Arrogant, Elitist, Obama embarrassed of America:
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THE SENATE
Mr. Obama’s Washington
He wants to change the culture there. But it's hard to fix a place you've never really known.
Mannie Garcia
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AFP-Getty Images
In the Halls of Power: Obama takes a call outside the Senate chamber
From the magazine issue dated Jun 30, 2008
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The life of a young senator in Washington can be lonely. After winning a Senate seat from Illinois in 2004, Barack Obama became a part-time bachelor. He lived three or four days a week in a one-bedroom apartment a few blocks from the Capitol. He worked all day, and at night he missed his daughters and his wife, Michelle, left behind in Chicago. "I have chosen a life … that requires me to be gone from Michelle and the girls for long stretches of time and exposes Michelle to all sorts of stress," Obama wrote in "The Audacity of Hope." "Rationalizations seem feeble and painfully abstract when I'm missing one of the girls' school potlucks because of a vote, or calling Michelle to tell her that session's been extended and we need to postpone our vacation."
The Obamas' separated life was of their own making. When they had first pondered a run for the Senate, the couple had weighed the pros and cons of relocating to Washington. Obama quizzed Democrats on the balance between work life and home life; Michelle toured D.C. neighborhoods. In the end, they decided it was best to keep the home base in Chicago, where Michelle had her own career and the girls, Malia and Sasha, had a chance at normal life.
This is the stuff that people like about the Obamas—their insistence on maintaining something approximating "normal." From the start of their presidential campaign, the Democratic nominee and his wife have been at pains to show they view the capital as a strange and foreign place. They aren't the only ones. The Obamas are part of new generation of political couples that doesn't assume election to the Senate means a new life in Washington. Connie Schultz, a columnist for The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, works at home in Ohio while her husband, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, spends weekdays in Washington. "What better way to keep a senator grounded," she says, "than to bring him or her home on a regular basis to the people who elected him or her?"
But while frequent-flier legislators have been a boon for constituent services, they aren't necessarily good for governance. Old-guard senators bemoan their new colleagues' eagerness to get out of town on Thursday nights, a tendency that the veterans believe has helped make Washington a more partisan place. It was easier to understand the gentleman from the other party, they reason, when you saw him cheering at St. Albans' soccer games. As he launches his general-election campaign, Obama faces the question always asked of outsider candidates: how do you change a place you've never really known? And as they contemplate capturing the White House under a banner of bipartisanship, Obama and his generation of senators face a broader dilemma: how do they work with their opponents when, for so long, they've lived their lives apart?
Members of Congress have always led geographically divided lives. In the early 19th century, the House and Senate convened in mid-December and typically closed by March or April, in time for members to head home for the planting season. The Civil War, however, made service in Congress a full-time job, and the men stuck in Washington sought to turn it into a real city. "They were trying to catch up with New York and Philadelphia society," says Betty Koed, assistant historian of the Senate. "They needed women to do that." By the mid-20th century, it was standard for senators to bring their families to town. Each of the last three presidents who had served in the Senate—John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon—raised families in the capital.
Senators' spouses and kids became creatures of Washington, for better and for worse. This was the heyday of the Georgetown dinner party, of men with martini glasses and hostesses in flowing gowns out of "Advise and Consent." John Warner, the Republican from Virginia, retiring after six terms, remembers this Senate as "a close-knit family" where "a new senator had a big brother and his wife had a big sister." The collegial quarters made it harder to stay mad. "I remember in the good old days, there were several senators who were known to keep a pretty good bar," says Warner. "We would just go down and have a sip together and go home. The fight was over."
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