News & Politics

Georgetowner • December 7, 2011

Ladies, gentleman, and you rascals in the media: In the midst of hard times and earth-shaking crises, there is a raggedy circus running about the country pretending to be a race for the Republican Party presidential nomination.

It is indeed a circus, and it’s not quite so good as Ringling Brothers. It’s a circus full of acrobats trying to catch the elusive rings of leadership in the polls, flying through the air and falling into the sawdust. It’s full of screaming mimes, hucksters who can’t complete a sentence and weekly wannabes. It has clowns that scare even adults.

But the best act is the human cannon: every week or two, somebody gets shot out of a cannon and soars high into the air of the polls, anointed by MSNBC or Fox to be the leader in Iowa, if not in New Hampshire. For a brief time, the candidate will dream at night that he has been struck by lightning, hearing himself reciting the Presidential oath.

Both Bachman and Perry had their moments—Bachman’s so short that she barely had time to change clothes after a victory in an Iowan straw poll.

Up came the last star and latest victim, Herman Cain, the pizza king, carrying a populist message that the Tea Partyists ate up. He briefly led the polls, and it is entirely plausible that he too began to think he could be nominated. But, things happened, as we all knew they would, and Cain fell out of the running, which we knew he would, and so it has come to this:

Newt is the man.

Newt Gingrich is leading the polls in Iowa in the days leading up to the Iowa Caucus and in several other polls, while gaining on Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. It’s bellwether time, and its not even Christmas.

Gingrich has taken up the cause of limited government, of course, and no new taxes. He is tough but compassionate on illegal and legal immigrants, and he has also said that poor children don’t want to work. He wants to challenge the power of the Supreme Court too.

The last seems to fit what may be Gingrich’s idea of the ideal government: a Roman Republic, where he can wear the senatorial white toga. Gingrich has an autocratic bent, which goes well with his arrogance, but it should be remembered that while he has been given credit for engineering the 1990s GOP sweep of the House and Senate and helping bring out President Clinton’s impeachment trial, Clinton, even with both political hands tied behind his back, outmaneuvered Newt thereafter.
Gingrich may be the anointed one now—what else could they talk about on Meet the Press, after all? But if Mitt Romney, the genial, flip-flopping former governor of Massachusetts and successful businessman, wonders why the conservative core doesn’t like him, wait until they take a good look at Gingrich. Likability won’t be an issue.

Romney is the great magician in this eight-ring circus. Week in and week out, he smiles, he shakes hands, he attacks Obama, gives no interviews to the press (except Parade Magazine where he and his wife were photographed in jeans, which may make him look like a 99% type, as opposed to the one percenter that he is). Week after week he finishes second, stays in the mid-twenties and, while sometimes is seen to worry, always flashes those pearly whites with a steady confidence.

This is fascinating to the media roundtables, the insider beltway musers who love the show more than the real world. 

One of the more interesting things about the GOP race is that the debates and the battle for the caucuses are taking place against a background of real world and national upheaval. Take your pick of omens and portends: Egypt’s second revolution could yet produce an Islamist state; Putin’s party in Russia lost major ground in elections there’ France and Germany are trying to stave off a major debt crisis in Europe; Syria is about to topple; the ruler of Yemen is leaving; the wicked man is dead in Libya; and Saudi Arabia still won’t let women drive cars because they might have sex. These things barely get a mention in the debates. Perry is seeking to have creationism taught in schools.

Recently, like a giant balloon escaped from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Donald Trump, who was also at a time a GOP frontrunner, has become visible again like a Cheshire Cat, as some sort of GOP pope, insisting that the candidates should drop by Trump Tower to kiss his political ring. Or what? They’re fired?

And right about now, as he wakes up in the morning, Newt Gingrich is starting to feel a draft on his behind. That’s the nasty breath of media exposure that’s about to blow on the latest man at the top.
As the song goes: Send in the clowns… Except, in this case, they’re already here.

Georgetowner • November 30, 2011

November in Washington is winter’s harbinger and the keeper of the bitter flame for one of the nation’s most haunting and shocking tragedies, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22 in 1963.

When Kennedy was a young senator, his wife and daughter Caroline lived in Georgetown so that the memory of November 22 is keenly felt here, every year, by elder statesmen, by long-timers in the village, by what remains of the tribe of New Frontiersmen along with journalists with vivid memories of the day, memories shared by Americans enthralled by Kennedy’s inspirational rhetoric in the early 1960s. We remember the news, Cronkite’s voice, the headlines, the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald on live television, the funeral drums, the heads of state marching on the parade route, John John’s salute, the widow in black. It was — like 9/11 — a sea change event.

