CHAPTER 10

Our Leaders Hate Us

You could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol.

—Senate leader Harry Reid, on Americans

Nobody likes a crybaby. Especially if he’s a sixty-five-year-old adult male who happens to be in the third-most-powerful office in America and beats his face on every surface in his bathroom while misusing exercise bands (a new phrase for “mafia beating”—I kid! Don’t delete it, legal!). But there was Tang-colored former Speaker of the House John Boehner weeping like he’d just lost his favorite golf club as he announced his resignation from Congress. You see, mean old conservatives kept trying to get him to challenge the president and do what millions of people elected his party to do in a 2014 landslide.

But shed no tears for John Boehner. He’s almost certain to go the way of other disgraced politicians—cashing in on their time in office to make millions of dollars so they can stay as far away from Flyover Nation as possible. Make no mistake: John Boehner has total contempt for the millions of Americans who supported the Tea Party and constitutional conservatives. He said as much when he resigned, blasting those “who whip people into a frenzy” to do things that “are never going to happen.” Crazy ideas like reducing the size of government, repealing Obamacare, cutting spending—positions supported by a vast majority of Americans.

In the end, Boehner has no interest in supporting the folks who elected him. And neither did his close friend and colleague Eric Cantor, who was booted out of Congress in the biggest upset in more than a century. Cantor, who worked against his own constituents on a host of issues, turned right around after being fired by them to prove just how right about him they had been. The man accused of being a candidate of Wall Street, not Main Street, went right to work for—wait for it—a Wall Street investment firm! He’s now employed as vice chairman of Moelis & Company, where, the Washington Post reported, he will make twenty-six times the average salary of people in his former district.162

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a capitalist. I’m not some street-defecating hippie occupying Wall Street. Just because they are rich doesn’t mean our elected representatives can’t understand us, but it does make it harder to sympathize with the ordinary struggles of the working class—because they don’t remember them. They don’t even really live in Flyover country anymore—or even in the states they claim to revere and represent in Washington. Look how many of them, when their jobs no longer require them to live with the coastals, choose to stay. When they have a choice, they spend as little time around us unwashed masses as possible. They do so only as a vote-getting vehicle.

Take Speaker Boehner, for example: After weeping over the fine folks of his district in Ohio, who put their faith in him and elected him to office thirteen times, he announced plans to retire to an $850,000 condo in beautiful Cleveland. Not. He’s actually going to live with other fat cats in a “luxury residence” in Marco Island, Florida, where the average household is worth over $650,000. That is, when Boehner isn’t jetting back to DC to reap millions as a lobbyist from his years of “public service.” See ya later, Ohio! Waving good-bye to Flyover country in the rearview mirror is a bipartisan epidemic. In 2014 a Kansas senator almost lost his job when his constituents learned he no longer lived in Kansas. That’s right—Pat Roberts, a creature/caricature of the political establishment, owned no home or apartment in the state he was elected to serve. His primary residence was in a suburb of Washington, DC—suburbs that are quickly becoming filled with senators, congressmen, ex-senators, ex-congressmen, and lobbyists, to become among the wealthiest in America.

Richest Counties in America163

County

Median Household Income

1

City of Falls Church, VA

$121,250

2

Loudoun County, VA

$118,934

3

Los Alamos County, NM

$112,115

4

Howard County, MD

$108,234

5

Fairfax County, VA

$106,690

6

Hunterdon County, NJ

$103,301

7

Arlington County, VA

$99,255

8

Douglas County, CO

$98,426

9

Stafford County, VA

$95,927

10

Somerset County, NJ

$95,574

11

Morris County, NJ

$95,236

12

Montgomery County, MD

$94,365

13

Prince William County, VA

$93,011

Senator Roberts admitted that he didn’t occupy his former home in Kansas and preposterously claimed he slept on a friend’s recliner whenever he visited his (former) state.164 Which probably tells you how many nights the seventy-nine-year-old actually spends in Kansas. The now-former Indiana senator Richard Lugar used to rent hotel rooms when he went home to visit with constituents in Indiana, the state that elected him. And he listed an address on his voter registration card where he did not live. At one point the Lugars actually were informed they were not even residents of the state.165 Mary Landrieu of Louisiana was labeled “the Senator from Washington, DC,” because she spent so much time working for the rich denizens of the District, where she actually lived in a $2.5 million home, than in the state of Louisiana, where she only pretended to live.166

