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Illustration by Matt McCann
I
The dining experience is beside the point. The Monocle is a true Washington Establishment for The Washington Establishment; a clubhouse for political frenemies to wine and dine each other in the pursuit of that rare animal: consensus. As meals perform intestinal gymnastics, you can cajole your distracted invitee into supporting that House appropriations bill rider that gives children the right to carry grenades to school, or maybe, persuade an advocate that it’s politically expedient for them to join your campaign to outsource the Department of Justice’s legal work to India. No one cares about the cost--if you’re invited for lunch there, you’re probably not paying, as the lobbyist who invited you has been kind enough to foot the bill.
When I first enter this shrine to legislative advocacy, under the wing of a seasoned lobbyist, I feel decidedly like a newly arrived Soviet émigré seeing the insides of a Costco for the first time. So this is what the promised land looks like! Detailed in rich mahogany, leather, and cut-glass, it is clearly the inspiration for the Beltway hangout of the Ministers of Death (representing the alcohol, tobacco, and firearm lobbies) in the movie Thank You For Smoking. Fittingly, I am here on the invitation of a gun-rights lobbyist.
Part of an ACLU lobbyist delegation, I am joining a lunch convened by the Gun Owners of America (GOA) for staffers from various Republican Congressional offices. The GOA is obviously a gun rights organization--the kind that writes copy for militia groups, believes that the black helicoptered shock troops of the New World Order are coming to get you any day now, and dismisses the NRA as a bunch of sell-out patsies (Moses included). The staffers--in their mid-twenties to early thirties—represent various ultra-conservative Republican Congressmen. Actual members of Congress rarely show up to lobby meetings and lunches (there are just so many of them), and often send staffers in their stead. The prospect of spending a lunch hour with a delegation of pinko commies allied with paramilitary supporters for a common cause probably does not encourage a Senator’s attendance either.
We are here because the GOA and the ACLU have agreed to oppose potential legislation affecting both guns and privacy. The GOA is concerned with the former; the ACLU, the latter. In Washington DC, strange bedfellows happen all the time, and it’s not uncommon to find two groups representing completely opposing interests agreeing on something for completely different reasons. Generally speaking, supporters of the GOA would likely chase a card-carrying member of the ACLU off their lawn with a rocket-propelled grenade. However, in DC, we can all make peace and find common ground over Salisbury steak and mediocre wine!
The ACLU has an audience with these Congressional offices solely due to the GOA’s efforts, which itself is apparently important enough to warrant the attendance of more senior staffers. The less important the interest group, the younger and more middling the staffer sent as a representative. You know that you’re not on a Representative’s or Senator’s priority list if you’re being sent to a meeting with a 21-year-old legislative assistant, but that is better than the alternative, which is the 19 year old legislative intern who simply hangs up on you when you call them on your organization’s behalf. Making lobby calls representing the ACLU, I get my fair share of dial tones.
II
DC is a city built by slaves, and kept running by their contemporary counterparts—unpaid interns and barely-paid staffers. Virtually all in their twenties and thirties, guided by twin the stars of idealism (some of the time) and ambition (all of the time), they contribute unpaid or barely-paid labor in hopes of the possibility of access to power... or at least invites to all-you-can eat fundraising buffets, and brown-bag talks at the World Bank. You can find them staring hungrily at NGO reception tables; or skulking about the Capitol’s corridors in off-the-rack Ann Taylor and Brooks Brothers suits, bright-eyed from sugary Starbucks highs.
Camouflaging their apparent youth through neutral tones, sensible shoes, misshapen suits, and power ties in differing iterations of red and blue, DC men and women give exception to otherwise youth-obsessed Americans—they routinely try to pass as 15 years older than their actual age. The guys dress like Alex P. Keaton, if Alex P. Keaton was selling life insurance in rural Michigan, and I swear that some of them must buy grey hair in a box to provide instant gravitas. The women look members of my high school’s PTA, striding purposefully through the streets in tweed Chanel knock-off jackets or grey pantsuits, topped off with cheap pearls.
These individuals, often only a few years out of college, act as gatekeepers and surrogate brains for the Congressperson. They do much of the legwork for political decision-making, oftentimes making those decisions themselves. Members of Congress, often overwhelmed by campaigns, fundraising, constituent visits, and the occasional scandal, depend heavily on staffers for everything from legislative analysis, to drafting a piece of legislation, to reading the damn piece of legislation to begin with.
