… or perhaps an occasional tennis match might be the prescription for what ails Washington. And what ails Washington – number one – is an inability to get things done. It’s a government on pause, with a nasty dialog circling in the winds.
During an interview with Greg Principato, president of ACI-NA, at the group’s annual meeting in San Diego, I asked a question that I’ve asked in the past: How would you characterize the environment in Washington these days?” Greg knows the turf as well as anyone. And he also likes to be the optimist – the glass is always at worst half full.
In this instance, he discarded the rose-colored glasses for a bit. To wit …
“It’s horrible. At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old man, it really was better in the old days. You had people who wanted to get things done. They were partisan people … but at the end of the day they were there to get some things done.
“The system is built for incremental progress. The best way to have overnight change is to have a dictatorship, and the Founders didn’t want that. There are people in Washington today, on either side of the aisle, who don’t think that any kind of compromise is a good thing. It’s become a bad word. People have said making deals has gotten us where we are now financially.
“Making deals is what built this country; that’s what politics is. We’ve always had a closely divided country. The political environment in Washington in terms of getting things done on the Hill is as bad as it’s been since the 1870s – during Reconstruction. When the FAA can shut down for two weeks, it’s not a good thing.
“Somebody wrote an article recently saying that people in Washington should go out to dinner more. People don’t go out with each other to dinner or for a drink. In the old days, Congress was only open a couple months a year; the families stayed at home. With the invention of air conditioning, people began spending all year there with their families, but they still got together with others.
“Today, if you play tennis or go to dinner with somebody it’s on YouTube, almost immediately; it’s Tweeted. So many of these people are afraid that when they go back to get reelected, their real fear is, is somebody going to come at them from the furthest end of their party? That’s the flank they have to protect. And it pushes people away from the center.
“Probably, Barack Obama and John Boehner are the only two politicians in Washington from opposite parties who can get away with playing golf together. Nobody else wants to get caught playing golf with someone from the other party.”
Let the games begin … and thanks for reading. jfi
