EDITORIALS / OPINION

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Last thoughts on Philly

The georgetowner

February 2010

Philly owner Mehmet Kocak at his restaurant. The new hours were recently posted on the door.

So, the great pizza affair finally looks like it’s drawing to a close. On Feb. 19, the city’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs served an illegal use notice to Potomac Street’s Philly Pizza Company, echoing a Board of Zoning Adjustment decision a few days earlier to close the University’s favorite huckster of sauce and cheese on the grounds that it was operating as a fast-food establishment, not as the sit-down restaurant for which it is zoned. The notice ordered an immediate cessation of operations.
 
It had been a lingering, painfully slow fight. Last October, Philly received a similar ruling but lucked out with a temporary reprieve until the BZA could reconvene this month. Clocking in at over seven hours, the final hearing was one of near-mythic proportions, a kind of neighborhood armageddon where the issue’s major players could take the field, voice their side and duke it out one last time. Neighbors were finally given the opportunity to speak (in the interest of time, citizen testimony was not heard at the October meeting), and ANC commissioners again submitted their two cents, reinforcing the claims of their unhappy constituents. Of course, Philly owner Mehmet Kocak and his legal team took the floor as well, arguing that the handful of cocktail tables dotting the cramped pizza parlor cemented its status as a proper restaurant.
 
When the dust had cleared, the neighbors came out on top, and while Philly might have enjoyed a few days’ respite until the city could enforce their decision, the DCRA notice three days later effectively put to an end all the revelry, the good times for students and headaches for everyone else — at least at that particular corner. Kocak said Philly now has abolished carry-out orders and curtailed its hours to close at midnight, but it is unclear whether this will put the restaurant back in the city’s good graces.
 
For the record, it’s worth noting that until the ruling was handed down, Kocak’s cooperation and diplomacy on this issue had been lukewarm at best. He seemed to hardly notice the clamor over his late-night clientele until the blogs, populace and community boards were all screaming about it. Even then, the solutions he offered were cursory: roll a few trash cans in the street, ask a bored policeman or two to check in every once in a while and hope the situation works itself out. The whole time, his put-upon attitude earned him few friends or allies. Georgetown students, when the ruling was reported on the University blog Vox Populi, seemed to shrug their shoulders and move on. There are other places in town to grab a slice.
 
To be sure, the BZA’s decision was the right one. Philly had been operating beyond the parameters of its license and indirectly made lives miserable for its neighbors across the street — all of whom have lived on the block for far longer. The community, however — the ANC, neighbors, students — will have to work hard to prove that this wasn’t an isolated lynching. The precedent set by the ruling must be upheld when dealing with similar problems at Tuscany, Domino’s and others, which very likely will inherit the crowds once commanded by Philly. After all, inebriated, early-morning revelers bent on greasy food will gravitate toward the nearest alternative.
 
Which warrants a word or two about the early-morning revelers: as those directly responsible for the complaints of neighbors, they bear much of the blame here, and deserve to be held accountable more than they have been. We urge the neighborhood boards (the ANC and BID especially) to allocate the necessary funding to ensure, if problems continue to arise, that officers are regularly on hand to halt the littering and noise at the source.

Vancouver: America wins medals, Canada wins hearts Alexandre Bilodeau

By Gary Tischler

February 2010

So, how do you like the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver so far?
 
If you’re an American, quite a bit, thank you very much.
 
If you’re one of the NBC sportcasters here, you like it even more, because now you’ve got an almost legitimate excuse to talk about practically nothing but Americans.
 
If you’re Canada, the host nation, probably not so much, for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. If you’re from Russia, even less. You and your president are mad as hell about it all.
 
This has been an unexpectedly dizzying and surprising winter Olympics, at turns exposing everything that’s right and everything that’s wrong with these every-four-years efforts. If nothing else, we’ve seen a couple different sides to the host nation, for better and worse.
 
That image of the Canadians as bland, modest, mild-mannered folks who are patient and have things in perspective and proportion, well, that one took a small hit. They are as crazed about gold as anybody else, and carry as much bellowing national pride as the next country, which happens to be their too-good neighbor, the United States.
 
The Canadians, in their efforts to create a really fast luge and bobsled competition, created a course that athletes and experts complained was way too fast. It certainly proved to be too fast for a young luge competitor from Georgia who was killed when he lost control at somewhere around 90 miles an hour.
 
That tragedy, right before the start of the games, was a huge controversy with charges, tortured explanations, and countercharges in the midst of competition. It’s not being talked about too much any more, except perhaps in the Georgian village where they’re still mourning the loss of their hometown athlete.
 
