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Townhall...
Goodbye, Washington
By Linda Chavez
7/8/2011
After nearly 40 years in Washington, I’m leaving the nation’s capital
pretty much as I found it when I arrived. The players have changed, but
the problems haven’t.
Richard Nixon occupied the White House then, and the United States was
involved in a long and unpopular war and faced economic problems at
home. In 1971, to combat nearly 6 percent inflation, and a trade and
balance-of-payments deficit, and to protect the value of the dollar,
Nixon imposed a 90-day freeze on wages and prices, and a 10 percent
import surcharge, and ended the convertibility of dollars into gold. He
also launched the war on drugs -- a ‘war’ we still haven’t won.
Forty years later, Barack Obama presides over an economy in far worse
shape than has existed at any point in the intervening period, and the
U.S. is about to lose its ability to borrow money -- yet Congress and
the president can’t agree on how to fix it. Relations between
congressional Republicans and Democrats are as rancorous as they were
during the Watergate period, maybe more so. (I can say that with some
authority because I worked on the House Judiciary Committee during the
Watergate hearings.) And the U.S. is involved in another unpopular war,
in Afghanistan, the longest in our history.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. But just as
Americans got through the lousy economy of the 1970s, I’m confident
we’ll recover from the mess we’re in now. Unemployment will recede, and
so will government spending -- not because of political deal-making but
because Americans will boot politicians who fail to do their job out of
office and replace them with those who will. Just ask Jimmy Carter.
I look back on a life in politics that took me from Capitol Hill to the
Reagan White House to the public policy and media worlds with as much
frustration as pride. Some of the policies I hoped to play a role in
changing -- like racial preferences in hiring and education -- have
become so ingrained and widespread many people no longer seem to notice
their corrosive effect.
But there were successes as well as failures, albeit modest ones.
Bilingual education -- which as columnist Michael Barone once quipped
is neither bilingual nor education -- has largely been replaced by
English instruction for non-English speakers, a goal I advocated for
more than 30 years.
And I met -- and in some cases worked for -- some truly great Americans
during my Washington years. President Reagan tops the list. It was a
great privilege to work in the Reagan administration, first as staff
director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and later as director
of public liaison at the White House.
Even President Reagan’s critics acknowledged that he was a true leader,
but it has taken time and the publication of his handwritten diaries
and speeches for some people to recognize the intellectual skills that
those of us who worked with him saw first-hand.
But there were also Democrats I admired -- even when I didn’t always
agree with them. Former Vice President and Senator Hubert Humphrey was
a gentleman to the end of his long political life in 1978. I first met
him when I was a young lobbyist walking the halls of Congress. And even
as he fought cancer, he never failed to be the “happy warrior,” as he
was known, with a smile and a kind word for everyone he met.
Unfortunately, I’ve also encountered some downright mean-spirited and
arrogant politicians. I won’t name names, but suffice it to say that
they can be found on both sides of the political aisle. I won’t miss
having to deal with the outsized egos Washington breeds, but I will
miss the many good friends and colleagues I’ve worked with over the
years.
I leave Washington to return to my childhood roots in Colorado. I’ve
lived almost two-thirds of my life in the East, but the West is in my
blood. I’ll still be commenting on what goes on inside the Beltway, but
with a new perspective. I’ll call on the insights I’ve earned working
in Washington, but now I’ll be looking in from the outside, like most
Americans.
Read it at Townhall
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