The Federal City

After the Constitution of the United States went into effect in 1789, the government proceeded to make a number of momentous decisions, some of which had to do with the finances of the precarious new republic. Congress had been granted the power to levy taxes, to regular interstate commerce, and to print money—all of which had been denied the Congress under the Articles of Confederation. But the challenges were many, including the issue of who would be responsible for repaying debts incurred during the American Revolution. Some of the states had made an effort to retire their loans, but others had not. Our creditors included both individual Americans and foreigners, and it wasn’t clear whether the states respectively or the national government under the new Constitution should bear the burden of repayment.

The first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who harbored a vision of a “strong, well-mounted government” and a bustling commercial republic, viewed the national debt as a national blessing—up to a point, at least. Hamilton proposed that all of the nation’s public debt be assumed by the new national government and funded at par, a policy that enriched the many speculators who had bought up depreciated war bonds during the hard economic times of the 1780s. In addition to making some people rich (and in effect buying their loyalty to the new republic), Hamilton also proposed the creation of a national bank and investment in infrastructure, that is, “internal improvements” such as roads and canals. To win Congressional approval of this highly controversial plan, Hamilton had to cut a deal with those harboring a more modest, agrarian vision of America’s future, particularly the two Virginians, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. A deal was cut over dinner at a New York townhouse: Hamilton’s financial measures would be approved by the Congress, but in return states that had paid off their debts would be reimbursed by the federal government ($1.5 million in the case of Virginia), and the national capital would be moved away from the northeast, where the commercial classes were prominent, to a location more convenient for and receptive to the rural and slave-holding south.

The issue of the national capital was addressed by Congress with the Residence Act of 1790, which authorized President George Washington to select a location somewhere along the Potomac. Unsurprisingly, Washington favored a spot that was below the fall line and not too far from Mount Vernon; to implement the plan, Washington recruited aides, including Hamilton, whom he had learned to trust during the Revolution.

Enter the shadowy figure of Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the man whose name is synonymous with the design of the city of Washington, DC. L’Enfant had come to the New World to help General Washington win the Revolutionary War. He made himself useful at Valley Forge, and he did some networking among the officer class through the terrible winter of 1777-78. Afterwards, he employed his talents—many of them artistic—to further the creation of the Society of the Cincinnati, which some people regarded as an American version of the English House of Lords. It was L’Enfant who designed Federal Hall in New York, the building where Washington was sworn in as president of the United States on April 30, 1789, and he earned something of a reputation for what we would call “event planning.” After passage of the Residence Act, L’Enfant offered his services as designer of the city that would arise in the new Federal District straddling the Potomac.

Though L’Enfant was enamored of life in the New World—he wanted to be called “Peter,” for example—it was natural for him to look to his home town, Paris, for inspiration, and that suggested the standard baroque playbook of geometric plans with radiating boulevards, public squares with their neoclassical palazzos, obelisks, and equestrian statues, and long axial vistas—elements suitable for military parades and revues and for exploiting the local topography, the whole composition being an implicit rejection of the humble Jeffersonian gridiron that was to become ubiquitous throughout the rest of urban America.

The result is that among cities in the United States, Washington is unique, and has always been so. L’Enfant thought that the several states would take responsibility for developing “their” grand avenues and piazzas, and that the city as a whole would issue from these nodes like a puppy growing into its paws. That happened in the end, but it took the better part of a century. During that time Washington was ridiculed as an “embryo capital,” featuring “squares in morasses,” and “obelisks in trees,” a city of “magnificent distances,” with tree stumps in the boulevards and a swamp dividing the President’s House from Jenkins’ Hill (i.e., Capitol Hill). For many decades, L’Enfant’s plan seemed a hopelessly grandiose exercise in futility. Benjamin Latrobe called it a “gigantic abortion.”

L’Enfant himself, unfortunately, was a prideful and somewhat prickly character who rubbed DC’s commissioners the wrong way, alienated the most powerful local landowner, and finally wore out his welcome with President Washington. L’Enfant was dismissed in February of 1792, and an imperfect version (see image above) of L’Enfant’s plan executed by the surveyor Andrew Ellicott. Rather quickly, L’Enfant drifted into obscurity along with most of the leaders of the Federalist party that had been led by his patrons.

Washington, DC, began to look like a proper national capital only with the growth of government that accompanied the Civil War, with soldiers, bureaucrats, construction crews, office-seekers, and prostitutes descending upon the capital city. But the growth that ensued was higgledy-piggledy, unguided by the L’Enfant plan, which was neglected along with memory of the man himself. The elderly L’Enfant lived as the “permanent houseguest” of kindly friends at Warburton Manor, where he spent his time petitioning Congress for proper recognition of his service to his adopted country. He died and was buried in an inconspicuous grave in 1825.