The Canadians, who should be good in these events because there’s lots of ice, mountains, and snow there — as opposed to Washington — haven’t fared well. Last two times they hosted the winter Olympics they got no gold. They finally broke the spell this time, but then the United States — with most of their NHL stars playing for Russia, Sweden and Canada — managed to knock off the Sidney Crosby-led Canadian team, a huge upset.
 
The Russian hockey team, with Alex Ovechkin at the helm, lost to Slovakia. Russia was shut out in the medals for pairs skating, where China finished first and second, and when defending gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko, a boyish Putin look-alike in sequins, lost the gold to American Evan Lysacek in men‘s figure skating, he got peevish. He waltzed up to the gold podium at the medals ceremony then, after some comments about skaters who don’t do a quadruple jump not being manly, he walked out. Russian President Putin and his wife also complained about the loss.
 
And then there was our country ’tis of thee. Even if the Americans don’t win another medal, they’ve kicked butt. This would be really wonderful to behold if we didn’t have to listen to the various broadcasters point out the obvious to us, instead of letting us enjoy it.
 
This, in spite of the fact that this has not turned out to be the Vonncouver Olympics.
 
We’ve seen too much of the golden girl, in both senses of the word: her hurt shin, her pained grimaces, her bikini poses, her personal life, her long hair, all of that. She won a gold in the downhill and flashed her gutsy brilliance, fell in another race, and raced conservatively in the super-G for a bronze. Not bad at all, but just modest enough to let others shine.
 
Others won big also, with Shani Davis taking gold and silver in speed skating, Julia Mancuso winning two silvers and Apolo Ohno setting a record for Olympic medals with short track skating.
 
Then there’s Bode Miller. Remember him? Like Vonn, Miller was the hyped American athlete in Torino and crumbled like a cookie, with no medals. Here, he’s been about as good as he can get, getting a bronze, silver and gold so far, and a lot less attention, while looking like the scruffy skier Robert Redford might have played once.
 
Finally, there’s Shaun White, the red-headed snowboarder in a class by himself. I think I saw him working his way to the moon on one of his jumps. Confident without being arrogant, articulate, shrewd and funny, he’s the coolest guy in Vancouver.
 
Canada has enjoyed a few victories, though. The gold medal win by dark-horse moguls skier Alex Bilodeau, the country’s first in a Winter Olympics, prompted a fire of excitement nationwide. More touching was seeing Bilodeau’s older brother Frederic, who has cerebral palsy, weep with joy when the results were announced.
 
One of the great things about watching ski runs is to see how the Vancouver’s mountain setting revealed itself every time. It was breath-taking. And there’s the city itself, gleamingly hip and cosmopolitan against a backdrop of fierce nature. Even if Canadian athletes aren’t sweeping the podiums, the country has the shown the world a remarkable culture full of natural beauty and modern elan. Now there’s something to be proud about.
 
Plus, we got to see fiddle players who could tap dance. What more could you want?

Alexander Haig: Soldier-Statesman

By Gary Tischler

February 2010

Almost every obituary and remembrance written about Alexander Haig in the wake of his recent death at age 85 contains the phrase “soldier-statesman,” or some variation of it.
 
Not too soon thereafter and sometimes in the same sentence, you’ll find this: “As of now, I’m in control here in the White House pending the return of the vice president.”
 
Those words were part of a televised address in which then Secretary of State Haig made an ill-fated, misunderstood and clumsy attempt to calm the psyche of the nation after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1983.
 
That’s more than little unfair, and those words hardly sum up the life and achievements of the man who rose high and fast through the ranks of the military, served in two wars and, for a military man, was as close to the seat of highest power as you can get, serving in latter-20th-century Republican administrations.
 
“Soldier-statesman” is a good description, although political soldier might also fit well enough, because not only did Haig aspire to the presidency, he served as a close adviser to President Richard Nixon, under the sponsorship of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, during the keenly political days of Watergate, and managed to come out of it with his stature and honor intact and enhanced.
 
Lots of generals have aspired to the highest posts in the land in the United States, and some have even achieved it, beginning with the Founding Father and going on through Zachary Taylor, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and, last but not least, Dwight Eisenhower. Others have coveted or been urged to run for the position, because even beloved and successful generals have to stand for election if they aspire to office, this being one of the gems of our democracy (“Seven Days in May” and General Douglas MacArthur notwithstanding). In other countries and governmental systems, this sort of aspiration usually leads to putsches, disruption and coups.
 
Haig was a through Republican of the old school, conservative, but not stridently so, somewhat more of a Republican than, say, Eisenhower. A Philadelphia native, he had always wanted a military career and was sponsored for entry to West Point, where he excelled. He saw combat duty in Korea and Vietnam and caught the eye of Kissinger, who made him a military adviser on the National Security Council. From there it was a hop, skip and a few stars to four-star rank, which he achieved in 1972, leap-frogging over 200 generals with more years in rank. President Nixon appointed Haig his chief of staff in the midst of Watergate and after the firing of H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.
 
