E-mail a friendDana Milbank
airdate February 14, 2008
A Washington Post staff writer and author of the popular "Washington Sketch" column, Dana Milbank was named one of the nation's top political journalists by Columbia Journalism Review. He's also been called one of Washington's most feared columnists. He covered President Bush's first term and the '04 election and published a collection of columns about the '00 presidential election, Smashmouth. Milbank is also a political analyst for MSNBC and has written a new book on the government, Homo Politicus.
Dana Milbank
Tavis: Dana Milbank is a widely read columnist for "The Washington Post" and a political analyst for MSNBC. He's combined his wit and wisdom for a new book called "Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government." He joins us from Washington. Dana, nice to have you on the program.
Dana Milbank: Good to be with you on the program.
Tavis: "Homo Politicus" means?
Milbank: Well, it's Potomac man, it's the strange and very scary people who live right here in Washington. They steal from other tribes, as we saw in the case of Jack Abramoff. They put strange war paint on their faces, as we've seen in the case of Katherine Harris. (Laughter) And anybody who has seen Howard Dean give a yell knows that we have very fierce war cries here. And then there's not even to mention the public fertility rituals, which of course Larry Craig has made famous.
Tavis: (Laughs) I'm laughing already. I mentioned earlier that your usual wit and wisdom come together and come to bear in this book. The idea for the text comes from where?
Milbank: Well, I moved to Washington 12 years ago and I've always sort of felt that I was a foreign correspondent here. So in this case, I bought a pith helmet, pretended I was an anthropologist. Really, my only degrees come from Google and Wikipedia, but I've compared Potomac man to various barbaric tribes. For example, anybody who saw the Scooter Libby trial knows that Potomac man still practices human sacrifice, much the way the Aztecs did five centuries ago when the poor fellow would be marched up the pyramid, then have his still-beating heart ripped out.
Tavis: (Laughs) Potomac man is made or born?
Milbank: Well, it's some combination of each. But what frequently happened is people from elsewhere in the country send perfectly normal people here who have this unfortunate habit of going native. The word "Potomac" in the language of the Piscataway Indians who first lived here, means "where the goods are brought in."
And if you're going to survive here in Potomac land, you've got to know how to bring in the goods. And basically, that means hooking yourself up with a lobbyist. I compare them to the Melanesian Big Men. They give you campaign contributions; you give them the currency known as earmarks.
Tavis: (Laughs) But Potomac man works primary where, on the Hill, down the street from the Hill, in the White House? Where does Potomac man most reside?
Milbank: Tavis, some of them are right here in the newsroom I'm speaking to you from, (laughter) so I'd better be very careful because my back is unguarded. They're all over the place. Surprisingly, though, there is perhaps seven million people who live in the Baltimore, Washington metropolitan area, but by one count that was I think done by ABC News, they call it the "Gang of 500," essentially arguing that only 500 people really matter and count in this town.
Those would be - that's the "Homo Politicus" crowd. I likened it to the Varna caste system in India; so you have the shamans, or political strategists, at the top; you have the warriors, the politicians. Then you have the bureaucracy, and the vast majority of people are untouchables. Just ordinary people who just through no fault of their own had the bad luck of living in the national capitol area.
Tavis: Let me walk through some of these traits so that when I am next in Washington I will recognize Potomac man when I see him. You tell me in the book that one of the traits of Potomac man is craving symbols of status.
Milbank: Well, he does in virtually every aspect. You can identify people by - they like to wear these ID tags around their neck, you can get a pretty good sense of status that way. You can tell by their parking spot how near the White House or the Capitol it is, what row they're seated in on Air Force One, and of course which parties they're invited to. Everybody's very conscious of this and it's sort of the unspoken language that we communicate with here.
Tavis: You intimated just a moment ago that Potomac man has a real need to be seen and heard.
Milbank: Yes, he does. Some of this means going to parties so you can look over the shoulder of the person you are talking to and look for the next person you need to meet in the room, but thanks to the wonder of modern telecommunications this can also be achieved by face time, as the ritual is known, on television.
We have some very expert practitioners of this, the most famous being Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer in the Senate, who have been known to give sometimes four, five, six press conferences in a single day. (Laughter) These are some of our greatest orators.
Tavis: Which leads to the next trait of Potomac man: greed, ruthlessness, egomania, the importance of having presents bestowed upon you. All these traits of Potomac man?
