Washington: Land of Dreams

...That approach, the heart of American legislative politics, is essential to most of the policy decisions in a democracy, but it has no place in the application of the Constitution...

...It is where Top Decisions are made...

...In PEARL v. Nyquist (1972) the Court found itself forced to overrule a clearly intolerable violation of the principle, in this case involving grants to parochial schools for maintenance and repair of facilities and for ensuring the health and welfare of students, combined with tax credits and reimbursements to parents for tuition payments...

...Confused attempts to somehow reconcile separation with its opposite not only permit a bridge where the Founders intended a chasm, but undermine the rule of law, and with it the ideal of a constitutional republic...

...It can happen...

...Does Clark Clifford go to Sears ? Isn't there someplace that the dream exists...

...If you see Washington only as a place where a quest for power can be fulfilled, Black Washington is something to follow in the newspapers and on the local television evening news, much in the same way one might follow the activities of the San Diego Padres if 14 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 one doesn't live in San Diego...

...In reality, it consists of a few score buildings, a few thousand people, and some newspapers and television stations...

...But for most in Working Washington, the dream of Washington must never be denied...

...So many young men and women come to Washington thinking that they will be characters in a Washington novel...

...And the Georgetown bars are as full of phonies postfantasy as they are pre-fantasy and the frantic clutchings afterwards are as sad as they ever were...

...see it as three cities in one geographic location...

...To deny it is to admit one will go to Georgetown bars forever and ever, that one will ride the Metro bus into eternity, and sort constituent mail until the Second Coming...

...The Court rejected such practices on the ground that "the effect of the aid is unmistakably to provide desired financial support for nonpublic, sectarian institutions...

...And, as that, to those who come to Washington seeking not reality but a dream, it is unbearable...

...The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 15...

...It is Embassies...

...Unless, during the most boring of subcommittee hearings or staff meetings or while working on a draft of remarks that will be used by the William F. Gavin is author of Street Corner Conservative...

...The lobbyist's secretary who is going to meet the right kind of man, not the phonies she meets in the fashionable Georgetown bars...the Senator's aide who knows, just knows that if he is given a chance to get out of the mailroom and work as a legislative assistant, things will change...the Presidential aide who can see himself sitting across from the President in the Oval Office, just the two of them, and the President saying "Joe, what the hell are we going to do," and the aide, puffing on pipe, looking the President in the eye and saying, "Sir, your options are these' 'wand then presenting options to the President of the United States ! Can there ever have been a dream so full of wonder...

...All the same, the crucial point is that the Founders did set down a clear and uncompromising principle--that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion' '--and the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment made that prohibiton applicable to the states as well...

...But to the young and ambitious--and to some extent, to the rest of us--one cannot live--cannot live-knowing that Washington has no meaning...

...And the Metro bus coming down K Street in the morning is still crowded and the White House aide gets off at K and 17th to walk to his cubicle in the Old Executive Office Building and does what he did the day before...

...If there is no certitude, no help for pain beneath that bright shining dome, then where...

...In recent decisions, however, the Court has appeared intent less on maintaining a clear separation of church and state than in trying to balance the interests of the two sides by giving each some of what it wants...

...First, there is Black Washington...

...Equally difficult is trying to extrapolate from the writings of the Founders how they would view contemporary issues that they could not possibly have imagined...

...Principles established in a constitution are by nature ground rules transcending and underlying all other actions taken by government...

...Justice Douglas would have no part of the decision, pointing out that the "Federal Government is giving religious schools a block grant to build certain facilities" and noting that the "milliondollar grant sustained today puts Madison's miserable 'three pence' to shame...

...Does Bernstein buy the Ballantines even if he would prefer the LiSwenbraii...

...When Ballantine Beer is selling for $1.24 a six-pack in the Dart Drug, buy it, because it still means something to save money...

...This Washington has nothing to do with Black Washington and could be said to exist on different levels of reality while sharing, in part, the same space...

...Top national reporters for the New York Times and even the Washington Post, who could take you on a tour of Belgrade or Helsinki blindfolded in a snowstorm, would need a compass if they wandered off their regular paths in Washington and found themselves in an all-black neighborhood...

...And, so, the dream, the fantasies become a sweeter reality...

...There are some who cross the line from Working Washington into Official Washington...

...and it is Washington in the summer and the heat is smothering, heavy, sickening in its intensity and your car has no air conditioning...and three cars ahead of you, there is a black limousine with a driver and the man in the rear seat of the car is reading something by the light of a high intensity lamp...even New York City, which is hell, cannot create a torment like this...

...But so very many do not cross over and remain life-long dreamers of the dream, visionaries...

...Other American cities are good for dreams and visions but Washington can shape the dream with a unique force that comes only when all of the energy, all of the talent, all of the dreams of hundreds of thousands of human beings are focused on one idea--power, political power, national political power...

...They look across the street at the white shining majesty of the Capitol dome, bathed in light...

...But the constituent mail continues to come in and the mailroom needs bodies...

...The Court's responsibility is not to balance the opposing claims of the two sides in the separation controversy, but to enforce without exception the principle that the state should not support religious institutions, beliefs, or activities...

...The multitude of relationships involving the two--from taxes to public services--often brush up against the principle of separation, and it is not always easy to discern where the line should be drawn...

...It is a place where nationally known Top Reporters interview nationally known Top Washington Figures...

...One even can get to a point where, on those cold, clear winter evenings, one stands on the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building and looks across the street and sees...a beautiful building, bathed in light...but still, only a building...

