Gary Tischler • June 18, 2013

By Tuesday, you might’ve been deceived into thinking nothing had changed in Washington, D.C.

Vincent Gray was still sitting in his accustomed Chairman’s seat as the DC Council returned, preparing to tackle ticklish and problematic issues including a looming budget deficit reported at $100 million.

At Large Councilman Kwame Brown was in his old seat, and so was Democratic At Large Councilman Phil Mendelson and every other member of the council who had stood for re-election. Everyone, including Mary Cheh (Ward Three), Jim Graham (Ward One), David Catania (At large), Harry Thomas Jr. (Ward Five), and Tommy Wells (Ward Six), was there, no worse for the wear and tear of campaigning. Michael A. Brown was in his seat, not confused with the likes of Michael D. Brown.

Mayor Adrian Fenty was still Mayor Adrian Fenty. When last heard, Michelle Rhee was still Chancellor of the District of Columbia Schools.

Everything was the same.

Except that it wasn’t.

Gray was now something else, in addition to being Chairman of the City Council. Gray was now the presumptive mayor of the District of Columbia—the sixth and oldest in its history—having just knocked off the youngest elected mayor in D.C.’s history in the Democratic Primary, September 14. He had done this in an election that revealed a deep economic and racial divide in the city.

The vagaries of the District electoral makeup being what they are, he has still to endure a general election in November. But this, as it has been in the past, should be a mere formality, with Democrats in the District outnumbering Republicans or anything else by an overwhelming margin.

Kwame Brown, as it turned out, easily bested Vincent Orange in the race for Chairman, in spite of some difficulties with financial revelations during the campaign. Phil Mendelson, with a determined effort to make sure voters knew who the real Michael Brown was, managed to fend off an odd challenge from Shadow Senator Michael D. Brown, and a lesser one from Clark Ray.

But Gray’s victory over Fenty still sent a shockwave through the city. For one thing, nobody knew who had won until the wee hours of the morning because of major difficulties at the Board of Elections, where it took a long time to count the votes what with same day registration and new technology.

In the end, Gray carried Wards Eight, Seven, Five and, perhaps most telling, Fenty’s home turf, Ward Four —the same ward where Fenty had first been elected to the council, upsetting long-time veteran Charlene Drew Jarvis. Gray even beat Fenty in Brentwood, the precinct where Fenty made his home. On the other hand, Fenty decisively carried Wards Three and Two, the most white wards of the District, as well as Wards Two and Six, if less decisively.

Early in the campaign, Gray had observed that, “The city was never as divided as it is now.” At the time, that sounded a little like hyperbole, but he was absolutely right. He said the divide was not merely racial but economic — which is to say it was both.

Fenty’s fall was a steep one, and it was based almost solely on the way he ran the government — on the way he conducted himself. Large parts of the city, especially the blacker and poorer parts of the city, felt abandoned, ignored, and left out of the process. This was especially true of the big changes that were begun under Fenty and Chancellor Michelle Rhee in the school system, a system Fenty had vowed to change when he ran the table in the elections of four years ago, winning all wards and precincts. He was seen as arrogant, high-handed, petty and aloof.

Fenty ignored the warnings revealed in two polls, which showed a big disconnect between accomplishment and character, substance and style. He insisted that his accomplishments would carry the day, and during the latter parts of the campaign he did not change. He blasted Gray for his tenure as DHS director under Sharon Pratt Kelly, while praising himself and Chancellor Rhee for making tough decisions.

But there was a failure in leadership. Fenty and Rhee never felt they had to persuade people to come along with the tough decisions, or to show empathy with those most affected by the them; the unemployed, teachers left jobless after two large firings, and so on.

The end result was a 56 to 45 percent Gray margin over Fenty, or 62,174 votes for Gray and 52,000 for Fenty. Kwame Brown won over Orange by a 55 to 39 percent margin. Mendelson beat back Michael D. Brown by 64 to 28 percent margin.

In his first statement after his election victory, Gray promised to bring unity back to the city — in effect, to recreate the “One City” platform he once ran on. “I know this city remains divided, and I promise to do everything in my power to bring this city back together,” he said. “We face grave challenges. Now is the time to move forward. Let now be the time for this city to unite.”

Gray attempted to allay fears on the part of many people that, “I will not turn back the clock,” to earlier political times in the District. He also said he would continue with school reform, making it broader and more inclusive while placing greater emphasis on early childhood and vocational education. He also promised to hold town hall meetings in every ward, to sound out to the entire city. Only a week before the election he had said at a Penn Quarter breakfast that he might resurrect former Mayor Anthony Williams’ Citizens Summit, in which residents from all wards were invited. “We might tweak it a little, but it’s another way to bring the city together.”
Both Gray and Fenty have shown considerable class while planning for a smooth transition,
a process that could prove difficult. At a Democratic Party Unity Breakfast, Fenty hugged Gray and vowed to use all the resources available to him to make for a smooth transfer of power.

No personnel decisions have been made yet, including the one that everyone is most interested
in: the fate of Chancellor Rhee.

If Gray and Fenty have shown grace in victory and defeat respectively, Rhee seemed bent on making things more difficult, whether as an exit strategy or a ploy to give herself room to stay and finish the job she started — an idea floated by some council members. “RHEE IS LIKELY TO HEAD FOR THE DOOR,” the Washington Post front page trumpeted on Friday. This was after comments she had made at a glitzy Newseum premiere of “Waiting for Superman,” a documentary film about education reform in which she was one of the heroines quoted on camera as worrying about the children going to “crappy schools.” More harmful may have been the comment she made at a post-screening panel discussion, in which she said “yesterday’s election results were devastating. Devastating. Not for me, because I’ll be fine, and not even for Fenty, because he’ll be fine, but devastating for the schoolchildren of Washington.” In an e-mail she sent out later, she backtracked saying she meant that if reform were discontinued it would be bad for the children.

