Washington/A World Apart
Barnes, Fred
Fred Barnes/Washington A WORLD APART D uring the Senate Judiciary Committees hearings on Robert Bork, Alan Simpson of Wyoming got to musing about the Saturday Night Massacre. (Come on, come on....
...Even the odious Small Business Administration has survived...
...The picture the Washington crowd has of America is horribly distorted: tens of millions crazed with fear of AIDS and ready to lock up homosexuals, or anxious over the prospect that foreigners will stop buying Treasury bonds, or stomping mad because the Japanese insist on sending cheap, efficient products to the United States that they'll wind up buying...
...Mostly people in Washington...
...It's as if large pods are put by newcomers' beds at night...
...They were Washington expense account junkies—Administration officials, lobbyists, journalists, consultants, think-tank heavies, Capitol Hill aides...
...Most significant of all, Washington is where most of the money, is raised these days...
...I was going out to dinner...
...Tom Korologos, a private lobbyist who also ran the White House's disastrous effort to get Bork confirmed, recently did it...
...Anyway, my fear is :that an ineluctable force is at work, causing all pollsters, media 64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 consultants, and strategists to slouch toward Washington...
...And Irving Kristol...
...My wife and I talked and huddled together and had a drink and just shuddered in shock.' " Simpson caught the trend exactly...
...Advanced in Hume's masterful prose, his argument continues to make this definitive edition a valuable study to the modern reader and to anyone interested in the history and preservation of liberty...
...The tax revolt of the late 1970s was a surprise to Washington...
...People in Washington know who Rosty, Henry, Novak, Meg, Elliott, Gorby, Tip, Tipper, Lou, Liddy, Jody, Mary, Cap, Lee, Brad, Ralph, Marlin, Lesley, and Jeane are...
...In this town when you say, 'What were you doing on the night of the Saturday Night Massacre,' they say, was just finishing shaving...
...And I'm not talking about liberals alone...
...From the window of my Washington office, I used to monitor the entrance to the Palm Restaurant, a mecca for power lunchers...
...Please allow I to 6 weeks for delivery...
...It tends to make the candidates, like everyone else in Washington, snug and smug inside the Beltway...
...At ground level in Washington, Ronald Reagan changed nothing...
...Thousands have flocked to Washington, and they don't want to leave, ever...
...Sting, Alvin, Pee-wee, Pound Puppies, Bono, and the Littles —you might know these names, but most Washingtonians would have to ask...
...It's bad enough the way Washington is...
...They think this because they live and work in a fast-paced city, the Big Apple...
...Likewise, Senate and House aides figure they've arrived because they know the intricacies of some awful piece of legislation...
...Pollsters have proliferated in Washington...
...The fellow was miffed...
...The committee didn't know what hit it...
...I remember when Washington was referred, to derisively as a "sleepy Southern town...
...In the off-season, they work in Congress or as lobbyists or in a think tank...
...Once, late in the Carter years, a reporter approached me Monday morning and asked, "Youhear what Hufstedler said on Face yesterday...
...Sure, a lot of them go back regularly in spite of the TV studios...
...In the 1988 presidential race, nearly all the campaigns have headquarters in Washington...
...Something happens to them when they get here, something right out of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers...
...So was the reaction 011ie North touched off around the country when he testified before the Iran-contra committee last summer...
...Hume saw English history as an evolution from a government of will to a government of law...
...If you have to ask who Rosty is, you're either not from Washington or you live here but will never make it big...
...The distinction between the public and private sectors is already blurred, but twenty years from now it may have all but vanished...
...I admit to ambivalence and hypocrisy on the subject of Washington...
...The press completes the circle of selfimportance by reporting on the hearings and citing the reports...
...A similar complex is spreading like impetigo among the drones of Washington, especially journalists and congressional aides...
...Fourteen years...
...Paul Maslin and Harrison Hickman are the hot new Democratic pollsters...
...7440 N. Shadeland Avenue, Dept Q-130 Indianapolis, IN 46250 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 65...
...We had nothing to discuss...
