A girl Republican political hack's got to do what a girl Republican political hack's got to do

Thought Monica Goodling, the Justice Department political hack whose job appears to have been filling the rest of the Justice Department with political hacks like herself, chose a strange way to describe herself Wednesday to the House Judiciary Committee.

“At heart, I am a fairly quiet girl, who tries to do the right thing and tries to treat people kindly along the way,” said the 33-year-old Ms. Goodling.

Don't lawyers prepping their clients to testify, whether before a court, an investigative committee, or a legislative body, warn them away from self-pity and special pleading?  Apparently not, or maybe it's just too ingrained a reflex, a fact of our weak natures proof against the best lawyering that when we're in trouble we instinctively feel bad for ourselves and beg for everybody else to feel as bad for us as we do ourselves---whatever it is, everybody does it, from mobsters on down to a retiree asking the town justice to let him out of traffic ticket.  "I'm really a nice person, go easy on me!"

So her advertisement for her own nicess is not the part of her mini-self-portrait that made me sit up and take notice.  It was her calling herself a "girl."

Goodling is 33.

That's not even the very end of girlhood.  That's the brink of middle-age.

Goodling is a conservative Christian so I presume she is aware that 33 is the age at which Christ was crucified.  Consequently, for centuries, 33rd birthdays have been superstitiously observed as the beginning of the make or break year in life.   If you haven't done it by the time you're 33, a lot of people have felt, give it up, you're not gonna.

By the age of 33 most "girls," certainly most good Conservative Christian girls like Goodling, have been married and become mothers.  These woman don't think of themselves as girls.  The girls in their lives aren't testifying before Congress.  They're demanding to know why they can't play their Dora the Explorer DVDs for the tenth time today.

A 33 year old girl is only two years away from being Constitutionally able to become President of the United States.  She is 8 years older than she needs to be to run for one of the seats of the men and women grilling her on Wednesday.  There's probably no point in reminding anyone in the Bush administration that a 33 year old is 15 years older than a lot of young women we are sending over to Iraq.

I'm sure I'm making too much of this.  Lots of grown women refer to themselves as girls in a casual way.  I know seventy year olds who talk about themselves and their friends as "the girls."  But it's one thing to use the word in conversation, another thing to go before a Congressional committee in your role as a professional and formerly high-ranking government official, with your career and reputation and the possible freedom of your former colleagues and boss on the line, and beg for people to let you off the hook for your admitted misconduct on the grounds that you are just a good girl who made a few naive mistakes.

Probably a good strategy though, considering that the Right Wing Republicans on the Committee are probably like most Right Wing Republicans these days, firm believers that ideal woman is in fact a girl.

A particular kind of girl too.

A good little one.  Docile, obedient, quiet, unassuming, content with whatever the grown up men in her life choose to give her to do.

Daddy's little girl.

They don't even seem to want wives anymore.  They want daughters.  Virginal ones who will never date, let alone marry, without daddy's say so.

From Justice Kennedy's weird affirmation of the women aren't adult enough to know their own minds or make morally correct decisions for themselves school of thought that underlies the entire anti-aboriton movement nowdays to the very, very creepy chastity balls, the Right has infused itself with the notion that a woman's place isn't in the home, or the kitchen, or even the bedroom, it's on daddy's knee.

So it's no wonder that Goodling would choose to describe herself as a girl to influential men she needs to stand between her and a bleak future as a disbarred and unemployed one-time political hack with a dubious law degree.

And it worked.  According to the New York Times the Republicans on the Committee fell all over themselves, figuratively, hurrying over to pat her on the shoulder and say There, there.  Of course, as the Times notes, this wasn't exactly statesmenlike of them:

The only people odder than Ms. Goodling were the House Republicans who rushed to praise her. Even in these partisan times, a Justice Department official who admitted to her level of wrongdoing ought to draw bipartisan condemnation.

But maybe it was not a cynical move on her part, just an instinctive one, based on her own view of herself.  I suspect she really does think of herself as just a girl.  And how lucky for her that she does because good little girls don't have any power of their own, they just do what they're told; they have no ability to make moral choices for themselves, they have to rely on daddy to tell them what's right and what's wrong.

A good little girl, even one who is a top official in the United States Department of Justice, who is a senior counselor to the Attorney General, who is in a position to decide the professional fates of hundreds of people, many of them powerful, highly-regarded, influential men and women in their own rights, could not possibly have been responsible for any nefarious goings on in daddy's office.

And that's exactly how Goodling portrayed herself in her testimony. Oh, she may have crossed a line here or there, without meaning to or even knowing there was a line there to be crossed, but really, guys, she just had no idea!

Actually, being a good little girl seems to be the key to success as a woman in the Bush Administration.  From Condoleeza Rice and Harriet Miers on down, the Bush Leauge women seem to see it as their role to be part cheerleader, part gunmoll, part devoted kid sister, and part loving daughter, the kind of daughter who takes over the household and caring for daddy when mommy slips off to the bedroom to nurse yet another headache.

Goodling's description of herself could be the first item on the resume of every successful female job applicant at the Bush White House.