On my way to a briefing on the Hill, a seasoned advocate points out a Congressman’s office as we walk by.
“That one has his staffers draw up a checklist of what he needs to vote for and against—he never reads the bill.” Later on, I overhear a frustrated lobbyist, having spent the past 20 minutes deconstructing an issue to someone maybe a third of his age, snap to a colleague: “Goddamn it, I do not want to have to always explain my position to yet another 23-year-old staffer.”
During the Bush Administration, these aspirant political operatives often held court during their off hours in Georgetown—an uptight enclave in an already uptight city. I would find them at faux Irish pubs and preppy bars like Smith Point, anointed the It-place to be by DC’s answer to the Hilton sisters--the Bush twins. On any given night, any one of these interchangeable bars was packed 5 deep with girls in Lily Pulitzer dresses toting Longchamp bags, sizing up male counterparts decked out in uniforms of khaki and pressed pastel polos; their side-parted hair covered by white baseball caps. Headbands were the preferred hair accessory for women, which I think in DC shared a similar connotation to the mullet hairstyle: business in the front, party in the back.
Both would try to impress each other by loudly spouting the names of colleges attended and Congressional offices worked for, while getting soused on a steady stream of cranberry-vodkas and pitchers of Coors Light. The night might end in a drunken hook-up at someone’s group house in Burleith, with the aftermath consisting of panicked text messages to long-distance significant others the next day, and wall-eyed stares in the background of a Senate committee hearing, broadcast live on C-Span 3.
III
Influence-peddling is an ancient tradition—sharing the same hallowed Roman roots as aqueducts, toga parties, and eating in bed. It’s not surprising, then, that lobbying is as much a part of the fabric of DC life as is working as a comptroller in a building conceived as a Brutalist interpretation of the Pantheon.
In Ancient Rome, amicitia—which means “friendship"—encompassed a variety of relationships, such as those between childhood playmates, military buddies, acquaintances within a social circle, or between individuals who had shared interests and goals. In De Amicitia, Cicero, who was a big talker in his day, opined that the most ideal form of amicitia was the friendship between good people: individuals dogged in their pursuit of virtue. Friends of this variety did not necessarily pursue the same material goals, have the same social rank, or even share the same beliefs; but, nonetheless, they expected from each other only good company and words, admiring each other on the basis of character.
Amicitia was also a euphemism for patron/client relationships, where a sense of mutual obligation and back-scratching incentives acted as the bedrock for social stability. The patron—a better-connected, older, or wealthier person of higher status—would take on a number of clients, who due to their station in life did not have as much access to resources. By taking on a client, said patron would obligate him or herself to providing advice, money, legal representation, and, most importantly, would look out for the client’s business and political interests by providing connections and access.
Everyone was a client of someone at some point--extending all the way from the lowliest farmer to the Consul, and later, Emperor. The client would promise to support the patron in his or her endeavors—campaigning for and providing needed votes when the patron ran for political office, attending ceremonies and standing with the patron at a temple that the patron had recently built, or following the patron into the battlefield. The patron/client system (theoretically) was a win-win situation for everyone—clients got access to and representation in the corridors of power; patrons received legitimacy, prestige, and a guaranteed base of support.
In essence, this served as a primitive type of lobbying system. Much in the same way that religious groups, gun clubs, and industry associations promise their loyalty and endorsement (and their own war chests) in exchange for tax breaks, concessions, and the like in contemporary politics; Roman clients promised loyalty and outspoken political and military support to whomever best represented their interests. Of course, the major difference between Rome and DC is that with all the money flooding from lobbying groups into political campaigns, it can be hard to tell who is the patron and who is the client.
IV
At the Monocle, I am ruing my decision in choosing clothing. It’s a weekday in the suffocating height of the DC summer, and I am fully clad in a dark skirt suit and long-sleeved, button-down top. I feel like I’ve overcompensated in my camouflage for this meeting, as I am wearing both pearls and a headband. This disguise does nothing to alleviate the discomfort I feel as I sit down amongst the Congressional staffers. They eye me warily as I take a seat across from a doughy-faced guy with intense little eyes and a standard Young Republican side-part hair cut. Man, I am so glad that I wore my headband, I think to myself.