Haig was in the circle closest to the beleaguered president then, which in liberal camps was grounds for mistrust, but by all accounts, after helping Nixon with is defense, he also counseled him to resign in the end.
 
He went on to serve as commander of U.S. forces in Europe and commander of NATO.
 
With such a resume, including an aborted run for the presidency in 1979, Reagan picked Haig to be his Secretary of State, a position for which he seemed aptly suited. But the blunder of the televised statement was not forgiven by the public and certainly not the media, and increasingly made his position untenable in the competitive Reagan White House.
 
In 1988, he once again threw his hat in the presidential ring, sort of, but dropped out before the New Hampshire primary.

In the end, he was a soldier-statesman and a Washington general, who also happened to fall victim to Washington politics.

Two gop heavyweights pass on

By Gary Tischler

February 2010

In Washington where we live, there are types of people, just like there are in San Francisco or Philadelphia or Paris.
 
In Washington, they’re actually called Washington types, as opposed to the rest of us who are merely Washingtonians or Redskins fans.
 
They come in from all over the country to run the country, or, weather and economics permitting, run the world. We are talking about the visitors, of course, those men (and some women) who walk about not only in $5,000-and-above suits and pants suits, but with a matching gravitas that says they are serious people, from the president on down.
Our history is full of them, of course, a sub-set species of lawyers, retired generals, ex-spooks, friends to the friends called advisers, actual congressmen and senators, the supremes, the cabinet members, the secretaries of as opposed to secretaries to.
 
Very few leave an indelible mark, let alone statues, equestrian or pedestrian. But they have a look — on Capitol Hill you can spot a second term congressman pretty much by the way he acts, as if he should be recognized after four years on the Hill. Tom DeLay would scowl at people. And Bill Clinton, if he hadn’t been told his terms were over, would still be getting seconds at a local diner.
 
The ones that leave a mark do it quietly — or not. In the case of former Secretary of Commerce Robert Mossbacher, he made an impression working for his friend, President George H.W. Bush. He was a Republican politician through and through but he was also not to be mistaken for a hanger-on or lightweight. He had style and gravitas, and he made his money the old-fashioned way, coming out high enough in what’s always called the “oil bidness” in Texas to be dubbed a tycoon. He was a rich man who served and enjoyed his life, enough to have married several times. One of the wives was Georgette Mossbacher, who came to Washington with him. She was in the beauty business, herself as chief, red-headed example, and together, they cut quite a swath in Washington, making for a power couple par excellence. Nobody ever asked to see their invitations to anything.
 
He sailed yachts, he looked elegant, he was a fund-raiser without equal in his day, and as commerce secretary he helped to promote the American Free Trade Agreement . Mossbacher died of pancreatic cancer last month. In the old (Roman) days, he would have had a statue in the city.
 
So would Charles “Mac” Mathias, a Washington type who, if you follow politics at all, is as rare as a rumor about unicorns. Matthias was a three-term Republican U.S. Senator from Maryland, and, when he ran for the last time, made silly putty of the now venerable liberal Democratic Senator Barbara Makulski. He was, by all accounts and descriptions, a so-called “liberal” Republican. Nowadays, of course, to be a liberal Republican would be to be a Democrat at best, and probably a grumpy independent at worst. But there were such political types in the U.S. Senate, once upon a time. Mathias, who died at 87 last month, was a maverick who gave the word some real meaning before Senator John McCain took it for himself and made a campaign slogan out of it.
 
Matthias, who served three terms, was a champion for saving the Chesapeake Bay, he was pro-labor on many issues and even every now and then not quite the gung-ho hawk that seemed to be part of the GOP genetic makeup. He also championed civil rights.

Looking at pictures of him, he looked like an imposing, standup guy — standing up for the rights of others. Here’s a man who probably would get up first to shake the preferred hand from across the aisle, no matter what the party and partisan line might be.

Say “Enough’s Enough!” to polarization

By Lee H. Hamilton

February 2010

In recent appearances, President Obama has suggested that it’s time for Washington to confront the intense polarization and incivility that mark our politics these days.
 
His first sally was his back-and-forth with the House Republican caucus at its retreat in Baltimore. He followed that a few days later with a speech to the National Prayer Breakfast, decrying the “erosion of civility” in Washington and the inability of politicians in an increasingly partisan culture to listen to one other. “Those of us in Washington are not serving the people as well as we should,” he said.
 
