A Weekend in Washington

Notes on our country and society

The White House and beyond from Lafayette Park, September 2023 (Jay Nordlinger)

On Saturday, I took a bus down from New York to Washington. The driver of that bus was wonderful. More about her in due course.

Not far from D.C.’s Union Station—where the buses “dock,” as well as the trains—is the U.S. Department of Labor. This is what confronted me, and everyone else:

I was repulsed. Because I think Trump is unfit to be president? No, because I think such a banner on a federal building is unbefitting of our republic. I mean, leave it to Turkmenistan or some other such place.

If there were a similar banner of Barack Obama or Joe Biden—or Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris—Republicans would howl about it. And I, of course, would be howling right along with them.

“If it weren’t for double standards, there would be no standards at all.” Mona Charen taught me that expression long ago. In our country today, tribalism rules.

Let me tell you a secret—well, it’s not a secret, because I have written about it several times. I have now been writing, publicly, for ... let’s see: 30 years. Exactly, in fact! When you’ve been at it for that long, you’ve written about practically everything.

(It was 30 years ago this month that The Weekly Standard launched, and I launched too, so to speak—as a journalist.)

When I was in college, I spent a semester in Washington, taking a “domestic semester abroad,” as I thought of it. (I had just taken a semester in Italy.) I was in love with U.S. politics and the U.S. government, and with our capital city itself.

Yes, I was.

My internship was in the office of Senator Bob Dole, who, that semester, was elected majority leader by his Republican colleagues. But I also visited a number of executive departments and agencies—and in every one of them, there were pictures of the president and vice president: Reagan and Bush.

Now, I liked Reagan and Bush. But those pictures struck me as wrong. I was shocked, in fact. It seemed a little North Korean—not quite us.

And those pictures were postage stamps (in size) compared with the thing hanging from the Department of Labor.

In a cabinet meeting—one of those nauseating North Korean affairs, where the members bathe the Dear Leader in flattery—the labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, said, “Mr. President, I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor.” She added, “You are really the transformational president of the American worker.”

Every American stomach should turn. Why it doesn’t, says something about the national character in this era.

***

Did you see this? It is not a parody. It is real.

Cathy Young commented, “The Soviet Union called and it wants its poster back.” (Ms. Young was, in fact, born in the Soviet Union, as “Yekaterina Jung.” She knows what she’s talking about.)

***

All of my life, I have been cheered, heartened, by the sight of U.S. soldiers. (Of policemen, too.) They are our friends. They protect us. Without them, we would be lost.

This weekend, for the first time in my life, I was not cheered or heartened by the sight of U.S. soldiers—the ones milling about in Metro stations. I knew why they were there: President Trump was performing.

There are many, many articles to read on this subject. Here and now, I would like to note simply this: I hated—hated—that I had this feeling upon seeing our soldiers. A sour feeling. An unsettled feeling.

As I’ve said, this was brand new to me.

And it had nothing to do with our soldiers—rather, with their current leadership.

***

You know what city is too lightly policed? New York. When I got back, I went to the 42nd St. Station to take the subway home. Of course, the kid next to me jumped the turnstile. Not a “hood,” let me specify. A clean-cut high-school or college kid.

Last year, I was talking with a young friend of mine, a freshman at one of our universities. She said that practically everyone jumps the turnstile. It makes you feel like a chump for paying.

When law-abiding people see others break the law—breezily and with impunity—it demoralizes them. The entire atmosphere is degraded.

Mayor Giuliani and his team understood this. So did Mayor Bloomberg and his team. That was a golden period in New York, those 20 years from 1993 to 2013. The lessons of that period ought to be reapplied now.

When I mentioned this on social media, someone responded, “Is there a politician who has thrown away more goodwill than Giuliani? He did such good things and then torched his own legacy.”

His good works for New York stand. They are “ungainsayable,” as Bill Buckley might put it. But his Trump-period performance? Well, he has a lot of company ...

***

The driver of the bus from New York to Washington was “wonderful,” I said at the top of this column. Yes. And she was the driver the next day, too: from Washington back to New York.

Before the journey, she gave a little speech, over the microphone. Please keep your voices down, she said. Respect your fellow passengers. Don’t have your phone on speaker. Don’t let your “notifications” beep. Don’t clip your nails. Please behave.

In sum: Let’s be civilized and get to our destination safely, shall we?

On a break, when we were stretching our legs, I spoke to this woman. She is from Jamaica. She has seen a lot in America—a lot that is wrong. On that bus, she has a front-row seat.

I wish you could listen to her, to hear the details. I wish I could make her a guest columnist. But the gist of it is ...

Well, do you remember the phrase “the coarsening of the culture”? In the past, we conservatives used it a lot. And, yes, the culture has coarsened. Everything is downward.

On Saturday night, I listened to a friend of mine, a very experienced journalist. He has traveled this country from coast to coast. He is a natural patriot (principled and unshowy). And he said something like this: “Our culture is more cracked than you know.”

Obviously, everyone’s got stories: not just negative ones but positive ones, too. There is much good around us. Still, we should not close our eyes to the trends.

Take Senator Lee’s Twitter feed (please). He calls himself “BasedMikeLee.” The meaning of “based” is a little fuzzy. But in practice, it seems to be close to “debased.”

***

While in Washington, I had to snap this picture:

Let me get mushy. (“The world will pardon my mush,” wrote Ira Gershwin.) I love this country and its political system—its constitutional way of life. I have had this love since childhood. And these things—our country, its way of life—are worth struggling to maintain.

Don’t leave the field to our foes. Our various illiberal foes. Hang in there.

Okay, that’s my lil’ speech.

***

So help me, I have thought of Red Buttons. He was a comedian—born Aaron Chwatt—who lived from 1919 to 2006. His main shtick was “never got a dinner.” He would speak at Friars Club roasts and on Dean Martin specials. Someone would be getting a dinner. But you know who “never got a dinner”? That was Red’s shtick.

“Adam, who said to Eve, ‘What do you mean you have nothing to wear?’—never got a dinner.”

“Eve, who asked Adam, ‘Does this fig leaf make me look fat?’—never got a dinner.” (Red would add: “She got an apple, but never a dinner.”)

“President Jimmy Carter, who said to Pope John Paul II, ‘Next time, bring the missus’—never got a dinner.”

“Queen Elizabeth, who said, ‘Not now, I’m on the throne!’—never got a dinner.”

On and on it went. Good lines, generally. And Red, a New Yorker, said “dinnah.” “Nevah got a dinnah.”

Do you want to know something odd? In Washington, friends of mine threw a dinner “in my honor.” Terribly embarrassing. And so gratifying. I think we need friends in this world, which is often bruising. They are worth their weight in gold, our friends.

I thank them. And I thank my readers. And these two groups—friends and readers—happily blend.

Once more to quote Ira: “Pardon my mush.”

Out.