Recovery of L’Enfant’s original vision was spurred by the professionalization of landscape architecture and the popularity of Beaux-Arts classicism during the Gilded Age. The watershed event was the Chicago Fair of 1893—formally, the World’s Columbian Exposition celebrating the “discovery” of America. Through the Senate Park Commission, also called the McMillan Commission, Progressive politicians called for recommitment to the basic principles of L’Enfant’s plan; their wooden models are on permanent display at the National Building Museum. As for the long-neglected Major L’Enfant, his mortal remains were exhumed in 1909; his grave now occupies a place of honor near the front of the Lee-Custis Mansion in Arlington National Cemetery.

L’Enfant’s original plan for the city is easily discerned in the modern city. The Victorian train station on the National Mall was eventually removed, part of a deal struck to build Union Station, Washington’s most eloquent tribute to the Chicago Fair. Tiber Creek, which L’Enfant turned into a canal, was covered over, finally giving way to Constitution Avenue. Until fairly recently, Washington still had many of the features of a somewhat sleepy Southern city, racial segregation being only the most lamentable of these. As late as the early 1960s, it was still possible for President Kennedy to joke about the city’s unique combination of “southern efficiency” and “northern charm.” Before long, the Capital Beltway and the Metro had transformed the black-and-white city that had dazzled Mr. Smith when he came to Washington in the person of Jimmy Stewart. Architectural controls and building height limitations have preserved much of the spirit of the L’Enfant plan.

And now, with publication of Scott W. Berg’s Grand Avenues: The Story of Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C. (New York: Vintage, 2008), we have a biography worthy of the city that took shape so gradually over a long span of time. Berg shows us that the distinctiveness of Washington, D.C.—it’s beauty, most would be willing to say—is due entirely to its designer’s recognition that this city, unlike all others, “would not happen; it would be made.”

The Controversy over the Eisenhower Memorial

Two weeks from today, the Winter 2012 class of Glenn Fellows will be settling into their accommodations on Capitol Hill. My hope is that they will find time to pay attention to the debate over a famous architect's design--to be reviewed by the National Capital Planning Commission in February--for a memorial to Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th president. It is to be built on Independence Avenue near the Air and Space Museum.

The memorial was designed by Frank Gehry, who ranks as the brightest star in the galaxy of American architecture since the sensation caused by his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. But Gehry and his undulating titanium sculptures are controversial, and so is the question of how American heroes should properly be memorialized. To no one's surprise, the prospect of a Gehry structure on the National Mall has generated a kerfuffle. It turns out that members of the Eisenhower family find much that is objectionable in Gehry's design. Just as predictably, Philip Kennicott, the Washington Post's smart, eloquent, and irascible architectural critic, has pronounced it a great success. Stay tuned.

December 21, 2011 update: There is a fascinating display at the National Building Museum of architectural projects that were proposed but never executed in the nation's capital. See Amanda Hurley's lively review here.

Earmarks: They're Back!!!!!

This morning's Post contains a story about earmarking and how the practice has crept back into the legislative process, despite last year's efforts to rule it out of bounds. Apparently earmarks are like mildew in the shower, and that reminds me of a book review I posted a couple of years ago in this space. I've pasted it below.

The sordid story of Congressional sausage making is well told in Robert G. Kaiser’s So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). Kaiser makes a persuasive case that American universities—not Wall Street or the Teamsters or the AARP—are responsible for one of Washington’s nastiest and most expensive habits: earmarking.

As technical instruments for the appropriation of public monies, earmarks haven’t been around nearly as long as one might suppose. The protagonist in Kaiser’s history is a lobbyist named Gerald Cassidy, one of whose clients, Tufts University, wanted to build a nutrition center on its campus in Medford, Massachusetts—which, as luck would have it, was in the district of Tip O’Neill, who was soon to be elected Speaker of the House. O’Neill enlisted the support of Rep. Jamie Whitten, long-time power broker on the House Agriculture Committee. And voilà. In fiscal year 1978, as Kaiser tells the story, “Congress appropriated $20 million to build the nutrition center, and an additional $7 million to fund its initial operations. Though attached to Tufts, it would be formally part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which would pay its operating expenses for years to come.”[i]

As soon as they saw what Cassidy and Tufts president Jean Mayer had done, other universities were quick to get into the game. Kaiser’s story is fascinating because it involves so many academics—and priests, in the case of Georgetown and other Roman Catholic universities—along with a few certified scoundrels, including Jack Abramoff, and some of the most prominent members of Congress on both sides of the aisle (most notoriously, the late John Murtha (D-Pa), pictured above). The bucks, let it be said, are decidedly big; the last photo in the book’s gallery is an aerial shot of Gerry Cassidy’s $8 million estate on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.