It's because she was a quiet girl who tried to do the right thing (as defined by her very partisan conscience) and treat (the right) people kindly along the way that she's where she is today and where she was Wednesday.

Comments

[thoughtful pig]

I noticed that good little girl nonsense also. I think you are giving Goodling too much credit in underestimating the level of cynicism inherent in the construction. I don't believe for a minute that it's "reality based." It was pure horseshit theater, played to another bunch of bad actors.

[ken Houghton]

She's eight years older than being able to run for the House. The Senate is 30. (Both of those are IIRC, so a five-pound bag of salt would be wise.)

[ken Houghton]

By the way, Everything Old is New Again; anyone else read this post and think immediately of Don Henley's description of Fawn Hall:

Lookin' like a beauty queen
Loyal as a wife
She raised her little voice and testified,
I am a good girl
I've been one all my life
But her virtue was as swollen as her pride
She should've had the Oscar
She must have been miscast
Her fifteen minutes went by so fast
I said, Now, baby, have you got no shame?
She just looked at me, uncomprehendingly
Like cows at a passing train

[travy]

If you haven't done it by the time you're 33, a lot of people have felt, give it up, you're not gonna...

unless you live in nyc where adolescence can live forever...

good points on monica. i felt going in the goops were betting a cute (republican scale) blonde with a squeaky voice going up against all those uppity dems on the judiciary would play well to the 25 percenters and achieve some version of what ollie did back in the 80's.

the world's changed though. the people are more informed and politically savvy so the republican dance of a thousand veils just doesn't work as well as it used to. people didn't see a good girl trying to be nice, but a liar breaking the law for her side...

[Dix Hill]

I imagine in Goodling's Christian-conservative circles that some part of the definition of "girl" is "unmarried and childless" -- which also describes Miers and Rice. Of course, that ship has sailed for Miers and Rice, but Goodling is probably still looking forward to that. Despite a good career at DoJ I bet she'd have dropped it all in a second if she'd found a suitable husband.

[joanr16]

It does help to explain Monica II's copious weeping in the boss's office when she first came under scrutiny. A woman sheds a few tears in a bathroom stall; a child runs to the parents, blubbering.

Feh.

[Lance]

Ken Houghton: She's eight years older than being able to run for the House. The Senate is 30.

Thanks for the correction, Ken. That's what I get for relying on my own memory instead of doing the Google. I made a slight revision that incorporates the fix.

Love Henley song.

[Chris G.]

"That's the brink of middle-age."

You really know how to hurt a guy...

[Jim]

Somebody told me today that 40 is the new thirty, and at thiry-nine and counting, I'm clinging to that like a shipwreck survivor to lifesaver.

on topic: Ann Coulter, who I think is pushing fifty by now, consistently refers to herself as not just a "girl", but a "pretty girl". And even among humans, it seems pretty common for people in their mid-, maybe even late twenties to refer to themselves as "kids". But I can't imagine any male over the age of twelve calling himself a "boy".

[Campaspe]

I agree with thoughtful pig. It was a conscious, cynical, calculated turn of phrase. She's about as girlish as Lady Macbeth.

[Bianca Reagan]

And you say you're not a feminist, Lance? :)

[jonst]

"of course that ship has sailed for Miers and Rice."

Good.

[Chris the cop]

What's annoying in my mind is that this woman at 33,had been in this position since 2001. She got this job as a senior advisor to the Attorney General of the United States---when she was 27 friggin years old! She hadn't been out of law school an hour and a half!! What are these people thinking?

[Molly, NYC]

She got this job as a senior advisor to the Attorney General of the United States---when she was 27 friggin years old! She hadn't been out of law school an hour and a half!! What are these people thinking?

That women around the office should be tractable (which Goodling is, at least politically) and look nubile.

Beyond that, it's not just a matter of valuing party loyalty over competence. Genuinely competent appointees--grown-ups, who'd have some experience with the concept of professional ethics--would have rocked the boat (eg, most of the USAs who were fired).

(It also partly explains all those Republican twinkies who got civilian jobs in the Green Zone. Can you imagine how screwed this administration and its contractors-slash-donors would have been if they'd sent in some adults with real-world management experience? And maybe some CPAs?)

[Chris the cop]

Points well taken, Molly, and I WANT Gonzales to succeed...

[catherine]

They have to hire *girls* because women would ask too many questions and not just follow orders.

[coturnix]

I was nowhere at 33. I am 41 now and just made it two weeks ago.

[John Doe]

Kind of troubling to know that none of this blog's readers are well-informed enough to know that she did NOT say she was a "girl." The word she used was "person." You can watch the video for yourself here.

Which kind of blows the very premise of this whole post out of the water.

[Lance]

John Doe,

Well, ain't that a kick in the head.

But I don't know why it's troubling to find out that the readers of this blog read the newspapers!

Doesn't change the fact that Goodling is a hack whose job was to fill the Justice Department with other hacks.

Doesn't change the the Right Wing's attitude towards women or the role of women in the Bush White House.

And you have to wonder which represents her real view of herself, what she wrote out presumably after careful thought, or what she said on the spur of the moment under pressure.

But you're right, it does sort of ruin the approach I took in writing the post and I do have to run a correction.