Anyone who has ever lived in or around Capitol Hill knows that the two-square-mile Washington D.C. neighborhood is hardly representative of Main Street U.S.A. While in session, Congress members' daily routines are jam-packed with briefings, committee meetings, lunches with friends, lunches with enemies, votes, floor statements, dinners with friends, dinners with enemies, and an overall culture of scratching someone's back to itch your own. The hand you shake at breakfast could stab you in the back over dinner. On the rare occasion that you do get to spearhead an effort or piece of legislation that you're passionate about, the glory will be short-lived when opposition leaders drag you through the mud, or worse, your bill winds up in President Bush's veto-happy hands.
Washington is tiring. Superficially, people call it "Hollywood for ugly people," but I think D.C. looks like Hollywood would if no one slept or had time to get botox. That's because they don't sleep or get botox. They're too busy fighting tooth and nail, building and breaking down alliances, trying to pass legislation that they truly believe is good for the country without stepping on the toes of the donors who put them in office.
It's easy to paint all Congressmen and women as special interest pawns or self-serving bureaucrats. Every Congressional election, we seek to put ethical candidates in positions of power, hoping they'll be different, that they'll resist special interest temptation and somehow single-handedly spread goodness and moral conduct throughout the halls of Capitol Hill. More often than not, they become part of the very machine they sought to shut down.
Hillary Clinton is a candidate who knows how to keep the D.C. machine well-oiled and running smoothly. Don't be fooled by his tenure as NYC Mayor; Rudy Giuliani is no stranger to the machine, having done his time in D.C. as a special prosecutor during the Reagan administration. Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Fred Thompson... they all know D.C. politics inside and out. Some will make the argument that this indicates a candidate can stay afloat, and has a better shot of navigating the murky waters of our nation's capital.
Personally, I don't want a president who knows the ins and outs of wheeling and dealing in D.C. I want a president with the gall to shut the Oval Office door to special interest groups. I want a president who doesn't owe decades of favors to fellow politicians or lobbyists. Several candidates, GOP and Democrat alike, have had to fire close advisors due to immorality or unethical actions on the campaign trail. I don't want another Bush administration, I don't want another Karl Rove or Scooter Libby lurking in the West Wing like the Cigarette-smoking man from the X-Files.
I want a Washington outsider for president. Experience comes in all shapes and sizes. When current foreign policy and diplomacy strategies are failing so miserably, I want new blood, not old rhetoric. I don't want the proponent of a failed health care overall, I want new ideas. I want a young president who is in touch with people my age, the people who will be handed trillions of dollars in debt and no social security checks and a polluted, globally-warmed planet.
I want someone who is willing to try diplomacy first before a retaliatory bombing of the wrong nation. I want someone who will consider the opinions of the U.N. and the global community when intervening abroad, but who understands that they are the president of THIS country, and not the rest of the world. I want someone whose family doesn't have ties to Saudi oil. I want someone who hasn't had money his or her whole life, and knows what it feels like to struggle a little. Someone who knows what it feels like to have an overdrawn checking account when times are tough. Someone who actually cares about those of us who still live paycheck to paycheck.
These are the criteria I used when deciding that Barack Obama would be receiving my primary vote on February 5th. What do you think? Is Washington experience a must-have? Is it a negative?