The Animals had it right:
“We gotta get out of this place
If it’s the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
‘cause…there’s a better life for me and you.”
The immediate reason to flee Washington is the onrush of visitors headed here to participate in the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.
Whether the number of visitors turns out to be a mere two million, or the four million that has police teeth on edge, matters not.
In any event, the transport facilities will be overwhelmed, the traffic a nightmare, and the number of portable personal comfort facilities inadequate.
But that is to carp. The attraction of the inauguration of the nation’s first black President is understandable — many black Americans see the culmination of many of their dreams, many white Americans the end of their long guilt trip, many liberals the end of their long Bush nightmare. They have every reason to suffer the inevitable physical indignities of an over-taxed (pun intended) city in order to see their dreams realized.
But for those less inclined to participate in the festivities, and content with a long-distance televised view, getting out of town is not a bad idea.
And not only because of the inauguration, which will end when the last happy Democrat twirls across the dance floor to the strains of “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
The end of the inconveniences caused by the inauguration won’t change the fact that we gotta get out of this place, or else continue to live among a population that is part government dependency, part Gucci-clad snatchers of income from one person to give to another, a band of Robin Hoods without the charming, snappy, ecologically correct forest clothes.
All those new office buildings that are close to completion will not lack for tenants. Some will house the several new government agencies that will be set up to sort out which programs will benefit from what will probably be a trillion-dollar transfer of wealth from those who earn it to those who merely want it.
Others, most likely the “A” buildings that dot not only K Street but other attractive streets in this physically attractive capital, will house the lobbyists who whisper in the ears of the congressmen and bureaucrats who are now in charge of the banking, energy, auto, insurance and other industries.
And who will decide which states and cities get how much to build the so-called infrastructure projects that they lust after, but cannot fund because their bloated bureaucracies and over-pensioned public-sector employees are claiming too large a portion of the state’s resources to leave anything for needed infrastructure investment.
In Washington circa 2009, a good day’s work will consist of taking money from a hard-working couple (secretary and cop on overtime, say), and handing it to Dayton, that has on its list of infrastructure improvements a request for $1.5 million to rid its streets of prostitutes, or another city that wants a dog-walking area.
Or to some California state agency that has still another mad idea for a completely uneconomic energy project. Or to an industrial dinosaur, or a badly managed bank. The list goes on.
There is an alternative: stand and fight. But how? The institutional constraint on the power of Democrats to invade the wallets of working people is no more: the Republicans are a feeble rump in the House, and thanks to the “moderates” among them in the Senate, capable of nothing more than a bit of annoyance to the majority, despite the procedural skill of the estimable Mitch McConnell.
And don’t look to the courts, as they will be once Barack Obama has stocked them with judges who understand the plight of the poor, rather than the words of the constitution. Or to the business community, now in hock to the government, or hoping to be.
Perhaps the solution is to find a place with an agreeable climate, an ample supply of time and reading material, and think — just think about how to structure the economy that will emerge from the current crisis.
Then, scribble, scribble, scribble, as the Duke of Gloucester described Gibbon’s work completing the second volume of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The scribbling of the neocons in the 1970s brought us Ronald Reagan in 1980; a similar effort now might make Washington an attractive place in 2017 — or even sooner.
Examiner columnist Irwin Stelzer is a senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Economic Studies.
