Our Town
Politicians run against it. Tycoons sneer at it. But I'll stick up for Washington.

By Leonard Downie Jr.
Sunday, October 5, 2008

After 44 years in Washington, I am still impressed when I look out the window of a plane landing at Reagan National Airport. The monuments and government buildings arrayed around the Mall never fail to remind me of the beauty, majesty and purposefulness I see in the nation's capital.

So it annoys me when businessmen now wait for Washington to bail them out after long sneering at how government works here. And it particularly irks me when candidates for president rail against my adopted home town. Throughout this long campaign, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain have been trying to outdo each other in their colorful denunciations of "the mess" in Washington and their insistent vows to "change," "clean up," "fix," "reform" and "shake up" everything here. Their stump speeches and campaign ads willfully misrepresent Washington, along with each other's records and positions.

Never mind that the biggest mess in America today, the crisis in the financial markets, is largely the creation of the private sector, which has left it to Washington to clean up. Never mind that the two presidential candidates and many of their advisers are already part of the fabric of this town. And never mind that both senators have been striving for years to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Of course, the potshots are nothing new. Presidential candidates have been running against Washington since at least the time of Andrew Jackson, and it has often appeared to work. Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did it. So did Republicans Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. And then there was Richard Nixon, who filled his enemies list with people in Washington before being forced into exile in disgrace.

I know there are real problems in Washington. In my decades as an editor at this newspaper, I've put plenty of stories on the front page about waste, fraud and abuse of power, excessive partisanship and governmental gridlock, cronyism and bureaucratic incompetence, and influence-peddling and scandal. Yes, too much of all of that has gone on here, just as it has on Wall Street and Main Street, in Arizona and Illinois, and in Alaska and Delaware, not to mention my native state of Ohio.

But that is far from all that happens here. Large numbers of Washingtonians have dedicated much of their lives to real public service that does not involve the ego trips, trappings and hypocrisies of elective office.

Political appointees put their private lives on hold to cope with financial-market meltdowns, natural disasters and global crises. A senior Treasury Department official I know has been in his office from early morning until late at night every day for the past two months, along with colleagues across the government, working to contain the credit crisis. Several Middle East policy experts whom I know have devoted most of their lives -- in both Democratic and Republican administrations and even after their government service ended -- to attempt to bring peace to that region.

Some of those oft-derided Washington bureaucrats have risked their careers to do what they believed was right. We now know that top appointees in the Justice Department stood up to the Bush White House and were ready to resign en masse several years ago rather than certify that the administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program was legal. Intelligence sources who still can't be named helped this newspaper expose the CIA's "black site" interrogation centers overseas, where we now know terrorist suspects were tortured.

Federal workers throughout Washington put in long hours in virtual anonymity to combat terrorism, fight wars, enforce laws, seek cures for diseases, and administer billions and billions of dollars worth of federal programs that benefit nearly all Americans in one way or another. Among the most recent winners of Service to America Medals were civil servants who improved surgery performed on wounded soldiers, reduced infections in veterans' hospitals, uncovered fraud in defense contracting in Iraq and increased the use of renewable energy. We have published occasional stories in this newspaper about their good works, but we probably should have put them on the front page, where Washington scandals usually appear.

The dirty secret is that Washington usually works the way most Americans want it to work, even though they don't want to acknowledge it. Entitlements, farm subsidies, military spending, pork-barrel projects, research and development grants, regulations of all kinds, and even provisions of the complicated tax code all have constituencies across the country clamoring for help from Washington.

The nation's financial system is only the latest distressed sector to depend on the capital for emergency assistance. Banks, savings and loans, and homeowners have been rescued in the past. Farmers have been given decades of subsidies. Chrysler was bailed out. Amtrak was created to save passenger railroads, and the Transportation Security Administration took over airport security after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Now it is left to the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and Congress to try to save an economy in the worst crisis since the Great Depression, even as many Americans -- including McCain and Obama -- continue to blame Washington for how difficult it is to do. In fact, neither presidential candidate has provided much real leadership in working out a solution, while they have continued to jockey for political advantage during the final weeks of the campaign.

