What I Saw in the Imperial City

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"The people's good is the highest law" ~ Cicero, "De Legibus"

Recently a nameless benefactor, in a Sisyphean effort to provide me with a modicum of the professional training I gravely lack, made it possible for me to spend a week in Washington, D.C. Wherewith, I eagerly haunted the hallowed halls of Congress and learned to scarf Congressional Bean Soup with the best of them. I strolled the old carriage lanes the length of the National Mall and entertained myself hugely in visiting a vast array of taxpayer-subsidized monuments, museums, and gardens. After one such ramble, I rested contentedly on the steps of the Capitol. Gazing with wizened eyes towards the Washington Monument there came unbidden to my mind the famous words of Gibbon:

“It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amid the ruins of the capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind…. "

Well, in place of barefoot friars, the omnipresent black-clad Capitol Police had to do. And just as inevitably my thoughts, though originally circumscribed to the City, gave way as did Gibbon's to musings on the decline and fall of empire.

So herewith, as a token of compensation to my unnamed benefactor, are the impressions of a political naïf wandering unsupervised in the lair of Leviathan, a citizen out of time, holding quixotically to the notion that the United States are a constitutional republic, that the Constitution circumscribes and enumerates the powers of the central government, and that in general the government which governs best, governs least.

One has only to stroll through the teeming concourse of Union Station and out into the surrounding streets to completely obliterate from the mind any lingering picture of the sleepy Southern town of yesteryear, a capitol city so uncomfortable and lacking in amenities that Congress hurried to get its work done so as to sooner leave the pestiferous place. No, Washington is as noxious to the agricultural yeoman as it is nutrimental to the parasitic managerial elite. It exhales the atmosphere of a self-conscious capitol city as hordes of people hustle purposely about humming with importance and power. The street scene is populated by all races, languages, and cultures drawn as were the Dacii and Alemanii to Rome as the locus of influence and opportunity. What do all these people do? Can it be possible they all derive their living from the activities of a handful of elected representatives and to the departments, bureaus, institutes they fund and regulate? Yes, in a complete inversion of the Founders' vision, the ripples of money and power radiate outward from the Capitol like the solar wind throughout every square inch of the country's political and economic universe.

The architecture of Washington is a hoot. The Mall is flanked on both sides with monumental buildings of Beaux Arts grandiosity. I suppose it is meant to recall the Rome of old, and evince the new American power’s legitimacy, importance, and permanence. To me, the faux grandeur falls flat; it seems to try too hard, with one shameless monolith after another shouting, “Look at me! Important!”

But I like the quirky and inefficient Smithsonian Castle and to my eye the cast iron dome of the Capitol is a thing of beauty. But step inside the rotunda, and floating high above the floor is Constantino Brumidi's huge and absurd fresco, "The Apotheosis of Washington." From the time of Augustus the Roman emperors were routinely deified upon death and so too, the Father of Our Country is here depicted sitting upon clouds as he ascends into heaven. The befuddled Virginian, who in life eschewed any sort of royal title, is clad in imperial purple, flanked by the goddess of liberty and the winged figure of fame, and surrounded by a myriad of allegorical figures too hackneyed to be believed. It is rather easier to picture the same Washington in Valhalla, grinding his dentures at the ironic absurdity of it all.

There are a lot of places to eat in Washington. None of the Italian restaurants I saw had braciola on the menu. That's enough to keep me from living there.

It's surprising just how accessible the Members of Congress are. You can breeze into any Member's office and be greeted by an eager young staffer who seems glad to see you, and who will give you gallery passes and other goodies if you ask. If the pooh-bah himself is present, and you don't look too smart, he may even come out to shake your hand. Anyone with a tolerance for balderdash, or a few drinks in him, can sit in on Congressional hearings and observe floor action from the Senate or House galleries. I did lots of both, and was confirmed in the conviction that they are, to a man, blowhards and braggarts. The ability to bloviate must be a prerequisite for the job and the laconic, taciturn, or modest best not apply. And carissimi, my worst fear was realized: every single damn one of them makes it clear that he thinks it's his job to take money from some people and give it to others. This simple fact is the unum necessarium, the one ineluctable, uncontested bedrock principle of American politics. If you want to see this principle iconically portrayed, pick up your representative's latest constituent newsletter. If it does not have at least one photograph of him/her/it handing some smiling vassal an oversized check, I'll eat my head.

