WORDS.
"...rather than being on a collision course, these two Washington have become curiously symbiotic. The Tea Party makes sure there’s no shortage of political ranting to fill the cable channels. Young congressional staffers, meanwhile, see profitable futures at lobbying firms after a few years on government salaries. By a magical process of acculturation, Washington transforms true believers into members of the stay-and-get-rich club. One-half of former senators, and nearly as large a share of former House members, stay on as lobbyists after leaving office.
What drives this process, to which both parties are subject, is the dazzling amount of money to be made in the neighborhood of politics if you don’t work for the government. The biggest change in Washington over the past 30 years is that social status there used to depend more on proximity to power than upon wealth. This wasn’t necessarily a superior value system, but it did create a distinctive culture in which the city’s richest people weren’t treated as its most important people. Now Washington is America’s wealthiest city and has same value system as every other.
Leibovich and Draper offer little by way of ideas how to fix the metropolis they depict so damningly. It’s not clear there is any way to fix it. Official Washington’s problem is primarily structural: State-level gerrymandering produces 30-sided congressional districts that favor extremists over moderates. Unofficial Washington’s problem is ethical: An older conception of public service has given way to the pursuit of wealth and personal advantage. The result is a double knot of dysfunction that won’t be untangled anytime soon."
SLATE: The Two Washingtons
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