She, like so many politicians claiming to care about Flyover country, is literally phoning it in. And where do most of them spend their time? Places like the Ritz-Carlton Residences, where Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic Party’s majority leader and professional poor-mouther, lives next to former Democratic Party leader Tom Daschle and a number of other Washington big shots. Asked about his residence, Senator Reid made it sound like any old low-cost housing. “I live in a one-bedroom apartment,” he insisted.167 That one-bedroom apartment comes with access to housekeeping, valet parking, private chefs, and a posh health club and spa. The Web site for the residence simply calls it “Life at the Top.”168 Yep, just like every ordinary American.

 • • • 

Flyover is different.

My grandparents had a giant bug zapper that hung on their front porch. On summer nights I’d sit out there, looking over the Astroturfed front porch and sipping iced tea—and, once I got older, stronger beverages—and watching bugs fly to their deaths. The moths, June bugs, and mosquitoes would buzz and hum lazily around the porch, pulled in toward the light by forces they couldn’t control, drawn closer and closer by its glow. Then I’d hear the sound of an electric bolt zapping their life away like Sith lightning. In the stillness of those quiet nights, the cacophony of death and discovery was a comforting sound. Some evenings we would sit in silence, watching the insect tragedies play out, but other evenings we would talk. Sometimes I’d listen to the most serious gossip, which occurred after the sun went down, as though the darkness muffled sound and eliminated sight. I remember a lot of the conversations we had on that porch. My grandparents could always be relied upon for a plain, unvarnished helping of country wisdom, and they had a knack for cutting through fluff and getting straight to the heart of an issue. Growing up, I knew I could come to them with any problem. Grandma was my fierce advocate. She knew I hated living in the city during the week and that I felt alone. Grandpa rarely spoke but when he did, it was to say either something hysterical or something so insightful that you could feel the weight of the wisdom. Our porch talks always helped me better understand the world around me. Every now and then, I’d get a lesson on politics in our local community—how mayors are elected, how a police force is formed and run, and other insights into town government. An uncle was a deputy, so-and-so was the mayor of the tiny town, which was insane that it even had enough people and administrative responsibilities for a mayor to handle). Sometimes we’d get to talking about other levels of government too. Grandpa rarely minced his words, and he knew just what to say when the conversation turned to the federal government and Washington, DC.

“In a way,” he once said, looking toward the glowing light that had just claimed another moth, “that bug killer is like Warshington.” (Where we’re from, people pronounce an r in “wash.” I’m not even going to apologize. I also say “pellow” for “pillow” and “melk” for “milk.”) “That light attracts people, even the good people, and it kills ’em.”

At first I wasn’t quite sure what Grandpa meant. Like, they’re literally zapped by Washington? But as I grew up and came to have more experience with government and the people who run it, his simple comparison between the capital of the free world and your standard, garden-variety Walmart bug zapper came to make a lot of sense. It wasn’t as comforting a thought as the bug-zapper sound, either. Washington folks, whether they’re elected officials or unelected bureaucrats, find themselves so drawn in to the toxic culture of that town, and before they even realize it, what humanity they had has been zapped away as if it were no more than a wayward mosquito.

Fitting, isn’t it? Mosquitoes breed in swamps, after all—and legend has it that Washington, DC, itself was built on a swamp. Finicky historians can argue about the accuracy of this point—one says the idea simply stuck around “because it’s such a useful analogy for the way Congress works,”169 and another thinks the city’s builders “were looking for a reason to explain why . . . development was so slow.”170 Either way, the metaphor holds.

