Editorials and Opinions

Gary Tischler • July 26, 2011

This is the time of year when Americans think about presidents—two of them, specifically—and make a holiday out of it. We call it President’s Day.

Usually, it’s about George Washington, the first president, and Abraham Lincoln, the most haunting, memorable president.

This year, it’s worthwhile to think a little broader, farther and wider. Things are happening. For instance, we’ve been thinking a lot about Ronald Reagan on the occasion of the centennial of his birth. The remnants of his family, friends and associates, their memories and stories still fresh, have been talking and writing.

It’s also been the 60th anniversary of the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, and again, memories and meaning were on the airwaves and in the newspapers. Celebrations were held at the Kennedy Center and the National Archives where Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s surviving child, presided over music and introduced the digitalization of the JFK library.

In this country, presidents are ever on our minds, including and especially the current one: President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, and the first African American President of the United States.

It’s worth thinking about how we feel and think about our presidents—all of them— although its fair to say we hardly think of many of them at all; and that includes both ends of Tippecanoe and Tyler too and the middling to obscure presidents of the 19th century. When is the last time you’ve had a chance to use Chester Arthur in a conversation, or sung the praises of Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan, who, when it came to slavery, was like Scarlett O’Hara? We’ll worry about it tomorrow (meaning, he passed it on to Lincoln).

So, who do we think about? The exultant, vocal members of the Tea Party think and talk a lot about the Founding Fathers—sometimes as if they could read their minds and were on intimate terms with them. In knowing Washington (who just had a 900-plus page biography written about him), John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, I defer to the Tea Partyists. I know one thing about them, and that is that not a’ one of them dreamt, thought, or talked about becoming President of the United States, which is now a cherished dream and opportunity among the entire American citizenry instilled from birth. “Some day, you too, can become President.”

When our first batch of presidents was young and childlike, there were in fact no presidents. There was no United States of America. There were only kings, emperors, a few prime ministers, empresses, shoguns, Pashas and fact totems and powers behind the throne, and scattered parliaments here and there.

The president is an invention—our invention. The Head of State as a man (or woman today) of the people, representative of and obligated to the people, doing the people’s work at their sufferance.

But make no mistake about it: when someone becomes president, he becomes someone else, he becomes history, fable, legend, sun king. To regular folks, he becomes myth and savior, priest and devil all rolled into one. Listen to the talk about Kennedy and Reagan these days. They have moved beyond their own history, achievements and failures, into something much larger.

This town is full of statues, of course. Memorials, metaphors and mulch. A bust of JFK sits, wounded-like on the red carpet of the Kennedy Center, which seems appropriate. Reagan’s memorial is a multi-purpose building housing offices, think tanks and every which kind of function. We have the spear of the Washington monument, the rotunda that is the Jefferson, and the Lincoln Memorial.

It’s interesting who we remember and how. There’s a certain commonality among the men we remember most: they seem, and are often remembered as, unknowable. Reagan’s family members and associates, while extolling his chief virtue, which was communicating a boundless American optimism, also remembered a distance within him.

JFK’s chief vices were personal, but what’s remembered was an ability to inspire people with rhetoric and vision. One of his biographies was titled “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye.” And that’s probably true.

Bill Clinton is well remembered today because of his unquenchable thirst for experience and love of the people, a quality that persists as he remains among us. It’s interesting that George W. Bush, whose presence at the recent Super Bowl was hardly noted, has written an autobiography, perhaps prematurely.

We don’t know them. They become changed people. We see their hair change color, and we watch them in crisis, publicly, every day, at press conferences, waving to crowds, collapsing into the presidential bubble that even a visit from Bill O’Reilly can’t dent. I don’t think any of us have ever seen a man endure such a public embarrassment as Bill Clinton did during his impeachment trial, and yet he overcame that bit of history almost in triumph. Richard Nixon, the only man to ever resign the presidency, somehow came back to achieve a distant stature as a member in good standing of the Wall Street legal establishment, and a painful puzzle in history.

The presidency, you have to think, is a kind of trial by fire for an individual, and a good part of it is beyond the President’s control. Think about Obama for a moment: in the wake of his State of the Union message, he appeared buoyant, on the rise in the eyes of the people. Then Tunisia and Cairo happened and has engulfed his attention with results that remain to be seen.

