Candidates Get to Washington By Distancing Themselves

At the height of campaign season, there's finally something that unites Democrats and Republicans, incumbents and challengers alike: Everyone hates Washington.

Or at least "Washington."

"Washington" is the generic boogeyman in dozens of political ads this fall. It isn't so much a place as an abstraction, a state of mind. In the shorthand of political adspeak, "Washington" is the embodiment of something -- perhaps everything -- wrong with politics and government. It's malleable, suitable for framing by left, right or center.

As the ads have it, "Washington" is practically a living organism, incorporating some of the least flattering of human traits.

It's clueless, for example.

"I know what you're thinking, I know what you're feeling: Washington has no clue of what's going on in your life," Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele, the Maryland lieutenant governor, says in one of his recent TV commercials.

And heartless.

"It's time Washington takes care of our own people for a change," Ed Perlmutter, a Democratic candidate for the House in Colorado, grumbles in one campaign spot.

And spineless.

"I believe in standing up for people without fear or favor. Isn't that what they should be doing in Washington?" asks Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, a Senate candidate. In another TV ad, Klobuchar offers this prescription: "I think Washington needs some good Minnesota common sense."

Anti-Washington sentiment in political advertising might be stronger this year than historically because voters are in a pretty foul mood, says John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University. Geer, the author of "In Defense of Negativity," a book about negative political ads, points out that both President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress are scraping the bottom in public opinion surveys amid dissatisfaction over the war in Iraq, economic uncertainty and the Mark Foley scandal.

Tying an incumbent to "Washington," he said, plays into the American romance with outsiders, reformers and citizen-politicians rather than career professionals. "People want to perceive candidates as someone who is tied in with their community and cares about it, someone like Cincinnatus" -- the humble farmer who saved ancient Rome -- "or George Washington. If you're tied up with the Washington establishment, it suggests you are corrupted by power."