Rhee has not been shy in her approach to her job. She made a controversial appearance on the cover of Time magazine bearing a broom she intended to use. She fired principals, closed schools, instituted two large teacher firings, and negotiated a complicated contract with the Washington Teachers Union that included a loosening of tenure rules and some merit pay, as well as the installation of a teacher evaluation system. Under Rhee, test scores went up and infrastructure improved, but school is still out on the overall effect of her tenure.

Gray said he and Rhee would be sitting down and talking soon, although it hasn’t happened
yet. During the campaign, he consistently refused to discuss her fate. “We will talk,” he said the day after the election. “I put in a call to her, although I haven’t heard back from her. I imagine she is busy running the schools.”

An Oprah Winfrey show aired recently (taped before the election) that had Oprah calling
Rhee a warrior woman for turning the D.C. School System upside down.

If Rhee, who did not call to congratulate Gray on his victory, has shown a certain lack of post-election grace, so did Courtland Milloy, the Washington Post columnist, with a column entitled “Ding Dong, Fenty’s Gone. The Wicked Mayor is Gone” — a blast of vitriol. “People who need more time to gloat and wave their fists, take it,” he urged.

Probably not the kind of comments Gray was looking for. On the other side, in addition to Rhee, national journalists warned that reform itself took a hit; school reform was in danger because of the election results.

Yet Gray repeatedly said education reform was his top priority. What he also said during the campaign was that education reform was not about any one person. [gallery ids="99196,103363" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Presumptive mayor Vincent Gray’s version of a magical mystery tour through all of the city’s 8 wards continued apace at the Foundry Methodist Church in Dupont Circle in Ward 2, one of the two heavily white wards where voters favored incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty by wide margins in the recent Democratic primary.

In this, and in a Ward 3 town hall “getting to know you” meeting meant for folks to get a closer look at Gray after the primary, he appeared to make strong strides in easing some of the resentment still nurtured by many Fenty voters in Northwest Washington.

After favorable reports from a Ward 3 town hall meeting, Gray again showed a strong, detailed and comfortable command of a variety of issues and topics, a hearty sense of humor, strong, no-nonsense views and an earnest desire for inclusion in problem-solving by the public.

All the much-ballyhooed suspicion, fear and worry about Gray’s commitment to education reform, and ties to DC’s less appealing political past did not surface among an audience composed of the city’s most far-flung and affluent ward, stretching from Southwest, to Dupont Circle, the Penn Quarter District (and the less affluent Shaw area), Logan Circle and Georgetown.

Part of the reason was that Gray’s biggest bet noire as an issue—what in the world to do with the nationally prominent, polarizing reform icon and controversial DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee—appeared to have resolved itself as if by magic. In a press conference the previous day, Rhee, Gray, and Fenty all appeared together to make the official announcement that Rhee would be resigning her position as of the end of October. Everyone involved insisted that the decision, reached after numerous phone calls, was, “a mutual agreement.”

Sure enough, he once again repeated adamantly what he said at the press conference and other meetings: “She did not abruptly resign. I did not ask her to quit. It was a mutual decision.”

It helped having interim chancellor Kaya Henderson in the audience for this town hall meeting, who was greeted with warm applause. In some ways both Rhee’s resignation and Henderson’s appointment as Interim Chancellor (through the school year at least) seemed to defuse some of the disappointment in certain wards of the city where a large majority had voted for Gray’s opponent. Or at least it did on this occasion.

Gray talked mostly about education reform and the future, but there were no further questions on the subject from the audience. They had questions and tales about the presence of a noisy pizza parlor in Georgetown, about the makeup and power of the numerous boards and commissions and their memberships, about raising taxes (or not), about Statehood (Gray has this down like a great performer), about homeless shelters, literacy, at-risk and vulnerable residents, especially the elderly, and so on.

In almost all cases, Gray displayed two qualities that will serve him well after he wins the general election on November 2—as he’s more than likely to do in spite of a Fenty write-in effort—and is inaugurated in January.

Gray impressed many with a command of the issues, seemingly calling up statistics, examples and understanding of how this city functions and works, not so much as a politician showing off but as a man who seems to have made a study of the subject of bureaucracy and government at work.

Gray also showed a certain benign kind of opportunism, in the sense that he used every question as a way to not only invite, but urge people to take part in the process of government. Asked about how grants are received by aging programs. “This isn’t just an issue about which organization gets what grants,” he said. “This is about protecting some of our most vulnerable citizens, the elderly and others. You have to want to take part here. You can do that. Work as a volunteer, work with those groups that give seniors an opportunity to come together in groups.”

Per talking about the looming budget crisis ($175 or more million deficit coming right up): “We need your input and cooperation in this. We are all in this together. It’s not the government’s problem, it’s not the city council’s problem or the mayor’s or some agency’s, and it’s ours. Tough decisions are going to be made; I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Cuts will have to be made. Don’t’ say, ‘cut this one or that one, but not the one that we don’t want cut.’ It’s about all of us. We need your input.”

Talking about statehood really jazzed him up. “Yeah, I’m going to be going up to the hill on this and in my capacity as mayor. But on statehood, I don’t want to go up there alone. I don’t just want to have somebody right behind me, another person on the right and the left. I want hundreds, no, thousand of people behind me, and if we get thrown in jail, so be it.” They hooted and hollered and whistled then.

A homeless person asked about the prospect of homes for everyone and then appeared to disapprove of the right to marriage law passed by the district, allowing gay couples to marry. Gray took on both. “Housing for everyone sounds nice,” he said. “Who wouldn’t want it? But it doesn’t work that way. It’s impossible to be truthful. Because it’s not going to solve the problem of homelessness in this city. Everybody will come here and you increase the problem. As for the other, I fought for the legislation on right to marriage legislation. I believe in it with all my heart.”

“I came here and to all the other town hall meetings so that you can get to know me better,” he said. “Lots of people know little about me. I think maybe I wouldn’t vote for me if I knew as little as all that.”