Many of us will have actual memories of several presidents, living and not. It was, for me startling to see a video clip during the JFK library press event showing JFK and Eisenhower talking in the most casual way during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which seemed only like a possible nuclear Armageddon for most people who were alive then, including me.

Ike was my first president, and all the rest followed. But I find myself thinking often, not of them or the Founding Fathers, but of Lincoln. I suspect that’s true for many folks. We gather in his presence often, the place where we try to find succor, inspiration, hope. The place where we can be safely defiant and insurgent in our discontents.

I think Lincoln—also unknowable, but not unaffecting—lived the most intense presidential life in the space of four years that any one person could reasonably fold unto himself. I do not think there has been a man who has experienced more pain, more suffering, and, perversely, historic glory, than Lincoln. He seems a personal man who kept his own pains and memories secret, but took on other people’s sufferings because the moment—that great shattering civil war—demanded it. And it showed in his face, his choice of reading (Bible and Bard), his own words and writing, which were clean like an arrow to the heart.

He was, as Whitman wrote, our captain and remains so. He is the ghost in our history, it’s still restless soul. I think we see that on the Mall, at certain times in our history, in the coil of history’s movement.

He is not a Republican or Democrat, not a Methodist or a Jew, not a frontiersman or an urban legend. He is, for want of a better word, the President as hero. And you know what they say about nations and heroes…

Gary Tischler •

In this age of wall-to-wall news, the results of a special April 26 election to fill a vacated at-large city council seat in Washington, DC is a small matter, probably not worthy of national attention, and barely noted even by city media.

Yet, in Washington, the election on Tuesday, won by the ever-present, two-term city council member (1998-2006) Vincent Orange, is all of a piece. There is a serendipitous, recurring quality to the campaign, which could be said to have begun in early January when Sekou Biddle, a board of education member, was appointed to the seat vacated by Kwame Brown, who had handily beaten Orange in a race for the city council chairmanship back in November.

Our city is the poster child for the notion that all politics is local. People who live here live in distinct neighborhoods, in areas with distinct qualities, atmospheres, residents and histories. However, the elephants in the Washington neighborhoods are the White House next to Lafayette Park, the Capitol Building, and the people who work in it. Those two places, the members of Congress, the government and the President all make us the center of the world, and entangle our daily lives and local politics in larger national and international issues.

The at-large council race didn’t concern too many people in the beginning, nor did that state of mind change—in the final tally of votes, it showed that 9% of eligible voters took part. It did not concern Mayor Vincent Gray or Chairman Kwame Brown much, except that they supported Biddle for the interim appointment, which in the end did not help Biddle.

Folks did come out to throw their hat into the ring: Sekou Biddle, of course; Bryan Weaver from Ward 1, a liberal community activist with smarts to spare; the youthful Republican Patrick Mara, who had once run for an at-large seat before, in which he managed to beat veteran Carol Schwartz in the GOP primary only to lose to well-know independent Michael Brown; Josh Logan, the young, Hispanic Fenty operative; and inevitably, there was Vincent Orange, not in the least deterred by his previous electoral setbacks.

The campaign did not really get rolling until the last two months, with forum after forum popping up all over the city. In such a race, barring some shocking revelations, forums are the medium and the message rolled into one.

Elsewhere things were not so quiet. Mayor Vincent Gray’s inauguration had been a big success, a one-city dream launched in spite of a looming budget crisis. However, things unraveled after that. Unsuccessful mayoral candidate Sulaimon Brown unleashed a stink bomb of a scandal with charges of payoffs and job promises by the Gray Administration, all the while the council investigating Gray’s hiring practices. Kwame Brown, meantime, had his own troubles over ordering up a fully loaded SUV for himself amid questions about missing money from a 2008 campaign.

Investigations, as they say, are ongoing.

The scandals, as they are now lumped, had an effect on the campaign, which eventually had the candidates attacking the ethics of the city council, the administrations, and calling for ethics reform. The once-red-hot education reform issue was still talked about, but at the national level.

Bigger news tends to flatten council races and local governance: the crisis in Japan sucked the air out of local matters for weeks, while the Middle East spring of revolutions and upheaval in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria and other places took up everything else for a while. Today there is a daily standing headline in the Washington Post: “Turmoil in the Middle East.”

