White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

Power — the Lure of Washington

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You are part of the new administration, or want to be part of the administration, or your company thinks it will gain favor if it moves its headquarters to Washington. One way or another, a lot of people are on the move to the nation’s capital.

It is part of the Washington mystique that more come than go. Once you get in the Washington whirlpool, you don’t simply swim back to where you came from.

Members of the diplomatic corps yearn to come back to Washington. And members of the Washington press corps seldom leave Washington, although they may change employers.

Explaining the power that Washington exerts over its migrants isn’t easy, but it is there. Part of it, as Martin Walker, who covered Washington for Britain’s Guardian, told me when I met him in Brussels, where he had been sent by the newspaper, that he longed to get back to Washington — and he did, later, with UPI. “I like living somewhere where the head of government can send in a battle fleet,” he explained.

Journalists love Washington because it is one-stop shopping. There are innumerable stories and many places of employment, from the multifaceted world of trade journalism to the throes of political journalism.

Others, who don’t cover the White House or write for a major international newspaper, are also smitten. Maybe, I should say infected because an unnatural attraction to our nation’s capital is more often referred to as “Potomac Fever”.

There is no therapy for the malady, or known cure. People say, “I love Washington” and they mean it. Writers say, “I love writing.” But author Susan Seliger told me it means, “I love having finished writing.”

A common diagnosis of Washington’s peculiar sickness is that it is about power. But most people in Washington have precious little power and do ordinary jobs. It could be argued that, for the most part, investment banks on Wall Street or software shops in Silicon Valley have more power.

The president has real power, but even he is restrained, as President-elect Donald Trump is about to learn. Most power in Washington is derivative: Your wife’s best friend is married to the chairman of an influential Senate committee. Letting this be known gives you a sense of power.

One man I knew for years impressed people with his “White House contact.” He let it be known that he was “well-connected at the White House.” Beyond bragging, it did him no good.

Access is the currency most sought after. It, too, is dubious. If you have a telephone or an email account, well, you have access. People in Washington get back to you, just in case you’re important.

Lobbyists work on access, raising money, providing tickets to sports events, and ingratiating themselves with members of Congress and their staffs.

This isn’t as hard as it seems. Members of Congress enjoy the attention that multiplies the sense that they are important, therefore, powerful.

Washington schools are important. As Frederic Reamer, professor at Rhode Island College and an expert on prisons, told me in a television interview: “Washington has the best and worst schools in the country.”

The best schools are the private ones — Sidwell Friends and St. Albans stand out — and they are part of the power structure in Washington. Presidents, members of Congress, diplomats and other power people send their children to these schools. School functions are where the elite meet. It’s heady, it’s Washington. The better suburban schools are also part of the game.

The downside of Washington is that it gets more expensive daily, particularly housing. Affordable housing is available in less-savory areas of the city or in the suburbs that spread out 40 miles into neighboring Maryland and Virginia.

Washington traffic is second only to Los Angeles. If you have close friends, better live close to them because they won’t be dropping in on a whim.

The spring and fall are beautiful, but summer hot humid and hellish. When it snows, everything shuts down. Enjoy!

The Brits to America: No Hard Feelings, Chaps

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Light the candles, fire up the grill, cue the fireworks — a birthday party is in the air. A nation’s birthday. To wit, America’s birthday, 234 and still young!

My friend and colleague Martin Walker, a famous British columnist and author, likes to remind audiences that the Fourth of July is not a time for him to be downcast about the American War of Independence. “I celebrate solid British yeoman farmers taking up arms against a German king and his German mercenaries,” he says.

Quite so.

Historically somewhat accurate, too. Like so many English monarchs, George III was of German descent, in his case Hanoverian. Also, the British administration, short on troops of their own, happily fielded Hessian mercenaries to fight the Colonists.

After the war, these men were demobilized in the states — a British habit that accounted for my paternal grandfather’s taking up involuntary residence in South Africa at the end of the Boer War.

Anyway, Walker isn’t the only Briton in modern times to embrace America and to make a life here — and a good one at that. I, too, am of the British persuasion; and I feel a remote connection to the left-behind Hessians because I live in a Virginia stone house constructed by some of them. They had brought with them skills beyond war-fighting, and applied those skills in building up the nascent nation in which they found themselves immigrants of necessity. By the way, it’s a great house. Danke schon.

There are hundreds of thousands of Brits in America — no one really knows how many because of their differing legal status. They are to be found all over, but are concentrated in southern Florida and Southern California. As Noel Coward wrote, “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” Dallas also is popular; and, for other reasons, New York is well supplied with Brits. If nothing else, they have to be there to oversee the transplantation of their plays to Broadway.

These wandering sons and daughters of Albion are among America’s greatest boosters, led by a coterie of journalists, known without derogatory implications at home as “hacks.” The dean of these was, without doubt, the late Alistair Cooke, who spoke lovingly about America for nearly 60 years in his weekly broadcasts of “Letter From America” for BBC radio.

The late Henry Fairlie lighted the way for British opinion writers in the America. Besides Martin Walker, these now include Gerard Baker; Tina Brown and her husband, Harry Evans; Christopher Hitchens; Andrew Sullivan; and Sebastian Mallaby.

What is it that the British expats so like about their American cousins’ homestead? Probably, it’s the sense of possibility that permeates American life. It’s what has made the word “America” a metaphor for hope, going back to the English poet John Donne in 1595.

And there is mobility. In America, one can lose one’s way in Baltimore and get a fresh start in Albany, Providence, Tampa, St. Paul or any other city. In Britain there is London; and if you lose your place in London, you may never recover.

Also in America, the Brits enjoy a special minority status. We have a terrible sense of superiority, making us immune to insult.

What do the Brits in America complain about? They complain about the lack of pubs and a pub culture; the lack of public transportation; and, above all, the lack of public health care.

And what do we give our hosts in this promised land as a thank-you gift? Well, we don’t whine. In a time when everyone is apologizing for transgressions in history, we’ll be celebrating our defeat this Fourth of July, choking down thin beer and reveling in thick, grilled rib.

Happy Birthday, America. Cheers!