Newsweek’s Evan Thomas is a journalist and a beltway insider. He considers himself a cog – albeit a small one – in the machine that keeps Washington, D.C. running much the same as it has run for generations. In his column this week he recounts a meeting with a number of other such insiders where they pondered Barack Obama’s potential ability to really change the fundamental way that Washington works. The Illinois Senator speaks lovingly to his massive audiences about rejecting beltway “politics as usual” but could he really take that massive Rube Goldberg machine of Bureaucracy, pivot it ninety degrees and make it march in a new direction? Thomas notes that the same old people keep things running the same old way, and the machine may not even be able to function without them.
The fact is that Washington is largely dominated by people, some of them very smart, who get well paid to represent the status quo and fairly narrow interests. These people are not by any means wicked or unjust or venal…
But I am sure that if you took a poll and asked them whether Obama could really change Washington-could really close loopholes on energy companies and raise taxes on the rich, reform the health-care system and significantly scale back the ill effects of global warming, substantially improve public schools or get us out of Iraq anytime soon–the answer would have been no, probably not.
As the author notes, going back to the seventies, on the rare occasions when the Democrats get their hands on the reigns of power they think they can pull off such a transformation. The results seem to follow a pattern. Jimmy Carter attempted to push against that sysiphusean stone of beltway business as usual by bringing in his gang of “The Georgians” and the outcome was not pretty. Unlike so many of my friends on the Right, I do not demonize Jimmy Carter. I believe he was a gentle, noble soul with lofty principles and admirable goals. But the fact remains that his administration was characterized by nothing so much as paralysis and inaction. He spent four years pushing against a stone wall which noticed him not one bit.
Even Bill Clinton faced the same challenges. He initially brought in a gang of good ole’ boys from Arkansas, but had Lloyd Cutler (“super lawyer and Washington wise man“) not ridden in to the rescue – showing them which levers needed to be pushed and where the grease had to be applied – he might have been another one term president.
Getting rid of the people you need to get anything done is a magic act worthy of David Copperfield. I have no doubt that Obama could “change” the way things operate in D.C. should he really put his shoulder to the wheel. But will that change only be to make the machine grind to a halt? The man makes a great speech, but when he turns Washington into a chorus of angels, each working harder than the last for the benefit of the people, I’ll be buying stock in winged bacon.