Who will rule Potomac Man?

By Dana Milbank
Sunday, December 30, 2007

Iowans will begin the 2008 presidential voting this week. For those in the nation's capital, this means that there soon will be an answer to the all-important question:

Who will, for the next four years, rule the barbaric tribes that live along the Potomac?

In the tongue of the Piscataway Indians who first occupied these shores, the very word "Potomac" means "where the goods are brought in." To this day, the savages who live here are a breed unto themselves -- Homo politicus, or Potomac Man -- and they continue to bring in the goods in strange and sometimes scary ways.

They steal from other tribes (Jack Abramoff) and hide their treasure in iceboxes (William Jefferson). They adopt war names such as "The Hammer" (Tom DeLay), apply elaborate war paint to their faces (Katherine Harris), give blood-curdling war whoops (Howard Dean) and shave their heads and plot against each other in war rooms (James Carville). They perform frightening fertility rituals in public places (Larry Craig), exchange their services for boats, homes and jewelry (Duke Cunningham) and even engage in human sacrifice (Scooter Libby). The two perpetually warring tribes of Potomac Land -- "parties," in the local dialect -- speak a common language incomprehensible to outsiders ("I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it").

For Potomac Man, each candidate represents a different segment of the Homo politicus body politic. One is a shaman, one a heretic, one a bard, and several are bloodthirsty warriors.

For the inhabitants of Potomac Land, backing the winning candidate in the election is a matter of tribal survival: The victor will determine who brings in the goods over the next four years . . . and who gets scalped.

The Avenger

In primitive cultures, the killing of one individual would set off a cycle of retaliatory murders in which kinsmen of the latest victim would kill kinsmen of the latest perpetrator. Today, this grisly practice is continued by only a few peoples, among them the Yanomamo of Venezuela and Homo politicus.

The presidential campaign of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) can be seen as an effort to redeem the family name -- something Dodd has been trying to do since his senator-father was censured for financial impropriety 40 years ago and left Potomac Land in disgrace. On the Republican side, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is avenging his father's embarrassing collapse as a presidential candidate; George Romney, then governor of Michigan, claimed in 1967 that he had been "brainwashed" over Vietnam.

But the most prominent blood avenger in the race is Sen. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, whose feud with the Bush kin has been going on for more than 15 years. In 1992, her husband, Bill, buried President George H.W. Bush, only to have a Bush scion, George W. Bush, depose a Clinton ally as governor of Texas in 1994. The Bush revenge continued in 2000, when George W. took down Clinton's hand-picked successor, Al Gore. If Hillary Clinton defeats Bush's Republican heir in 2008 and wins reelection in 2012, the republic will have been governed for 28 years by two families -- at which point Jeb Bush can seek blood revenge.

The Deviant

On the Malaysian island of Langkawi, families often feed and shelter children who do not belong to them. Potomac Man has a similar notion of "fictive kinship," defining family not by bloodlines but by political party. This is because Homo politicus sees his own survival as dependent on the survival of his party.

So Potomac Man is surprisingly tolerant of those who deviate from his social norms -- as long as that person is a member of his political party. On the Republican side, Ron Paul would legalize prostitution and drugs and opposes the Iraq war, but his fellow partisans keep him on the stage in debates because they need his fellow libertarians to vote Republican in November. Likewise, Rep. Dennis Kucinich says he has seen a UFO -- but Democrats tolerate his deviance because they need his far-left backers.

The best example of Potomac Man's legendary tolerance is

RUDY GIULIANI, who deviates from the Republican ideal in almost every way. He supports legal abortion and gay rights, has frequently dressed as a woman and divorced his second wife in a series of press conferences. His son doesn't speak to him, and his daughter supports Democrat Barack Obama.

While shacking up with the mistress who would become his third wife, New York's mayor billed his travels to the Hamptons to the New York City Loft Board. His former business partner and police chief has been indicted on corruption charges. And yet many Republicans have embraced Giuliani. The sole reason: They see him as the best chance to defeat Clinton and thus preserve the Republican species.

The Shaman

Homo politicus attends church like members of modern Judeo-Christian cultures, but this is an affectation meant to make him blend in with outsiders. At his core, Potomac Man is idolatrous: He worships the gods of public opinion, and his sacred texts are polls. Those who can shift public opinion -- particularly those who can convert members of the rival tribe -- are believed to have magical powers.

In the 2008 race, BARACK OBAMA is the shaman. He gained his magical gifts in 2004, when he transformed himself from an unknown Illinois state senator to a phenom who won a U.S. Senate seat in a landslide. It didn't hurt that his first opponent dropped out because of a sex scandal and his second opponent didn't live in the state. But no matter: Obama had won the vote of 40 percent of Republicans, convincing Potomac Man that he had wizardly powers. Obama carried his shamanic abilities into the presidential race, performing acts that would doom mortal politicians. He was photographed frolicking barechested, love handles and all, in the Hawaii surf, and People magazine put him in a "Beach Babes" spread that also featured Catherine Zeta-Jones and Penelope Cruz. Another photo caught him breaking a major Potomac taboo: standing for the national anthem without his hand over his heart.

