Into D.C.'s heart of darkness

An unforgiving field study of Homo Politicus

Milbank's book is dedicated to former congressman Tom DeLay (right), shown above with "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert last November. (Associated Press/charles dharapak)

Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government
By Dana Milbank
Doubleday, 276 pp., $26

Of all the American ideas - democracy, equality, homeownership, the right to boo the Dodgers - none might be quite so robust as the notion that Washington is a cesspool full of louts. Over the years that preeminent notion has been expressed with uncommon eloquence by Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Harry Truman, Mark Russell, Art Buchwald, Father Coughlin, and my father-in-law.

So let us be clear here: Dana Milbank, the latest cultural anthropologist to discover that Washington is populated by liars, cheats, fools, poseurs, crooks, misanthropes, egomaniacs, philanderers, and abject morons, is breaking no new ground in "Homo Politicus." He has studied the denizens of the capital and - this will shock you - pronounces them to be hypocrites.

No matter. Milbank has a privileged perch - he writes a daily column for The Washington Post - and a practiced eye. He knows a buffoon when he sees one. What is more, he likes buffoons (my guess is that he thinks they're good for business), and he has produced the ultimate field guide to the fools of Federal City.

Which, of course raises some questions: How can a nation survive if we let the likes of members of Congress and appointees in the executive branch walk the streets as free men and women? And not only the members of this Congress and this administration, but any Congress and any administration.

Further: Why are the institutions in which we invest our most cherished ideals so riddled with the sort of people who stayed after for detention in high school? Or: How do the people who so often are described as the best and the brightest turn out to be the worst and the dumbest? For the answers, don't channel James Madison, who invented the system. Channel Jay Leno.

Indeed, these questions have occurred to Milbank, too. He opens his book with a great truth: "Among the many paradoxes of Potomac Land is that it is, ostensibly, the capital of the most egalitarian people on the planet, and yet it has embraced a status system that is both hierarchical and byzantine." A few hundred pages of wisecracks, horrifying (and true) anecdotes, and case studies follow.

You need only to consult the dedication page of Milbank's book to have an idea of what is to come. "Homo Politicus" is not dedicated to Mom or Dad, or to a loving and indispensable spouse, or to the veterans of World War I. This book is dedicated to Tom DeLay. He was, after all, the inspiration for it.

"Potomac Land is extraordinarily tolerant of behaviors that other cultures would immediately attribute to psychiatric disorders," Milbank writes. "Here, people who are thought by the outside world to be utterly mad are commonly embraced as respected members of the community." This is at best a disadvantage of democracy. But it's a terrific opening for a homily on former representatives James Traficant and Bob Dornan.

Here's another anthropological analysis of Potomac Man: "He is so convinced of his own exceptionalism that he believes himself invincible, invulnerable to accusations of vice, and incapable of failure. This tendency is reinforced by Potomac Man's reliance on paid staffers, whose job it is to affirm to the boss constantly that his actions are the correct ones. The result is a remarkable detachment . . . between the standards Potomac Man expects of those he leads and the standards he sets for himself. He is therefore prone to commit acts with ignorance that other cultures would immediately qualify as self-mutilation."

All this makes a serious point, and it is this: We can do better. I plowed through more than 175 pages of fools on parade waiting for the master to put the media under the magnifying glass because we can do better, too. He does so, and makes an observation worth contemplating.

Milbank starts out with his finding: "Potomac Man commonly exhibits a moth-to-a-flame relationship with danger. It is not that he is exceptionally brave; relatively few members of the tribe have fought in the military or otherwise displayed heroism. Rather, he has a powerful tendency to draw attention to his most glaring flaws."

He goes on, and it is worth sticking with this: "This is in part driven by the town criers, who assign what is called a designated flaw to each public official." Therefore Bill Clinton's a sex maniac; John Kerry can't make up his mind; George W. Bush is a little on the dumb side; Al Gore exaggerates like mad. The sum total of these designated flaws is that members of the media, who are supposed to be covering a drama that is unfolding, instead create a narrative into which they force everything a politician does. It may be journalism's original sin, and if not its original one then perhaps its most damaging.

All of this is engaging; a lot of it is funny. But it's sad and pitiful, too. Milbank is having a good laugh, but he is also making a good argument. I'd call this satire and tell you that many an important argument has been lodged in a laugh, but remember this: This is no satire, and ultimately it is no joke.

David M. Shribman, for a decade the Globe's Washington bureau chief, is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.