Ever since then, people have been writing about that day and the Kennedys — poetry, fiction, stories, biographies, histories, books on conspiracy theories. More than that, though, the event led to a polishing and a continuing retelling of the mystique and stories not only of John F. Kennedy but of the Kennedy family — of the mafia, Monroe, plane crashes and the old man, and tales fraught with so much conspiracy, you could get completely lost. It is an endless roll call of movies, made for television movies, documentaries, music, novels, biographies, essays, musings and histories. Sometimes, the process seems to roll back on itself to the beginning, the place where hero worship and grief still lie waiting. Our imagination and memories are alive with the faces and voices — friends and foes, lovers and wives and children — of the Kennedy clan and the triumphs they achieved, accompanied by a more than equal number of tragedies which befell them. The Irish gods are not just.

Washington journalist and talk show host Chris Matthews just recently came out with a speculative book about JFK called “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,” which he plugged on two of his Sunday talk shows, on the first of which he argued that Barack Obama was, well, no Jack Kennedy. The book, according to reviews, is generally admiring of JFK on his heroic quality, the PT 109 thing, the Cuban Missile Crisis and his inspiring qualities, the most affecting of which was a kind of fiery detachment.

Only recently, the prolific horror and pop culture master novelist Stephen King came out with a massive fantasy novel called “11/22/63,” in which his hero travels back in time to try to prevent JFK’s assassination. Earlier this year, there was yet another in a long series of television mini-series about the Kennedy’s which featured Tom Cruise’s spouse Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy. It never ends—the whole pop culture parade of all things JFK, not the mini-series.

We’ll never stop dreaming about the Kennedys. Lots of presidential wanna-bes were inspired by him—certainly Clinton was and to a degree so was Obama, or to put it in reverse, the media sometimes tries to find Kennedyesque qualities in candidates reaching for the gold ring. Ted Kennedy, who died last year as a lion of the Senate, saw something like that in Obama as did JFK’s daughter Caroline, the only remaining child and star in the Kennedy firmament these days, the keeper of the heritage flame by way of education, schools, trusts and libraries.

At the time, and in retrospect, Jackie Kennedy’s claim that the brief Kennedy era was a kind of modern-day “Camelot” was embraced by many people, and they never quite let go of it. Jackie was thinking of the popular Broadway musical of the time, starring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet as Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot. The reality was not quite so charmed, but the idea persists centering around drama, rhetoric, inspiration — and just about the biggest collection of familial romance and tragedy, scandal and lofty ideals you can possibly imagine.

We have come around again, like Matthews, to think of the times and the family in heroic, perhaps Shakespearean and Arthurian terms, in spite of everything. No family ever endured worse scandals, more shattering tragedies and untimely, violent losses than the Kennedys and yet maintained their essential image of political class. The Kennedys were a family full of striding princes and lords, and princesses and brides, a saintly matriarch and perhaps a thwarted king who made it all happen. In this, they did resemble the Arthurian story: think of Arthur, his drugged fling with his cousin that produced an evil offspring, think of the dream of the round table, of Lancelot betraying the king and the spirit of the grail seekers, and yet it happened nonetheless: The lady rose out of the lake and caught the sword, and the quest remained and so did Camelot.

The Kennedys continue to suffer losses, and today resemble nothing less than a gathering of stately trees in our neighborhoods, their brightest foliage stripped, gone with the ongoing wind. Every time a Kennedy suffers a misfortune —Ted’s daughter Kara died relatively young this year; we remember all their misfortunes. In our heads, we remember our “sexiest man alive John F. Kennedy, Jr.,” a plane crashing into the Atlantic, his troubled wife at his side. We remember Robert F. Kennedy facing down angry crowds in Indianapolis on the day Martin Luther King, Jr., died, we remember the brothers together, sad Joan, brittle Ethel, some of the children not surviving the journey, and we remember Marilyn. We remember Ted on his first Senate run, young and green, admitting to a factory worker that he had never worked a day in his life. “You didn’t miss much,” the man told him.

I saw what was left of the New Frontier at a gathering for the funeral of Pierre Salinger in Georgetown at Holy Trinity Church in 2004. Salinger, who had been JFK’s much put-upon press secretary and had even written columns for the Georgetowner, had delivered on his promise to move to France if George W. Bush was elected in the 2000 elections and now, having died there, he was returning home. Ted Kennedy delivered the eulogy, and there was Ben Bradlee, and George McGovern, and JFK’s speech writer Ted Sorenson and they were much older, their ranks thinned and thinning, but still carried history with them like a blank check.

The ranks are thinner still. And thinking of them now, I can understand Matthew’s yearning for a JFK hero, and King’s desire to rescue the present from the past.

Somewhere, maybe, a hand rises out of a lake holding a sword. I expect it’s just a trailer for the next Spielberg movie.

Georgetowner •

A subject that is unfortunately getting a lot of press these days is the alleged ethical failures of a number of the District?s elected leaders.? No fewer than ten bills have been introduced in recent weeks by members of the Council purporting to provide additional safeguards to campaign rules, use of constituent services funds, and other areas that could present possible conflicts of interest.

