White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

A Primer for the New Congress

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Welcome to Washington, new members of Congress. It is a city of museums, statues, self-importance and arcane ways.

After a post-campaign vacation, you will be ready to take on the world — or at least this city — and begin to make things right. You are coming here to cut through the crap, straighten out the mess, to return the peoples’ government to the people.

You are feeling good, even invincible. This sense of euphoria and possibility is normal. It is nothing to be worried about — and it will pass.

As most of the new class is Republican, you are going to stop the rot come what may. No more liberal shenanigans, no more creeping socialism, no more welfare state, no more European-style mollycoddling of the undeserving.

You are going to loosen the shackles on business and watch it rise like a jolly green giant who has shaken off his captors, including the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service.

Oops! Before we go any further, maybe you should pick a target. EPA and IRS are very unpopular — those two are enough for now.

It goes without saying that you are against Obamacare and that should be repealed, or go unfunded, or be replaced with something. Be careful: it may not be as unpopular with your constituents as it is at the country club.

But do not let things like that worry you. You have been elected to Congress. Hallelujah! Reality will not set in until you get to your first caucus, or you see the lousy office you have been assigned, or you learn that that committee appointment you cherished is not coming your way.

Again, worry not. You are about to make a lot of new friends; really nice people, people who will do anything you ask. They have advice about where to live, whom to hire, what schools to send the little ones to — if you have not already decided to leave them back home, which you may when you find out the cost of housing in Washington.

Anyway, the new friends will help you through the intricacies of being a member of Congress. They will advise you on which forms to fill in, how to get your expense reimbursements. Such helpful people. They will also give you advice on issues that are new to you, like net neutrality, the Law of the Sea, and the reason companies have to move overseas.

Amazingly, they also have tickets to wonderful sports events with local teams: the Redskins (football), the Capitals (hockey), the Nationals (baseball). They also have tickets to cultural events, from plays at the Kennedy Center to exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art. It helps so say you love the arts when you are railing against the National Endowment for the Arts, PBS and NPR.

These new friends are the lobbyists, and they have your number already. They know what you like to drink or eat, and whether you prefer to bike, hike or sail. Everything can be arranged. Trust them. They will also guide you on delicate legislative issues; no pressure, just guidance. And who are you to refuse a friend?

Dear Democrats, you are not forgotten but not well remembered either. Your party lost, and you know what that makes you. For two years you must walk the halls of Congress mumbling about income redistribution; how many successes President Obama actually chalked up, but failed to trumpet; and cursing, under your breath, the presence of money in politics — unless it is union money.

There will also be real pleasure for you in thinking up hateful things to say about the new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and be quoted saying them in social media.

Whatever your party, as your first term wears on, you will get to feel at home on Capitol Hill. You will know how to play the lobbyists, one against the other, and how to discomfort the leadership of your own party. But mostly, you will come to love Big Government. Welcome to the Washington elite. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Power Lunches, Then and Now

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Despite Jimmy Carter, lunch is alive and well in Washington. But it is a different rite than it was before his presidency.

 

Carter was the president who launched an attack on the notorious three-martini lunch. He not only scorned the business lunch culture, but he also changed the tax law so that only half the cost of a business lunch can now be deducted.

 

Carter became a dirty word in the restaurants of Washington. Yet the change in lunch habits may have occurred anyway.

 

During the Carter years, drinking at lunch slowed to a stop. There is hardly any drinking at lunch these days: Headwaiters proffer wine lists to shaking heads.

 

It was not Carter’s jiggling the tax code that killed the three-martini lunch, but rather a great social change that coincided with his time in Washington. For complex reasons, the decision-makers of the big cities dried out in the 1970s. My guess is that the world became more competitive, secretaries were not prepared to cover for their intoxicated bosses, drunk-driving laws tightened and health became an issue.

 

For me, the old-time Washington lunch was exemplified by a wonderful man, a great friend and a tremendous lobbyist. His name was Tom Clark and he represented the nuclear interests of the General Electric Company in Washington. Clark—who, alas, died more than two decades ago–was the uncontested master of the Washington lunch. And, yes, he drank three martinis with his lunch every day.

 

Clark was an American patrician, a kind of nobleman. He was also marvelous company and a skilled lobbyist. His principal tool was lunch, but he did not roam from restaurant to restaurant. He ate his lunch every day at Le Provencal, a classic French restaurant, where he always sat at the same large, round table.

 

Clark’s guests were a who’s who of Washington movers and shakers. There would be a Cabinet secretary at his table, maybe a senator and often a House member. I was one of the regulars at his round table. As a reporter, these feasts were valuable but mostly fun. You could drink anything you liked so long as it was distilled, fermented or brewed. There was a large menu, but most of Clark’s guests followed his lead and ordered grilled Dover sole.

 

Well, there are no more long, three-martini lunches and grilled Dover sole has given way to a new kind of eating: stacked, fusion food favored by the dieting classes in Washington. Of course without alcohol, three-hour lunches are out. Now we choke down the ersatz food with bottled water, ice tea or diet soda. Tom Clark would not have approved.

 

It is the shorter lunch that has allowed the development of that gastronomic and political horror: the power breakfast. All over Washington power-brokers are breakfasting with people from Capitol Hill, the media and the political financiers, who are the kingmakers.

 

Eating around Washington is really not about deals and arm-twisting, but rather about opening and keeping open channels of communication that later might be used to push a lobbying message. In the days when the martini ruled, it was a bit about communications, but mostly it was fun. It was just that it was more productive to have fun with a Cabinet member or an important senator than, well, your neighbor.

 

In the old days, the greatest lunch place in Washington was another French restaurant: Sans Souci. Its headwaiter, Paul, was known for his prodigious recall of names. You had to fight for a reservation and fight to be seated at a good table. The most important table–in a restaurant that was fairly small and had terraces of tables–was the Kennedy table. At this table, Kennedy family members dined with their White House and media friends. Columnist Art Buchwald was often seen with Ethel Kennedy. A cheery hail from that table as you passed by and you were on the A-list.

 

Today, there is nothing that looks like an A-list in Washington, and no restaurant dominates political and media circles. Also since the Carter presidency, White House staffers have favored the White House mess over restaurants.

 

Only retired people dare quaff midday martinis these days. As Rudyard Kipling noted, “There’s sore decline in Adam’s line.”  –For North Star Writers Group