The four-day Obama inaugural celebration will be historic for the federal enclave known as the District of Columbia. The whole world will be watching — very closely.
We should look smashing as a backdrop to the swearing-in, and the parade, and the balls. With New York City losing power as the financial capital, with federal regulators and Congress taking more control of corporate America, and with a star taking residence in the White House, Washington, D.C., is indeed poised to become a global destination for business and pleasure.
Unless one tourist gets whacked during the inaugural festivities.
If a woozy couple from Kansas wanders out of a bar in Adams Morgan and gets mugged at gunpoint, or if a diplomat from France gets lost on his way to the hotel and asks directions from a punk who takes his car, or if a drug boy decides to prey on a tourist taking in the Mall after dark — all of the goodwill evaporates.
Given that calculus of crime, what sensible civic leaders want to do is limit the risk. Bad things happen to good people after dark. Really bad things take place after midnight. Horrible violence happens at 4 a.m.
So what does the D.C. Council do? Without deliberating, it passes emergency legislation that would allow bars, restaurants and nightclubs to stay open until 5 a.m. all four nights of the inaugural celebration. Stupid idea. Bowing to bar and club owners who want to rake in a few more bucks, the council is willing to risk the city’s reputation for decades.
“It would be mayhem in places where people least expect it,” says police union chief Kris Baumann. “Gang members would have a field day.”
Let’s peer into the back rooms to see how this stupid idea became law. The restaurant association, fresh from its defeat of veteran Councilwoman Carol Schwartz, was looking to express its power. Why not keep the bars open all night? It needed a council member willing to carry its water and settled on Jim Graham, who represents Ward 1.
Graham was an unlikely champion. “Like asking Carrie Nation to tend bar,” said one member. Graham likes to close down bars, not keep them open. But some bar owners in Adams Morgan asked him to sponsor their bill, the restaurant association drafted the legislation, and Graham popped it on his colleagues at a breakfast before the legislative session.
Was Graham “Carol Schwartzed?” Did the restaurant folks promise to support his next campaign, or not? There was no direct threat, my sources say, but the implied threat is that crossing the people who took out Schwartz is a mistake. Graham scoffed at being Schwartzed and said: “I think I’m pretty safe in my ward.”
Now, having passed the dumb bill, the council is seeing its mistake. Miffed that two U.S. senators objected, it is loath to kill the bill entirely. But Chairman Vince Gray huddled yesterday with members to undo the harm. Tommy Wells, who represents Capitol Hill, wants to redo the law.
Why not just kill it outright?