On Oct. 26, I attended a hearing of the Committee on Government Operations chaired by Councilmember Muriel Bowser to address these issues and consider the various alternative bills proposed by our colleagues. During that hearing, I expressed my views on the subject. Lack of enforcement is the primary problem that I see — we have a number of good laws already on the books, but without adequate enforcement, those rules do us no good.?I support enhanced disclosure requirements, more rigorous enforcement when violations are discovered, and more meaningful penalties assessed on violators. Current practice is to simply assess a $5,000 penalty a year after an election is already won, for example. Politicians can view a penalty that small as simply a cost of doing business, and it is invariably paid with campaign funds rather than out of an elected official?s own pocket.

The Committee on Government Operations will hold an additional hearing on ethics reform on Nov. 30. Unlike the first hearing, the purpose of which was to discuss a number of general concepts, this hearing will be focused on feedback regarding a specific proposal that Councilmember Bowser released to the public on Nov. 18.?The heart of Councilmember Bowser?s approach will be to create an independent Board of Ethics and Government Accountability to enforce a more clearly defined Code of Conduct. The board would have the power to administer oaths and issue subpoenas. The board, as proposed, would also have access to adequate staffing, partially due to a suggested re-purposing of current District employees from agencies, such as the Office of the Attorney General and Office of the Inspector General.

As I am continuing to study this bill and formulate my positions, I would encourage all my constituents also to read the bill (which can be viewed at http://goo.gl/5sFB8) and share their views.?

You are welcome either to come to the hearing or to submit written testimony to put your thoughts on the record. I plan to remain very engaged in the ethics reform process and appreciate your thoughts.

Let me end on this note ? while Thanksgiving is but one day of the year, I have to say I am truly thankful every day.? Thankful for my family and friends and thankful for my colleagues and staff.? Thankful to have the opportunity to make a difference every day in what I do.? So, don?t let the week go by without a little reflection and hopefully a nice meal with family and friends, too!?

Georgetowner •

“A house divided against itself cannot long endure,” Abraham Lincoln so eloquently said.
More than ever, since then, the country is again divided against itself, and again, it is about values and class warfare and, of course, money.

Historical themes repeat themselves.

In 1992, Ross Perot ran for president arguing that the Reagan and Bush budget deficits were leading the country into bankruptcy and that the U.S. should lock its borders and stop the flow of imported foreign goods.

Sound familiar?

During that 1992 presidential campaign, I was working in the U.S. Senate and had the opportunity to visit 20 high schools, meeting with thousands of students to talk about how Congress works.

To make government come alive, we created a mock Congress with students divided into two groups, half serving as a Senate and half as the House of Representatives. Their job was to pass a law based on whether seniors should be allowed to leave campus during lunch.

Both student chambers individually debated and passed a bill and then elected representatives to a conference committee who were charged with negotiating a compromise. That compromise was then taken back to their separate chambers to see if they would accept the compromise.

Some passed bills allowing seniors to leave campus during lunch, while others allowed both juniors and seniors to leave campus. Some passed bills allowing any student to leave campus, and some, especially when underclassmen were the majority, passed bills not permitting anyone to leave campus. Rarely were the bills the same.

Of these 20 schools, only one agreed to the same original bill. They probably wanted to go home early.

The other 19 schools elected representatives to meet in conference and negotiate a compromise. Two of those 19 agreed on a compromise. Seventeen could not reach an agreement. Some failed at the committee level, and others could not get both houses of their congresses to agree to the same bill.
Of course, the students faced strict time constraints, the process was new to them, and they lacked the ability to communicate with each other during the process.

However, they did learn that compromise is difficult — and had they more time, perhaps they would have figured out how to give a little and get a little to reach a compromise.

Today, Congress is teaching us that the lack of compromise hurts everyone. Its inability to reach a debt ceiling deal until the last minute cost the U.S. its stellar credit rating. Neither party seems willing to accept the fact that the middle is wide and where the majority of the public wants to be.
Last week, the Super Committee — specifically, The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, 12 members of Congress, six from the House and six from the Senate, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans — was scheduled to present a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction plan. It could not agree and failed, just like 85 percent of those students who could not find common ground. To make matters worse, that $1.2 trillion is peanuts. It is spread out over 10 years and equals only 10 percent of projected deficits over that time. Even if they could have reached a deal on that, the really heavy lifting – another $3-4 trillion – still lies ahead.

In addition, if the super committee finds a compromise, that compromise will look like every other deficit reduction proposal, the good ones and the bad ones, out there. All of them propose formulas based on an amount or percentage of something. The hard work of filling in those blanks is assigned to a future Congress.

Budgets matter. They define policy. Improving schools or not, fixing bridges or not, providing or reducing health care to the elderly, cutting or increasing taxes may or may not be good ideas. The common denominator is that nothing happens without compromise.

During the cold war, the threat of nuclear war was called MAD: mutually assured destruction. Today, MAD defines the political process. If everyone demands a full loaf and only a full loaf, we all starve.
A century and a half ago, a few weeks before he was killed, President Lincoln reached out to both victor and vanquished alike, a common “us,” stitching together a single nation among enemies who distrusted each other, and said, “Let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”

Today’s leaders need to hear the echoes of Lincoln’s lips. Will they listen?