What happens in federal Washington, like its response to the financial crisis, may not often be pretty or noble. In this election year, for example, Congress was once again unable to agree on individual appropriation bills for government departments, but its members did find ways to spend taxpayers' money on politically advantageous pet projects through earmarks hidden in legislation. And the Bush administration, like the Clinton crowd before it, has been changing regulations and administrative procedures in its dying days to perpetuate its own ideological approach to governing.

These kinds of shortcomings are certainly worth debating factually and forthrightly. But little is likely to be fixed or reformed by empty rhetoric that only bashes Washington.

The other secret about our town, obscured by its distortion in political campaigns, is that the real Washington is a good place in which to live, despite the snarled traffic and a jumble of political jurisdictions. When I arrived here as a summer intern reporter in 1964, the city was something of a cultural backwater with a racially divided population, deteriorating neighborhoods and awkwardly growing suburbs. Then the riots of 1968 after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. left the region deeply troubled.

But that proved to be a turning point. Local citizens, governments and business communities committed themselves to making improvements in transportation, education, social conditions and urban development. With the ensuing population growth and economic diversification, the Washington area blossomed into a world-class city, rich in theater, music, the visual arts, museums and even cuisine. It now has one of the country's best-educated populations and largest university and think-tank communities. Its economy has grown well beyond the federal government into technology, research, services and real estate. It has become one of the nation's most diverse metropolitan areas, enriched by international organizations, embassies and sizable immigrant populations from countries around the globe.

Although worrying gaps persist in income, education and housing, as in most big cities, many Washington-area neighborhoods have become more vibrant, and old urban centers, from the District to Silver Spring to Clarendon, are on the upswing. Streets and neighborhoods that were deserted and dangerous after dark when I came here are now meccas of nightlife. Tourists crowd the city in all seasons, and Washington is still the place for Americans to come, individually or in demonstrations of thousands, to speak, assemble and petition the government for causes great and small.

As much as it has changed, Washington remains a pleasantly unique city, with its low skyline, monumental architecture, preserved history and green open spaces. Despite the serious dedication to work of so many of its residents, their lifestyle is generally unpretentious.

"Though few Washingtonians would be caught dead admitting it," wrote the late Marjorie Williams, an astute and affectionate chronicler of life here, "this place has a grace that we love and need."

For all its partisanship and jockeying for power and influence, Washington's culture -- with roots in the New Deal, World War II, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the Reagan Revolution -- is receptive to new ideas and new people. It is steadily refreshed by idealistic young professionals who come here to work and learn for low wages in the backrooms of power. And it readily assimilates waves of older hands who arrive with each new administration and member of Congress, and then stay in the public arena here.

"The truth is that many newcomers stay forever, secretly at home in the city everyone loves to hate," Williams has written. "As each administration departs, it leaves behind a layer of flotsam on the shore -- lobbyists, lawyers, public relations people -- all too smitten or too connected to ever move away. The city happily absorbs its quadrennial infusions of new blood. But Washington always does more to change its newcomers than the newcomers do to change it."

It changed me by increasing both my skepticism about power and its abuses and my appreciation of the many, many people here who sincerely try to use their access to power for the public good, regardless of ideology or personal ambition. I've found this ambiguity to be the key to understanding my adopted home town. And I've sought to portray it in my soon-to-be-published novel about Washington, "The Rules of the Game." Its characters -- journalists, politicians, lobbyists and government contractors caught up in a high-stakes mystery -- struggle with the rules for politics, journalism and relationships here and the consequences they face when they cross the line.

The American people's love-hate fascination with Washington and its institutions of power have made it a rich setting for fiction in books, film and television. The best of that entertainment has been rooted in the reality that, like it or not, the capital plays a vital role in the future of the country. After these past turbulent weeks, that role seems more important than ever.

Leonard Downie Jr. was executive editor of The Washington Post for 17 years. He is now a vice president at large of The Washington Post Co.