Abstract
National politics permeates Washington. It can be seen and felt in many ways. Perhaps the most obvious way it manifests itself is in the city’s reputation: Americans associate Washington with political power to such an extent that its very name is often used as short-hand to describe the entire national government. As a consequence, the capital’s image, and its ability to draw or repel outsiders, has long been affected by citizens’ views of political affairs and power.
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Notes
For more on this “Lockean liberal” tradition, see Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1955).
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, volume one, J. P. Mayer edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 278; Kenneth R. Bowling, “From ‘Federal Town’ to ‘National Capital’: Ulysses S. Grant and the Reconstruction of Washington, D.C.,” Washington History 14, no.1 (Spring/ Summer 2002): 10–14; Young, The Washington Community, chapter 3.
Abbott, Political Terrain, 128; Google Ngram Viewer, search term inside the Beltway, accessed September 11, 2011. On American’s suspicion of cities, see Dennis R. Judd and Todd Swanstrom, City Politics: The Political Economy of Urban America, fifth edition (New York: Pearson/ Longman, 2006), 6–7.
See, e.g., Richard F. Fenno, Jr., Home Style: House Members in Their Districts (New York: HarperCollins Publishing, 1978), 97.
Henry Adams, Democracy (New York: Harmony Books, 1981 [1880]), 9–10.
Morris Fiorina, Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment, revised edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989);
Andrew King, “The Vulnerable American Politician,” British Journal of Political Science 27 (1997): 1–22;
David Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).
In 2006, for instance, Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), under the influence of prescription drugs, crashed his car near the Capitol but was merely escorted home by Capitol police officers. For more examples from D.C.’s history, see Jon Katz, “2 Students Say Albert Was ‘Drunk,’” Washington Post, September 13, 1972, and Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen, “Boiled Bosoms” in Katharine Graham, Katharine Grahams Washington, edited by Katharine Graham (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), 205–208.
Marc Fisher, “Chevy Chase, 1916: For Everyman, a New Lot in Life,” Washington Post, February 15, 1999; Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 123. Others, such as local banker Charles Glover, were also instrumental in the creation of the park. Many were motivated by altruistic considerations, including expanding urban recreation space and water supplies. See William B. Bushong, “Glenn Brown and the Planning of the Rock Creek Valley,” Washington History 14, no. 1 (2002): 56–71
and Barry Mackintosh, Rock Creek Park: An Administrative History (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1985), 2–15. Stewart also used advance knowledge about planned city development in the early 1870s to profit from investments in soon-to-be-developed areas in western Washington.
See Kathryn Allamong Jacob, “‘Like Moths to a Candle’: The Nouveaux Riches Flock to Washington, 1870–1900” in Urban Odyssey: A Multicultural History of Washington, D. C., ed. Francine Curro Cary. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 83–84. Another legislator who invested heavily in Washington’s growth was Senator John Sherman of Ohio, who helped create LeDroit Park, an early Washington suburb, and the Columbia Heights neighborhood; he also introduced the bill in the Senate that would eventually create Rock Creek Park.
See Kathryn Allamong Jacob, Capital Elites: High Society in Washington, D.C. after the Civil War (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 163–164; Mackintosh, Rock Creek Park.
Charles Wesley Harris, Congress and the Governance of the Nations Capital: The Conflict of Federal and Local Interests (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1995), 152; Sue Anne Pressley Montes, “Report Adds to Debate over Putting Meters in D.C. Cabs,” Washington Post, July 28, 2007; Schrag, The Great Society Subway, 314. This congressional ban on meters dated back at least to the early 1930s; see, for example, “A 20-Cent Attitude,” Washington Post, July 7, 1935, and “Cab Meters Rule Upheld in Reply to House Attack,” Washington Post, January 7, 1932. Congress’s power over the District of Columbia is discussed in more detail in chapter 7.
Some national politicians (both acting and retired) and their spouses have tried to improve the city for generally unselfish reasons. For example, Amos Kendall, former postmaster general under Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, successfully lobbied Congress to fund the establishment of the city’s famous school for the deaf, Gallaudet University (Green, Washington, vol. 1, 219–220). Dolley Madison was another such early figure; see Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2006), 324–325. More recently, First Lady Michelle Obama participated in volunteer work around the city, including food kitchens, a community health center, and Toys for Tots (Krissah Thompson, “Michelle Obama’s Washington,” Washington Post, September 26, 2013).
Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, 4th edition (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2006);
Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: Free Press, 1991), 11;
Matthew Soberg Shugart and John M. Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
Hedrick Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 13–14, quote p. 14; see also Matt Bai, “The Insiders,” New York Times Magazine, June 7, 2009.
For skeptical views of the belief that the mandate exists, see Robert A. Dahl, “The Myth of the Presidential Mandate,” Political Science Quarterly 105 (1990): 3, 355–372.
The bully pulpit tends to work far less well than people assume; see George C. Edwards III, On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 124, 143;
H. L. Mencken, On Politics, ed. Malcolm Moore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 249. It also echoes the “court-in-motion” of Moroccan kings who, by travelling throughout their kingdom, demonstrated their authority to more distant realms (Geertz, Local Knowledge, 136–138).