Ronald Reagan certainly believed it. In January 1982, after his first year in the White House, he reminded his staff: “You’re here to drain the swamp.”171 Politicians of all parties have been promising to do just that for years, vowing to do things differently, all the way up to President Obama, who, let’s remember, essentially ran his entire campaign on two words: “hope” and “change.” And yet for all the draining, all the hope, and all the change, the swamp remains.

Anyone who’s spent an oppressively hot summer’s day in Washington—and I don’t recommend it—would swear they were smack in the middle of a muggy bog. The atmosphere of the place is heavy—heavy with the weight of stacks and stacks of regulations that seem to be much of the government’s reason for existing, heavy with the hot air spouted nonstop by those whose idea of work is talking down to the rest of us, heavy with the self-importance that comes from spending so much time insulated in a marble bubble that’s completely out of touch with the rest of the country.

That’s not to say there aren’t some decent people in Washington. I’m sure there are. The guy who works the night shift vacuuming the floors of government buildings or gleaming corporate offices can feel satisfied at having done an honest day’s work. So can the lady who arrives early in the morning to set up her hot dog stand, which will feed hungry tourists making the desultory trek along the National Mall. And, of course, legions of police officers and other first responders work tirelessly every day to safeguard the lives of everyone in the city, from politicians to tourists to locals—like the cop who gave me a bottle of water one hot August day as I was covering a rally at the Lincoln Memorial and was about to drop.

But, regrettably, these aren’t the people who run Washington. “We the People” don’t run the place either, no matter what politicians of any party tell you. The dirty secret is that Washington is run by career politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, and corporate and special-interest lobbyists who are all pulling toward the same goal: keeping their own jobs as secure (and lucrative) as possible.

If you’re interested in spotting these rare creatures in their natural habitat, you need to go where the real business is done in Washington. It’s not in the Capitol, that gleaming temple of democracy that sometimes seems more like a taxpayer-funded country club. It’s not even in the conference rooms of K Street, the enclave of high-powered lobbyists that’s also been known as “Gucci Gulch.” To see the real deals being struck—to see “how the sausage is made”—you need to go to places where there’s actually meat on the menu. The real centers of power in Washington are the city’s steakhouses, of which there is a seemingly endless supply. A DC food writer once quipped: “Want to see some Washingtonians go ballistic? Just call the District a ‘steakhouse town,’ a place where the natives’ love of politics is rivaled only by their lust for thick slabs of charbroiled beef.”172

Because I’m all for making Washingtonians go ballistic whenever possible, I’m going to agree. It is a “steakhouse town,” and it’s at those places where the three groups that hold all the cards—elected officials, bureaucrats, and lobbyists—come together to hatch their plots.

If you or I or anybody from the Flyover Nation were to somehow make it past the host or hostess—often the snootiest of the snooty—and take a peek into one of these places, we’d be met with an interesting scene. First of all, our eyes would have to adjust—it’s always gloomy in those places, and the dark wood all over the place doesn’t help. Then we’d start to notice details. There might be signed photos or drawings of dearly departed big shots on one wall and sealed wine lockers emblazoned with current high rollers’ personalized nameplates on another. Huddled around the tables would be groups of mostly men—though women are just as capable of becoming members of the self-serving establishment—in dark suits, deep in conversation over wine or cocktails (beer is usually too “lowbrow” for these types).

Some in the group might be elected to represent the citizens of some far-flung Flyover Nation locale, some might be high-ranking officials in the president’s administration, and some might take in great sums of money from major corporations, unions, or other special interests in order to advance their interests among the first two categories of Washington creature. Everyone around the table would have the same attitude: “Get along to go along.” Keep the wheels of government moving “smoothly,” keep the environment safe for Big Business, Big Labor, or whoever else has concerns, and keep the process as far away from the actual American people as humanly possible.

