© 2017 by David Schoenbrod
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First American edition published in 2017 by Encounter Books, an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit, tax exempt corporation. Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com
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FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Schoenbrod, David, author.
Title: DC confidential: inside the five tricks of Washington / by David Schoenbrod; foreword by Howard Dean.
Other titles: D.C. confidential
Description: New York: Encounter Books, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016040156 (print) | LCCN 2016059669 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594039126 (Ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Government accountability—United States. | Political culture—United States. | Political corruption—United States. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / General. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Democracy.
Classification: LCC JF1525.A26 S35 2017 (print) | LCC JF1525.A26 (ebook) | DDC 320.973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040156
Interior page design and composition: BooksByBruce.com
In fond memory of my mentors:
John Doar, Neal D. Peterson, and Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III
Table of Contents
Foreword by Governor Dean
Foreword by Senator Lee
Introduction: Rabbits, Hats, and Sleights of Hand
1 The Left and the Right Agree on One Thing: Congress Misrepresents
2 How Congress Is Supposed to Work—and Long Did
3 When the Five Tricks Began
4 Four Tricks of the Legislative Trade—and How They Deceive Us
5 The Tricks Harm Us Now
6 The Tricks Will Ruin Us Later
7 A Trick Even for War—and How It Deceives Us
8 The Honest Deal Act
9 An Action Plan for Us
Appendices: A Toolkit
A Summary of the Honest Deal Act
B The Honest Deal Pledge
C How You Can Help Trigger Reform
D Organizations that Call for Accountable and Open Government
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
This is an alarming book, and indeed we should be alarmed. Americans already know that there is total lack of responsibility in Washington. That knowledge helped to produce the turmoil that we experienced during the election of 2016.
Washington and the campaigns of those seeking to get there have become like middle school on steroids: with the raging hormones, complete lack of civility, and, most tragically, abdication of any sense of dedication to a cause greater than ourselves.
As David Schoenbrod points out, this has been some time in the making. The Five Tricks of Washington that he discusses were not invented by the recent crop of candidates but rather are the result of decades of self-absorption by our political class, including the media.
A layperson reading this book may be tempted toward despair. Don’t go there!
The Five Tricks are complicated; otherwise they would not have been so successful for so long. But the real recurring theme here is very straightforward: the power to get rid of Washington chicanery is not within Washington, it is in each of us.
Yet, as Americans, we have failed to articulate the most important part of the solution. We debate ad nauseam about our rights as Americans, but it’s been a long time since I’ve heard a serious discussion about our obligations to one another. So, we get pulled into hot-button emotional issues about rights, most of which I support, but we never get around to asking what we ourselves must do to maintain a political system that allows us more rights than almost anywhere else in the world. Half of us vote, at best, and yet we wonder why the people we vote for can get away with using tricks that wreck the nation to get reelected.
I am, however, optimistic. Not long ago, I heard a conservative North Carolinian interviewed about the election of 2016. I disagreed with him on immigration and much else. After he bemoaned the state of the country from his point of view and talked about his fears for the future—the debt, the loss of jobs, and the prospects for our kids—he concluded by saying, “I am a social conservative, but I think we may need to put social conservativism on the shelf for a while in order to straighten this all out.”
I agree, but not because he spoke of putting aside social conservatism. We all, regardless of our favorite cause, need to work “to straighten this all out.” Our politics can’t be about winner-takes-all anymore. We have to make common cause and talk about real issues, including unpleasant subjects like debt and entitlement reforms. To do that, we must stop the tricks.
As you read this book, think not just about how mad you are at the tricksters. Think, as the social conservative from North Carolina did, about our obligations to one another as we fix the problems. We must refuse to respond to divisive tricksterism, and start to demand accountability from politicians, the media, and, most importantly, ourselves.
Howard Dean, MD
Governor of Vermont, 1991–2003
Chair, Democratic National Committee, 2005–09
Washington is broken and everyone in America knows it.
Every day the chronic dysfunction of the federal government becomes harder to ignore. Nearly $20 trillion of national debt, boosted by massive annual deficits as far as the eye can see. Soaring corporate profits on Wall Street and stagnant wages on Main Street, thanks to unfair tax and regulatory systems engineered by and for the politically well-connected. A bloated bureaucracy—insulated from the consequences of its decisions—that raises the cost and lowers the quality of nearly everything it touches, from health care to higher education to our social-safety-net programs. Meanwhile, our political debates seem to have descended from a contest of ideas to a lot of yelling and finger-pointing.
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