David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist -- a key member of both his campaign and White House Staff -- leaves office. His attempt to help change the culture of Washington didn't work out to well. It was naive to think he could.
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Update: Here's interesting commentary. Who says Washington needs to change anyway? Why do we automatically assume its "broken?"
The same charge is routinely voiced by liberals, conservatives, and nearly everyone in between: If we could transform “how Washington works,” then our country would once again accomplish great things. But, like all tales about a bygone political golden age, this notion ignores historical reality. Since the Gilded Age, when both a large and permanent federal bureaucracy and massive national corporations emerged, there has been a Washington “system.” Corporate lobbyists, lavish donations, arcane and undemocratic Senate rules, dishonest campaigns bankrolled by millionaires—all were familiar to perceptive commentators from Henry Adams and Lincoln Steffens to Walter Lippmann and I.F. Stone. As long as the United States is a capitalist nation with a government ruled more by self-interest than great ideals, the system will endure.
Successful presidents like William McKinley and Lyndon Johnson soberly analyzed how “Washington” operated and made it work in their favor. Transformative presidents like FDR and Reagan eloquently bashed entrenched interests in the name of “the people,” while they and their advisers played those interests against one another for maximum legislative and electoral gain. Despite Roosevelt’s assault on “economic royalists” and Reagan’s fondness for Tom Paine’s phrase about “beginning the world anew,” neither man was naïve enough to think he could uproot the system. FDR needed some of the most noxious Southern Democrats who ran key committees to push through the signature bills of his New Deal, while Reagan cut a deal with Tip O’Neill to drop his proposal to freeze a cost-of-living raise for Social Security recipients if the speaker would back an increase in the military budget in the House.
Is Washington really broken or are we the people simply ignorant -- naive? childish? -- about how the world really works? In 2301 we are analyzing Madison's comments regarding human nature and the constitutional order. Men are not angels. Why do we continue to expect angelic behavior?