One of the many virtues of this book is that Kaiser recognizes that there is a case to made on behalf of earmarks. To begin with, the distinction between “pork” and the legislator’s responsibility to “bring home the bacon” is largely one of perspective; it’s legitimate bacon when it’s on my plate, it’s pork when it’s on yours.

That said, I fear that Kaiser is right to suggest that while legislators sometimes can be corrupted by crooked lobbyists, it is as often the case that the vicious circle begins with Members of Congress who feel they must be increasingly aggressive in their pursuit of campaign contributions. So Damn Much Money is an informative account of Congressional sausage making, and one that suggests that Congress remains, in the words of Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, “the broken branch.” It’s not a pretty picture.



[i] Robert G. Kaiser, So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), p. 71

December 11, 2011, update: Today's Washington Post reports that this year's defense authorization bill included some $834 million in earmark requests put forward by both Democratic and Republican Members of the House of Representatives.

Glenn Fellows Lay Wreath at Arlington National Cemetery

On the initiative of Kyle Nappi, who is interning this quarter in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Nappi and three other Glenn Fellows participated today in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery. Pictured from left to right next to their military escort in the photo above are Glenn Fellows Mitch Moximchalk; Anthony Adornetto, an ex-Marine; Nappi; and Joe Guenther, member of the Ohio National Guard. Other Fellows in attendance were Alexandra Constantinou, Gia Domine, Blake Swineford, and Abby Warner.

A Diplomat's Progress--Book Review (Reprise)

This week the Autumn 2011 class of Glenn Fellows is reading Samuel Huntington's famous Foreign Affairs article on "The Clash of Civilizations." As an introduction to the not-always-glamorous world of professional diplomacy, I have also assigned a book called A Diplomat's Progress, written by Henry Precht, a retired foreign service officer. Mr. Precht was born in Savannah, Georgia, and educated at Emory University. He joined the foreign service in 1961 and served in U.S. embassies in Italy, Mauritius, Iran, and Egypt. He was the Department of State’s Desk Officer for Iran during the revolution and hostage crisis when the Shah was overthrown, and he was deputy ambassador in Cairo when Anwar Sadat was assassinated. His nomination by President Jimmy Carter to the post of U.S. ambassador to Mauritania was blocked by Senator Jesse Helms, who blamed him for "losing Iran."

After leaving the foreign service, Mr. Precht served as president of the World Affairs Council in Cleveland, Ohio, where he also taught at Case Western Reserve University. A few years ago, he published A Diplomat’s Progress, a work of fiction consisting of a series of vignettes about a State Department official named Harry Prentice. It is an engaging work that reveals, as one reviewer has put it, the “grittier side of embassy life with a wry sense of humor and a bit of an edge.” To the extent that the work is autobiographical, A Diplomat’s Progress is rather remarkable.

For one thing, the “grittier” aspects of diplomacy are portrayed warts and all. In one of the vignettes, the young Harry Prentice and his wife attend a dinner party at the home of the foreign minister of Mauritius, during which the lecherous host assaults the drunken daughter of the Japanese ambassador. In a vignette set in Egypt, the protagonist must tend to a dead body and a suitcase full of drug money. In “Caviar and Kurds,” set in Iran, Prentice unwittingly leads the Shah’s secret police to an underground freedom fighter named Hassan, whom Prentice finds hanging from a lamppost the next day. In this account of embassy life, it seems that no good deed goes unpunished.

Most remarkable as an autobiography—and surely it must be regarded as partly that, in spite of the veneer of fiction—is the book’s unflattering portrait of its protagonist. Throughout A Diplomat’s Progress, Harry Prentice’s diplomatic efforts are undone by either his naivete or his cynicism. Typically, the reader is given a glimpse of a career diplomat preoccupied, not with the national interest, as one might suppose, but rather, with his own career advancement. At one point, for instance, Prentice seems to have been the unwitting accomplice of a Palestinian terrorist. What does he do about it? He gets up in the middle of the night to compose a somewhat Bardachian “balance sheet of possible courses of action.” There appear to be two:

First, the natural inclination of every Foreign Service Officer: Do nothing. Wait on events and react as necessary and as seems prudent at the time. . . . Alternatively, I could report my suspicions to the police. Playing it straight and admitting wrong might be partially redeeming. The key word was “partially.” The embassy surely would be informed and handle my future as if it had no value. The same with the Israeli authorities. I had to face it: Only I really cared about my future, not any American or Israeli career-building bureaucrat.