Eventually the meal itself would come out, but at your typical DC steakhouse it’s almost an afterthought. That’s right—in a town with so many steakhouses, it’s actually hard to find a decent steak. A T-bone sizzling on any given grill in any given backyard on any given summer’s day in Flyover Nation will beat an overcharred corporate DC sirloin anytime you please. I learned everything there is to know about grilling from my stepdad; any good backyard barbecue enthusiast could teach these DC chefs a thing or two. The best grilling is done during baseball season, Jack Buck was the best audible seasoning, and you grill pork steaks, thick London broils, brats, and St. Louis–style ribs (cut with just enough fat on them to flavor the meat). Maybe if we fed these already overstuffed government and corporate folks some real American food—Flyover food—they’d have a come-to-Jesus moment and get on our side again. In any event, nobody at these confabs even cares what the food tastes like. Chances are it means nothing to them because they’re not even paying for it; the firm or the clients are. Lobbying does not come cheap—it was a $3.24 billion industry in 2014. That year there were nearly twelve thousand registered lobbyists doing business.173 Welcome to Washington.

Sitting down for expensive steak dinners with a side of cronyism several times a week is just one of the many ways Washingtonians make a point of keeping themselves apart from mainstream America, and particularly from Flyover Nation. To them we’re just peasants, barely literate hicks who share a tooth and the same DNA, people whose proper role is to sit slack-jawed while the lords of the manor make their grand pronouncements from Capitol Hill or other assorted halls of power, then nod acceptingly—even gratefully!—when they’ve finished.

The saddest cases, though, are the folks who really did come to Washington with idealistic dreams of “making a difference.” Some are born into it—you can often find the offspring or other relatives of elected officials working as lobbyists, as staffers, and elsewhere around town. But every year recent college graduates from all over the United States—Flyover Nation included—come to Washington for that first internship with dreams of changing the world. Maybe they all saw Frank Capra’s inspiring—but hardly realistic—classic movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. More recent generations probably grew up on Aaron Sorkin’s equally inspiring—and equally naive—television drama The West Wing. Something was kindled within them, a fire that burned brightly and illuminated what to them seemed like the true path: They must turn their passions into action, head to Washington, and fight for what they believe in.

So they head off to college and join campus political organizations. Student politics can be a heady experience for a kid from Flyover Nation, where politics really aren’t discussed that much in polite company—frankly, we’ve got better things to talk about. But most colleges today are inherently political environments. Idealistic kids engage in spirited debate with one another and with their teachers, cheering or booing (depending on affiliation) when the president makes a speech on television. After a few years of this, they leave with a degree in one hand—in political science, public policy, communications, or some such thing—and dreams in their hearts. They make tracks for Washington, DC, and when they show up they find . . . the swamp.

The find themselves in a land of sky-high rent and cost of living. Even the food is different. They can’t afford the fancy steakhouses or the trendy GMO-free organic tapas places, and the canned chicken soup they buy doesn’t taste anything like how Mom used to make it back home. Everyone they meet seems cagey, wary, sizing them up as potential competition. There is very little sense of community—genuine social gatherings take a backseat to soulless “networking events.” The first thing out of any new acquaintance’s mouth is a standard four-word phrase: “What do you do?” If your answer does not impress them, those will be the only words you hear—they’ll be gone before your response is half over, moving on to someone more worth talking to. A kid from Flyover Nation might come to realize that Harry Truman was right: “If you want a friend in Washington,” he said, “get a dog.”

But these kids, exposed to the ways of Washington, don’t automatically go running to local animal shelters. Instead they take one of two paths: Either they pack it in and go home (and arguably save themselves) or they start to change. The transition begins slowly, maybe in the way they talk or the jargon that slips into their e-mails home. Then differences in appearance emerge: Boys drop hefty amounts on a tailored suit for job interviews; girls’ heels get a little bit higher. They start to play the game—learning which politicians are in favor, sizing up people as potential “contacts,” and beginning to plot their next career move. Before long, they’ve scored an entry-level job and are well on their way to becoming a full-fledged DC denizen and leaving behind all traces of their Flyover roots. That’s what my grandpa meant when he was talking about bugs getting drawn toward the zapper: “That light attracts people, even the good people, and it kills ’em.” Washington does that to people, even good people. Once it sucks them in, they’re usually stuck for good.