A Peroration on Moral Theology

According to Thomas Aquinas, in times of necessity it may be justifiable to take that which belongs to another without permission (the impoverished plucks an apple from a neighbour’s tree to feed his starving child). However, transferring this exceptional moral precept to civil law equates to the licensing of universal larceny. Every sound commentator on democracy – from Aristotle to de Tocqueville to Michael Oakeshott – says the same: as soon as the public realizes it can vote itself benefits out of the public treasury, democracy devolves into a kleptocracy and the citizenry lapses into unabashed self-interest and luxury.

End of Peroration

Of the notion that the powers of the federal government are constitutionally circumscribed and enumerated there is not a hint or whisper, not a shadow or penumbra. The Constitution is like some sort of deity to which Congress pays homage but does not obey. By a conspiracy it is understood to be nothing more than talking point, mainly useful as an administrative and organizational guide.

Congress legislates what it does not understand. At least that's what I was told by a happy young lobbyist. She further informed me that it's the lobbyist's job to educate the Congressman as to what side of a particular issue it's in his best interest to be on. Of course, the lobbyist plays Little John to the Congressman's Robin Hood. His purpose is to secure a share of the loot for his client. The lobbyist's "one-page-leave-behind" and intense persuasive speeches can be summed up in one word: "Gimme!!"

Congress is not a think tank. Legislation is the means to redistribute the taxpayer's dollars, and is composed of equal parts compromise and venality. Laws are the raw material out of which thousands of bureaucrats build enormous structures of rules, regulations, and controls each of which has the force of law, and which you are expected to know and obey. The last time I looked, the Code of Federal Regulations was comprised of over 140,000 pages.

I have no intention of being fair, but if forced to, I would admit that in their own obtuse way our representatives have what they think are their constituents' best interests at heart. They seem to be capable men and women and are generally slick, articulate and intelligent. But it's clear that their knowledge of issues is broad but extremely shallow. Details, procedural and substantive, are taken care of by scores of eager staffers. These hard-working young folks are the ones who sleep in the offices, gather and synthesize information, negotiate compromises, write position papers, set the member's schedule and whisper in his ear. In the district offices at home, proliferating like donut shops in New England, they provide all sorts of constituent services (that is, they are taxpayer-funded campaign workers, fixing problems caused by their bosses in Washington). It looks to me a lousy job. The main compensation must be "experience on the Hill" and proximity to the levers of power.

Votes are the currency of Congress, which members barter, trade, and sell like demented brokers, personal integrity be damned. This trading of what should be hard convictions is the Congressional national pastime. Shortly before resigning his seat to fight in the Mexican War, Representative Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was asked by a colleague to vote for another measure so as to obtain a reciprocal vote for his own. This is what he had to say:

"Sir, I make no terms, I accept no compromises. If when I ask for an appropriation, the object shall be shown to be proper and the expenditure constitutional, I defy the gentleman, for his conscience' sake, to vote against it. If it should appear to him otherwise, then I expect his opposition, and only ask that it be directly, fairly and openly exerted. The case shall be presented on its single merit; on that I wish to stand or fall."

Davis' sentiments – indeed, his language – are manifestly incomprehensible to the congressman of today, with the noble exception of Rep Paul of Texas.

Finally, while riding Amtrak home, I mused on what power and prosperity had wrought. Then it came to me, a fact so plain that it is simply not seen: our representatives do not have, and desperately require, philosophy. Without it, they can’t be anything more than political hacks. For the just exercise of power they should be conversant with intellects that are exalted and measured; they must take time to ponder the thoughts of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Montesquieu. And simply to orient themselves in history they need to make the acquaintance of Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, and Christopher Dawson. Our present malaise consists of good intentions uninformed by wisdom, historical imagination, and intellectual modesty. As the scenery flew by my fervent and spontaneous prayer for all of them was that they may learn to treasure virtue above all, and draw deep into their souls the words of Tacitus: "The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws."

May 28, 2007