What's wrong with Washington and how to fix it

My wife purchased and I read (she is immersed in a novel and has not gotten around to it yet) the book by two former Senate majority leaders, Tom Daschle (D) and Trent Lott (R), "Crisis Point." I had heard about the book on NPR's "Diane Rehm Show" and in published reviews. 

Lott and Daschle lay out what's wrong with Washington, and there's plenty wrong. There is also plenty of blame to go around. Both parties over years of increasingly partisan politics have contributed to an atmosphere of obstruction, persecution, non-stop campaigning and other ills that have led to an inability to get anything substantive accomplished. Even passing a federal budget has become undoable.

Lott and Daschle, who got along well for being two antagonists in highly volatile times, point to the explosion of money in political campaigns and politicians' need to constantly raise money or lose to a better-funded candidate. But there is more. In the 1990s, spurred by House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich, the House developed a calendar that is essentially a three-day work week, from Tuesday to Thursday. Gingrich claimed that would keep representatives closer to their constituents because they could "go home" every weekend. What they did on those weekends, however, was more about raising campaign funds than talking to constituents. It had another impact: Representatives were not in Washington with their colleagues. The collegial atmosphere of Congress was lost. The Washington social scene, which kept congressmen and their families together and built cross-party friendships, was no more.

Another factor was redistricting, which is required by the Constitution every 10 years. But the increased capabilities of computerized redistricting made it possible to create congressional districts that sliced voter populations down to a single Democrat or Republican. That created all kinds of mischief. Democrats and Republicans created districts that made their incumbents virtually challenge-proof. In the past few years, most members of Congress had to worry more about a party primary challenger than about the general election opponent because one party's voters dominated more and more electoral districts.

Lott and Daschle offer some recommendations for improving Congress and the election process, which could at least improve productivity on Capitol Hill.

This election year, with a candidate promising to overturn all that's wrong with Washington with the stroke of a pen or a dictatorial edict, the Daschle-Lott book may seem to complicated for the electorate, but it's worth a read. The authors are guys who have been inside the machinery of government. They know how it works, and they have some good suggestions for fixing things without resorting to one-man rule.

Not all who served fought

On this Veterans Day, as in all the others, much will be said about those who "fought for their country." But my military service did not involve any fighting, and that is typical of most veterans. We served behind front lines or outside of war zones supporting the massive logistical and record-keeping apparatus of the national defense. We sat behind desks instead of sandbags.

I spent three years in a Washington, D.C., office answering letters from Congress and the public for the Enlisted Personnel Division of the U.S. Coast Guard. I used the skills I learned as a journalism and English major and in newspaper internships to explain the Coast Guard's policies and its need for individual service members to serve where assigned and to follow orders.

It was, in many respects, the easiest job I have ever held. The pace was slow compared to the urgent, anxiety-filled race toward a newsroom deadline, and my biggest challenge was usually getting the approval for my words from all of the commanders, captains and admirals —and even the secretary of transportation, on occasion — who reviewed my prose. I wore a uniform just once a week — a concession to civilian officials who did not want Washington to look like a military camp. My most hazardous duty was navigating D.C. traffic with my car pool each morning and afternoon.

Nevertheless, I learned a great deal from my Coast Guard service, and those few years 40 years ago helped shape my life and still influence it today. I learned to value organizational skills, decisiveness, sacrifice, dedication and all the other traits of military culture. Had my draft number been three digits instead of two, had I managed to dodge the obligation to serve my country, I might have begun my newspaper career earlier, and perhaps followed a different route, but I would not have learned from the outstanding officers who were my mentors, colleagues and friends during those years.

On this Veterans Day, I am thankful for the opportunity I was given to serve and for the experiences and lessons of that service.

Back to Washington after 40 years

Driving into Washington, D.C., earlier this week (I was actually the passenger/navigator on this trip), I felt the combination of dread and excitement that had struck me 40 years ago when I lived in the Virginia suburbs and commuted into the city. The impossible rush of traffic, like being jammed into an overstuffed elevator while hurtling along at 70 mph, piqued my anxiety. At the same time, the glimpse of the marble- and granite-clad monuments, memorials and buildings calmed me with a sense of awe and admiration.

On those first few days that I went to work at 400 Seventh St. SW in the summer of 1972, I rode the Metrobus. It seemed like the safer, more sensible, less stressful thing to do. The mish-mash of streets and highways, of cloverleafs and off-ramps, were too complex for me to tackle alone. After a couple of weeks, I joined a car pool and learned the route over to the George Washington Parkway along the Potomac and into the city.

Forty years later, I returned to Washington for job-related training, found the hotel, walked to the training site and managed one side trip, as dusk turned to darkness, down to the National Mall. A couple of colleagues and I walked along the Vietnam War Memorial, the stark black marble darker yet in the evening. The wall brought tears to my eyes when I first saw it, on a family trip 23 years ago. It is just as moving now, but the grief is not so immediate, and the tears were absent. We moved on, avoiding recently erected fences and barricades, to the Korean War Memorial and a memorial to wartime nurses. I stood before the Lincoln Memorial, remembering the scene, captured in a photo I shot, of my eldest child, holding her young mother's hand, ascending the steps toward Lincoln's statue. New construction and topographical changes have altered the view we had that day when we had bicycled into the District to go to museums and memorials, and the beauty of the mall had been lost to fences and construction equipment.

This week's trip gave me the first glimpse of the World War II Memorial, a gaudy barricade set in the middle of the mall. A few critics, including me, had opposed the location, size and design of the memorial. It was a hazardous position to take, to be accused of being against the achievements of the Greatest Generation and the most historic event of the 20th century. But seeing the memorial did not alter my opinion that it was the wrong design in the wrong place. The memorial breaches the continuity of the mall, creating a barricade, and its design is reminiscent of Soviet architecture — grandiose and overdone without any real theme or sense of honor. We critics were outvoted, and the World War II Memorial is there forever, detracting from the natural beauty of the mall itself.

Just as it was when we lived in the area, Washington is an exciting place to visit, and a very scary place to drive. Someday, I'd like to take a few days to visit the places I had known as a young husband and father (an officer and a gentleman) and to visit the places we never got around to in the three years we lived there.