Art on Capitol Hill

I can’t always write on mental health, so here is a little something different.

When I went to Washington to Mental Health America’s 100^th Anniversary Conference, I was part of a team of MHA members from Los Angeles who visited two California Congressmembers from the LA region: Congressmember Dreier, representing the 26^th District, which includes such cities of the San Gabriel foothills as San Dimas, and Congressmember Schiff, my Congressmember, who presents the 29^th District, which includes Glendale, Burbank, Monterey Park, and most of Pasadena. Two more different congressmembers you would be hard pressed to find. One is a seasoned conservative Republican; the other is a young liberal democrat.

Congressmember Dreier is a powerful Republican. He has an office at the end of a long corridor. He has been in office a long time and has a lot of seniority. He stands high on the list for office space, I was told. Contrast this with Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Congressional leader; her office was still just one of many along the long corridor of Congressional offices in the Cannon building. I gather this is the choice building to be in if you are a member of Congress. Congressmember Schiff doesn’t yet have this kind of clout. His office is also along a corridor but it is up another level and around the corner in the Rayburn Building.  I got the feeling this was a power statement.

We were conducted into Congressmember’s Dreier office by an aide. It was an impressive office – large, with a big desk and a spacious sitting area in front of the desk with four or five upholstered chairs arrayed around a big coffee table. We made our pitch for mental health, which didn’t go very far, since we knew Dreier as a Republican didn’t favor national medical health care. We pitched for mental health assistance to veterans, which the  aide, an attractive young woman, assured us had the Congressmember attention. He is for a strong military, too.

 I stopped paying attention after that. He isn’t particularly interested in helping the mentally ill and the poor. Most Republicans aren’t. If you can’t pay for it, tough luck.  That’s the American way.  They wouldn’t help their own mother if she were in a pinch and didn’t have enough money to help herself, but then again anybody knows a Republican mother without money. Ah, but that’s another subject. What many Republicans do have is taste, or at least this Republican does.  

I looked around the office, a space tastefully appointed in antiques and fine furniture.  Situated on tables were bronze western sculptures. I thought they were Remingtons. I am not a fan of Remington, so I didn’t ask. But on the walls there were exquisite California landscapes of the late 19^th Century or mid 20^th Century. It wasn’t Georgia O’Keefe or Ansel Adams, but they were good quality works, if not museum quality. There were, I think, three of them in the beautiful pink-red, yellow and blues of that school of Southern California painters like Conrad Buff and J. Smeaton Chase, who painted the bluffs and buttes of the desert.  

One was above a bucking cowboy sculpture, one on a far wall by a bookcase, and a last one above the door at the entry to the Congressmember’s office. Before I could inquire about the paintings our party was hustled out for the next meeting to take place. But I was impressed.  Not bad for a politician, I thought. I am sure I would have liked the Congressmember, even if I disliked his politics.

Congressmember’s Schiff office was far less grand. His aide, Aaron Baird, directed us to a couch and two chairs. Aaron took a chair across from us. We began our pitch. Here we had a more receptive audience. Congressmember Schiff had supported parity for mental illness as part of the TARF bill in December, and we thanked him for his support. We now went on to ask that the Congressmember continue his support for mental illness parity in the new national health care reform legislation. The aide seemed very supportive, but I couldn’t help feel a little put off by the fact that I was sitting with a young man dressed up in a nice suit, who was wearing loafers without socks. What did that mean?  My attention drifted to the pictures on the wall as if I could get a better feel for the man by what he displayed.

Behind the Congressmember’s desk was a window, and on the right was a picture of Abraham Lincoln –good patriotic stuff — and next to that was a photo of Dwight Eisenhower with another man. The aide caught my glance at this picture and commented, “Congressmember Schiff’s father worked for President Eisenhower. That’s his father with the President.” So the Congressmember has Republican roots I thought, very interesting!  I came back to the conversation, which was now going over the same issue of mental health services for veterans. The Congressmember was for it. I glanced at the wall behind the aide. There was a children’s drawing, probably something by his children, a couple of photographs, and a watercolor of Pasadena City Hall; nothing to get excited about here.

Starry night

Now maybe you say interest or taste in art is no indicator of a stance in politics. But what kind of a stance is the stance where the best you can do is put up what you would put up in your college dorm? So you like Van Gogh. Who doesn’t? Of course you know he was as mad the March Hare, and he could have used a good national mental health program. Maybe he would have lived and created more and even better work.  Any self-respecting representative of a California District like Pasadena, Burbank, and Glendale can do better than two safe Van Gogh prints. The art on your wall was like something from the art department at Wal-mart.  Burbank and Glendale include the Disney Studios, and even a Mickey Mouse animation might be better.  If you are this wishy washy on art, where do you stand on other things, like health care reform? From what I am hearing, you are not standing with the progressives for strong national health reform Congressmember Schiff. Are you a latent blue dog hanging around on a starry night in the deep blue funk of that tired image?