Kozlowski: Blame it on Washington

No matter who wins an election, I find myself with an acute case of political prostration by… No matter who wins an election, I find myself with an acute case of political prostration by Election Day. After the elections comes a moment of calm. In this moment of tranquility, it is time to have a last laugh about the elections. And to my mind, nothing is funnier than the split personality of Americans when it comes to Washington, D.C.

Washington is a powerful symbol. It stands for the U.S. government, and how much it changes lives all over the world. It stands for America itself: How many times have you seen a picture of a bald eagle in a William McKinley-esque pose, superimposed on the Capitol dome? It is a major front of the War on Terrorism, and the War on Drugs. In an election year, Washington becomes another kind of symbol: a symbol of what’s wrong with America.

Washington means lots of spending, bungling, bureaucracy and mismanagement. It means corruption, insider deals and frustration. Running against Washington is popular for many politicians, even when the Harrisburg, Springfield, Charleston or Albany they come from is just as bad. “Washington insider” is usually said with a sinister tinge, and one of the worst things you can call somebody these days is a congressman.

So, with all this hatred directed at Washington, we would expect hardly anybody to visit it, right? Nothing could be further from the truth. According to the National Park Service, 24 million people visit the National Mall each year, even when there isn’t a sale. A trip to D.C. becomes a sort of pilgrimage for Americans. When you and your folks felt extremely patriotic one summer, you likely went to D.C. Thus, we have contradictory attitudes about our nation’s capital. It is a cesspit and a shrine, Sodom, Gomorrah and Jerusalem all rolled into one. This is odd. Mecca would be strange indeed if people were supposed to swear at it five times a day — and then make the hajj.

Part of this divided attitude probably comes from the fact that Washington is a made-up city. It wasn’t much before the Revolution, and would have remained such had Northerners not stuck a capital city there to placate Southerners, in an early example of backroom deals. Its main purpose was to be the seat of government, and until the Civil War that’s pretty much all that it was.

This probably plays a large role in our tendency to both swear at and visit Washington. When a financial crisis screws up the entire United States, we don’t say “Oh, New York screwed us.” We say “Wall Street screwed us.” We focus our rage on a specific district of the city. Even the British government is referred to as “Westminster” or “Whitehall,” not “London.” However, whenever the federal government irritates us, the raison d’être of Washington irritates us.

Furthermore, since Washington is far away for most of us, it’s easy to think of it as an almost unreal place, a mythical fairyland that is, metaphorically and literally, Oz. We see it on TV all the time, but rarely are we there. The more mysterious or ethereal a place is, the easier it is to hate it with the passion that is reserved for the abstract. It’s also easy to make the accusation that “Washington is out of touch with the American people” when the place doesn’t quite seem real.

The artificial nature of Washington is also what makes it such a cool place to visit. In two miles, from the big honkin’ statue of Abe Lincoln to the big honkin’ statue of U.S. Grant, you can visit the Hope Diamond, two war memorials, the White House, that most-phallic Washington Monument, the hilariously large and probably hard-to-heat Environmental Protection Agency building, the Apollo 11 command module, one of George Washington’s coats,  and the — not just “a” — Star-Spangled Banner. You can tag photos on Facebook with corny captions like “Mark Kozlowski, The Pitt News, the White House.” If you’re organizing a protest, you can identify yourself with the great protesters of history. And while most of us can never come close to holding government power, we can at least be awed by our proximity to it. And we can always pretend to be Senators by walking up the steps of those great neoclassical buildings. If Washington had any other point than to be the seat of government, it wouldn’t have such a density of significance. In fact, when Washington wasn’t just a capital but a large military base, railroad hub and fortress during the Civil War, it wasn’t so tidy.

If Washington had been a city that just happened to be the capital, or if Philadelphia were the capital city, we wouldn’t feel so strongly about it. But, as a city of, by and for the government, we are condemned to despise and visit it repeatedly.

Write kozthought@gmail.com