“I want us to work together,” he said. “And that’s a concrete thing. I want people from all the wards to work together, to get to know each other. We are facing tremendous challenges but also a great future. We did that on the council, and I have to say I think we have and had a tremendously talented council. I have to say, in all honesty, that I’m feeling a little separation anxiety starting to seep in. I’ve developed friendships in this council. We all have.

“But we have big challenges. Number one is education. Safety. Jobs, The economy,
The budget. On top of that we are a deeply divided city—divided by geography, economics, society, and, let’s face it: race.

“We can’t continue that way. People say you’re never going to change that. I’ve heard that in other meetings. And I say, you can’t stop trying.”

Gray said that everything is tied together: education, he said, is about adult education, continuing education, special education, early childhood, charter schools. “There’s this strange statistic: there are actually more jobs available now but the number of unemployed remains the same. Why? Because the people applying for jobs don’t have the tools, the education, the training, and skills for the jobs that are there. We’ve got to change that.”

“I’m going to say one thing about reform,” he said. “My commitment to reform is steadfast and won’t change. I believe strongly in the position of a strong chancellor, capable of making tough decision. We have that again in Kaya Henderson, and we had it in Michelle Rhee who worked tremendously hard for children which resulted in major improvements.”

Gary Tischler •

If you made it to the inauguration ceremonies for Mayor Vincent Gray at the Walter Washington Convention Center on a bitter cold Sunday, you might be forgiven if you got caught up in a strong, surface sense of Déjà vu.

Four years isn’t all that long of a time after all; a lot of these same people were there for the inauguration of a triumphant new mayor named Adrian Fenty four years ago, especially on the dais. Up there, it was practically an instant, but slow-mo replay, except that somebody had subtly re-arranged the seats at the captain’s table. In fact, there was a new captain, and a new exec officer, which made all the difference.

Fenty sat a little off to the side, along with other dignitaries like former mayor Anthony Williams, newly elected Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Catholic Archbishop of Washington DC, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, U.S. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, incoming Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker, III and other civic and political dignitaries.

All the council members who were up for re-election had returned, except that At Large Councilman Kwame Brown was now the new Chairman of the City Council, which temporarily left an empty seat, at least at the ceremonies. So the swearing in ceremonies, complete with an array of judges and council family members, very much resembled the same ceremonies four years ago, except that Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh did not bring Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsberg to swear her in. Instead, District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle did the honors. Cheh, exuberant, wearing an arm cast and accompanied by her family, gave the shortest speech of all those being sworn in, which perhaps allowed Gray to be sworn in as Mayor just under the noon deadline.

The apparently ageless WUSA 9 reporter and anchor Bruce Johnson did the emcee honors again, contributing to the déjà vu all over again. So did the presence of many Gray supporters, ex-council members, ex-mayors and public officials who had not so far found themselves without a jobs as happens with a change in administrations.

We ran into former council member Harold Brazil, an attorney who said he was glad for the new Mayor and keeping busy, “Trying to make a little money.”

Williams, who served two successful if sometimes difficult terms as mayor, told us, “I’m optimistic. I think Vincent Gray has the opportunity and the ability to be a great mayor, a terrific leader.”

Williams supported, if not outright endorsed, Fenty during the campaign because, as he explained on Mark Plotkin’s political hour on WTOP, where he appeared with former Mayors Sharon Kelly and Marion Barry, “I believe in supporting sitting mayors.” He acknowledged on the show that his support did not go unnoticed in his family, with his mother Virginia Williams being an ardent Gray supporter.

“These are going to be tough times,” he told us. “But I think Vincent has the gifts to bring the city together to face the budget challenges that are already here. “ Williams looked fit and comfortable, as if private sector life agrees with him.

We ran into new City Administrator Allan Lew, who was appointed to the city’s number two position after what was generally seen as a very successful stint as Operations Officer for the DC School District. Robert Bobb, one of the former city administrators under Williams and once school board president (until the board was basically shunted into obscurity by Fenty’s mayoral takeover of the schools) was here. Bobb is currently heading the Detroit school system, but rumors haves been floating around about him being a possibility for the next chancellor. Bobb, it should be noted, still lives in Washington. Kaya Henderson, Michelle Rhee’s No. 2 person, remains the interim chancellor where by all accounts she has done a yeoman job. Still, Gray has remained mum about his choice.

The inauguration was centered around the same theme that Gray used for a campaign slogan: “One City.” It is an ironic theme in some ways. The 2010 campaign, which resulted in a convincing victory for Gray, exposed deep fissures of race, class and economics that continue to exist. Gray swept the poorer and mostly black wards of the city where unemployment is abnormally high and development and jobs lag, while Fenty swept the city’s affluent and white wards.

Gray struck the “One City” theme early and loudly, and with tremendous passion and conviction. If there is a man who could bring the city together in any sort of effective, lasting, and emotional way, it may be Gray. He rattled off the names of the city’s great neighborhoods as they are mirrored in the city’s divided whole, giving them the quality of unique and special places. “The next chapter in the city of the District of Columbia won’t be written by a single author, but with the pens of 600,000 residents from all eight wards and all walks of life committed to a vision of One City. Our City.”

He spoke vehemently about statehood and how he would continue to fight for it on this day – at least before the usual realities about such an endeavor set in, he sounded like he was the man for the job.

Gray, with his children and grandchildren in the audience, talked often about going to Dunbar High School, about attending George Washington University, about growing up in the struggling parts of this city. More than anyone, he has the kind of roots to the city and its neighborhoods that make him a resident-citizen-neighbor kind of mayor, and one who is instantly recognizable in his passions and concerns.

Still, many of the residents of the wards where he lost don’t really know him (made clear in a misguided, but solidly effective write-in attempt for Fenty in the general election). It’s not clear whether a series of town hall meetings in every ward of the city made a dent into the perception of Gray as a mystery man.

