How Washington Has (And Has Not) Changed

“You will find two kinds of people in Washington: political hacks and policy wonks,” Bruce Reed once famously wrote in the pages of the Washington Monthly. Reed’s piece is deservedly well-regarded, but it misses a large part of this city’s puzzle: the residents who do not work in politics at all. You know, the ones who have real jobs: construction workers, clergy, social workers, etc. I was reminded of Reed’s mistake the other day while the subway, where I found myself in between a nun carrying a bag emblazoned with Barack Obama’s name, and a little boy wearing an Obama tee shirt. It’s safe to assume that neither one is a hack or a wonk.

It’s also safe to assume that you couldn’t have taken an analogous subway ride six months ago. Not many nuns were proud of the president then, and those six year olds who were sure didn’t live in Washington (McLean, maybe). In the spring of 2007, when I first moved here, the place was still in its George Bush-era malaise. The president, if you will recall, was then not merely a lame duck, but a drag on the national psyche. Washington was a GOP ghost town: the party had lost Congressional control a few months before, but still held a death grip on power. Its lobbyists in seersucker suits populated the bars, and its ambitious frat boys and sorority girls  were in charge of the White House. The non-hacks and the non-wonks, meanwhile, were nowhere to be found–left out of the political conversation.

In some meaningful way, all that was swept away this past November. You don’t have to be a presidential sycophant to realize that Obama’s triumph was as much the wonks’ and the hacks’ as it was everyone else’s. DC changed immediately; overnight, young Obama staffers, with the sweet smell of victory on their breath, descended like an invading army upon the city. For about a month, every street had a moving van parked on it and a few young people lugging furniture. Even today, every basement window still seems to have a campaign sign affixed to it. The old Republican stomping grounds are less crowded, and our ambitious frat boys now aspire to work for Barack Hussein Obama.

Back to the nun and the boy. I shouldn’t have to mention that the nun is white and the boy black. Racial reconcilition is part of Obama’s promise. Yet reconciliation, for now, may be too strong a word. The nun and the boy went their separate ways, off the subway and into the city. So while the world of Washington has changed for the wonks and the hacks, what about everyone else? Well, I can’t speak for everyone else. And the fact that nuns and little boys are proud of their president again is a start.  But it’s just a start. It seems to me that Obama’s project, over the next four to eight years, will be creating a sense of comunity that goes beyond symbolic enthusiasm for him.