Washington Hate

I was born in this city, oh so long ago. My father worked on the Hill (Capitol Hill) as an administrative assistant for Kentucky Senator (John Sherman Cooper – Republican), my mom as an analyst for the Department of State. Even when they divorced, my mother re-married… to a career U.S. foreign service officer. There were all immigrants from Eastern Europe, all having left before the Iron Curtain slammed the door for decades. It was hot and miserably humid in the summers and pretty darned cold in the winters. It was all I knew. I didn’t realize that Washington, D.C. would become the most hated town in the United States someday.

I didn’t know that the President, having proposed and passed an “okay but not stellar” universal-access-to-healthcare program, wouldn’t understand his own bill well enough to explain it accurately – forcing him into a humiliating apology to all the folks he hurt in his error – and would have no capacity even to select the right people to implement the vital technology that was needed to make the plan work. That he continued spending billions on unwinnable wars and his administration supported massive warrantless spying efforts on practically everybody didn’t get better when he said he “didn’t know.” Leaders who don’t know really important parts of their governance aren’t going to win friends or influence people.

And the Congress – a Senate that could not rise above partisan politics to approve normal political appointments and a House that was incapable of passing much of anything based on the Tea Party wing of the GOP that had long-since substituted raw sloganeering and mythology for any semblance of hard facts – has become even a bigger joke. Let’s face it, if Washington stands for national political leadership, most American have totally lost respect for that city and the people who run our government. To many, disrespect has evolved into hate.

You wonder why Hillary Clinton high-tailed it out of Washington in the President’s second term? Of course you don’t. If she were to be the Democratic standard-bearer in the 2016 race, she needed to distance herself from the Obama administration and Washington… fast. If all the Republicans could pull is Benghazi – an issue that no longer matters to anyone except right wing extremists who somehow think that this failed issue will destroy her – Hillary has to be careful to continue maximizing that distance, even as Joe Biden and those in the Senate (Liz Warren and John Kerry) and House (who????) are tied to the elected offices and cannot seek safety by pushing Washington away.

For Republicans, Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Paul Ryan – well ahead of the pack including the next generation of the “Paul clan” –are poster-boys for Washington dysfunction, and while they are pulling the right side of the party into their Base, the tide for political leadership is rapidly shifting to governors, who aren’t in the political maelstrom we call Washington. “At a time when Mr. Obama and members of Congress are mired in partisanship and gridlock, many governors — including Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican who was re-elected by an overwhelming margin on [November 5^th], and the chief executives of such states as Arkansas, California, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Ohio — are showing that it is possible to be successful in elected office, even in this era.

“These governors are, at least by comparison to lawmakers in Washington, capable and popular leaders, pushing through major legislation and trying to figure out ways, with mixed success, to avoid the partisan wrangling that has come to symbolize Washington…

“[Although there are] some governors are certainly struggling, be it Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican who failed to get his Legislature to back him on expanding Medicaid coverage, or Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois, a Democrat who is widely unpopular after a failed effort to change pension laws there…

“The difference is reflected in polling. In the latest CBS News poll, 85 percent of respondents expressed disapproval of the performance of Congress, and 49 percent expressed disapproval of Mr. Obama. By contrast, less than a third of respondents in a variety of state polls said they disapproved of the performance of governors like Mr. Christie; Jerry Brown of California, a Democrat; Bill Haslam of Tennessee, a Republican; and Mike Beebe of Arkansas, a Democrat.” New York Times, November 9^th.

States can’t print money, so balancing budgets, generating revenues without alienating voters and cutting costs without destroying the political value chain are second nature to governors. They don’t have to deal with volatile foreign leaders with killing-American-power agendas, and they get to generate their caché by making a much smaller contingent happy. So when you think about the last few governor-as-presidents, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W Bush, the power of governors becomes a whole lot less subtle in presidential elections. While 2016 is approaching, there is still enough time to see if this “we’re not Washington” contingent can rise to the top.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it just might be that the people we all think are at the top of the expected presidential primary sweep might not even be finalists in that race.