By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, June 13, 2008

It was a quintessentially Washington moment:

There, in the Ritz-Carlton ballroom Monday, stood Vernon Jordan -- the political insider, corporate networker and financial rainmaker, tall and impeccably turned out -- presiding over his last meeting as head of the Economic Club of Washington.

During his four-year tenure, Jordan had used his incomparable connections to bring the heads of J.P. Morgan Chase, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, American Express, Pfizer and General Electric, along with the secretary of the Treasury, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the president of the United States, to speak to 400 of the city's top business executives.

Now, for his final act, Jordan had reached beyond the Old Economy establishment and snared the chief executive of Google, the hottest company on the planet. Jordan had met Eric Schmidt the year before at Bilderberg, the super-secret gathering that falls between Davos and Bohemian Grove on the calendars of the global elite. By the end of that three-day meeting in Istanbul, Jordan had snared his final speaker.

Depending on your point of view, Jordan represents everything that is right or wrong with Washington.

To the cynical and conspiratorial, Jordan epitomizes the clubby and back-scratching Washington power broker, an amoral fixer who uses his web of connections to enrich himself and his clients while corrupting the political process.

But to those who know him, Jordan is a good friend and generous colleague who does well only by doing good. He follows in a long line of super-lawyers -- Harry McPherson, Clark Clifford, Bob Strauss and Lloyd Cutler -- who moved as gracefully in the government as they did in the corporate boardroom, serving as counselors valued for their wisdom and discretion.

So, which is it: Are Washington power brokers good or bad for the system? Apparently, we can't decide.

We never could in the case of Jordan, whose friendship with Bill Clinton was the source of never-ending controversy, starting with his chairmanship of the Clinton transition effort in 1992 and ending with a special prosecutor's investigation into his job-placement activities on behalf of White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Nothing unethical was ever uncovered.

And now it's happening again in a presidential campaign in which both candidates are competing to distance themselves from the permanent Washington establishment.

Republican John McCain has already fired a number of his top campaign aides because at some point they made money as Washington lobbyists. So far, the hatchet hasn't fallen on volunteers and unpaid advisers, but given the overheated rhetoric and mindless media coverage, it's only a matter of time.

On the Democratic side, Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman and former chief of staff to Walter Mondale, was forced to resign this week as head of the vice presidential vetting committee for Democrat Barack Obama in response to a variety of allegations about corporate missteps. Meanwhile, Obama's new economic adviser, Jason Furman, came under fire from labor unions that complained he consorted with known free-traders such as former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin.

There is, of course, a certain appeal to candidates who vow to change the way business is done in Washington and hold out the promise of bringing new people with fresh ideas into the process. God knows, we could use a good dose of that.

But at the same time, there are both silly and dangerous qualities to the current purge.

Over the years, I've had plenty of critical things to say about the way Johnson ran Fannie Mae and his willingness to defend excessive pay packages. He certainly wouldn't be on my list for secretary of the Treasury or chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But if Obama were looking for someone discreet and thorough, with deep experience in presidential campaigns and wide contacts in the Democratic Party who has experience vetting potential running mates, it's hard to think of a better candidate than Johnson.

The problem about this presidential campaign is that it has been too little about the candidates and their programs and too much about drawing deep meaning from whom they hire, who has given political contributions or even where the candidates go to church. It all smacks of a new kind of political correctness in which anyone with an unpopular view, a controversial past or a connection to the political or corporate establishment has to be officially renounced and banished from the political process.

In a way, we've seen this before. Jimmy Carter and Clinton both came to Washington vowing to change the way things were done. Initially, they had broad support from the public and the media. But after the inevitable stumbles, the sentiment turned, and suddenly it was conventional wisdom that they were naive and arrogant and that it was a mistake not to recruit people with more Washington experience.

The lesson from Carter and Clinton is that we need both: a mix of old hands and fresh blood, of time-tested experience and reformist zeal. It may be good politics, and good sport, to rail against the Vernon Jordans, the Jim Johnsons and others in the permanent establishment. But the dirty little secret is that it's folly to try to succeed in Washington without them.

Steven Pearlstein may be reached atpearlsteins@washpost.com.