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3 | Going Downtown through the Overton Window to Play in the Endgame
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★ 69 3 Going Downtown through the Overton Window to Play in the Endgame People, Places, and Things, Both Real and Imagined Of the novels that have sought to capture Washington , Jeffrey Frank’s The Columnist ranks among the most underrated. It’s the 2001 comic “memoir” of an imaginary bedhopping and pompous pundit who, at the outset, listens to former President George H. W. Bush heap praise on him—“Not that you weren’t tough, but you always put your country first”— and then implore him to chronicle his life’s exploits for history’s sake. “Don’t hold back,” Bush urges.1 “Don’t hold back” is the unofficial motto of the score-settling book, something that’s become especially prominent in politics. Of course, athletes, movie stars, and musicians write juicy tell-all memoirs in which they exact revenge on those who slighted them. But in the world of lawmaking and politics, there’s an eagerness to twist the knife as quickly as possible that distinguishes the literary output. E-books discussing internal strife or depicting someone as an incompetent bungler now get published during presidential campaigns. Former defense secretary Robert Gates’s Duty is not a score-settling book per se, but when Gates came out with his 2014 memoir in which he rebuked Barack Obama and Joe Biden, some critics said it was too soon. As such, we thought it was one of the things—along with people (Neville Chamberlain, the American people) and places (Downtown, the Acela Corridor)—that merited inclusion in this 70 ★ Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs & Washington hanDshakes chapter. Some are imaginary or metaphoric, like the “Land” that encompasses a powerful politician’s entourage, or “The Pledge” never to raise taxes. Rest assured, though: They’re quite real to anyone having anything to do with the nation’s capital. Acela Corridor: The densely populated stretch of the Northeast traversed by pundits, campaign consultants, and other political cognoscenti. Named for the express, pricier Amtrak trains that can shuttle between Washington, D.C., and New York City in under three hours. Vice President Joe Biden is Amtrak’s bestknown patron; much was made of his daily train commute between D.C. and Delaware when he represented that state in the Senate. (He even half-jokingly once complained to one of us, “When I die, they’ll put it on my tombstone: ‘He took the train.’”2) ★ “Acela Corridor” can sometimes be used as a pejorative. This is usually a knock against liberals. Conservative-leaning New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote in June 2013 that gun control, immigration reform, and climate change are “pillars of Acela Corridor ideology, core elements of [then New York Mayor Michael] Bloombergism, places where Obama-era liberalism overlaps with the views of Davos-goers [a reference to the World Economic Forum, a gathering of political/business elites] and the Wall Street 1 percent.”3 Conservative RedState blog founder Erick Erickson is harsher in his assessment of the “Acela Corridor” crowd, suggesting they’re mostly acolytes of President Barack Obama. “The New York–Washington bubble remains largely disconnected from the rest of the country. . . . There is a disconnect that I think explains both Congress and the President’s falling approval ratings,” he wrote in June 2013.4 The American people: Every politician, even the ones in complete disagreement, claims to speak for the people. It’s invoked often enough to have achieved drinking-game status. Vanderbilt University communication studies professor Paul Stob [52.90.181.205] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 06:11 GMT) ★ 71 PeoPle, Places, and Things says “the people” has become “the keyword for all populist discourse.”5 ★ That means that true believers can call the agreement that ended the 2013 government shutdown a lousy deal for the American people, while President Obama said the shutdown offered incontrovertible evidence that “the American people are completely fed up with Washington.”6 But as Stob notes, there are other subsets to describe political audiences: hardworking Americans, American families, the good people of [fill in the blank with any state or city], Godfearing Americans, “real Americans,” and so on. And there is “We the people,” taken from the first three words of the Constitution . It’s become an increasingly popular expression of outrage on both liberal and conservative circles, as in “What about ‘We the people?” Conservatives also talk about “the undeserving,” or those deemed unworthy of government benefits that have to rely on “handouts.” A related phrase is “in the...