Capitol Ideas / Washington's Ways and Mean Streets
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS WASHINGTON'S WAYS AND MEAN STREETS From time to time people ask me what it is like to live in Washington, and I see their point: that it is possible to write about the goings-on and...
...Thus the notion gradually filters down through the Washington hierarchy that busyness denotes power...
...In most parts of the world, it is the reverse: Conspicuous leisure puts you among the high and mighty-whether it is skiing in Switzerland or being photographed aboard a yacht in the Mediterranean...
...The political consensus in Washington is somewhar liberal, but perhaps less so than is sometimes portrayed...
...But I think very few people took any notice of the article...
...The "rules" in such a society automatically exclude such outsiders...
...Sad, but true...
...It is my impression that there is very little book-reading done in Washington-at least in the official and quasi-official government and media circles that I am describing...
...If before coming to Washington, you did a stint with the Mafia, well, no one need know about it, and if people find out, they won't necessarily hold it against you...
...A society which is open to all naturally turns out to be highly competitive, and this in turn seems to result in a strong pressure toward conformity...
...To be called "irresponsible" in Washington is our approximate equivalent of a Soviet citizen being sent to Siberia...
...I imagine that this is not just a feature of Washington, but of any capital in which the power-seeking classes will have to spend almost all their energy coping with rivalries and political turmoil...
...In four years in the nation's capital, I can honestly say I have not met one eccentric...
...Perhaps one or two do exist...
...You can then go downtown, no later than 8 o'clock of an evening, and find hardly a soul on the streets...
...CAPITOL IDEAS WASHINGTON'S WAYS AND MEAN STREETS From time to time people ask me what it is like to live in Washington, and I see their point: that it is possible to write about the goings-on and public-policy developments in a city without ever really conveying much about the flavor and "culture" of the place...
...Journalists are apt to get terribly snooty about "gossip" -remember all that fuss a few years ago when Barney Collier came out with his hilariously gossipy book about journalists...
...At lunch time you will see crowded sidewalks on Connecticut Avenue, but by 2:30 everyone is back inside those cubical-ly shaped office buildings, and all will be quiet until the obedient, dutiful, well-trained, well-behaved, well-paid, well-dressed workers begin to go home at 4:30...
...Joad, the British philosopher and civil servant who wrote his books in Whitehall...
...No one is excluded from moving onto the socio-political board...
...Journalists should occasionally remember to try to describe the scene about them as though they had just dropped in from another century...
...As noted, this leads to conformity above all else...
...If you invite people to dinner in Washington (which must be between 7:30 and 8:00 pm), all your guests will arive at your doorstep within five minutes of the appointed time...
...This is an exaggeration, but in any event the willingness to advertise one's toils derives, by association, from the lives of the top political appointees, e.g., cabinet officers, all of whom are immensely busy all the time...
...Media people -especially those who work for the daily newspapers and television- live in permanent dread that someone will call them irresponsible...
...This is really because there is so little distinction between gossip and what journalists daily put on the front page of newspapers...
...The most damning epithet that you can hear in Washington is "irresponsible...
...In Washington it is said that everyone has the same amount of money but differing amounts of power...
...That way, if the winds of opinion change direction you won't be blown down...
...This would be irresponsible behavior, which possibly could make its way back to the taxpayers in the hinterland...
...I am sure this is missing because most people are only too well aware that they are living and dining so well courtesy of the taxpayers, that they are performing functions which in many instances the taxpayers would be only too happy not to have performed, and this tends to inculcate a sense of drear "responsibility," a need to be on one's best behavior at all times, so that Washington sometimes resembles a school on parent's day...
...But these books are mostly just browsed because those busily seeking preferment and power in the capital don't have the time or energy to devote to reading...
...This is a perfectly rational scheme...
...It is not "done," either, to show any very strong ideological inclination...
...Perhaps in consequence, there is an element of status attached to being seen (or thought) to work hard...
