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 / AFP-Getty Images

In the Halls of Power: Obama takes a call outside the Senate chamber

By Jonathan Darman | NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Jun 30, 2008

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Barack Obama

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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."

Member Comments

Posted By: just-another-sweetie @ 07/19/2008 8:13:31 AM

Arrogant, Elitist, Obama embarrassed of America:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7I3mwrC9M4
Posted By: Nins @ 07/12/2008 6:47:00 PM

Know why McCain wants to distance himself from former Senator Phil Gramm? It's not because of Gramm's obnoxious remarks calling Americans "a nation of whiners" who are in "a mental recession." Those remarks were so ascerbic that they may've been made just to give McCain an excuse to distance himself from Gramm. This issue is a lot deeper than it looks on the surface.

When Gramm was a Senator he was Chairman of the Banking Committee. He pushed through the legislation known as the "Enron Loophole." This loophole allowed US investment banks to bypass Federal regulations governing futures trading, and is the reason why investment banks were able to falsely inflate the prices of oil, wheat, corn and other commodities through massive futures trading, causing your costs of gas, heating oil and food to go through the roof.

Gramm also created the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act, which got rid of the laws that seperate banking, insurance and brokerage activities in America. The Gramm Act was touted as a new way to protect consumer privacy, but the real meat on the Act's bones was banking deregulation. Essentially, this Act did away with laws written after the Great Depression to protect us from another Wall Street/Banking Industry collapse. That's right, Gramm stripped the system of it's safe guards nine years ago, and guess what? The value of the dollar has nose-dived, four major economic institutions have failed, Wall Street is unstable, and we are in a worsening recession.

Notably, the US investment banks that gained the most from the Enron Loophole and from the Gramm Act contributed more than a million dollars to Gramm's campaign.

Currently Gramm is Vice Chairman of UBS, the Swiss Bank that came up with the idea of "death bonds." Worse, though, UBS is involved in a scam where they sold auction rate securities to American customers. Auction rate securities are supposed to be as safe as cash, but the way UBS did it, the fees garnished by their in-house investment bankers were intentionally higher than the return on the securities, ripping off their American customers. The Massachusetts Attorney General has already filed charges against UBS, and private brokers world-wide have dropped UBS stock. UBS is forecasted to lose 82.91% of it's value in 2008. We are talking about the corporate bank where Gramm is Vice Chairman. Looking at his track record there and at the havoc he has wrought on the US economy through the Senate Banking Committee, it's clear that either Gramm is a criminal or grossly incompetent.

Now McCain wants nothing to do with Gramm, wants us to forget Gramm has been a key player on McCain's team. Gramm was McCain's campaign CO-CHAIR and LEADING ECONOMIC ADVISOR. Previously, McCain had said that he planned to appoint Gramm as SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

With Gramm as McCain's leading economic advisor, now you know why economists and analysts say that McCain's economic policy plans are untenable.
Posted By: Express-talk @ 07/11/2008 3:25:00 PM

THERE ISN´T MUCH DIFFICULTY IN KNOWING HOW WASHINGTON IS RUN BEFORE YOU DESIDE TO CHANGE IT! IT IS NONESENSE TO MAKE SUCH SUGGESTIONS.IF YOU ARE AN AMERICAN RISIDING IN AMERICA AND ARE SMART ENOUGH,YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO VISION THE TERRACE AND TOPOGRAPHY OF WASHINGTON.WHEN THAT IS CLEAR YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY DIFFICULTY FINDING THE RIGHT CONTOUR LINES OF REPAIR!
OBAMA IS ENERGETIC AND SMART ENOUGH TO TAKE UP THE CHALLENGES OF CHANGE WITH HIS POSSIBLE CABINET AND ADVISERS.BECAUSE HE HAS OFTEN DISPLAYED A GREAT DEAL OF GOOD JUDGEMENTS IN THE MAJOR ISSUES,THERE SHOULD CERTAINLY BE NO CAUSE FOR ALARM BUT FOR AN AGING AND FORGETFUL McCAIN,WHO DIRECTLY IS INVOLVED IN THE PLOT THAT LED TO THE WAR DRAGING AMERICANS KNEES ON THE GROUND ECONOMICALLY AND WEAKENING OUR SECURITY AS A RESULT.McCAIN HAS MAITAINED AMERICA IS BETTER OF,HIS PHIL GRAMM SAYS AMERICANS ARE COMPLAINING TO MUCH AND WHYNNING,SUGGEST McCAIN REMAINS INCORRIGIBLY OUT OF TOUCH.A TRUE CONFIRMATION OF HIS ZERO KNOWLEDGE OF THE ECONOMY.HE SAYS HE NEEDS TO BE EDUCATED ON ECONOMY BUT AMERICA CAN´T WAIT FOR HIS AGING BRAIN TO FIRST GET IT.NO NOT AT THIS VERY FIERCE URGENCY OF NOW!!I AM CONFIDENT THAT EVEN THE LEAST EDUCATED AMERICAN WOULD MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE THIS TIME!WE CAN´T COMPLAIN ABOUT BUCH,YET CONSIDER A WORSE CANDIDATE THAN BUSH IN ALL FASHION.