...A good way to get the fisheye—it's happened to me many times—is to tell a young conservative who's interested in journalism that he or she ought to head for the hinterlands for a few years or maybe for life...
...I figure there's one thing worse than all of Washington watching TV on Sunday morning...
...In truth, busy work is engulfing Washington...
...By 2007, the pods will be triumphant...
...chat shows, since I'm occasionally on one...
...Liberty Fund edition, 1985 Volume VI — The last Stuarts and the Glorious Revolution...
...Washington wasn't always the national center for electoral politics...
...You remember...
...By 2007, the Washington community should be practically homogenous...
...Al Haig's campaign office is next door to the Washington Post...
...When the campaign starts, they join...
...Now nobody goes home...
...Their minds are absorbed by completely different matters: who said what on "Brinkley" last Sunday, who's up and who's down at the White House, what Rosty's got in mind for the kitchen utensil industry in the trade bill, etc...
...The one thing they don't do is leave Washington...
...People shuttle back and forth between congressional and campaign jobs...
...Many in Congress aren't...
...Please send me a copy of your latest catalogue...
...And now even TAS has come to Washington...
...Senators and representatives know their first names, too...
...But in Washington, they are glued to the tube...
...Just the other day, a journalist I know was jogging...
...Jimmy Carter ran his out of Atlanta...
...By morning they've been taken over, heart, soul, and mind...
...One day they are lobbyists, the next they are in the White House...
...For heaven's sake, couldn't they at least have chatted about the Redskins a bit or mentioned Madonna or said cutting things on the subject of The Untouchables...
...All orders must be prepaid in U. dollars...
...Volume I — From the Britons and Romans through the death of King John in 1216...
...Checks are written...
...In fact, most people in Washington are utterly out of sync with America, which is why they are repeatedly mystified by the political ebbs and flows outside the Beltway...
...Every night, senators and representatives have receptions that draw high-dollar lawyers, lobbyists, and envoys from political action committees...
...Bruce Babbitt of Arizona has a big contingent here...
...If you go out in the land and say, 'What were you doing on the night of the Saturday Night Massacre,' a guy will say, 'What are you talking about...
...Another ominous sign: the new television facilities on Capitol Hill that allow members to send shows back to their states and districts in lieu of going themselves...
...A recent example is Ray Strother, a very skilled operator who produced Gary Hart's TV spots in 1984...
...He moved his mouth close to the microphone and talked softly...
...In Washington, said Simpson, "we have only been talking about it for fourteen years...
...So was his prolonged success and popularity in the White House...
...They move easily between administrations and think tanks and law offices...
...He ran into two acquaintances, also jogging, and they started arguing about Bork...
...Conservatives do the same in Washington...
...Name Address City/State/Zip Mail to: Liberty Fund, Inc...
...I grew up here and have no intention of leaving...
...Few normal people...
...Folks in Washington are different...
...A reporter may be doing a story on how Gramm-Rudman affects fund, ing of Urban Development Action Grants and along the way run into a senator who calls' him by his first name...
...Liberty Fund edition, 1983 Volume II — From the reign of Henry III through the death of Richard III in 1485...
...Soon they'll be lobbyists again, only to return to government...
...Soon a car pulled alongside and another acquaintance chimed in on Bork...
...Liberty Fund edition, 1985 The complete set — Hardcover $90.00 Paperback $45.00 Volumes may be purchased individually —Hardcover $15.00 each Paperback $ 7.50 each Please send me: The History of England Price Per Quantity Total Author Title Edition Copy Ordered Price David Hume The Hardcover $90.00 Complete Set Paperback 45.00 David Hume Volume I Hardcover $15.00 Paperback 7.50 David Hume Volume II Hardcover $15.00 Paperback 7.50 David Hume Volume III Hardcover $15.00 Paperback 7.50 David Hume Volume IV Hardcover $15.00 Paperback 7.50 David Hume Volume V Hardcover $15.00 Paperback 7.50 David Hume Volume VI Hardcover $15.00 Paperback 7.50 Subtotal Indiana residents add 5% sales tax Total We pay book postage rate...