...Of course, plenty of books are bought, and the shelves of any home you visit are well stocked...
...They will discuss politics and the burning public-policy issues, and they will leave in a compact squad not later than 11 pm...
...The fashionable thing is to be able to say out loud that you must " leave early" because on the morrow you have an important "breakfast meeting" to attend...
...Few do, of course...
...That is the prevailing, if unstated, outlook...
...Why wade through the hardcovers when you can go to a breakfast meeting and perhaps learn the latest gossip about Ham and coke or Ted and Jimmy...
...Books are likely to be read far more frequently in quiet places remote from such power struggles...
...Washington society is interesting in that it is extremely "democratic...
...In any event, the "players" in Washington are always so busy keeping up with "the latest," whether one chooses to call it gossip or news I don't mind, that they have very little time to read books and so acquire some perspective about the public events they are daily immersed in...
...People who have the spare time to slide down mountains obviously have plenty of money...
...They head for the parking lots, strap in, buckle up, and drive home at 25 mph as though Ralph Nader himself were peering in through the rear window...
...Certainly among the political appointees, who arrive every four years or so with the new President, the daily regimen of work is arduous...
...and, very occasionally, a passing stranger, a weary bureaucrat who has stayed on late at the office to complete an important memorandum for his supervisor...
...But I can't help thinking that if this happens in Washington, it is a great rarity...
...As far as working hours are concerned, from time to time I hear tell of a comparatively high-level bureaucrat who lives in a hideaway office down some remote corridor, has little or no work to do, and could very easily be writing works of philosophy on office time, after the manner of C.E.M...
...This marks you down as a Signpost...
...A Washington Post editor once wrote an interesting article for that paper's editorial page, pointing out that the First Amendment said not a word about responsibility...
...This is because the aristocrat in the nature of things has lifetime membership and cannot be displaced by an outsider...
...How completely indistinguishable, by the way, are news and gossip...
...This is the status meal in Washington...
...Credentials are less important than performance...
...The place will be deserted...
...It is very unlikely that anyone will get drunk...
...It is preferable to be a Weathervane...
...So you are hardly going to get any "scoops" from such sources of information...
...But there are no such rules in Washington, where, in fact, the First Rule of the Game is that anyone can play...
...So I shall try to rectify the omission and say something about the Culture of Washington...
...As far as the elected officials are concerned, the perennially censorious news media tends to bring them all into line, so that the politicians themselves more and more look and sound like newscasters...
...One of the first points to make is that, contrary to rumor, most people really do work very hard here...
...How much fun one could have "reporting on" 18th-century England, for example, and how much one would notice that contemporaries would take for granted...
...a swirling newspaper that wraps itself promiscuously about your ankles...
...Here I must interpose that I still have not been invited to the Godfrey Sperling Breakfast Meeting of Important Journalists-he of the Christian Science Monitor-but I live in hope that I soon will be, and when that day comes I shall enclose with my next dispatch an entertaining account of said meal...
...Birth" counts for nothing...
...Such people have no tenure, no more than the President himself, and they are constantly harried along by the sense of rivalry for their jobs and by the even more serious pressure of the quadrennial election...
...By contrast, an aristocratic society, into which one is either born or not, is likely to produce its fair share of eccentrics...
...For company, perhaps you will find a comradely electric sign clicking out the time, and temperature in degrees Celsius...
...How strange, incidentally, to find a culture in which conspicuous industry carries the badge of status...
...As far as journalists are concerned-and government people too, when one thinks about it-an additional reason is that one must be perennially up-to-date in one's information, and if you get your knowledge from a book, then you must be learning something that was known at least a year ago, when the author wrote it down...
...To me the saddest thing about Washington is how little feeling it has of urban bustle and life...
...Coming to Washington 4s rather like joining the Foreign Legion in that people will not ask too many questions about your background, parentage, et cetera...
...Sometimes one wishes there was a little more lightheartedness, a touch of frivolity...
Vol. 12 • November 1979 • No. 11