At the inauguration, he presented himself and showed himself to be the man of decency, grace and class that his supporters and his record have always indicated. At 68, he is the oldest mayor this city has ever had, and perhaps one of the more cautious. But he doesn’t lack passion or empathy for the city where we all live. Case in point: while all the re-elected candidates as well as the new chairman offered praise to various degrees of intensity, often in perfunctory fashion, Gray did a little more. He walked up to the man with whom he had engaged in an often-bitter campaign and embraced him in a bear hug after praising him profusely.

From the dais, you could hear the noise of heart-felt rhetoric and the confetti of home grown relationships—Brown, Yvette Alexander of Ward 7, and Harry Thomas Jr. of Ward 5 are all Wilson High School Graduates, a fact which they all duly noted. Gray laughed and said, “That just shows you it takes only one Dunbar graduate to deal with three Wilson grads.” This is home grown stuff, warm and affectionate, like PTA talk and town meeting bragging rights.

For now, Gray has the bragging rights. He’s the man. He’s the man who’s got to tackle an ever-growing budget crisis and a deficit that will be swelling to $400 million over the next three years. He’s the man who has to deal with the passionately high expectations—for jobs, for attention, for development—from the wards that elected him, without alienating the residents of the wards that didn’t. He’s the man who has to deal with a congress that is historically hostile to District needs and will be only more so under the new GOP stalwarts. He’s the man who will have to lead tough decisions on budget cuts and, as he indicated, possible tax increases.

To quote Mayor Vincent Gray, it’s time to “get to work.”
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Gary Tischler •

It’s Election Day in the middle of a picture perfect, weather-impediment free Tuesday afternoon of the kind that offers no excuses for would-be voters.

Around the city, folks are going to the polls, many of them taking advantage of a new rule which allows voters to register and vote on the same day – this day. At this point, it has turned out to be a cumbersome process, and at least one election official we chatted with said that it may slow things down some, since every polling place in the district allows same-day registration-and-voting.

Still, even now no one is certain of what is going to happen tonight at the end of it all, and no one knows for sure who will win and who will lose and why.

Did Mayor Adrian Fenty, running somewhat frantically and with more than his usual urgency, convince enough voters that his considerable accomplishments trump his considerable people-skill deficiencies which revealed themselves in not one, but two Washington Post polls?

Has City Council Chairman Vince Gray given folks enough reasons to vote FOR him, and not just against Fenty, and has he allayed worries about a return to old school politics?

Those are some of the true and remaining questions in the 2010 mayoral campaign leading up to today’s Democratic Primary election, which, in Washington DC is the election, to be formalized by the November election.

All of these things are important today, along with all the other races conducted by good and honorable men and women. For myself, I’m not running for anything, nor do I expect to win anything. But as the moment approaches where we see who won, who lost, I’d like to nonetheless offer a few thank yous.

This is predicated on an oft-mentioned adage almost as old as the ones that say “Thou Shalt Honor Thy Father and Mother,” “Never lend money to your friends,” and, “Never sleep with anyone who has more problems than you do.”

All politics are local.

That’s the one.

So on this day, I want to thank my dog. Yes, my dog. Sometime this month we will note his 14th Birthday. His name is Bailey and he is a Frishe Bichon. He is a true democrat and would ignore Adrian Fenty and Vincent Gray with equal amounts of disdainful disinterest. He has a gift for this, but because he remains, even in old age, adorable and cute, people ignore his disinterest and substitute their own interest and try to pet him. Come to think of it, he might have been a politician in a previous life.

Bailey’s politics – or lack of them – is not important here. What’s important is that I walk him four times a day, out of the house on Lanier Place, around the corner to Argonne and back onto Lanier Place, across Ontario, past the 100-year-plus firehouse and the four apartment houses on the two blocks, past the hospice for the homeless, past the bed and breakfast, past the dry cleaners, the deli, the Exxon, around to Adams Mill Road and past the children’s playground and park, onto Ontario Place and its overarching trees, around past the Ontario, up the hill to Lanier again, and home.

All politics are local.

It doesn’t get anymore local than this. All along the length of this election campaign, roughly from the time about a year ago when rumors began that Vincent Gray (he had not yet become Vince) was going to run, through the poll that showed a divide in the city that was economic and racial, through Gray’s announcement and his One City signs, through the mayor’s muted announcement, through two major firings of DCPS school teachers, through the teachers contract agreement, through a blizzard of achievement announcements from the mayor’s office by e-mail – as well as three real blizzards – through the long and really hot summer and finally the big Washington Post poll that showed Gray with a double-digit lead.

That’s when things got really intense.

I want to also thank my neighbors. You know who you are. Because if not every day, almost every day, and with greater detail and force, my walks, especially this past month, were about politics. Which are, of course, local.

When politicians say all politics are local, they usually mean a state — as opposed to the big government — or a region, or city, town, or village. In cities, this sub-divides into neighborhoods, and again into street blocks and street corners, and finally – and this one turned out to be important in this election – the human heart. That’s how local politics can get.

Everyday my neighbors and I had conversations—about Gray’s chances, about his tour of duty as DHS director in the old days, about the police, about Chief Lanier, about Chancellor Rhee, about cops in the hood or the lack of them, about service cuts and snow plows, or the lack of them, about fire hydrants and the renovation of the Safeway, and the new jobs at Teeter, and how it wasn’t safe to be out on 18th Street at night at times, and about immigrants in this very, very diverse neighborhood where graffiti on garage doors was as omni-present as peeling paint.

I am here to tell you this: I knew the city was divided before Vince Gray told me it was, and even before the Washington Post told me so. There are people just on my block who admire Michelle Rhee or who dislike her intensely. There are teachers who live here, and EMS workers out of the firehouse down the street, and there are people who work for the city — quite a few. There are newer young people with young children, and people who lived in the same house for decades. There are houses being renovated, usually with work crews consisting of Hispanic workers. Trucks are all over the place. There are people that curse Mayor Fenty (cab drivers especially so) and there are people who like what he’s done. “The curbs, they clean, the crime, not so much,” a Hispanic homeowner who voted for Fenty told me today.

“That SOB had done more to hurt affordable housing than anybody,” an affordable housing advocate said angrily just a week ago.

