Mitt Romney, like most of his opponents, have adopted a well-worn strategy.

Le Monde, France

Over 200 Years On, Washington is Still 'Broken'

"It isn't surprising that the capital is receiving some bad press. This, so to speak, is in its genes. … The press immediately denigrated the city. Even in 1801, with 109 brick houses, the 'federal city' was judged too large, too expensive and too ostentatious."

By Corine Lesnes

Translated By Kate Davis

January 16, 2008

France - Le Monde - Original Article (French)

Washington has always considered itself a little like Rome. This is its destiny, it seems. One of the earliest arrivals was a certain Francis Pope. An English settler. In 1663, Mr. Pope settled on what is now Capitol Hill, and he believed he saw Rome at his feet. Bedazzled, he named his property after the Italian capital (the title can still be seen in the State Archives in Annapolis, Maryland).

Other sources claim that the man, who was an anti-Papist, was looking mainly to amuse himself. He enjoyed the effect it had when he introduced himself as: “The Pope." "The Pope of Rome,” he would say, Pope being the anglicized version of Pape. He also changed the name of Goose Creek, which flowed through his land, to the Tiber. And he forecast a flourishing future for the capital of the New World, which is still overrun by groups who are passionate about the symbolic meaning of the local architecture.

Washington wasn't built in a day. Between the act of Congress in 1790 that established the seat of the federal government on the banks of the Potomac [the Residence Act ]  and the arrival of the administration (15 cabinet heads, 69 members of the Treasury, 12 employees of Congress …) it took ten years. No one was in a hurry to move into the middle of a swamp (cows weren’t banned on the Mall until 1826). And many, especially among the Jeffersonians, feared a shift toward more centralized government. A capital! With the power to levy taxes? So why not restore the monarchy? Ever prudent, the Founding Fathers were careful to limit the pretensions of “big government.” The Constitution (Article I, Section 8) defines the maximum size of the federal city: 10 miles square [100 square miles].

The press immediately denigrated the city. Even in 1801, with 109 brick houses, the “federal city” was judged too large, too expensive and too ostentatious. Too monarchial. It took the Civil War and the influx of troops and wounded for Washington to earn its stripes as the capital. A century and a half later it has exploded again, swollen with the bureaucracy of Homeland Security. As Francis Fukuyama, who published his own photos of the capital last summer in the magazine American Interest said, Washington “reflects the vision of Alexander Hamilton, not Thomas Jefferson .” A powerful government - just what American individualism mistrusts the most.

This long preamble is only to underscore that it isn't surprising that the capital is receiving some bad press. This, so to speak, is in its genes. Every presidential election sees the same anti-government antiphons and the same candidates who claim never to have set foot in Washington. But this year takes the cake. Not since the Watergate scandal have the political class been held in such low esteem. The popularity of the Senate is still lower than that of George Bush. On the campaign trail, on the Democratic side as well as the Republican, we hear the same rallying cry: Washington delenda est! [Must Be Destroyed!]

"Washington is broken,” repeats Barack Obama. “To fix healthcare, we have to fix Washington.” In Michigan, Republican Mitt Romney appeared before a brightly-lit sign: “Washington is Broken." For him, "[Washington] is almost a broken down automobile clunker that you have to push in the station. The difference is we have been pushing that clunker into the same garage year after year after year … but they give it back to us in exactly the same condition where we got it.” The same words from the mouth of the populist John Edwards: “The system in Washington is broken.”

Why so much animosity? Voters are fed up with the government’s inability to act: from Hurricane Katrina with its crumbling dams to immigration and global warming. And when states take action on their own, as a dozen of them have on health insurance or limiting greenhouse gases, the federal government calls on the Supreme Court to quash them if necessary. “Washington's ideas are bankrupt,” said Texas Governor Rick Perry. “Today the epicenter of innovation is in the states.”

In a book that has just been released (Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that Run Our Government), Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank offers some additional information. In the time of the Piscataway Indians (who occupied the capital before Francis Pope), the Potomac was already “where the goods are brought in,” he says. Money continued to be the motivation of the indigenous people. “Thus, the modern-day Potomac Man is a local congressman (or woman) laboring to bring in the goods in the form of federal dollars for their state or district” he writes.

In the hierarchy of Potomac Land, presidential advisers occupy the highest rank, along with the Supreme Court judges who “interpret the sacred texts” and the electoral strategists who “use their shamanistic talents” to keep their candidates in power. Then come the newly elected, who live under the thumb of consultants. This, Milbank says, is not the least of the system's paradoxes, which claims to be the "most egalitarian in the world,” but which functions according “Byzantine” rules as good as frozen. The last category: the “untouchables.” This is the cohort of ordinary people in which the shamans are interested only once every four years and who now are demanding change.

Click Here for French Version