Lots of ordinary Americans would agree with those lofty sentiments. But what’s notable is the growing concern even in Washington that, when it comes to the actual business of governing, the nation’s political leaders appear so riven with conflict that they’re unable to move forward on anything. Both Democrats and Republicans welcomed the President’s visit with the House Republicans as a first, tentative step in trying to reduce partisanship.
 
Moves like these are important gestures. But intense partisanship is deeply rooted in the body politic now. Even if the entire leadership at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue were suddenly to embrace one another in honest fellowship, there would still be a long way to go in reducing polarization. That is because much of our political culture now works to drive people apart, not bring them together.
 
To begin with, we face a somewhat confusing paradox: In terms of electoral politics, the country is closely divided between left and right, with one side or the other gaining a majority depending on where independents choose to alight on Election Day. Yet in terms of political values, the nation is above all pragmatic and moderate, caring less about ideology than about what works.
 
The problem is that too much in politics — the extent to which congressional districts lock in a single party’s dominance, the increasing importance of primaries dominated by the ideologically driven voters in both parties, and hence the growing ideological homogeneity of both parties’ leadership — works to favor division, not pragmatism.
 
The result is that politics now drives policy on Capitol Hill. Every vote is looked upon as a political vote, with members of Congress asking themselves not, “What’s best for the country?” but, “How do we put the other guys on the spot and advance our own partisan interests?”
 
This trend toward the extremes has also been driven by political developments in the country at large. Demographic trends — the migration of African-Americans out of the South, the tendency of people of similar class and ethnic background to cluster together — have created communities and even regions that are dominated by one party or the other. This has been echoed by an explosion of advocacy organizations, so that groups that used to create consensus out of wildly disparate views no longer do so.
 
The political parties, which once forged consensus platforms at conventions that were notable for their diversity, now cater to their ideological activists. Advocacy associations — whether focused on the environment, agriculture, health, or whatever — that once needed to build an agenda acceptable to a diverse membership now are so narrowly aimed that they feel free to pursue their parochial points of view.
 
The media, too, has fragmented. Americans get their information from a bewildering array of sources, and these days need never be troubled by reporting or analysis that doesn’t agree with their own preconceived views of the world. Punditry and commentary are what rule the media-sphere now, not hard reporting, and much of it is ideologically driven. There are very few prominent media voices pushing political Washington toward the center.
 
All of this has made it hard for fair, open-minded, and centrist politicians to gain any footing, and has pushed their counterparts in the population at large to withdraw from a politics they see as increasingly nasty, closed-minded and unattractive.
 
If there’s a solution, it lies with ordinary Americans willing to stand up and say “Enough’s enough!” The president and other political leaders can certainly try to change the tone in Washington, but they have an uphill battle to fight unless enough Americans make it clear that they are so tired of polarization, they’ll set their own ideological prejudices aside and place a premium on politicians who demonstrate they know how to work with people who don’t agree with them.

Lee H. Hamilton is director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.

Ray Browne: Georgetown’s activist and community leader

By Gary Tischler

February 2010

To many community political activists in Washington, the idea of statehood and district voting rights were causes you embraced without expecting fulfillment. It took passion, patience and perseverance to engage in the pursuit of the cause, which was something on the order of Don Quixote’s impossible dream.

Ray Browne, who died recently at the age of 71, was no Don Quixote, but he did believe in the quest for both statehood and D.C. voting rights, knowing full well that neither was likely to be achieved any time soon, if ever. He didn’t just talk about it, either, but ran for the office of D.C. shadow representative, an office, like that of shadow senator (now held by Paul Strauss), was symbolic and a tool for statehood and voting right lobbying.
It was a thankless task and remains so, but you still had to run for it, an activity that Browne, a former Georgetown ANC commissioner, seemed to enjoy, even if the prize was substantively small in terms of power.

Browne served as shadow representative for six years. He used the position to lobby for full representation in Congress, which is to say that the elected delegate would have voting rights on legislation in Congress, something current Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, does not have. Browne lived to see the House pass the D.C. voting rights cause three years ago, but it fell short by three votes in the Senate, which were at least positive indicators for its future passage.

Browne was a realist in the sense that while he believed in D.C. statehood and full representations by delegates and two senators, he also felt it likely would not happen. He was what you might call a passionate pragmatist, spurred by what he saw as a just cause. But he never mistook windmills for anything but windmills.

Back in the day, if you would happen to run into Browne at some political function or another, you were in for a little political talk time and that was almost always a good thing. He made time for people, he was easy to talk with, and you always learned a little bit about the Washington body politic when those occasions occurred. A businessman — he started an insurance — Browne was in the best sense of the word and phrase, a good citizen, of Washington, and of Georgetown. Not only was he a commissioner, he was to be seen at CAG meetings or any other public forums concerning the city and his neighbors. Georgetowners will miss him.

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