Social Notes: When Washington after dark still made the news

Sam Smith 1975 – Among the social notes of last month is an item from Texas telling of the meeting between John B. Connally and our president." Asked by reporters how he justified conferring privately for forty-five minutes with Connally, who is under indictment on charges of bribery and perjury, the ever ingenuous Ford replied, …

The murder capital

Sam Smith, 2016 - A chance surf landed me on the beach in time for some rare unpredictable C-SPAN moments. There was a supercilious Michael Lind, lately proposing that the Vietnam War was a good thing, and a mild and bemused novelist, Tim O'Brien, who thought nothing of the sort, in part because he had …

A hidden Washington that works

Sam Smith It is easy these days to give up on Washington ever doing anything right. Which is one reason I've enjoyed being on the board of the Fund for Constitutional Government for the past quarter century. The fund, started by the late Stewart Mott, has helped create and support groups that have blown whistles, …

A capital without doubt

Sam Smith The other day I found myself watching one of those CPAN segments in which serious looking men say purportedly wise things in front of a wall full of reduplicated monikers like “Brookings Institution.” I wasn’t enthralled by what the speaker was saying, I even questioned much of it, but what got my attention …

Bipolar America

Sam Smith Some days, when I finish editing and writing stuff about our nation and its politics, I get in my car and drive “up street” – the five miles on a two lane country road to the center of our Maine town. I am on my way to run  errands or to meet someone, …

Capitol cops in a different time

Sam Smith 2006 The US Capitol Police force was once comprised mainly of young men benefiting from the patronage granted their fathers by various members of Congress. It was a fairly pleasant crowd and you knew you were not just dealing with a law enforcement officer but perhaps a grad student whose dad was a …

Pathological politics

Sam Smith – I’ve only watched two  episodes of House of Cards but it has already made me glad I finally left Washington. Admittedly, I never ran into a congressman who  handed out dope to get some cooperation, but like the native American story teller put it, “all the facts may not be right, but …

Bipartisan law breaking

Sam Smith One of the problems in understanding what is happening in Washington is that if both major parties lie or break the law, the media tends to just go along with it. A recent example is the case of Obama issuing signing statements allegedly exempting himself from having to obey Congress' defunding of his …

WASHINGTON: WHERE SMART PEOPLE GO TO DO STUPID THINGS

Sam Smith One of the reasons that Barack Obama was elected was that many people thought he was extremely intelligent. And they assumed that meant he would also be competent. Unfortunately, these two qualities - while not necessarily mutually exclusive - are not necessarily synonymous, either. In fact, we have found ourselves stuck with an …

Singing for the chief

Sam Smith -  The US Capitol Police force was once comprised mainly of young men benefiting from the patronage granted their fathers by various members of Congress. It was a fairly pleasant crowd and you knew you were not just dealing with a law enforcement officer but perhaps a grad student whose dad was a …

Why Washington doesn’t work

Sam Smith, 2009 The years I have spent in Washington since covering my first story in 1957 can be roughly divided into two parts: a time when the capital and America were getting better and a time when they were getting worse. In that order. I use 1980 as a rough turning point. Rough because …

Gaylord Nelson

SAM SMITH,  - When I met my wife she was working as assistant press secretary to Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Nelson was notable in two regards: good legislation and good stories. For example, he was once delivering a speech when he stopped a few paragraphs in, looked over his glasses at the audience and …

Potomac playground

Sam Smith 2006 Phil Hart said the Senate was a place that did things 20 years after it should have. The same could be said of much of the rest of Washington. In fact the yet-to-be accomplished U.S.-Iranian negotiations are now at 27 years and still counting. The common presumption is that such tardiness is …

The media’s anti left bias

Sam Smith, 2005 Dana Milbank's snotty attack on critics of White House behavior as revealed in the Downing Street memos illuminates a carefully concealed truth about the media: its definition of objectivity stops at the edge of anything left of center. Standard Democratic policy is okay, even a liberal quote or two, but anything further …

Galaxy Update: The Clingons & the Process People on Planet Potomac

Sam Smith, 2003 -   The two most powerful subcultures on Planet Potomac are the Clingons and the Process People. The former got their name from their skill in hanging onto various branches of power with one hand while speaking on the phone with the other, valiantly ignoring the laws of gravity, ecological factors, common sense, …