This is Why Normal People Hate Politics

But is he “the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life”? https://t.co/eJI1UVFDM2

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 19, 2023

Well, there is more than one reason for that, of course. But exactly that cringey fawning beyond-embarrassment-and-maybe-even-self-awareness tone of puppy-love for a politician is alone enough to make regular people hate politics.

What does it take to make a man debase himself like that? What could possibly be in it for him that would outweigh the contempt he must feel for himself? 

Potomac Fever is a disease that strikes not just presidential candidates but also the long, long, trail of moochers and sycophants that follow in their wake. That is just sad. 

  

If 1967 Was the Summer of Love, 1968 Was the Summer of Fire and Tear Gas

Federal troops in the Federal enclave of Washington DC, 1968

It was 52 years ago that federal troops, 11,000 of them, were used to restore order to Washington DC, after four days of rioting and arson had destroyed large parts of the city. They brought order with dispatch (note the - sheathed - bayonets on those rifles) and most of the public was glad to see it done. Most people in any kind of position of power back then, including those who ran the news media, were World War II veterans or at least were shaped by the experience of WWII, and had a whole different scale by which they measured harshness. Any crowd control measure short of shooting was easily accepted, and shooting was always an option.

I was a little kid at the time but I well remember the atmosphere. The first time I smelled tear gas was in the streets around National Airport, and I saw troops manning an M-60 machine gun at an intersection near the Capitol.

A dozen or so cities had riots that year that were at least as damaging as those in DC. One immediate political impact of that was to make some Police Chiefs run for office, such as those in Los Angeles and Philadelphia who became their city's next Mayor.

There's a lesson there. Keep your eye on the benevolent associations and collective bargaining structures of New York City's Police and Fire Departments, which could turn into very large and extremely effective political organizations overnight. Why should they not run someone against Mayor De Blasio?

One other lesson: the 1968 Democratic Party Convention turned into a shambles and its nominee, Vice President Humphrey, lost to a law'n'order Republican. Republicans went on to win four of the next five Presidential elections.

Who knows? Maybe the voters across America, and especially in the swing states, are taking the side of Antifa as they watch all the violence, but I kind of doubt it. We'll find out soon enough.

We're Number Three!

Washington DC has been named one of the rudest cities in America, ranked according to a new Business Insider survey.

New York City takes the top spot - no surprise there - and Washington DC comes in third, behind Los Angeles and ahead of Chicago.

The Seat of Government has often been in the #3 spot (see this WaPo story from 2012), and I wonder why. Is DC really all that much ruder than most other cities? Probably it's the political animus that most Americans feel toward one or the other party in power than colors their impressions.

Come now. Can't we disagree without being disagreeable?

Let's Return the District of Columbia to Maryland

One of the boundary stones marking the District of Columbia

President Obama will make a symbolic gesture of support for the notion of statehood for the District of Columbia by putting the equivalent of a bumper sticker on his Presidential limo at next Monday's inauguration. Because, you know, the slogan "taxation without representation" will motivate Americans everywhere to rise up and demand the creation of a state of New Columbia, naturally.

Let me be blunt: the proposal to make the District the 51st state is as ridiculous and transparently self-interested a political project as has ever been launched in Washington. Its boosters are cynically preying on local voters by appealing to "fairness" and "voting rights" when all they really want is two new Democratic U.S. Senators. Fairness and voting rights could be achieved by other means, like giving DC back to Maryland except for the small core of the city that contains federal office buildings. That's something that might actually be politically possible, but the local politicians calling for statehood never mention that option. I wonder why not?

To review a little history, in 1790 the Congress carved a ten square-mile district out of parts of Virginia and Maryland for the purpose of housing federal government functions in a jurisdiction entirely under federal control. Fun fact: residents of the District of Columbia continued to have voting rights in either Virginia or Maryland from 1790 to 1801. In 1847, the parts of DC west of the Potomac River were retroceded back to Virginia, becoming present-day Arlington Country and part of Alexandria. The reasons for retrocession were complicated, but one of them was the decision, taken decades before, to build all public buildings and infrastructure on the eastern side of the Potomac, leaving the Port of Alexandria undeveloped and unable to attract investment. Things continued unchanged until 1960 when the Twenty-Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed, which created new Electoral College positions for DC so that residents could vote in presidential elections. 

If Congress followed the Virginia retrocession example, it would only be necessary for the Maryland legislature and the residents of DC to agree in order to treat DC residents as belonging to Maryland for purposes of congressional representation. Since presumably we're all in favor of fairness and voting rights, who could oppose that? Only local politicians who want to be U.S. Senators, I guess.

Problem solved. Now take that unsightly bumper sticker off the Presidential limo.

Congressional Staffers Harrass Long-Suffering U.S. Capitol Police

This story in The Hill has one bit of surprising news - surprising to me, at least - which is that “the [U.S. House of Representatives] does not require criminal background checks to be conducted on the 8,000 staff members who work with lawmakers.” That doesn't seem wise.

The rest of the story is not exactly news. It turns out that Congressional staffers have an inflated sense of their importance. I'm shocked, shocked!

My heart goes out to the U.S. Capitol Police officers who must deal with thousands of the most self-important people in the world every day. If we paid them each a nickel for every time they heard the words “do you know who I am?” coming from some intern to the junior assistant to the deputy chief of the minority staff of the Subcommittee on Insular Affairs Trade Preparedness Policy Funding and Railroad Pensions, I’ll bet they could all retire tomorrow.

The situation calls for a modern-day “Clubber” Williams ("there is more law at the end of a policeman’s nightstick than in a decision of the Supreme Court”) but you can’t get away with that behavior anymore, not now that there are surveillance cameras everywhere.

Not So Footloose on the Washington Mall

Just saw some bad news in the Washington Post today. Does this court decision mean that the traditional Washington's Birthday Midnight Rave on the Mall will be called off?