...There are secrets in the heart of LeeHarrison shopping center in Arlington that the Washington dreamer can never know or has forgotten, secrets of everyday reality, of buying food, of pushing carts laden with cherries and butter and ground beef through the A & P, of bringing suits and dresses to the dry-cleaners, of getting a haircut (waiting for the barber you want instead of taking your turn), of strolls on a quiet Sunday morning during the three weeks each year that Washington knows as "spring," going to the bakery to buy still-hot seeded hard rolls and then to the Drug Fair to buy the Times and then return home...

...President as he addresses the Sons and Daughters of the Montenegrin-American Society--unless one hears the faint whispers of the seductive music of power as a background theme, Washington is nothing but a cold, dead, uninteresting third-rate city on a second-rate river, a city of white monuments and black people...

...Washington is, if nothing else, a land of dreams and never to have dreamed the great dream, at least once, is to have died a little, long ago...

...Washington--Working Washington--means the indestructible vision within the unyielding fact...

...In reading the Ti/ton opinion, one gets the impression that the Court has almost given up trying to enforce the principle of separation...

...The novels of Allen Drury and, now, his scores of imitators, have done much to convince most of us that this is the only Washington that counts...

...Power is democratic...

...This is a Washington unknown to most of the white people who work in the city and totally unknown to the big names of the national press who, we are told, "cover" Washington...

...One can live and work and be useful in Working Washington...

...The third Washington is Working Washington...

...It takes heroic sanctity to be content just being yourself when you had always thought that by moving to Washington you would be somebody else, finer, nobler--more serious, a person with a career instead of Someone who has a job...

...Sometimes those in Working Washington have delusions that they are part of Official Washington...

...Every night before the city goes to sleep, these fantasies rise from thousands of beds, and hover over the city...

...Those who work in Washington are all standing on Dover Beach whether they will it or not: either they see Washington as "a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new" or else are forced to see it as a place with "neither joy nor love nor light, nor certitude nor peace nor help for pain...

...But they soon discover that they are still themselves and this knowledge is devastating because there, just beyond their reach, is the Washington of dream and legend...

...That the problems of determining the proper line of division between church and state are complex and difficult is beyond dispute...

...Most important of all, Official Washington means never, ever having to ride a bus...

...An option-presenter...no title at the court of the most splendid Byzantine emperor, no task to be performed for the Grand Vizier of the most opulent and magnificent king of legend could thrill anyone more than being a Presidential option-presenter...

...Why the Court outlawed such "support for nonpublic, sectarian institutions" in this case, while permitting it in the textbook and construction grant cases, is a mystery, for what is true of the first is undeniably true as well of the latter two...

...To be part of that power, to feel oneself part of that power is to experience Official Washington...

...So the politician and his aides look at L'Enfant's city as if it were a garden of mystery with a hidden meaning that can be uncovered, that must be uncovered, by work and diligence and faith...

...What can be more sad than to dream of being the assistant secretary for something or other and dream that dream while stuck in a traffic jam on the Fourteenth Street Bridge, knowing that if you don't get home in time the laundry will close and the shirts you sent to have cleaned won't be able to be picked up until tomorrow...and besides that, the toilet is leaking and you don't know how to fix it...and the rent is due...

...With the exception of bureaucrats who have a universe of their own, those who work in Washington, D.C...

...And one can drive home and eat Spanish Rice with bacon and read the Star and watch some silly shows on television and read a bit and then go to bed in the dark, listening to the rhythmic breathing of one's wife beside you, and drift off to sleep...

...It recognizes merit that wealth or even intellect would never condescend to recognize...

...On cold, clear winter evenings, ambitious, bright young Congressional aides working in the Senate and House office buildings pause on their way home to their high-priced apartments to stand on the corner for a moment...

...And, so, one dreams...

...William F. Gavin Washiugtou: Land of Dreams Every night before the capital goes to sleep, fantasies of power rise from thousands of beds and hover over the city...

...The Top Washington Figures are known because they are always interviewed by Top Reporters and the Reporters are Top because they are always interviewing Top Figures...

...Then there is Official Washington...

...Unless they see it as a symbol of their dreams, as a kind of marvelous promise, as a glorious fragment of a lovely poem only they can interpret--unless they see all this, they are doomed...

...Perhaps the largest industry in Washington is that of producing fantasies of power...

...Presidential Aides are part of Official Washington but only if they are known by Top Reporters, who, in turn, do not long remain Top if they do not know nationally known Presidential Aides...

...In Chief Justice Burger's words, "the line of separation, far from being a 'wall' is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship...

...There is a healing in reality, a balm in watching Little League games, an elixir of the spirit in listening each Sunday to the boring rambling sermons of an over-burdened priest in a suburban church built in the shape of a flying saucer...

...Some--a few--awake from the dream and survive and even prosper...

...Official Washington is the President and a few Congressmen...

...But characters in Allen Drury novels do not go to the Safeway or Giant Foods...

...They reflect the basic premise of a constitution, the idea, in Hayek's words, that "no power should be arbitrary and that all power should be limited by higher law...

...Does Woodward mow his own lawn...

...But if you have never, for at least a short while, had to endure the misery, the joy of the dream, you have missed something...

...If the dream of Washington is not preserved and nurtured and renewed, then Washington means: still having to go to the supermarket, driving the kids to piano lessons and to Little League, mowing the lawn--writing out checks to C & P Telephone Company and Sears...

...But they are wrong...

...This is the Washington most Americans confuse with the real or essential Washington...

...You recognize some of the big names but there is no impression of reality to burden the mind...

...The job of the Court is to locate the line between church and state and to keep each on its own side of the line--a difficult task, but no more so than applying any of the other principles established in the Bill of Rights...