For those on the Hill, inauguration is business as usual

Well, maybe not that last one.

Since I’m a brand-new intern, my observations should be read with skepticism. After all, most interns function more as copy-making, coffee-getting automatons than as actual thinking humans. From what I can tell, though, the mood on Capitol Hill isn’t as ecstatic as the mood on MSNBC. For many people who work here, it’s largely business as usual.

Yet another disclaimer: My congressman isn’t high up in the House leadership, so I’m not in the thick of things. But from what I’ve picked up in the office, logistics are still a bummer, constituents can still be crazy, and politicians are still politicians.

All talk of the inauguration in my office centered on either the incredible hassle of distributing tickets to deserving constituents or the impossible quagmire the city would become once two million people flooded it and all the streets were closed — a well-founded fear, as it turns out. Staffers on the Hill were eagerly anticipating the inauguration, mostly because they wanted it to be over.

As an intern, I spend a lot of time reading and sorting constituent mail. Many of those letters, e-mails and phone messages can be quite heartening. Some people write their congressman with real concerns. In some of these messages, though, people still believe that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim terrorist out to get us or that climate change is a bunch of hooey. That so many people believe in that old aphorism, “Call your congressman,” suggests our democracy is more than an idea.

I could not have become an intern at a busier time. Had I snagged this job a few years ago, my initial sense of wonder at that white dome looming over a pale blue winter sky might have faded quickly. Even from my low spot on the totem pole, I would have soaked up the congressional inertia, partisan stalemates and stale ideology.

Instead, I’ve stumbled into an 111th Congress invigorated by great ambitions and the anticipation that big things may be coming. Everyday conversation is sprinkled with “green” as a verb and “accountability” as a real possibility. All necks crane when Obama or one of his advisers appears on our ever-glowing TV screens.

Even better, many of my congressman’s constituents write to express their wish that legislators will work together, with one another and with the Obama administration to fix what is broken and conceive what has yet to be imagined.