 • • • 

The longer anybody spends in Washington, the less contact they have with the real world. In 2014 Hillary Clinton—former First Lady, former U.S. senator, former secretary of state, and at that point still a not-quite candidate for president—dropped a telling revelation while addressing the National Association of Automobile Dealers.

“The last time I actually drove a car myself was 1996,” she told her audience. She went on to turn it into a joke: “I remember it very well,” she said. “Unfortunately, so does the Secret Service, which is why I haven’t driven since then.”

Of course this self-deprecating crack makes sense given the audience, but there is still some sweet irony about a politician—and a consummate one at that—making this sort of confession to a roomful of car dealers. But the kernel of truth within the joke—that Clinton hasn’t driven a car herself in decades—shows the almost surreal alternate world the creatures of Washington inhabit.

How can someone who has been chauffeured across the country and around the world for nearly twenty years connect with a working mom in Flyover Nation? I can think of a lot of people who would just love to have a fleet of big black SUVs (gas-guzzlers, I might add) to take them to work, take their kids to school, pick the kids up and take them to basketball or gymnastics, and then hit the grocery store on the way home. Wouldn’t that be nice? Alas, most of us can only dream of the rarefied existence enjoyed by the Hillary Clintons of the world. Hillary can laugh off the fact that she exists on an entirely different plane—if not a different planet—from her countrymen and countrywomen if she so desires. It’s even possible to pity some of these politicians for being so divorced from reality. When was the last time the Clintons had a simple family dinner, or tossed a football around their yard, or even—God forbid—went to church together? And when was the last time any of these things were done with no cameras trained on them? Washington elites may have forgotten how to be real people, and that’s their problem. A couple of years ago media reported that Hillary was asking her Hamptons friends for advice on how to reach out to the middle class. The Hamptons set was giving Hillary Clinton advice on how to talk economics to hardworking Flyover people.

What nobody should excuse, however, is when out-of-touch politicians in Washington come out of their own little fantasy world only to heap disdain upon the rest of us. They may have lived in DC so long that they simply don’t “get” people from Flyover Nation, but that doesn’t mean they can talk down to us. It doesn’t mean they can demean whole groups of people who they feel are less entitled to enjoy the city of Washington than they are. It doesn’t mean they can viciously insult someone trying to do her job who happened to get in their way. There’s simple obliviousness, and then there’s outright contempt. The nastiest characters in Washington are those with such high levels of the former that they feel compelled to belch forth examples of the latter.

Who exactly do I mean? Let’s meet some of the worst offenders.

Harry Reid: Literally Holding His Nose

It was December 2, 2008, and Washington big shots were gathered on Capitol Hill for the grand opening of the Capitol Visitor Center. The massive underground facility, which sprawled to nearly 580,000 feet, was the largest addition ever to what official DC likes to call the “Capitol Complex” and was being dedicated on the 145th anniversary of the day that the Statue of Freedom was erected at the top of the Capitol dome.174 In true Washington fashion, it had been completed way behind schedule and way over budget, taking four years and over $350 million more than expected, for a total cost of $621 million.175 But that barely even counts as “real money” in Washington, and pesky considerations like that weren’t going to spoil the pomp and dignity of the dedication ceremony.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, was probably having a particularly good day. His party controlled both houses of Congress, and barely a month earlier the American people had chosen his party’s candidate to be the forty-fourth president of the United States—a Senate colleague of Reid’s named Barack Obama, who had not even served out his first full term. It was a good day to be a Democrat in Washington.

Maybe Senator Reid’s pride in the afterglow of Obama’s election and his gleeful anticipation of total Democratic control of the government got the better of him that day. Maybe that explains why he let his guard down when he took the podium and showed the audience a glimpse of his real self and what he thinks of the rest of us—his Nevada constituents, everyone in Flyover Nation, and the rest of the American people. When Reid got up to speak, he chose to praise the facility for its efficiency in getting “long lines” of visitors into the Capitol. He then proceeded to share why this was so important to him personally but began with a cautionary note: “My staff has always said, ‘Don’t say this,’ but I’m going to say it again because it’s so descriptive because it’s true.” Reid went on:

In the summertime, because [of] the high humidity and how hot it gets here, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. [Cue laughter from the crowd of Reid’s fellow elites.] And that may be descriptive but it’s true. Well, that is no longer going to be necessary.176

Suddenly, spending $621 million on a 580,000-square-foot bunker makes complete and total sense: At least the Senate majority leader wouldn’t have his delicate nose offended by real people.