The man, who I’ll call Michael, is from a South Carolinean congressman’s office. I estimate that we’re in the same age group, mid to late twenties. We engage in the requisite small talk about whether to order Salisbury steak or blue cheese-stuffed steak, and ask polite questions about our job roles and policy interests.
“So, what are the working on?”
“Ah well, privacy, some national security,” I reply vaguely. Ruh-roh, I think I just used a trigger word. Eyes flash.
“You know, they put me on the No-Fly list, and I’ve been trying to get off, and it’s impossible.”
Oooh, I think, maybe we can find common cause about profiling and “random” security checks that aren’t random at all, since he’s apparently flagged due to having a common Irish name that maybe corresponds to some suspected IRA cadre.
“It’s a plot by the Democrats,” he continues. How did this get so partisan so quickly, and how is this a Democratic plot? Aren’t we seven years into the Bush administration? I am intrigued as to how he came to this conclusion.
“Really? What makes you think that?” I ask, as I chew on a tough piece of steak—which kind of reminds me of the Hungry Man meals that my stoner college roommate loved to eat. Amateur mistake, as this is the cue for Michael to launch into his harangue. It is a long conspiracy theory about how the Democrats intentionally have placed innocent individuals such as himself on the No-Fly list, and then made it a Byzantine process to get the names off, all on behalf of their friends and allies, the trial lawyers. In so doing, he reasons, innocents would be forced to pay nefarious trial lawyers to assist them in being taken off the list, thus fattening their coffers---a pat on the back for their long-standing political support.
Michael has explained his theory in such an impassioned manner that I’m almost compelled to believe it myself. Sure, the U.S. government has engaged in some seriously crazy shit (see e.g. MKULTRA, and everything relating to getting rid of Fidel Castro). I consider the feasibility of this scheme for a moment. How much would trial lawyers potentially make with this sort of policy? Based on a rudimentary cost-benefit analysis, this seems to be a bit too complicated of a scheme to be worth the effort. For one, creating a list of false names of known innocents so that trial lawyers could make a buck off it seems the least lucrative way to reward a loyal constitutent. Trial lawyers must make more money from say, defective swimming pool filter litigation, or Cracker Jack prize choking, than from No-fly list corrections. Secondly, I would assume that Democratic lawmakers had to have a better and less convoluted way to reward loyal constituents; such as providing federal subsidies for unnecessary cash crops, or easing asset transfers to Caribbean accounts.
Finally, if we are to follow Occam’s Razor, maybe this dude just had the misfortune to have the same name as a suspected IRA cadre. I express my reservations.
“Well, I think that sounds kind of a pretty complicated scheme, just so that Democrats get support from the trial lawyers,” Michael glares at me with a look of disgust and disbelief, as if I had just told him that baby Jesus was actually a Cadbury Cream Egg swaddled in linens, sent back in time to a Bethlehem manger as publicity stunt. I think he would have taken it better if I had just looked him straight in the eye and exclaimed, Oh I totally believe it, son—I mean, trust me on this--9/11 was an inside job!
Since we obviously don’t see eye-to-eye on this issue, we move on to other topics. Most of the staffers are from the South—I grew up, became friends with and went to school with 125% of this demographic, so we focus on our geographic common ground. Michael talks about South Carolina, I talk about Texas and Florida, and others talk about where they’re from, sometimes bringing politics into it, sometimes now. I observe the group as whole. They are individuals whom I have virtually nothing in common with, other than our regional provenance.
However, what we do share is a belief that whatever cause we are working for is right and good, and that the other side is misguided in some way or form (and maybe trying to destroy America!). They think that I’m Communist. I think they’re crazy, and possibly borderline fascist. This partisan grandstanding can be fun, but gets old after a while. Well, hey, we’re all breaking bread because somehow we’re agreeing on something, and we can all complain about the lack of good BBQ in DC, so that’s an encouraging sign!
V
I am very late meeting my friend at a Congressional fundraiser at a townhouse near Capitol Hill. I open the door, and poke my little head through the front door. Sure enough, everyone’s gone, save for about four people in the parlor.
“Come on in, spend some time with us, we won’t bite!” an older man shouts jovially at me. Well, I have nothing better to do and I’m hungry and thirsty, so I come in and perch on an uncomfortable looking chair.
