Paying the Price to Be a National Leader

Madonna Diveley isn’t the kind to toot her own horn. Too bad. You ought to feel pretty good about yourself if you get a letter from a U.S. senator that begins:

“America’s leaders for the 21st century are being chosen today, and I am pleased to announce that you are one of them.”

Pretty heady stuff for someone who’s never been elected to anything, never served on any board, never backed any political cause.

Diveley is a 49-year-old Costa Mesa woman and full-time college student who, to the best of her knowledge, has not previously distinguished herself as a potential national leader.

Still, that was Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s signature on the letter that arrived a couple weeks ago at her home:

“It is my honor to inform you that at a recent meeting of my Republican Senate colleagues, your name was placed in nomination to serve as one of the 150 members from California in the exclusive Republican Senatorial Inner Circle,” Lott wrote.

Hoping she would “accept this honor,” Lott noted that her Inner Circle compatriots would include people like Steve Forbes, Elizabeth Dole and Henry Kissinger. “Like you, each has demonstrated a deep commitment to our party’s greatest principles and ideals,” Lott wrote.

One of the scary thoughts that went through Diveley’s mind was whether the role would require her to speak in public.

“I vote, that’s it,” Diveley says. “But as far as all the politicians, there’s so much corruption, I don’t like the whole system in a lot of ways. So how do they think I would represent California?”

A week after Lott’s letter, another arrived from Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, one of the GOP’s more successful fund-raisers. If Diveley accepted her nomination as a national leader, McConnell wrote, she’d be invited to a slew of Republican political events in the next year.

In the second letter, Diveley learned for the first time that accepting her nomination to the “exclusive group of distinguished Americans” required sending the GOP a check for $1,000.

Diveley began to get the idea.

Honor Will Cost $1,000

She’s married to a friend of mine, but I’ve never met her nor know of her political leanings. She tells me over the phone she’s never worked for either party and has no idea why the GOP came a-courting.

“That’s what’s baffling to me,” she says. “I’m really curious as to how they selected me, because if they knew me, I’m not interested in politics.”

She pictures someone in Washington, D.C., throwing darts at a board and coming up with her name. Or maybe browsing one of the catalogs from which she shops. She asks if I’ll try to find out for her.

I got as far as Stuart Roy, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who says the names are taken from lists of people who have donated to conservative candidates, groups or causes.

And there’s always the possibility of a mailing mistake, Roy says, noting that Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad from North Dakota also got one.

I suggest to Diveley she ought to revel in being tapped as a 21st century leader.

“No, because I know the difference between truth and fantasy, and that would definitely be fantasy,” she says.

She says her husband got a bigger kick out of the letters than she did.

“I was wondering if it was a joke, some kind of gimmick. I was asking other people if they got a letter too.”

No one had, but she still didn’t feel special. Instead, her brush with fame leaves her more skeptical about who’s minding the store in Washington, D.C.

“What kind of people do we have serving us if they’re sending this kind of thing out?” she asks. “It makes me wonder, are they getting a whole bunch of quacks, or what?”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com