You see where this is going. Vincent Gray hasn’t come here much that I know of, but he would be welcome here and asked tough questions. I think he’d be a little more at home here than the current mayor, even though the mayor grew up here.

All politics are truly local. There’s one man here I have practically daily talks with, which my dog allows me to do grudgingly. We solve the problems of the world and those of the more immediate area. We disagree on some things, but tomorrow, we will still talk about the things we disagree about. He likes what the mayor has accomplished and worries about the disruption that might result with a new mayor.

I happen to think, after much thought, that politics is as much about people and perception as it is about the use of power. What has puzzled me about the mayor since he came to power practically unanimously is that he appears himself puzzled about the displeasure, the disappointment with him in the city, especially in the economically stressed wards. It’s as if, being all but unanimously elected, that he shouldn’t have to worry about observing the niceties of basic human contact and interaction. Gray, on the other hand, doesn’t just worry about it; he often revels in it.

I think that the conduct of both Fenty and Gray since the last poll which electrified the city so much is to some extent revealing. Fenty has promised to change in addressing inclusion and listening to people and the promise doesn’t quite ring true. He lists his achievements, which alone are compelling, denounces Grey for his DHS reign, and promises to keep on moving forward. Grey presents papers and position tomes, but more than that he’s fleshing himself out as a candidate right before our eyes. He seems to often see the campaign as a way to get to know more people, as a kind of social gathering.

Mostly what I’ve learned from my daily walks is that politics is local in the sense of what I see and hear around the block every day. The man who has trouble finding work talks about his ailing 90-some-year-old father while resting on his bicycle: jobs, health care the elderly, and transportation. The woman living in an apartment tells me about the constant battles with landlords, half-hearted renovation and rent raises and dealing with city agencies: governance, rent control, urban housing issues. People gossip about the price of renovated houses in the neighborhood. Everyday you see more and more children in the park. In the neighborhood, there are two new grocery stores and a renovated Safeway. In the neighborhood there are also still no foot patrols. One of our neighbors is building an enclosed backyard patio. People move in and out.

On our block, one of my neighbors celebrated the birth of a son, his second child, last week. He helped deliver the baby himself on a night near midnight, and no doubt for a second felt himself a king.

All politics are local. Even the birth of a child, where all future policy planning starts.

Gary Tischler •

The other night, just before round two of the load of rain dumped by a tropical depression over the Washington region, I managed to get Bailey, my 14-year-old Bichon, out for a much needed walk.

I learn a lot from Bailey. We’re nearing the Exxon gas station at twilight when we see two little children getting out of an SUV. “Hey, it’s Bailey,” or something like that, yells Patrick, who is nearing all of three.

His friend turns and says, “Wow, I didn’t know we were going to run into Bailey.”

Talk about enduring fame. In our Lanier Heights neighborhood, as I’m sure it is elsewhere, dog owners are not always greeted by name, but their dogs are. Everyone, in short, knows Bailey. But a surprising many people struggle with my name, which is both a curse and blessing. I feel like Jack Kennedy when he said, “I’m the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.” I am the man who walks Bailey around the block.

Bailey’s very localized appeal made me think about the nature of fame — how it is sometimes fleeting, sometimes lasting, and sometimes recurring. In America, there are first acts, second acts and more — and always last acts, in which famous people have their achievements and infamy reprised after duly passing away. Often, given the state of vitamins and good medicine, these famous people haven’t been heard from in a while. People live longer, die later. Or as Tony Curtis, a true old school movie star, said recently, “In this town [Hollywood], you have to die before somebody says something good about you.”

So, herewith, we give you a little of the life and times of: Tony Curtis, Eddie Fisher, George Blanda, Vance Bourjaily, and Arthur Penn — American success stories all. A movie star, crooner, football quarterback-kicker, novelist, and film-stage-television director — all of them fell victim to health issues in their eighties, the best parts of their professional lives long over, but endured in the memories of people, who themselves are, well…getting older.

I believe in the six degrees of separation bit. Somewhere there is a connection, however distant or intimate.

So let’s begin with Tony Curtis, matinee idol, New Yorker kid, sailor boy, Universal Pictures studio creation, terrific-at-times actor, lover boy (married six times), artist, and underappreciated. Think of Curtis and, as a moviegoer, you immediately see him fending off Laurence Olivier in “Spartacus” (“I am Antoninus, singer of songs, hard g’s clanking on Roman marble.”), or seducing Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like It Hot”, the Billy Wilder classic comedy in which Curtis and Lemmon pretended to be female musicians in an all-girl band during prohibition. You think of the oily huckster in “Sweet Smell of Success” , the bigot Southern convict chained to Sidney Poitier, on the run in “The Defiant Ones”, the creepy title role in “The Boston Strangler” — a pretty good body of work right there.

Curtis rose in the studio system that trained him, a pretty boy with pitch-black wavy hair, blue eyes, and attitude, growing up poor in Manhattan. He became a movie star and never spent much time resisting its temptations or opportunities. He was almost as pretty as Leigh, a beauty sometimes burdened by a bosomy build and a much underrated talent (witness her work on “Psycho”). The marriage did produce Jamie Lee Curtis, who played Lindsay Lohan’s mom before Lohan became a train wreck.

We saw Curtis here during the opening week of the World War II Memorial, when he was at the Navy Memorial for the annual commemoration of the Battle of Midway. Curtis, who was born as Bernie Schwartz, was a sailor in the U.S. Navy in World War II and spoke movingly, thanking the navy for letting a poor kid from New York “expand his horizons, see the world and its possibilities.” Here, he was both things at once: movie star incarnate in dazzling old age, alligator cowboy boots, a big cowboy hat, and tanned with his gorgeous, thirty-ish wife beside him, and Bernie Schwartz, sailor boy.

Curtis died in Henderson, Nevada, where my son lives. Six degrees.