During his posting to Cairo, Prentice is asked to interview a Sheikh who might have been in a position to influence the extremists holding a number of American hostages in Beirut. Prentice’s efforts fail. “But never mind,” seems to sum up his reaction. “I could only hope that someone—the ambassador or an unknown friend in the department—would make an excellent report of my performance for my file.” The adventure, he concludes, “just might be a turning point—upward—in my career.” On the basis of the evidence provided by the author, the judgment handed down by Prentice’s first wife seems just: He has “a pretty good soul, even though sometime it seems quite lost in the bureaucratic maze.”

Molly Williamson to speak at WAIP policy salon Tuesday, November 15

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Molly Williamson speaks extensively on US foreign policy, the interagency process, energy, economic and demographic factors affecting policy formulation, and US-Middle East relations, especially the Israel-Palestine conflict, Iran and nuclear challenges. Williamson is a scholar with the Middle East Institute, a consultant, and lectures at Johns Hopkins University Osher Institute. She is a former Foreign Service Officer, having served six presidents, and achieved the rank of Career Minister. She is also a member of Georgetown University’s MSFS oral boards, a Board member of the American Foreign Service Association, and Board member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

2005-2008: Williamson was the Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy, with global responsibilities at the nexus of foreign policy and energy policy.

2004-2005: Williamson served as U.S. Charge d'affaires in Bahrain. She was also assigned to special projects regarding Israel/Palestine, Iraq, and the United Nations.

1999-2004: Williamson was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce responsible for the Middle East, South Asia, Oceania and Africa, advancing trade relations with 86 countries with a trade portfolio valued at over $120 billion/year.

1996-1999: Williamson was Principal Deputy, then Acting Assistant Secretary of State, International Organizations Bureau, responsible for the policy and programs affecting UN political and Security Council matters, peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.

1993-95, Williamson was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense responsible for the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. She was engaged in operational defense structure bottom-up reviews, and the policy challenges of Iraqi provocations, crises in Rwanda and Somalia, and nuclear tests in South Asia.

She has had numerous postings in the Middle East, including Chief of Mission and Consul General in Jerusalem during the Madrid Peace Process (1991-93) which culminated in the Oslo Accords.

She has been trained in both Hebrew and Arabic.

Williamson, a native of California, has been awarded 2 Presidential Meritorious Service Awards, the Secretary of Energy’s Exceptional Service Award, Secretary of Commerce Performance Award, the Secretary of Defense’ Service Award, and 14 awards from the Department of State.

Mr. Justice Scalia and the Moritz College of Law (Reprise)

In one of my first posts on this blog I argued that easterners are inclined to dismiss Midwesterners as rubes and that Glenn Fellows, who tend to be professionally ambitious and have every reason to be, forget or ignore this at their peril.

There could be no more dramatic example than that provided a few years ago by Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. As Adam Liptak reported in May, 2009, in The New York Times, Justice Scalia, speaking at American University in Washington, D.C., explained to an audience of law students that their chances of landing a clerkship with a Supreme Court justice were slim or none because those plums are reserved for students from America’s most prestigious law schools. According to Liptak, the “hard truth” is that “Over the last six years, the justices have hired about 220 law clerks. Almost half went to Harvard or Yale. Chicago, Stanford, Virginia and Columbia collectively accounted for 50 others.” Liptak reports that “Justice Scalia said he could think of one sort-of exception to this rule favoring the elite schools.” To wit:

"One of my former clerks whom I am the most proud of now sits on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals” in Cincinnati, the justice said, referring to Jeffrey S. Sutton. But Justice Scalia explained that Mr. Sutton had been hired by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. after his retirement and then helped out in Justice Scalia’s chambers. “I wouldn’t have hired Jeff Sutton,” Justice Scalia said. “For God’s sake, he went to Ohio State! And he’s one of the very best clerks I ever had.”

As one can readily imagine, Justice Scalia’s remarks inspired a kerfuffle in Buckeyeland. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Scalia was “not a big fan of OSU law graduates,” and the Ohio State Bar Association objected to the “insult” and issued a sharp rejoinder, arguing that “Intellect, skill and fundamental integrity are not measured by the school someone attends. Birthright, money, LSAT scores and magazine rankings of law schools are not the standards by which this profession judges itself.” My reading of this story is that Justice Scalia was conveying brute facts that are not really in dispute, and that his enthusiastic endorsement of Judge Sutton indicates that he understands that the prejudice in favor of elite law schools is ultimately not rational. True, he would seem disinclined to buck the system that from which he has profited, yet I think it’s pretty clear that his “For God’s sake” remark was intended as irony. They learn that sort of thing at the elite law schools, such as Harvard, where Scalia earned his law degree.

September 14, 2009, update: Further evidence that Harvard law graduates tend to be lovers of irony comes from an AP story that Lawrence Hurley cites in his Supreme Court blog, Washington Briefs. Elitist joke alert: Asked if too many of the justices came from elite law schools, Chief Justice John Roberts says no—some went to Yale (AP).