Op-Ed-By Jim Vespe
A little over 50 years ago, he was pretty much like many of us.
A lower-middle-class New Yorker who probably watched Meet The Press every Sunday – even in the summer time, took advantage of New York City’s marvelous free college program to rise out of subsidized housing into the middle class, and possibly hoped to buy a house and raise a family in Westchester – the promised land to generations of poor kids from “the city.”
But for Eliot Engel, who still looks like the South Bronx guidance counselor (it’s not a stretch to picture him dealing with the class from “Welcome Back, Kotter,” trying to convince Barbarino, Horshack and Epstein that they had college potential), after he graduated from Hunter College – or Lehman College, or Hunter/Bronx or whatever they call it now – life would lead him instead to the center of power in America, the United States Congress, and as of January, to the chairmanship of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Which means this welder’s son from a Bronx housing project knows as much about what’s really going on around the world as anyone in America, even the president of the United States who, come to think of it, was also a college student from New York City a little over 50 years ago.
Russia? China? The Middle East? There is no government memo, document or report so sensitive, so secret, so classified that Eliot Engel cannot see it: What our allies and enemies know about us, think about us, wish for us… The New York Times and the Washington Post would surely give millions of dollars to know what Eliot Engel sees, hears… and probably most of all, fears.
I have met Congressman Engel several times at political gatherings, shaken his hand, thanked him for his work, but never asked him, “What keeps you up at night?
“What sends you to the bathroom at two o’clock in the morning to gulp down a handful of Tums, or sit silently on the edge of the bed until your wife awakens and asks, ‘Can’t sleep, hon?’
“What do you know… but dare not share… about this crazy world that frankly scares the hell out of you, that might cause panic in the streets, or plunge the Dow Jones Industrials 1,000 points in an hour if it were common knowledge?”
I have never asked Eliot Engel these questions for two reasons: First, because he really couldn’t tell me; but more so, because I’m afraid of what he could tell me.