...Liberty Fund edition, 1983 Volume III — From Henry VII through the turbulent period following the death of Henry Liberty Fund edition, 1984 Volume IV — The long reign of Elizabeth I. Liberty Fund edition, 1984 Volume V — The first two Stuarts...
...They tune out that message...
...If it spreads, all is lost...
...No, I hadn't heard what Shirley Hufstedler, then Secretary of Education, had said on "Face the Nation...
...Okay, there's some valuable work done, but only a little...
...Now imagine Washington if the trend continues, and there's no reason to think it won't...
...Reagan didn't reduce the size of government...
...Not so in Washington, Simpson said...
...Presidential campaigns have become a Washington industry...
...Who would have guessed...
...That's today...
...It's just that it would be nice if members of Congress raised their campaign dough back home...
...libertyPtess/LibertyClassics LibertyClasscs THE HISTO OF ENGLAND FROM THE INVASION OF JULIUS CAESAR TO THE REVOLUTION IN 1688 By David Hume Foreword by William B. Todd In Six Volumes David Hume has been called one of the great- est social thinkers of the modern period...
...They have cut themselves off from the rest of the country, and they're glad they did...
...Naturally, they're in Washington...
...In a few years, Washington will have a monopoly on the business...
...W hat's wrong with running campaigns out of Washington...
...This wasn't so long ago, the 1950s and early 1960s...
...Washington is at its worst on Sunday mornings...
...Not Daniel Inouye or Warren Rudman...
...The irony of his presidency is that the more he railed against Washington, the more he made the city a magnet...
...It was more livable, and people who came to Washington with a new administration or as Capitol Hill aides often returned home a few years later...
...He thinks, he's in the big leagues...
...This is in large part due to his remarkable six volume The History of England...
...Media consultants were once spread around the country, but the best ones have migrated to Washington...
...That was the outrage that occurred in 1973 when special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox was fired and Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, quit...
...All over the country people are going to church or playing tennis or lollygagging...
...I went limp...
...Richard Wirthlin came with Reagan...
...The most dexterous of Washingtonians manage to work in and out of government or in and out of presidential campaigns at the same time, a neat trick...
...The illusion is that all of this is accomplishing something...
...Reagan ran his campaigns for the Republican presidential nominations out of Los Angeles...
...The, reporter's self-assessment soars...
...In 2007, there won't be any real folks at all dining there, the Washington types having driven them far, far away...
...There are now several hundred separate subcommittees in Congress, each holding hearings and churning out reports...
...So was Reagan's victory in the 1980 election...
...And who is drawn into presidential campaigns these days...
...Believe me, all this is not healthy...
...I have a vested interest in their watching the Sunday a.m...
...This is a curious place...
...Jesse Jackson doesn't live in Washington, but his campaign staff does...
...Cab drivers, doormen, waiters, delivery men, and cops there think they're tough and smart and better than rubes from the boondocks, and act accordingly...
...Washington is increasingly insular, Fred Barnes, a contributor since 1980, is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...Enclosed is my check or money order made payable to Liberty Fund, Inc...
...Twenty years from now, the new mindset will have settled in: I do things that get in the press, therefore I am important...
...The folks in Washington have common interests, ones that aren't shared by themasses...
...There's nothing illegal or immoral about this...
...It makes for a hectic life, but at least these ones are in touch...
...arrogant, elitist, power mad, addicted to luxury and mindless political combat, and, worst of all, downright hostile to the non-Washington masses...
...In 2007, there will be more committees, more hearings, more reports...
...What Reagan did was glamorize Washington for a new breed of people, conservatives...
...And so on...
...Well, it was a better place then...
...I will never forget it my whole life...
...Trouble is, watching has become a religion...
...Month by month as the mid-1980s wore on, I began to recognize more of the people eating there...
...It's when the whole country tunes in...
...For congressional candidates, particularly incumbents, Washington offers one-stop shopping...
...Twenty years ago, Torn Wolfe wrote a great piece about working stiffs in New York City called "The Big League Complex...
...Many Washington lawyers and consultants are active in campaigns without giving up their regular jobs...
Vol. 20 • December 1987 • No. 12