Besides causing all kinds of havoc in the White House, there is this: the Exxon Station at the end of Lanier Place in Adams Morgan is now selling regular gasoline at $4.45 a gallon. No one knows exactly why, except Glenn Beck, who says it’s the Federal Reserve that’s at the bottom of all financial plagues.

During the courses of the campaign, we have lived through Ann Hathaway’s Oscar gown changes, Lady Ga Ga, Justin Bieber (one of Time Magazine’ s l00 most influential people), and yes, Charlie Sheen and one more yes, Donald Trump.

Lest you think this is of no importance and without connection to politics or daily lives: Sheen, full of tiger blood and whatnot, had a tour date at the DAR, was an hour late, and got a full-scale police escort which he tweeted about. Not only that, but he agreed with Donald Trump that he had problems with the president’s birth certificate.

We will survive Donald Trump, of course. The president has now seen fit to present his long-form birth certificate, berating Trump and the birthers for “the silliness.” Trump is not satisfied, but he wants to run for president anyway. This in spite of the fact that he appeared to have no clue what the constitution said about privacy.

You can suspect that the only time Trump is being genuine is when he stands in front of the mirror in the morning and says “I love you.”

Trump has had low points, but as one GOP said, “you can’t fall off the floor.” Actually, Charlie Sheen proved that you can. He was dumped by one of his porn star consorts.

Then there was the budget crisis—not ours, which is coming up in a hearing soon—but the nation’s. There was a big scare covered to within an inch of its reality by the local press: What will happen if the government shuts down?

Well, for one thing, your trash doesn’t get picked up, which surprised many people who did not know how closely we were sleeping with the enemy.

A breathless near-midnight watch produced a tentative agreement signed on by the President and both parties (with major grumbling by the Tea Party house members). For the District, the result was a kick in the butt: the loss of abortion funding, the inclusion of a Boehner private school funding project, the loss of funding for needle exchange programs. The mayor and a number of council members were so incensed that they got themselves arrested in protest, and were forced to stay incarcerated until 3 a.m.

Mistrust was running so strong however, that many locals saw this as a political ploy, especially for Gray who needed a good showing somewhere. Biddle also took the jail route. Ward 8 councilman Marion Barry abstained this time.

You can see how the shadow of the budget debate might darken the thoughts of local politicians. What will the city be forced to give up next? Baseball tickets? Home Rule?

With the election looming fast, interest did not materialize in any strong way.

If campaign signs are a measure of community interest, this is what it looked like on Lanier Place: Several signs for Weaver (he is, after all a local boy), one for Biddle, a number of those ubiquitous “Don’t’ Tread on DC” signs (which now reek of irony, given the voter turnout), and a goodly number of “Scoop your Dog Poop” signs.

The election was held with another horrible and deadly weather story in progress in the South. The turnout was low. Vincent Orange was back on the council.

So it goes. All the news that wraps around itself.

Gary Tischler •

Mayor Vincent Gray took time to visit with the Kalorama Citizens Association this week. His arrival still seemed curious, even to himself, as it often is with newly minted and elected officials. And it’s already almost March.

“I remember this was one of the first places I came after I made my announcement to run for mayor,” he said. “Wasn’t even a year ago.”

He laughed to himself a little. “Seems more like 10 years ago, to tell you the truth.”

Since the triumphant elections, (the Democratic primary upset of incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty) and the celebratory inauguration, reality has set in to some degree, much like the kind that’s setting in all over the country.

“I wish I came bearing good news,” he said. “But we’re in the same boat as everyone else. We have a major budget deficit to deal with and everyone is gong to suffer some. It’s about sharing the suffering.”

“It’s happening to everyone—look at our surrounding jurisdiction, look at Maryland, look at New York State and New York City where I just talked with Mayor Bloomberg who’s facing a huge deficit. We all commiserate. In Illinois, they balanced the budget—by raising the state income tax to over 60 percent. So these days it’s tough being a legislator, it’s tough being mayor, it’s tough making the hard decisions. But we’re going to do it, and we’re going to get through this.”

He said the city is facing a 2012 deficit of $500 to 600 million. “That means we’re facing severe cuts while trying to find ways to raise additional revenues.”

