Washington, D.C. is the capital of the world's leading country. It is a place of decision. It is where the nation's policymakers come together. The welfare of distant places, the destiny of peoples and regions, is often decided in Washington. War and peace is debated there. Policies touching on economic problems are formulated there. So the question should be asked: What is the character of the policymakers who gather in Washington?
In the year of 9/11, the memoirs of the late Meg Greenfield were published. She was the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning Editorial Page editor. Her memoir was about political Washington. Whether you are liberal or conservative, whether you like the Washington Post or not, Greenfield's depiction of our nation's capital is worth reading.
The first page of the book contains a quote from William Blake: "Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something Else besides Human life."
In so short a space as a column, it would be impossible to list all the insights of Greenfield's brilliant book. There is one insight that stands out, in my mind, because of something a former intelligence official once told me about the people in government he went to school with.
"You may take it as a rule of thumb that the children who came to Washington are not the ones who put the cat in the dryer, but the ones who tattled," Greenfield wrote. She claimed that the "goody two-shoes" child, now grown to adulthood, predominates in Washington politics. According to Greenfield, "there is a method of relating to authority and achieving success that the good child repeats over and over again in his or her ascent to office and consolidation of authority once there."
What we learn from Greenfield is that the "good child" is not entirely genuine. After all, a child might learn to act in a way that pleases adults. But is that real? Could it be that politicians act in ways calculated to please the public? And if we set their act aside, what lies beneath? What is their real substance?
As Greenfield points out, the games played in Washington are similar to those played in high school. The lessons learned by the young climber remain true for the mature climber. But an apparently inexhaustible desire to honor father and mother (or to serve the public) sometimes flies in the face of "evidence that these perceived Eagle Scouts and mother's little helpers of public office are, in their offstage behavior, not necessarily like the earnest ... son and daughter figures they have come to personify."
Political Washington, therefore, has two faces. Greenfield calls this the "two-track persona, which is partly learned and partly instinctive in politicians...." A game of deception and false presentation, employed from childhood, is the formula for a successful politician. But is this the right formula for a nation at war with terrorists?
I recently interviewed John Carmen, a man who has worked in the White House as a Secret Service official. Having 25-years of experience in law enforcement, including time spent in the San Diego Police Department, U.S. Mint Police and U.S. Customs, Carmen is uniquely qualified to comment on the security regime set up in this country since 9/11. What he told me was unsettling. Carmen suggested that the politicians in Washington were not serious about the country's vulnerability to terrorist assault. "Our government is incompetent," he said.
Last year I spoke with a military expert and paid consultant in security matters. I asked him about the country's security. He replied, "Terrible, just terrible. This country is wide open to a massive terrorist assault." It wasn't that the U.S. government had done nothing. What had been done (i.e., the setting up of the Department of Homeland Security) was more presentational than effective.
Could it be that the description of Washington offered by Meg Greenfield is accurate? Have we acquired, in this country, a political (and perhaps a business) leadership that emphasizes appearances over reality?
I cannot help thinking of what Christopher Lasch wrote about the decline of loyalty and authenticity in America. In a culture that emphasizes image over substance, loyalty can be simulated. William Shakespeare wrote about this in King Lear. The simulated loyalty of Lear's wicked children was more pleasing than the genuine loyalty of the loving daughter. In this tragedy, the consequences of preferring false loyalty to true loyalty are devastating. For those familiar with Shakespeare's play, the descent into darkness of Lear's kingdom is headlong. Suddenly, all human relationships begin to disintegrate. From the moment that the false is accepted as true, and the true is accepted as false, society comes undone. It is not King Lear alone who becomes senile. The entire country becomes so.
In light of this, consider the story of a former U.S. intelligence official. He had been to his college reunion. The college in question was a prestigious school whose graduates went on to successful careers in government. During the reunion he was chatting with his former classmates. One by one, they joked about cheating in school. At first he thought it was only a few of them that had broken the rules. As the conversation grew, one classmate after another admitted to cheating. He was doubly shocked because his associates found these past transgressions rather amusing. But he wasn't amused. He was frightened. These clever people, who were supposedly so well educated, so knowledgeable, had been faking it. And now the country depended on them. To be trusted with government work it was only necessary to possess the right credential with the right grade point average. Like King Lear, the society didn't know how to recognize authenticity.
As we watch the war on terror unfold, we ought to ask ourselves whether we are hearing the truth from government officials. We ought to ask, as well, whether we are good enough in ourselves to discern true from false.
