The Distinguished Representative from C-SPAN:
Issues. Answers. Hotness.



She'd never accept a Maxim offer.

Thank goodness. She is reserved for us in the bubble of C-SPAN's wonky aspect, where we in our solitude can imagine otherwise. We get to watch her punch the phone, and glare from atop imperious cheek bones through eyes that cut into the future, the truth, and everything that makes this shambling suicidal republic great. I'm calling on the line that allows me to say with nervous respect: politics and social discussion should look and sound as good as you do at 7 a.m. I acknowledge that my infatuation doesn't get us any closer to solving these problems before us, but I had to say so. There it is.

She's the person, whom, meeting her at an all night coffee shop, you'd talk past three, and you'd fall hopeless for her within 10 minutes or less. She's enticing and makes puns that you don't get, and she's keeping score. You nod and say uh--huh as she schools you: Adlai Stevenson, Harold Stassen, Barry Goldwater, Norman Thomas. You walk alongside her to her Metro stop and it's snowing, and she's wearing a vintage big, black coat -- a military cut maybe from Woodward & Lothrop, from a half-century ago--and her hands shoved in the pockets and head bent forward so all you see is her hair tumbling past the collar--Why isn't she wearing a cap? --you watch as she descends the icing stairs into the earth to catch her train. The two buttons in the back get smaller, and the snow gets bigger, and sighing a cloud of breath you think: At least in this messed up world there's one of her.

Later, you fall asleep, dreaming of her in one of your old concert T-shirts--maybe Tom Petty-- with the sleeves ripped off---- and a pair of worn jeans, hers, and how you'd always have to think of what to say next and how good that would be.