Conservatives rightly honor George Washington, but why should any conservative so much as like Washington, D.C.?  The answer seems as perplexing as the desire of a tourist to buy an “I Love D.C.” T-shirt from one of the Third World vendors on Capitol Hill.  Tell me, Mr. Smith of Heartland, U.S.A., does wearing red-white-and-blue schlock signify your pilgrim’s pride that “We, the People” are masters of the federal government and that you visit its lair as a co-landlord inspecting his corporate realm?  As you tour the Capitol in your shorts and your made-in-China T-shirt and sneakers, does the glare off of white-marble shrines blind you to the reality that the federal leviathan confiscates a third of your annual income, meddles in your private affairs to the extent of dictating the type of toilet you can buy, and, when it is not financing circuses with your money, may cause your death when its riles Islamic militants?

After surveying the scene for over a year before returning to my native Midwest, I think that I have a good, if rather general, answer to my opening question, premised by the observation that few conservatives worth their salt reside in D.C. and like it.  “It” is the reason D.C. exists, not the cosmopolitan trappings that make life pleasant on former swampland.  “It” signifies what this city has become through the income tax, mass democracy, and the managerial state.  “It” is marked by the politicking and talk shows, the public-policy wonks finding fulfillment in ephemera and lobbyists wringing pols’ hands with a check in their palm.  “It” is odious to true conservatives who work here only because their jobs demand it.

What of the majority of D.C.’s so-called conservatives?  Simply put, they are mislabeled.  The first indication is that they love it there and get paper cuts from passing out their business cards so fast.  They fall into two categories: the first, pathetic; the other, contemptible.  There are the earnest young “conservatives” who do not know Burke or Adam Smith but are well versed in Coulter and Hannity.  They believe that voting Republican will make everything hunky-dory.  Conservatives of the heart, maybe, but not of the mind.  Then there are the ambitious hacks who have graduated from the College Republicans and want to join the real party.  Seeing them prancing down the street squawking into their cell phones incites the delicious urge to strangle them with their power ties.

However, the efforts of both sorts of quasiconservative politico are rendered more absurd (the earnest young things) or more shameful (the hacks) by the stagnant status quo.  Washington is no place for initiating bold new ideas or defending the dowdy principles laid out in the Constitution.  Practically all of the planks of the Socialist Party platform on which Norman Thomas ran in 1928 have been accepted by both parties and most have been implemented.  Back in 1962, Mr. Thomas himself noted the irony: “The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly.”  Since both parties agree on the big picture, they must fight over the details.  The noble statesmen of the Old Republic would not bother coming to town today, which explains the ascendancy of the Lotts and Liebermans.

And so the average Washingtonian conservative is in the same boat as the liberals, who at least are honest in their convictions.  This phenomenon is not limited to strictly political circles but extends to all institutions associated with the government, such as think tanks.  The biggest right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation, is located three blocks from Congress and advertises government positions through its “job bank.”  As a devastating New Republic piece showed, Heritage glosses over the threat posed by China (which offers lucrative investment opportunities), though it once vigorously assailed the Evil Empire (nuclear rich but cash poor).  Epitomizing Washington’s uncontroversial conservatism, this powerful organization deserves the nickname “the Heretic Foundation.”

Conversations with D.C. conservatives—activists, policy wonks, and politicos—validate Russell Kirk’s observation that “politics is the preoccupation of the quarter-educated.”  They can debate ad nauseam the composition of the Department of Homeland Security without ever asking what the “Defense” Department signifies.  They can squabble over immigration reform without ever taking note of President Eisenhower’s successful “Operation Wetback,” which simply deported the aliens back to Mexico.  They can give incredibly detailed analyses of proposals for prescription-drug benefits without questioning whether the Constitution mandates that the government play pharmacist.  They lack the intellect and imagination to get to the roots of policies and to determine their worth based on first principles or the Constitution.  Their chests are stuffed with statistics and factoids, but their heads are empty of wisdom and the knowledge of what the Founding Fathers intended America to be.  They can quote from George W. Bush’s first inaugural address but haven’t a clue what George Washington said in his Farewell Address.  Banning such characters from D.C. would drop the bottom out of the housing market.

None of these gripes is to deny that Washington can be lots of fun, however.  There is much fiddling while Rome burns.  The suits talk shop and joke over their single malt, and there is no lack of merrymaking for legislative assistants and other underlings at the loud, anonymous bars.  (Try striking up a conversation with the typical go-getter girl, and her lead question is, “So, who do you work for?”)  Yet, for conservatives who wind up in Washington for ingenuous reasons, there are avenues for entertainment, too.  Being members of a small cast, they tend to seek each other out for camaraderie.

Before returning to the relative sanity of Babbitt country, I invited Joseph Sobran to lunch with some friends: a carpet-bagging Knickerbocker who sells
real estate to underwrite his scholarship (a Ph.D. dissertation on Benjamin Disraeli), and two speechwriters for high-ranking government officials.

“At fifty, everyone has the face he deserves,” Orwell said.  Mr. Sobran’s visage is scarred by battles that he should not have had to fight.  But that is what getting axed by William F. Buckley, Jr., from National Review and blackballed by the mainstream conservative press can do to a man of principle.  Still, he seemed heartened by sympathetic young Turks eager for his conversation.  He did not fail to please.  Going to war with Iraq, he remarked, is proof that the War on Terrorism has failed.  We can’t find Osama, so we’ll get Saddam.  “President Bush said that we won’t know when we’ve won the War on Terrorism,” he said over a glass of sparkling Spanish wine.  “My question is: How will we know if we’ve lost?”

As our glasses were refilled and the plates cleared away, the conversation shifted to a secular god not yet enshrined in a temple on the Mall, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  I recalled the incident during a summit in which Stalin boasted that he planned to have 50,000 German POW’s executed.  Churchill protested this gross inhumanity.  Smirking, FDR suggested a compromise: murdering only 49,999.  At this, Mr. Sobran exclaimed, “I just want to [make water] on his grave.  Anyone want to join me?  In fact, I’d like to lead a march on Hyde Park to do it.”

That sounds like a refreshing weekend getaway from Byzantium-on-the-Potomac.