Gray said that he does not anticipate a control board takeover of the city. “It’s very simple,” he said. “I know people worry about it. That’s one of the constraints on our government that others don’t have. If we don’t balance the budget, we lose control. The reason that won’t happen is that I will never, never allow that to happen.”

“This is going to be about shared sacrifices and shared decisions,” he said. “One of the biggest problems we have is that we’ve spent down our fund balance account, basically our savings account. That’s how we managed to balance the budget the last few years. Now we’re looking at for 2012 a possible deficit in the neighborhood of $600 million. I always see this thing when I go around talking about cuts and sacrifices—and people nod their heads, they say yeah. But then [they say] not in my neighborhood, not my program, not this place.”

He continued: “There will be severe consequences, but we have no choice.”

“The good news is that our bond rating is not down. But we have an unhappy prospect and duty in front of us. It’s going to be difficult, but we will get through it and come out ahead at the end of it all. But for now and the next few years, no question things will be difficult.”

Gray appears to be turning into a passionate advocate for statehood. “Look at what’s happening,” he said. “They (the House) want us to eliminate anything to do with abortion; they’re telling us we can’t fund our needle exchange program, which is so effective in combating AIDS here. Mind you, they’re talking about what we can do with OUR money.”

“How much longer are we going to put up with this?” he asked.

He’s often said he’ll be an advocate and a strong one, but he wants people behind him. “I don’t understand the apathy about this,” he said. “We have the right—the duty—to make decisions about how we spend our money, and yet nobody seems to care. There’s always the same people who speak passionately about this. Look what’ s happening in the world, in Egypt, in Tunisia, all over the Middle East. People demonstrating for liberty and freedoms, including some freedoms that we ourselves don’t have here. Where’s our outrage? There’s no self-government, Lincoln said, unless everyone participates.”

His talk, with some question and answer time, came at a meeting that resembles other such meetings across the city—the body civic taking on such issues as noisy bars, which is a big topic in Adams Morgan where bars and night life are a large part of the commercial economy, but also a major quality of life nuisance for residents. It’s an eternal battle that reflects itself in other areas of the city, including Georgetown. There’s concern about shuttered storefronts—an increasing number here—and who here is going to be asked to share in the sacrifice.

“I’m not contemplating across-the-board cuts,” Gray said. “I think this is going to be a strategic approach. There are some cuts it just doesn’t make sense to do—we can’t eliminate job training and expect to deal with the several unemployment issues in our poorer wards, for instance.”

David Post •

“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” Captain Renault said as he was pocketing a bribe in Rick’s casino in the movie Casablanca.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal and this week, Congress have both reacted to recent budget news the same way: “We’re shocked, shocked that the federal budget deficit projections for 2012 have been revised upward from $1.1 trillion to $1.6 trillion.”

Well…what did Congress think that a $500 billion tax cut was going to do? Have no impact on the deficit? Collect less, but expect the bank account to not go down? Wait. That was two months ago—a lifetime in politics. More than enough time to be erased from the public and government memory.

Here’s the big picture: In the 2012 federal budget, taxes will bring in $2.1 trillion and spending will be $3.7 trillion, leaving a $1.6 trillion deficit. Compare that to 2000 when tax receipts were $2.1 trillion – unadjusted for inflation – and spending was $1.8 trillion.

The budget debate drove the election and promises were made to cut $100 billion, or about 6 percent of the amount needed to balance the budget. When it became too difficult to find that much to cut, the hurdle was reduced to $35 billion, but the Tea Party got mad that it wasn’t enough. Now the promise is to find $60 billion in thus far unspecified cuts.

But let’s give Congress credit anyway for finding that $60 billion. That’s about 4 percent of the annual deficit, leaving another 96 percent to cut to balance the budget.

Let’s look under the hood and find some ideas. Defense, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are sacred. Few Senators and Representatives can vote to cut those items and be re-elected, so even now, as we debate this, that can is being kicked down the road again until next year. Just like the past 30, 50, 80 years.

Let’s dig in and see what we can do. The Department of Education seems to be an easy target, always at the top of the list of federal departments to eliminate. Wipe it out. The states can do a better job taking care of education anyway. Students can get their loans from banks. If banks won’t make loans and young people can’t afford to go to college, they can get jobs, save, and then go to college later. That saves $70 billion. Good start.