But when your name is Barack Hussein Obama, even strong shamanic powers have limits. As opponents whispered false claims that he is a Muslim "plant" who had studied in a madrassa, a CBS News poll found Americans slightly more likely to think he is a Muslim than a Christian.

The Storyteller

In primitive cultures, mythology and folklore often trump fact and science. Some Australian aboriginals, for example, believe the sun is a torch carried across the sky each day by a goddess who dips the torch in water at dusk, then climbs underneath the Earth at night. Potomac Man likewise relies on folklore for such important matters as warfare. Vice President Cheney, for example, led the nation to war in Iraq by spinning a series of folk tales: that Americans would be "greeted as liberators" in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had "reconstituted nuclear weapons" and that it was "pretty well confirmed" that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

In the 2008 race, the most gifted mythmaker is MITT ROMNEY. Running for the Senate in Massachusetts in 1994, he vowed to work "to establish full equality for America's gays and lesbian citizens." He proclaimed that "abortion should be safe and legal in this country." Later, as the state's governor, he called it "reasonable" to allow millions of illegal immigrants to earn legal status.

But while preparing for his run for president, Romney was determined to create the myth that he was a conservative. He declared himself antiabortion. He proclaimed his "unwavering advocacy for traditional marriage." He condemned the same immigration proposal he once defended.

These efforts landed Romney in some trouble. His new claim to be a lifelong hunter was upended by the discovery that he never had a hunting license; his campaign had to admit that he had hunted only twice, and Romney himself said he mostly fired at "small varmints." Romney now finds himself stalked occasionally by a man in a dolphin costume calling himself "Flip" Romney, carrying a sign announcing, "Just another Flip Flopper from Massachusetts."

The Berserker

In medieval Iceland, the fiercest of all Viking warriors were known as the berserkers. They prepared themselves for battle by donning animal skins, drinking the blood of bears and wolves, biting their shields and howling. Reaching a frenzy, they fought without regard for their own survival and managed to ignore the pain of even severe wounds until the battle ended. Occasionally, the berserker would kill members of his own tribe, but this was regarded as an acceptable price to pay for such combat prowess.

The berserker tradition continues in Potomac Land -- exemplified in the 2008 race by JOHN EDWARDS. When he ran for president in 2004, he presented himself as the "positive alternative" with a "positive vision" and admonished his rivals not to let the Democrats become "the party of anger." As Sen. John F. Kerry's running mate, he refused Kerry's requests to go on the attack.

This time, he's mending his ways, attacking Hillary Clinton at every opportunity as a corrupt, dishonest corporate shill. In a single speech to the Democratic National Committee, he used a form of the word "fight" 23 times. "I fought," he said. "I did not walk away from the fight. I fought. I stood my ground. I took them on. And I beat them, and I beat them, and I beat them again. I won." (In Potomac Land, even a berserker needs a thesaurus.) Edwards's finest beserker moment came when he refused to fire two campaign bloggers who had described President Bush's supporters as the "wingnut Christofascist base" and written graphically about the Virgin Mary's birth control. Edwards was clearly drinking the wolf's blood, but cooler heads prevailed, and the bloggers quit anyway.

The Cannibal and the Heretic

H omo politicus is often surprised to find that Potomac chiefs are not treated with respect by other cultures. Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson have all been powerful committee chairmen in Congress, entitled to carry a scepter-like device known as a gavel, but in the presidential race, they're fringe candidates.

Worse, the fastest-rising candidate is a stranger to the ways of Potomac Land: Republican MIKE HUCKABEE, a Baptist minister from Arkansas. Even his last name is considered frighteningly foreign by Homo politicus. "Huckabee? You've got to be kidding me!" said former Bush White House official Dan Bartlett.

Huckabee's rise to the top of the opinion polls has terrified Homo politicus and given rise to suspicions of cannibalism. He had once been a towering monster, weighing 300 pounds as governor of Arkansas. He has since shed 120 pounds because of a high-protein diet: taking bites out of the other Republican candidates. While the hungry Huckabee gobbled up rivals' supporters (he has septupled his standing in the Iowa polls), Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain -- all considered safer to the Potomac way of life -- saw their support eaten away.

The source of Huckabee's strength: a mysterious force called the "religious right." These churchgoing conservatives can swing Republican primaries, but they remain alien to Potomac Man. This explains the tragic fall of Sen. JOHN McCAIN, a famous Potomac chief who nearly became president in 2000 after beating George W. Bush in New Hampshire. But then McCain inexplicably branded the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance" with an "evil influence."

This was taboo. And though other cultures have ways to survive the violation of a taboo (if the chief of the Namosi of Fiji is going to get a haircut, for example, it's rumored that he will eat a man as a precaution), McCain found that no amount of atonement -- even seeking mercy at Falwell's Liberty University -- would erase his heresy. For defiling these sacred cows of the religious right, McCain lost what support he had among conservatives; eight years later, his presidential prospects still have not recovered.

Dana Milbank writes The Washington Post's "Washington Sketch" column. This article is based on his new book, "Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government."