I vaguely listened to Eddie Fisher’s records when he was one of the country’s top crooners. “Oh My Papa” was everybody’s favorite, and young girls and mothers both adored him. This was pre-rock and roll, pre-Elvis, early 1950s: Fisher was dark-haired, handsome, with a stylish, moving voice and a way with a soaring, moving ballad. He was a teen idol before old swivel hips came along and ruined it all for a generation of lesser singers like Vic Damone and Johnny Ray.

Few people remember his musical career, which continued at lesser levels with albums, Las Vegas, and hotel show rooms. Fisher was something of a rat pack wannabe in his day, and, like Curtis, something of a dog with the ladies. What people really remember is: Debbie, Mike, Liz, and Dick. The paparazzi that existed in those days, from the mid-fifties to the early sixties, had a field day, and Fisher got bowled over like a gasping fish by the whole thing, with nobody to blame but himself.

Fisher married just about the nicest young girl around, a miss Debbie Reynolds, and together (with Curtis and Leigh a close second at the time) they became America’s Sweethearts — clean-cut, shiny teeth, and hugs with babies (daughter Carrie). Eddie had a best friend named Michael Todd, a larger-than-life Broadway and film producer who made “Around the World in Eighty Days” (Best Picture Oscar), married the reigning movie star of the day, Elizabeth Taylor, and promptly got killed in a plane crash. Eddie consoled the widow and then consoled her some more, much to the public chagrin of wife Debbie. They divorced, Eddie married Liz, and both became vilified in the public eye — especially Eddie, the cad. The whole thing was the biggest scandal ever, until the next one.

Liz redeemed herself professionally by playing a hooker in “Butterfield Eight” and winning an Oscar. Then she moved to Rome to make the ruinous, hugely expensive “Cleopatra”. While filming, she met Richard Burton, her Anthony, and promptly began a hot, heavy, and very public affair, much to the chagrin of husband Eddie — the perfect storm of all scandals, excluding Brangelina. Six degrees.

I sat in on a press conference in San Francisco in the 1970s for Debbie Reynolds, who was touring the country in the musical “Irene” with her daughter Carrie. I recall her very funny and forthright answer to the clichéd question about how she might change her life if she had to do it all over again. “Well,” she said with a straight-face, “I’d probably screw around a lot more.” Jaws dropped onto the hotel’s red carpet.

More recently, I saw Carrie Fisher, daughter of Eddie and Debbie, perform her one-woman show “Wishful Drinking” at the Lincoln Theater, which included acerbic anecdotes about Hollywood and a childhood with famous parents. Fisher already has a very permanent, red-hot kind of fame from her role as Princess Leia, in the 1980s “Star Wars” Trilogy. Perhaps some might even remember her very first lines in her very first movie “Shampoo.”

It turns out Curtis was more right than he knew. On Access Hollywood, the most shameful guilty pleasure and half-hour showbiz-and-buzz TV show featuring the one-time Christian music deejay and Bush family relation Billy Bush, you had to wait until the end to hear a less-than-a-minute tribute to the life and times of Curtis. The show and Billy were preoccupied with such matters as Paris Hilton’s car riding over the toe of a paparazzi, whether “Glee,” the hit Fox show, crossed the too-nasty-for-kids line in its Britney Spears tribute, and advice for Lindsay Lohan from Donald Trump. So it goes, and so it went.

I saw George Blanda, then in his forties, sub for Daryl (dubbed footsteps) Lamonica as quarterback for the pre-Kenny Stabler Oakland Raiders and had occasion to watch the old man from the sidelines on several occasions. He won games throwing, he won games kicking, and he played until he was 48 years old. An NFL owner, who had hired him originally, said he remembered in the 1970s that his father had played in the 1950s. He had a butch haircut like Johnny Unitas and craggy features: quarterbacks from that era, like Y.A. Tittle of the Giants and Unitas of the Colts, were born looking like marines. Blanda had the dubious fortune of playing for Al Davis, the only football owner that makes Dan Snyder look like Mother Theresa. I was kicked out of his office once during training camp when I was a young sports writer. That would be two degrees.

Davis, legend has it, came home once in the wee hours, and his sleeping wife reportedly moaned “God” in her sleep. “You can call me Al at home,” said Davis. I believe it.

Vance Bourjaily was of that generation of American post-World War II writers, many of them veterans, who pursued the dream of the G.A.N. (That’s not Good Morning America but the Great American Novel.) He tried hard, and sometimes movingly, and belongs in the ranks of writers like Updike, Mailer, Bellow, James Jones, and one of the surviving members, Philip Roth. Like them, Bourjaily, in novels like “The End of My Life”, “The Violated”, and “The Man Who Knew Kennedy”, wrote frankly about sex, which made their books must-reads for young men growing up in that era, in addition to their literary value. I read all of them and still didn’t learn everything there was to know. One Degree.

If “Bonnie and Clyde” was the only movie he ever directed, Arthur Penn would still be in some kind of pantheon, just for changing the movie culture of the 1960s. To say the film was revolutionary — a romanticized, stylized, sexy, and ultra-violent telling of the tale of Depression era bank robbers, with hunky Warren Beatty and super sexy Faye Dunaway in the leads — is an understatement. Time Magazine ran a highly negative review, then reversed itself. It’s one of the best movies ever made.

Penn became known as something of a liberal, leftist, counter-culture kind of force as a director. He captured the sixties zeitgeist, always a favorite word of the critics who praised him. He also directed “Alice’s Restaurant” and “The Miracle Worker”.

Penn was also a close friend of the controversial state department official Alger Hiss, who was convicted, in the early days of the McCarthy era, of being a Communist spy. Hiss always declared his innocence. Three degrees. I had a lengthy and haunting interview with Hiss at American University in the early 1980s.

And so it goes.

Gary Tischler •

Some twenty or thirty people—nurses, volunteers, aides, visitors, activists—had gathered at Joseph’s House at 6:30 in the evening.