Everyone knows that HUD is a snake pit of problems. If we’ve learned anything in the past decade, we know that Wall Street has all kinds of secret ways to make the housing market function. That’s another $40 billion. Now we’re getting somewhere. We’ve cut that first $100 billion. Only $1.5 trillion to go.

Maybe this piecemeal approach is too slow and painful. Like pulling off a Band-Aid slowly rather than jerking it off. Here’s a thought: With all this talk about smaller government, how about no government? Eliminate it all.

No one likes the IRS and the Treasury Department. Or the EPA. Those environmentalists are so pesky. Transportation could be turned over to the private sector like parking lots. Just make all the highways toll roads. Pay for it when you use it. Send Congress and the President home. Shut the Courts. Turn out the lights. The states can figure it out because they are required to have balanced budgets.

Drastic times require drastic action. So, if we eliminate the entire federal government as we know it, would that balance the budget? Not really. In fact, not even close. All federal government operations cost $400 billion, about 25% of the total deficit. That leaves another $1.2 trillion to cut.

Hmmm. This is going to be really tough. Especially since we’re scared to touch defense, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

And heaven help us if we raise taxes. President Reagan taught us an important lesson: Cut taxes and the budget will balance itself. Except that he raised taxes in seven of the eight years he was President and the annual budget deficits doubled on his watch. President George H.W. Bush taught us that a vote to raise taxes is a vote for your opponent in the next election.

Casablanca is the answer: We’re shocked, shocked! Maybe these problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. If we don’t figure this out, we’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of our lives.

Good lines, huh? Even 70 years ago.

Remember how Casablanca ended? Renault threatened to have Rick arrested. Rick threatened to shoot Renault. They decided that was MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction. So they promptly changed their minds, and as they walked away together, Rick said, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Congress and President Obama need a date night at Washington’s Casablanca, White House. They could watch that movie together.

Veena Trehan •

It’s been 10 days since the astounding ouster of President Mubarak. Many Egyptians who adopted Tahrir Square as their makeshift home embodied the dignity and resolve that epitomizes human potential. As they abandoned fear and committed their lives to democracy, freedom rang in the streets of Cairo.

Their ripples of hope became a wave to wash Mubarak from banks of the Nile, a peaceful but forceful tsunami overflowing the shores of the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas.

Every day, our screens are filled with images of thousands of youths whose courage evokes great spiritual leaders. They recall Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent movement for India’s freedom and Martin Luther King’s rallies for a united America. These heroes of humanity set remarkable examples, as may be true of the current demonstrators in the Middle East, whose goals may take years to fully achieve.

Still, these movements have unprecedented speed and impact. Middle Eastern youths are re-branding their region from violent terrorism to peaceful activism. They have achieved the near forgotten prophecy of technology to lift up humanity. And they have created the incredible phenomenon of rolling revolutions as individuals become fully empowered.

The vibrant energy of the Arab states recalls the campaign and inauguration that transformed D.C. two years ago. But these Middle Eastern movements, which represent the overthrow of systems rather than the unlikely outcome of one, may be a more powerful inspiration.

They remind us that vast and growing inequality has tangible consequences. In America, the wealthy bask in greater luxury while the poor struggle for food and shelter and the middle class lose rights and income. Workers, galvanized by a plan to end to collective bargaining for most Wisconsin public employees, are taking to statehouses around the country in an unprecedented statement of solidarity.

They remind Washingtonians that demands for fair representation can be taken from the back of our cars to the front of the Capitol.

They remind us that more important than the clothes or houses we live in are the ideals we live by. That the hunger for opportunity, justice, and democracy is universal. And according time to struggle for these cherished ideals, despite daily demands, is to seize the chance to write history.

They show us the power of one and the importance of living life by example. To many in the Middle East, the difference between democratic leadership creating broad economic opportunity and the status quo was the contrast between virtual slavery and exalted freedom. And they won it after one person rose up fearlessly, then another, then another, and many more.

Individually, it is important to champion causes with the power to transform our communities, be it healthy and affordable food, safe and effective schools, greater equality or sustainable industries.

By singly living out our values we can, together, create a brighter future for our country.