Milbank: Yes, and that's the idea. The lobbyists are really the ones who are in fact more powerful than the lawmakers themselves. The lobbyists are the ones who give mocha (sp?), as the Melanesian tribes call it, these tributes that they give to the lawmakers in the form of campaign cash. But they're very powerful. In fact, they believe that almost anything is possible.
I wrote in the book about Jack Abramoff, the now-imprisoned former Republican lobbyist who sat down to lunch with me one day and said he was opening up a Jewish kosher deli and he had been able to find a breed of kosher pig. (Laughter) That this particular swine could chew its cud and have cleft hooves so that its bacon would be kosher. Alas, this turned out too good to be true, which unfortunately was true of everything else about Jack Abramoff.
Tavis: (Laughs) I'm fascinated about why it is that Potomac finds it more necessary, more important, more worthy, more valuable, to talk to other Potomac men than to talk to Potomac man's constituents.
Milbank: Well, you see, homo politicus worships public opinion. There's a lot of talk about Judeo-Christian values, but really what's worshipped here is the gods of public opinion. That's why our high priests or our shamans, the medicine men, are the pollsters who are able to manipulate and strategize about how to change public opinion.
That's not to say that they have any regard for any particular individual's opinion about anything. The whole idea is that is something to be manipulated; it's the overall gods of public opinion. Because that's how you keep your majority, that's how you build your party, and of course for Potomac man, party is really family.
Tavis: So why does Potomac man get to make laws that he doesn't have to live by?
Milbank: Well he often finds out, much to his dismay, that he does, in fact, have to live by the laws that he has written for others, but it is frequently thought that the laws don't apply to him. It brings to mind the case of Duke Cunningham from California, who I thought made a great innovation in the Potomac economy. He actually drew up a bribery list and said, "If you want this piece of legislation, you've got to buy me a yacht." Or, "For this I'll take a Rolls-Royce;", or this, "I'll take the antique furniture." (Laughter)
I thought that was a great way to improve on the economy here, it'd be like going to McDonald's and saying, "This is the price if this is what you want." Unfortunately, the federal agents saw otherwise in that case.
Tavis: (Laughs) Let me ask you then what it is about this predilection that Potomac man has, this predilection toward trouble?
Milbank: Yes, it's almost like a moth to flame and of course the most dangerous part of that is hypocrisy. One of this is in the mating rituals section of the book. I talk about the unfortunate case of this conservative congressman, Don Sherwood, very high ratings for family values until his mistress, 40 years younger than he, filed a lawsuit claiming he had attempted to strangle and beat her on many occasions.
This was a big problem for him, but fortunately Potomac man is a very loyal breed and President Bush actually went to campaign for this congressman's re-election right in the middle of what the president himself declared to be National Character Counts Week.
Tavis: (Laughs) So tell me then, Dana Milbank, whether or not there is - you mentioned our friend Joe Biden earlier in this conversation, who was, of course, at one point in the race for the Democratic nomination for the White House. Is there someone now still in the race or someone now out of the race in this election cycle for the White House who best exemplifies, who is the fitting image of Potomac man?
Milbank: They all represent Potomac men in their own way, the exception being Mike Huckabee. They see him as really a barbarian, an outsider, almost a cannibal here, because he really would change the way of life here and how the goods are brought in. But Obama is seen as a shaman, he's a shape-shifter who can appeal to people on the other side.
Hillary Clinton, I've referred to her as a revenge killer. She's a very fierce warrior who's seeking to restore the reputation and administration of her husband. Mitt Romney was one of the great storytellers, able to create entire myths about (laughter) all the things he believed on the other side. Then of course Rudy Giuliani was the deviant who was able to remain atop of the polls for a long time, even though there were all these questions about cross-dressing and multiple wives and that sort of thing.
Tavis: So when one is smack dab in the middle of Potomac man land, Potomac land, I might put it that way, and one writes a book about Potomac man in Potomac land, what happens to that person?
Milbank: Well, one of the local magazines suggested a food taster for me. Nobody's volunteered for that role, but of course there are many, many good and decent people here, and I've paid them the compliment of leaving them out of the book.
Tavis: (Laughs) His name - you see that wit and wisdom always at work - his name, of course, Dana Milbank, columnist for "The Washington Post." His new book is called "Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government. Something that might bring a little levity to you in these all-too-serious times. Dana Milbank, nice to have you on the program.
Milbank: Thanks very much, Tavis.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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