They heard “Amazing Grace” played by a bagpiper from the firehouse. They were welcomed by Joseph’s House Executive Director Patty Wudel and were led in a light-sharing ceremony by volunteer Andrea Woods. Candles lit and spirits high, they embarked on a walk through Lanier Place in Adams Morgan, through the one-way section which makes it easier for the ambulances and fire engines to come in and out of the local firehouse. They walked past all the houses, the night having come on, the candles acting as pathfinders through sidewalks full of blustered leaves. Around the block, past the house next to the fire station where the old lady from the Carolinas had lived for so many years, and they were home again.

Joseph’s House staff member Kate Lichti read a poem called “Beannacht,” or “Blessing,” and they shushed their candles in the yard and went inside.

I came in behind them, late through faults entirely my own, and saw the extra chairs for the viewing of the Showtime documentary, “The Other City,” about the continuing rise of AIDS in Washington DC.

They were bringing in pizza and assorted snacks and lemonade and iced tea into the dining room, where the counters and walls were alive with the pictures of laughing, smiling men and women, almost all of whom are now gone.

It was World AIDS day at Joseph’s House, self-described as a compassionate community for homeless men and women at the end of life, founded in 1990 by Dr. David Hilfiker.

“We gathered tonight to celebrate Worlds AIDS day, and to celebrate the lives of all the men and women, over 300, who have died here,” Ms. Wudel said.

Mercelda Williams, a long-time personal care aide here, spotted me. “You’re the guy with Bailey,” she said.

That would be my dog Bailey, who is well known here, even though there is a new house dog, a cat named Romeo and a fierce female Yorky named Ajax, who, when it comes to Bailey, becomes fanatically territorial.

There’s a reason to bring up my dog. We’d always walked past the big, roomy house on the corner of Lanier Place and Ontario, with its peeling bark trees, its garden tools in the yard, the well-lit windows reflecting warmth, the gray statue of Mother Mary. We saw the men sitting on the porch, the employees, nurse’s aides, young, apple-faced volunteers, and a man in brown monk robes. I knew it was a hospice for homeless men and women with terminal illnesses, primarily AIDS, but also cancer.

It was a home on the street, really, very much a part of the neighborhood. Sometimes there were celebrations and gatherings there, and ambulances and hearses would stop there, which was a part of the life of the home. Some days Wudel would greet us warmly, as she does most people, and she took a liking to Bailey, as do most people.

Bailey, a Bichon Frise, wears his natural, little-dog cuteness, with a certain amount of diffidence, volunteering affection grudgingly. But it was Bailey who took an interest in the residents at Joseph’s House.

We would walk by—over the years a few thousand times, most likely—and Bailey would stop and look up. And the men there would respond. “That sure is a cute dog,” one or the other would say. And Bailey, instead of moving briskly on, would stop and look back. His tail would wag. Soon, some of the men would come down and pet him, and he stood still for it. I guess the word went out. Pretty soon, we’d be on the other side of the street and would hear, loud and clear: “Hey, Bailey, how you doin’?”

“That was Jesse,” Williams said. “He started that ‘Bailey’ stuff. Lots of them. They just naturally got to liking him.”

And Bailey would respond in kind, which was so rare as to require noting. He and I turned the corner with Fred and Donald. Fred was a carpenter by trade—he made the Welcome sign at the top of the porch—and his best friend there was Donald. Fred suffered from terminal lung cancer. When they were out on the porch early in the morning, Bailey would not only stop, but would hop up the two sections of stairs to see one or the other.

Donald, a navy veteran, a thin, lively man who refused to bow to the idea of dying, was out on the porch early in the morning, and Bailey came running up the stairs. “Yo, Bailey,” he said, opening the door.

“Fred,” he said, “you better get on out here. Bailey’s up here.”

“I think he’s sleeping on the couch,” Donald said. But Fred came out, walking slowly. It was near the end days of his illness, but he came out in the cold to greet Bailey.

The two of them showed up in November two years ago to vote. “It’s a history day, isn’t it?” Fred said. “It’s a great day. I had to do that.” It was also an act that spoke directly to the future that Fred would not be occupying, and he knew that.

Donald, it turned out, was one of the people who survived his illness and returned to the world outside of Joseph’s House. He would come back, show up periodically, and if I saw him, he asked about Bailey.

If this sounds prosaic, even whimsical and sentimental, it’s not meant to be. I began to understand what was happening at Joseph’s house, which was just this kind of thing. “We treat people with unconditional love,” Wudel said. “Nobody has to earn love, nobody should have to do it.

“It’s about respect. It’s about being curious about people’s lives. It’s about learning how to live a full live in the process of dying. There is a deep exchange that goes on here. We are not naïve in the face of death. We feel the loss, too.”

And life is all about greetings, the smell of fried eggs, fading light at dusk, early morning cold on a porch, people sharing moments by extending their time, life and hands.

When we pass by, I seem to remember them all—the young white man who made every effort to be out in the community, shopping at Safeway, going to the Deli, relatives showing up on birthdays, twenty-something volunteers on the porch listening to the latest resident talk about his or her life, the voices not quite carrying but being a musical murmur. Sometimes kids and men and women would be gathering, and there were tears. And you knew that the tears were a part of things here, and there would be somber faces in the morning here.

Daily life goes on there, and the house and the people in it are very much a part of the neighborhood, the street with its winter potholes, the bright street lamps, the ambulances coming out of the fire house, all the people with dogs walking dogs, the burst of babies in their carriages. There is no spot on the stairs or on the sidewalk that says this is where Joseph’s House ends and the neighborhood begins.

No one, it seemed to me, retreats into a solitary death there. They live in company even at the last. Walking by, we know all that, and the vibrant lives still lived, and those remembered.

“Who knew,” I thought early on.

I think Bailey knew.

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Gary Tischler •

Barney, who fulfilled the role of first dog and his master’s best friend for two terms at the White House, died a few weeks ago of lymphoma at the age of 12.

