Excerpts: Introduction
I should have known something was amiss when Jack Abramoff told me about the kosher pigs.
The Republican super-lobbyist and I were dining a few years ago at the high-end restaurant he owned, Signatures, across the street from the National Archives. Abramoff was a well-connected source who gave me newsy tips about presidential adviser Karl Rove and then House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. On this day, however, we were talking about a second restaurant he planned to open, a kosher Jewish deli called Stacks. He said he had just located a species of swine in Asia that chews its cud – as required by the Jewish dietary laws. Thus, Abramoff said, would he operate the first kosher restaurant to serve bacon and pork sausage.
Alas, the kosher pigs turned out too good to be true – as did just about everything else about Abramoff. To date, Abramoff and 10 of his friends and associates have pleaded guilty in a sprawling corruption scandal in which Indian tribes were bilked for tens of millions of dollars and federal officials were bribed with golf trips and skyboxes. Signatures and Stacks are gone, and kosher pork continues to elude us.
As I thought about crimes that sent Abramoff to jail, it occurred to me that they had much in common with his cud-chewing pig scheme. Abramoff believed that if you were powerful enough, the rules – federal statutes or Jewish dietary laws – didn’t apply to you. In this view, Abramoff was typical of of the peculiar species that inhabits the capital: Homo Politicus, or, in the native tongue, Potomac Man. Homo Politicus is unlike other members of his genus because he strives for power for its own sake. For him, fame and fortune are only vehicles to obtain power or byproducts of power; it matters little how or to what end the power is exercised, only that it is possessed.
I came to live in political Washington – Potomac Land, if you will – 12 years ago. For most of that time, I have lived among the natives as if I were one of them: working, eating, dressing and socializing as they do and wearing the same government-issued ID cards and BlackBerry devices. As I gained their trust over time, they allowed me to join them in their homes, war rooms and tribal councils. Seeing them that way, I felt like a Spanish explorer witnessing an Aztec human sacrifice for the first time. In his natural state, Homo Politicus was so defined by tribalism that he placed tribe, or party, above even family and nation-state. Though equipped with the tools of modern civilization, his work proved to be less efficient – and his rituals more bizarre – than even the most primitive of cultures.
As I write this, in April, 2007, the events of the two weeks alone in Potomac Land must confound those who have not studied and lived among Homo Politicus. The deputy secretary of state, Randall Tobias, has resigned because he used an escort service alleged to be a prostitution ring. Paul Wolfowitz, who after championing the disastrous Iraq war was rewarded with the presidency of the World Bank, is now in jeopardy of losing that job for getting his girlfriend a raise. Meanwhile, the FBI has raided the businesses of the wives of two congressmen, John Doolittle of California and Rick Renzi of Arizona. The attorney general is clinging to his position even though most everybody has denounced him as an incompetent. And the former CIA director, Democratic-appointee George Tenet, just published a book shifting blame from himself to his former boss, the Republican vice president, for the war in Iraq.
None of these tales, however, causes much surprise in Potomac Land. While the names of the offenders change, and the plot details vary slightly, the theme is universal: Potomac Man will do most anything to amass and to flaunt his power, and that of his tribe. The same character trait can be found in many of the characters in this study: the former national security adviser who hides classified documents in his clothing, the senator who hands out bingo cards at a confirmation hearing for chief justice of the United States, the congressman who wrote a menu listing exactly how large a bribe he required for various official acts, the Supreme Court justice who made an obscene gesture leaving church, the chairmen of the Iraq Study Group who paused in deliberations for a photo shoot with Men’s Vogue, the attorney general who ordered a drape to cover the exposed breast of the “Spirit of Justice” statue, and the family-values lawmaker who settled a lawsuit with a young mistress who accused him of trying to strangle her.
To understand such behavior, I followed Potomac Man through his daily rituals: the morning “Gaggle” at the White House, the lunchtime reading of the “Hotline,” the afternoon viewing of Wolf Blitzer, and the evening fundraiser. I learned of his weekly rhythms: the Sunday morning shows that are more popular than church, the lawmakers’ Thursday afternoon rush to National Airport, and the administration’s Friday evening “dump” of bad news. I observed his seasonal festivals at each stage of the biennial electoral cycle: the winter budget battle, the summer recess and the fall campaign. And I explored the Potomac rites of passage: election, the accumulation of seniority, and, finally, the ascent to lobbyist.
Admittedly, even intensive research cannot thoroughly explain why a senior White House official would shoplift from Target, why a member of Congress would stash bribe money in food containers in his freezer or strike a police officer with her cell phone. Neither can such study adequately account for the senator who calls man-made global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated” or the Senate candidate who explained a low turnout at an airport rally by making up a story about a tree falling on a hangar. Such Potomac Land mysteries may never be solved. But they are well worth contemplating over a kosher ham sandwich.