“Pour her a drink!” the man roars at a cohort. “Do you like scotch?” Weeeeee. “With ice?” Sure. “Are you old enough to drink---don’t worry, we’ll take your word for it!” Make yourself at home!” One of the women there, whom I gather is a former Congressional staffer turned lobbyist, looks at me with a degree of amusement as the man starts questioning me. He is surprisingly easy to talk to, so very different from the awkward interactions that I’ve had with apparatchik-type staffers and political consultants. He is curious and seems genuinely interested at my responses. “That’s great that you’re here---there aren’t many Asians on the Hill, and I can count all of them on one hand!” The woman nods in agreement. “She used to work for us, but now she’s gone to the dark side,” he teases, referring to her current position as a lobbyist.
“Oh come on now, Mike, I work in education,” the woman chides. “We’re old friends, he’s always like this.”
We talk amimatedly about the house he has been building back home in California, about Asian-American history, and things related and tangential to our conversation. His jovial demeanor turns unexpectedly serious for a moment as we start talking about civil rights.
“You know, I was raised in an internment camp—considered national security threat when I was just a baby. I know personally what it means to have a government do wrong to people.” He brightens up. “But that’s why we’re here, every day we keep fighting and try to do good.” An unexpectedly idealistic and positive remark from a slightly inebriated Congressman in a completely private and off-the-cuff setting, to someone who is, in no uncertain terms, an absolute nobody. That’s the first time in a while that I’ve heard those words come out of the mouth of anyone in DC who is not a windmill-charging Zoloft-eater, or a freshman in college, and I am heartened. “Looks like we should leave soon. Who’s hungry?” And off we go, a ragtag bunch, to the National Democratic Club, and I absently munch on greasy French fries set in front of me at an outside table, watching as the Congressman boisterously engages his colleagues in chatter.
At around 11:30, a loud bell rings from inside, a Bat Signal summoning members of Congress to a late night vote.
“Come to the visitors gallery and watch us vote!” But I demur. I want to (and should have, since voting procedure is old-timey and fun to watch), but there’s work tomorrow and the various carbohydrates I’ve eaten and drinks I've imbibed have lulled me into a soporific state. “Well, come on my the office any time you want and say hi, we’ll give you a tour and you can meet everyone—the door’s always open!”
VI
Election seasons come and go. New batches of bright young things, with ideals in their hearts and ambition in their eyes, enter DC with the changing political fortunes. In the Obama administration, I’ve heard that the centers of power have shifted to the more diverse, if only slightly less preppy, neighborhoods of Logan Circle and U Street. Everybody still dresses the same, except the fleece jackets now tend to be Patagonia rather than North Face; the dresses are J Crew rather than Lilly Pulitzer, and the khakis tend to veer more towards flat-fronted.
Those who are on the outs, or who are too old or too tired for this game have different options to consider. They’ve spent the past decade of their young lives carrying water for a political cause, but are still living with 6 other people in a glorified frat house/anarchist collective, with $150,000 in outstanding loans. With this in mind, they may decide to head back to their home state, go to law school (the default), use contacts to get a cushy job in New York’s financial gold mines, or maybe stay in DC and get a job with a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, a think tank, a non-profit organization---or a lobbying firm.
Many are fine with this—they got what they wanted out of the DC experience, and now are culling their contacts, using the resources of their own patrons to become patrons themselves. Dues have been paid, connections have been made, a skill set has been learned. These young politicos, now a little more seasoned, are in a position to go out and make their own way.
As they start their own spin around DC’s infamous revolving door, between private and public sector, agendas will probably get muddled (as these tend to with age, money, and what’s often called wisdom). It can get to the point where no one’s sure who is working for whom, and once that happens, then it gets very easy to simply look out for yourself—that way, at least you know who you are working for, and you won’t be set up for so much disillusionment. DC outsiders become DC insiders, or return to their home states to become a part of the local oligarchy.
Those who still remain idealistic-minded end up with the onerous task of continually trying to remember why they came to DC in the first place. They often can only stay aloft by holding tightly to dear friends. This amicitia is not the one of scheduled networking events, or backroom deals, or power lunches at overpriced restaurants on a monthly basis. It’s one based on sharing experiences, ideas, or goals (even far-fetched ones). Most importantly, it is based on enjoying each other’s company as equals and being able to respect each other’s character. This sort of amicitia is not the kind of influence-peddling that provides the most immediate returns. However, in the long run—and any old partisan or activist might tell you this--it has by far the most lasting effects.