Foreigners following the American election campaign must think Washington DC a hateful place. The one thing on which Republicans and Democrats always agree is that Washington is a sinkhole of greed, corruption, waste, stupidity and laziness.
Every politician vows to clean up the mess in Washington. It is the election promise that gets the loudest cheers from crowds, beating even denunciations of “the media” (which, at any rate, are thought of as a particularly unsavoury ingredient in that same mess). Since many such people do win elections and yet the rhetoric never changes, one might think that the voters would become discouraged, but enthusiasm for cleansing the nation is as high as ever.
We native Washingtonians know these would-be reformers well – because they all live here. They are our neighbours. Their children go to school with our children. They confide how desperately they do not want to leave us. Even politicians who lose elections to those who outdo them in vilifying Washington settle for jobs in Washington law or lobbyist firms. Anything rather than go home to the good people they have been representing and sentimentalising.
Who can blame them? Washington is a beautiful city of parks and river banks, flowerbeds and flowering trees, museums and monuments. It has an interesting, international population of those who are currently either representing or escaping regimes elsewhere. It has surprise winter holidays when the mere forecast of snow shuts down the schools and the federal government. Its style is frumpy-formal, so while we get to dress up, our evening clothes last for decades. Its underground is clean and its airport is very convenient. Daily life is pleasant and comfortable.
Washington’s world-class cultural institutions may be enjoyed spontaneously because they are often uncrowded and many charge no admission. Perhaps you have heard otherwise from your American friends. New Yorkers tell you that all the good music, art and theatre is located in their own city, which is why they would never live anywhere else, least of all in our cultural backwater.
Such people are always surprised to hear that we have already seen the blockbuster art exhibit for which they had to wait in line for four hours because it was at the National Gallery of Art last year – and we even dropped in for a second visit during lunch hour when on jury duty in the nearby courthouse. Those who catch on have taken to sneaking down for plays or the opera, while still claiming that their own versions are better, but admitting – it often sounds more like bragging – that, of course, in New York, it is impossible to get tickets.
Beneath the political squabbling, there is a real town here, beloved by those of us who grew up in Washington. When we are little, we are not sure what our parents do, the most usual explanation being “they talk on the phone a lot”, but we know the lingo. On a radio programme that held a quiz for Washington kindergarteners, one little girl jumped up and waved her hand, declaring that she knew the answer. But when asked to give it, she replied with quiet dignity, “I’m not at liberty to say.”
We become government workers, journalists or lawyers. As a high school classmate of mine said when he offered me a ride home from the airport in the White House car that was waiting for him, “It’s what we know. If we had grown up in West Virginia, we’d all be coal miners.”
What I love most is Washingtonians’ disinterested devotion to civics. With nothing practical at stake (even the government employees have election-proof civil service jobs, and the city has only a non-voting “shadow” delegation to Congress), we all follow politics avidly. Our license plates read “Taxation Without Representation,” but we stay up all Election Night, charting the returns on little charts and blackboards. The bars are crowded with young people following every return on television.
When the national budget is published in one great, thick volume, we line up to buy it, expertly reading between the lines as if it were literature, and discussing it at dinner parties – dinners that always end at 11pm because everyone has to get up and work in the morning.
To work, in one capacity or another, on behalf of our fellow citizens, often at lower salaries than we might be making in business. An amazing number of government workers are passionate about what they are trying to do for others.
So why do they hate us?
When I travel within the US, people feel no compunction about complaining of “those awful people in Washington” to me, even while knowing that I am a Washingtonian. Because my field is etiquette, they take care to phrase their displeasure by saying that Washingtonians are rude.
“I’m not rude,” I point out (gently and politely), “and I was born in Washington. My family and friends aren’t rude. You are talking about the people you sent there. You voted for them. Why? To get them out of your own town, I suppose. But how can you blame my town for that?”
Once in a while, someone then asks, “Isn’t there anything we can do about them?” Yes. It’s called an election. But there they go again, chasing after whichever of our neighbours is most vehement about promising to clean up the mess he wants to go on making.
Judith Martin is better known as Miss Manners and is the author of several books on etiquette, including ‘Star Spangled Manners: In Which Miss Manners Defends American Etiquette (For a Change)’