President George W. Bush made the announcement in straightforward, affectionate terms: “Laura and I are sad to announce that our Scottish Terrier, Barney, has passed away. The little fellow had been suffering from lymphoma and after twelve and a half years of life, his body could not fight off the illness. Barney and I enjoyed the outdoors. He loved to accompany me when I fished for bass at the ranch. He was a fierce armadillo hunter. Barney guarded the South Lawn entrance of the White House as if he were a Secret Service agent. He wandered the halls of the West Wing looking for treats from his many friends.”

From the former president’s tone, it’s pretty clear that Barney had many friends. In his own way, as first dogs tend to do, he became famous—the “Barney cam,” where he displayed his eager demeanor and outstanding ears and trying to upstage things at the first lady’s unveiling of the White House Christmas decorations simply by walking by.

Around that time, we found out that Smokey, the black lab and cocker mix who had best friend to Bailey, our Bichon Frise, during his neighborhood days, had passed away. We lost Bailey, about whom I’d written in several “Walking the Dog” columns in The Georgetowner, late last spring to cancer which was discovered too late for any succor or relief.

I did not write about Bailey on the occasion of his passing. I am doing so now for one last “Walking the Dog”— or until we should bring another dog into our lives, a subject about which there has been much discussion among our friends and neighbors.

The passing of Smokey, and Bailey, Woody, and Navy and Gertie and Spot, and the Maltese whom everybody called Little Bailey at the age of 19, and Jazzy and others, and, yes, if we may, Barney, because he was a part of our larger neighborhood in the city, marked the passing of a generation of dogs who were a part of our lives, directly or by association. Some, like Eddie, remain, but few are left.

Bailey lived to be 15 and spent all but the early months of his life in our Lanier Heights section of Adams Morgan. There are new dogs, newly minted dog friends, pups who tug their owners and pull them to the dog park, which did not exist when Bailey came to the neighborhood. There are new children, too, some of whom will want dogs. In case I didn’t mention it, this is a dog neighborhood. Bailey, for reasons I still find a mystery but appreciate with great feeling and affection, was a presence in the neighborhood. His absence is felt, as I’m sure Barney was at the White House and on the Bush ranch.

This is the nature of the beast—these small and large beings who are not beasts, but our pets, companions and unalloyed silent best friends. They will devastate us with the regularity of predicted loss, and, oddly, knowing what we know, there is no way of avoiding the pain of the loss or predicting its length, nature and specifics. In our world, in the neighborhood and all across the country, pets have become not only a cottage industry, but beings who are constantly written about, talked about, gossiped about in the hood, studied scientifically, and speculated about: who are these guys and girls anyhow and why do they mean so much to so many of us?

I can say this, and I suspect it is true for the Bush family—the loss of a dog is a death in the family, and around here, a death in the neighborhood.

I don’t mean to make so much of Bailey in terms of his neighbors, but I suspect it is true still. My four daily walks—rain, shine, the seasons, the weather, the talk, the other dogs, meetings and greetings—regulated my life. Bailey was the best alarm clock I had, the best weatherman, the best judge of conditions, the best communicator of need, the most patient soul in some ways. He was my enabler, in the sense he let me discover the neighborhood, let me think about how to write stories, or entertain ideas or receive them on the walk. He made me notice all of it—homes and hearth, the air, the change in temperature, the age and sudden absence of trees, the spots in the grass. Dogs don’t sniff idly. They dig out news in the grass and on the side of trees. They communicate in the air.

Dogs chasten your sense of self-importance—Bailey did that so routinely and without seeming to that I swear he was smiling in there somewhere. Bailey was instantly recognized by name. I would hear people hollering, “Hey, Bailey,” as if it were a daily song. Bailey was diffident about fame—he had it and seemed to know it—but he was not needy that way. He was not a seeker of strokes, pets, treats, or God forbid, hugs, and he was not a slurper like the happy labs and goldens. His appeal was simple: he was unforgivably adorable and cute—big black bottomless eyes set in a white furry face and body and facial expressions that could haves gotten him acting jobs. Oddly, he had an opportunity to do just that: they were filming the Will Smith thriller “Enemy of the State” on our street in the late 1990s, and had not yet cast the lone little dog part. The AD eyed Bailey, saying “He’s a cute little guy.” Bailey promptly ran his leash around my legs five times giving the AD pause and eliciting the comment, “Kind of hyper, isn’t he?” There went Hollywood. I should add that Bailey was hardly ever hyper except when he went into a mysterious, crazed run called the “Bichon blitz.”

I spent more time with Bailey than anyone I know. When I was working on stories, he would come into my office in the back and find several sleeping spots—under the computer, in the closet, by the bookcase and so on. He inspired me often—not just in writing about him or dogs, but about the neighborhood. What he did and how he conducted himself made me think and often entertained me. The dog who barely tolerated most people except to give them 30 seconds to admire him, discovered two of the residents of Joseph House, the hospice for the homeless in our neighborhood and routinely ran up flights of steep stairs to see them. I think he was a contrarian: outside of Smokey, Navy, and a few other dogs, his best pals were cats with whom he played, a Siamese on our block and Tiny, who would lay in wait for him under parked cars.

It doesn’t end, either. Henry, a dog walker and neighborhood guy, asked us about our dog future, then began talking about Bailey recently. “That Bailey,” he said. “He was a legend.”

And just the other day, I ran into a neighbor I hadn’t seen in a while, who was taking his little daughter out. Just as I left, I heard her voice: “But where’s the doggy?”

Smokey was his friend—he saw him after a year-long interval and they wagged and sniffed, but not forever. They were older, after all, no point in making a fuss. Bailey had once put his 14-pound body between Smokey and two large terriers who had gone after Smokey. There they were side by side, and Stanley, Smokey’s dad, said, “There they are, the salt and pepper team.”

I’d offer my condolences to President Bush, but I know how he feels. There were news photos of Bush and Barney—which sounds like a law firm, and maybe if you added Bailey on to it, it would be—and in both Bush is smiling and grinning, Barney darkly mysterious.

Bush said, “He never discussed politics and was always a faithful friend”.

Here’s to Barney. Here’s to Bailey. Barney and Bailey—we all know what that sounds like.