The District of Columbia is
composed of two distinct, occasionally nebulous cities. In the first are the souls of the
city—the men and women who are born, pay taxes, fall in love, raise families,
and die between the Potomac and the Anacostia. Born sometimes with no curiosity or knack for politics, they
are often compelled to force the illusion, either for the tourists eager for
interaction with the colorful locals, or for mere survival, begging the federal
government for a slice more autonomy.
They are the inconvenienced, under-represented Americans who, through
unlucky happenstance or poor decision-making, share elbowroom with official
Washington.
It is into this Washington that
hundreds of otherwise sensible Americans enter with the waxing and waning of
election cycle. They rush in,
high-chinned and self-important, and then spend the next two to forty years
collecting dues from and writing guidelines for the people back home. Eventually they vacate; a victorious
few of their own will, others by scandal or, worse yet, electoral defeat. The well-connected ones usually wind up
with better-paying gigs on K Street, where they can walk and talk like they
still have legitimate business in Washington and get away with it solely
because their former colleagues in government don’t disagree.
The city’s infrastructure is
distinguished by lead-seasoned water and frenzied, ill-marked traffic circles
that thoroughly undermine the logic and precision of the Enlightenment era grid
pattern, to say little of the equally intrusive state streets. A well-meaning zoning ordinance
designed to preserve the majesty of the Washington Monument keeps the other
buildings short and squat, resulting in sprawl and soaring property values that
rival those of much larger cities.
Hundreds of lawyers and lobbyists make their home here and when they get
home from a long day of setting policy and laws for the nation, they proceed to
do the same thing within their communities and neighborhoods, because that’s a
switch that has no off position.
The winters shuffle between mild and perniciously cold and back again,
after which the nation’s capital briefly opens up its cherry-blossomed beauty
for a few tourist-ridden days in the short spring months before summer arrives
to remind residents that the city was built on a swamp. The autumn conditions are a
mystery—national election coverage tends to obscure the changing foliage.
In official Washington, all
activities take a back seat to electoral activity having little to nothing to
do with the District, which—lacking serious representation—matters little. The voting patterns of cornfields and
eighteenth-century New Hampshire parishes take precedence over the debates of
the city council. And, when the
election banners are ripped down, the city hangs on every move C-SPAN’s cameras
record, making boasting, valueless bets on what happens next. Intermittently they look ahead on the
calendar, making predictions for the next election.
New York is the center of the known
universe. Boston and Philadelphia
trade off the “Cradle of Liberty” moniker. People talk about the couple of days they spent in Chicago
or San Francisco, New Orleans or Miami for years afterward and how they need to
get back one day. At least Los
Angeles gets the attractive celebrities.
It is Washington—the town whose part-time inhabitants believe that a
handshake can shift continents and a press conference can birth or eliminate
whole modes of thought—that is talked about like an embarrassing relative; the
word itself slurred past the lips of Americans whenever they deign to think of
the city: Washington. Not that this can ever be adequately
explained to the players in the high-stakes farce. Whatever happens, inside or out, it remains an effectively
blameless, shining island unto itself.
Washington’s myriad absurdities and curiosities remain untouched,
gleefully unaware of the slings and arrows of outrageous critique.
It is to this three-ringed circus
of derangement that tens of thousands have flocked in search of fame, power,
and glory, if not necessarily fortune.
In October of 2009, James, Conrad, Meghan, and Kara added their names to
that list.
Happy weekend, everybody.
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