David E. Lewis, The Politics of Presidential Appointments (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 22–23; Open Secrets, “Lobbying Database,” 2011, http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/index.php;
Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, and Michael J. Malbin, Vital Statistics on Congress 2008 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press., 2008), 110;
Pew Research Center, “The New Washington Press Corps,” 2009, http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/numbers; White House, 2011 Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff, http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/annual-records/2011. Another 300,000 people work for the executive branch in some capacity in the greater Washington metropolitan area, and an estimated 20,000 people intern in Washington every summer. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, “Table 2—Comparison of Total Civilian Employment of the Federal Government by Branch, Agency, and Area as of August 2009 and September 2009,” September 2009, http://www.opm.gov/feddata/html/2009/September/table2.asp; Ross Perlin, “Five Myths about … Interns,” Washington Post, May 20, 2011.
Ralph Linton, The Study of Man: An Introduction (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1936), 115. Wrote one journalist in 1884, Washington’s society
Ralph Linton, The Study of Man: An Introduction (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1936), 115. Wrote one journalist in 1884, Washington’s society “is not founded on wealth … [but] public station, temporarily conferred, whether directly or indirectly.” Frank Oppel and Tony Meisel, eds., Washington, D.C.: A Turn-of-the-Century Treasury (Secausus, NJ: Castle, 1987), 129.
But power is not the only basis for ranking in Washington society. For example, the city’s national press corps ranked its members based on the length of their membership in their exclusive Gridiron Club (Joseph Alsop, “Dining-Out Washington,” in Graham, Katharine Grahams Washington, 145). See also Mark Leibovich, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus Plenty of Valet Parking!—In America’s Gilded Capital (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2013), 23.
Graham, Katharine Grahams Washington, 451; Oppel and Meisel, Washington, D.C., 432. On changes in the rank of diplomats relative to Washington politicians over time, see Hope Ridings Miller, Embassy Row: The Life & Times of Diplomatic Washington (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), chapter 2.
Meg Greenfield, Washington (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001), 23; Smith, The Power Game, 97–101;
Olive Ewing Clapper, Washington Tapestry (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), 165–167, quote p. 167. One popular guidebook from 1880s Washington identified over two dozen ranks among the city’s officials alone;
Frank G. Carpenter, Carp’s Washington (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), 95. In 1960, the influential socialite Perle Mesta offered a more precise listing of rankings (Perle Mesta, “Bigwigs, Littlewigs, and No Wigs at All,” in Graham, Katharine Grahams Washington, 167–168).
Graham, Katharine Grahams Washington, 687; Leibovich, This Town, 31; Talcott Parsons, The Social System (New York: The Free Press, 1951), chapter 9; “Lapel Pins to Identify Congressmen,” Youngstown Vindicator, May 19, 1975; “Washington Wire,” Wall Street Journal, May 16, 1975.
Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 5–6, 66, 87; Allgor, A Perfect Union, quotes pp. 191, 245;
Fredrika J. Teute, “Roman Matron on the Banks of the Tiber River,” in A Republic For the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic, ed. Donald R. Kennon (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1999); Young, The Washington Community, chapter 4.
Allgor, Parlor Politics, 120–124; Cynthia D. Earman, “Remembering the Ladies: Women, Etiquette, and Diversions in Washington City, 1800–1814,” Washington History 12, no. 1 (Spring/ Summer 2000): 105–106. Formal dinners have remained an important activity for Washington elite, while social calls lasted as a tradition until roughly the 1930s, when “almost all of the attendant rigors of strict society had fallen by the wayside.” Graham, Katharine Grahams Washington, 113.
Jacob, Capital Elites, 10. Jacqueline M. Moore, Leading the Race: The Transformation of the Black Elite in the Nation’s Capital, 1880–1920 (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 52–53;
Burt Solomon, The Washington Century: Three Families and the Shaping of the Nation’s Capital (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 42;
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: The Mac-Millan Company, 1899), 1, 75. For more, see chapter 8. For more on Cafritz, see Solomon, The Washington Century; the letter is recounted on p. 109.
Trent Lott, Herding Cats: A Life in Politics (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 250; see also Dan Zak, “Party Politics on Tap,” Washington Post, June 6, 2011.
; Henri Tajfel and John Turner have been credited with introducing and developing the idea that social identity is central to understanding the formation of, and self-identification with, social groups, as well as the ability to contrast one’s group with that of others. See, for example, Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, “The Social Identity Theory of Inter-Group Behavior,” in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, eds. Stephen Worchel and William G. Austin (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1986)
and Turner A. et al., Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self Categorization Theory (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
Greenfield, Washington; Katharine Graham, Personal History (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 616; Smith, The Power Game, chapter 6.
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© 2014 Matthew N. Green, Julie Yarwood, Laura Daughtery, Maria Mazzenga
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Green, M.N., Yarwood, J., Daughtery, L., Mazzenga, M. (2014). Institutions, Power, and Political Community in Washington. In: Washington 101. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137426246_5
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