The Beauty Pageant completely misses the point
—WCN Warning: Economic/Terrorist event possible—
Watching the Vice President Debate last night, I was struck at how (almost) pointless this campaign is, and just how out of touch these people are. There was so little of serious consequence debated last night, I wondered if anyone up there truly grasped the danger of the economic situation, or realized more and more, everyday Americans are beginning to understand it. There’s worry out here, and a rising sense of anger over it. With the exception of Sarah Palin, everyone in the race is a complete Beltway Insider. I’ve lived and worked inside the Beltway, and I know insiders when I see them.
That term, “Beltway Insider” gets bandied about a lot. The interstate system that encircles Washington, DC, running through Virginia and Maryland, is a system I avoided as much as possible. My wife and I lived first in Arlington, then Vienna, both in Virginia. Arriving in the Nation’s Capital not long after Bill Clinton’s election (don’t read anything into that – purely coincidental), I quickly realized that when you came to Washington, you were either a Virginia or a Marylander, and you figured that out pretty quickly. Most never change sides. Sure, a few people end up living in the District, but that’s usually either ghetto or uber-upscale real estate. Neither for me, thank you.
Living in Arlington was subtly different than Vienna. Vienna is a nice little community barely a mile outside the beltway on I-66. There’s a Metro station at the edge of town, but my work hours (I’m writing this at 4:29am) kept me in the car, driving across the Chain Bridge, or else around the circular off-ramp that provided a magnificent view of the Iwo Jima Memorial as I left I-66 to drive through Arlington and across the Key Bridge into Georgetown.
Living in a high-rise in Arlington was a much more urban, inside the beltway experience. I loved it, though. We lived in a building just across a small plaza from the National Science Foundation, so between that, and my work in the media, there was a lot of contact with the “insiders.” When you’re inside, it’s almost like you’re in a “cone of acceptance,” and belong there. More than once, on a coffee-break we bumped into Chelsea Clinton and stopped and talked for a couple seconds outside Starbucks with her and her surly girlfriend/Secret Service protection. The “surly” was in a high school girl way, not a Secret Service Agent way, but she still could have probably kicked my ass in a heartbeat, even though I’m 6’2″ and on the day we first met, was wearing a long Aussie-style raincoat and a “USS Ronald Reagan” baseball cap (the ship hadn’t been launched yet, but I have Navy connections that got me a “Gipper” cap not long after they laid the keel), but they showed no concern. I figured my much more friendly looking staff, one metro-sexual male and a pretty 30 year old female “softened” my look. I was a little surprised that high school girls did lunch at Starbucks (it was only the middle 90s, and I don’t think the Frappacino had made its debut yet) – her school, Sidwell Friends – was down the street, but that’s the District. Things are just a little ahead of the rest of the country, like the East Coast, but in a subtler way.
Once we moved to Vienna, we got away from a lot of the “total government” people and more into the high tech and government support industry community. Sure, there were still insiders there – our next door neighbors, still friends to this day, were an Air Force Captain (now Colonel) at the Pentagon, and his government contractor wife. But Vienna residents seemed more down to earth.
We occasionally would run into insiders outside the Beltway, but it was rare. There was a salad bar we frequented, a mile or so further outside the Beltway from where we lived, where we would see and chat with ABC (now Fox) anchor Brit Hume and his wife Kim, Washington Bureau Chief for Fox. Really nice people, and when we first met them, my quick introduction (I was a voice in DC, not a face) warmed the meeting up, and while I wouldn’t say we became close friends over infrequent salad bar meetings, it was a much more comfortable knowing each other than you would normally experience two miles further east, inside the Beltway. That’s the nature of the region. Every two or three weeks I would have my hair cut at Okyo Salon in Georgetown, almost always sitting next to, or not far from, Larry King, who was (maybe still is?) there every day having his hair blow dried (I know…but that’s what he was there for – he’d walk in, hair a mess and leave the perfectly coiffed Larry we all know and love, thanks to Bernard, who cut my hair a couple times and he’s GOOD). We never talked. And I have nothing against Larry King, in fact early in my career he was someone I learned a lot about being a talk show host from, but it was not a friendly media-people meeting. Neither was my almost daily passing on the sidewalk of Jim Leher, of PBS, even though on that walk I was usually with my very well-known radio news anchor. We were inside the Beltway, and it’s a different environment.
My point in all this, is that being inside that Interstate system, the air is different. When people pass through the invisible boundary they are changed. What goes on outside the Beltway becomes more academic, and less personal to you. And when I say “you” I can’t say that I was exempt. When you’re regularly inside, you are part of a social system that makes you want to continue to belong to it, and be true to it. I can’t explain it better than that. Moving to Vienna, outside, albeit barely outside, changed that. Again, I can best describe it this way: The air is different.
So, when I watched the VP debate last night, I was startled, more than anything, by the contrast between the accomplished insider, Joe Biden and the massively outsider Governor Sarah Palin. Gov. Palin brushed by a topic I would have pounded, that Biden, in his Democratic Primary race against Obama mercilessly hit Obama with the charge that he’s in no way ready to lead. Much like George Bush Sr. in the 1980 Republican Primary campaign, where he slammed Ronald Reagan so hard, it was shocking to see Reagan pick Bush, the elder, as his VP candidate, it shocked me when these Democratic candidates hooked up to campaign.
But that’s the way it works inside the Beltway, and I realize John McCain is an insider. But, it’s why, when I watch Sarah Palin I can’t help but think we need many, many more like her. Candidates who simply reek of outside the beltway. We need them. The same old insiders have put us in these troubling times. The interesting misconception about Washington is, that we think we need these experienced hands to run government. Not so. Staffers run the place. Sure, the higher up you go, the more partisan the players, but on the administrative level, the people that do a lot of the real work are the people who take public transportation to work, answer the phones, word process the paperwork and handle the day to day stuff of running the government. Even partisan staffers aren’t nearly as tied to their party affiliation as we tend to think. Much like Judd Nelson’s character in St. Elmo’s Fire, staffers sometimes jump parties for better job. Heck, didn’t Dick Morris do just that? Not even going to mention Joe Lieberman.
And after all, let’s face it. We are called “The United States of America” for a reason. We are an association of States, not a single centrally-run organization. Remember when the Government shut-down in the winter of 1995? I was there. Between the snowstorms that shut down the District (don’t even get me started about Marion Barry and his “80 snow plows at work,” he had maybe 2 running) and the budget crisis that sent Federal employees home for a few days, despite the worry, American still ran just fine. Better, according to some! I ferried our private industry employees to and from work through waist high snowdrifts in the District and Maryland in my Jeep Cherokee – We Virginians are just much more hardy souls 
The government employees stayed home on paid vacations.
The insiders must go. Please do not vote for them. I will hold my nose and vote for McCain, because it seems like someone involved at a high level of the McCain campaign understands this. If I thought it would make a difference, I would write-in Ron Paul. I will continue to help him in any way I can, because we truly need Dr. Paul. We need Congressional candidates of his like elected for the next Congress.
Let’s find them, and elect them.
Posted in Economy, Politics, USTags: Biden, Palin, Politics, VP Debate