Editorials/Spirits of Enterprise/Along Goose Creek
Tyrrell, R Emmett Jr.
ALONG GOOSE CREEK T have now lived in America's Rome 1 for precisely one year. My reference to the ancient capital of the Caesars is facetious. The founders of Washington were smitten by the notion...
...The town's politicians and journalists especially betray the charming anxiety characteristic of college boys and coeds...
...T hat is why Washington is known for its reverberating vogue words and phrases...
...Despite all the grandiose claims, America's Rome is more like the seat of a great university than like Hershey, Pa...
...Thus a decade or so ago Washingtonians desperate to appear sophisticated began speaking of "this point in time" when they meant now, "that point in time" when they meant then, "early on" when they meant early...
...Superior sociologists would describe it as a college town, complete with drunken alumni and marching bands...
...Its inhabitants live in dreadful insecurity, cramming for tests, primping for parties, trying desperately to make their marks...
...Our Suetoniuses want to be "ahead of the curve," but not too far ahead...
...When Ronald Reagan was elected the sophisticates spoke of a political "sea-change...
...Far from being Romans, Washington's "players" are often provincials, and shamefully timid at that...
...Taking cognizance of something or assenting to it is "signing off" and over the last couple of months the sophisticates divined a hitherto unnoticed "curve," which the astute player is always "ahead of" and the boob is forever behind...
...Given the fact that these shimmering terms are merely used for effect,one would think that at some point those who use them would consider the effect...
...What, after all, is the substance of politics in a country where it is malum prohibitum to distribute judicial appointments to cronies or to scotch our enemies in Central America...
...The founders of Washington were smitten by the notion that their capital would become the Rome of the New World, but only such hallucinatory Americans as Gore Vidal really believe Washington became a modern equivalent of Imperial Rome...
...Washington never became the vital center of national life envisaged by the city's founders despite the govern10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 ment's growing power to coerce the citizenry and the fact that the President has acquired nuclear weaponry and Delta Force...
...Washington's deficits were there at the creation...
...The vast majority of Washington's politicians and journalists knew at least in August 1985 that Lt...
...A swampy rivulet behind the White House they vaingloriously renamed the Tiber River, though earlier Americans had known it as Goose Creek...
...One's tenure is for now a "watch" as in, it happened "on my watch'—oh, brave you...
...It is the same question that evokes perspiration and unsightly blemishes on every fraternity row in the country...
...Truth be known, adults so insecure as to resort to these preposterous vogue words and phrases do not appear very sophisticated or suave...
...Its funds depend on the industry of others...
...Dreary Jenkin's Hill they renamed Capitoline Hill...
...Those Washington locals who know their sociology will tell you that Washington is a company town, by which they mean a town with only one industry—politics...
...No country on earth has as many vital cities as the United States, each of which subtracts from the centrality of Washington to our national life...
...Recently public figures of a certain magnitude became "players," quarrels became "dust-ups," criticism became "bashing," as in "liberal bashing'!--a rude and cruel act, that...
...Rather they appear pathetic...
...Oliver North was raising money for the contras, but very few would sound the alarm...
...Who's up and who's down" is an urgent question in Washington...
...substance is almost unidentifiable...
...Alas for the founders' dream of imperium and eagles, true Washington has missed the mark...
...Couldn't a friend from New York or Indianapolis let them know...
...Washington's founders believed that their city would become the vital center of national life, teeming with wealth and commerce and fostering artisticendeavor of incomparable sweep...
...When in October 1791 the government expected to raise a fortune by releasing 10,000 lots for auction around the site of the President's mansion, commissioners could corral only enough morons to buy thirty-five forlorn lots...
...Its chief products are paperwork and pontificators...
...Appearances are extremely important here...
...Consider their bovine boldness over the present Iran-contra row...
...Well, the herd had not begun to stampede against it...
...or Akron...
Vol. 20 • May 1987 • No. 5
