Whenever Rush Lim-baugh had mentioned me during his new television show, he superimposed my face on the body of a baby. Enough was enough. “Rush,” I joked, “don't you think it's time to get me out of the diapers?”

He chuckled nervously, naked without his microphone, and mumbled something about seeing what he could do. By year's end, I was a toddler in short pants, riding a rocking horse.

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