What kind of message does that send to the American kids who come to Washington, DC, to finally see with their own eyes the sights they’ve only read about in school? What does it say to the parents and teachers who guide them? What about the millions of Americans or visitors from foreign nations who come to our Capitol because they happen to be inspired by what it represents? Senator Reid told them simply: “Go home. You stink.”

There were probably times in Harry Reid’s life when he didn’t smell so great himself. That can be a side effect of not having regular access to running water, and as Reid’s official biography notes, he grew up “in the small rural mining town of Searchlight . . . in a small cabin without indoor plumbing.”177 His childhood was tough. Both parents drank—his father, a gold miner, committed suicide and his mother earned extra money by doing laundry for local brothels.178 The schools in his hometown went up to only eighth grade, so Reid had to go to high school in the nearby town of Henderson. Local families gave him places to stay during the week, and when he graduated, Henderson businessmen helped pay for him to attend college at Utah State University.179 After graduating in 1961, he headed for Washington, DC, for law school at George Washington University. While earning his law degree, he worked the night shift as a police officer at, of all places, the United States Capitol.180 At least at night there probably weren’t any smelly tourists around.

After law school Reid moved back to Henderson and became city attorney, touching off a political career that would include time in the Nevada State Assembly, becoming the state’s youngest-ever lieutenant governor, and a stint on the Gaming Commission. His run at a job in DC failed when he lost a Senate race in 1974, but after his time on the Gaming Commission he tried for a House seat in 1982 and was successful. Winning election to the Senate in 1986, Reid has been the chamber’s top Democrat—majority or minority leader—since 2005 and remains “indisputably the most powerful politician in Nevada—Democratic or Republican.”181

Harry Reid came from humble beginnings—of which he seems to remain proud—and achieved success on the Nevada and national political stages. So what makes him think it’s all right to look down on regular Americans who visit his place of work—the Capitol—as nothing more than foul-smelling inconveniences? Those “smelly tourists” own that building, you know. The answer may lie in the fact that along the path from the tiny cabin in Searchlight, Nevada, to the Senate Democratic leader’s suite of offices in the Capitol, Reid’s lifestyle changed big time.

When he first came to Washington in 1982, Reid’s net worth was already at least $1 million, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.182 It may have been even higher. Prior to 1982, while not serving in public office in Nevada—or serving only part time—Reid had continued to earn money by practicing law. Over the course of his career he has also made significant investments in real estate. This has helped his net worth reach an eventual peak of about $10 million, according to RealClearPolitics. Its analysis concludes that “Reid has walked a fine line over the years, occasionally breaking rules or engaging in brazenly unseemly behavior during his pursuit of wealth.”183 Some of the real estate deals that have helped enrich Harry Reid have raised ethical red flags. One involved a friend of Reid’s named Jay Brown, who has variously been called a “master manipulator” (by a veteran Nevada political journalist)184 and “always a person of interest” (by a retired FBI agent).185 Reid invested $400,000 in some vacant land near Las Vegas and in 2001 transferred his stake to a company controlled by Brown. The problem: This transfer went unreported on Reid’s financial disclosure forms. But that didn’t stop him from collecting $1.1 million when Brown sold off the land in 2004—a profit of some $700,000.186 Or there was the time that Reid’s Senate priorities and private business interests happened to line up neatly around a town called Bullhead City in Arizona. Between 2004 and 2005 Reid—who had publicly supported earmark reform—pushed through an $18 million earmark to build a bridge between Laughlin, Nevada, and Bullhead City, Arizona, situated across the Colorado River from each other.187 A 160-acre plot of land in Bullhead City was owned by none other than Harry Reid himself—purchased from a friend a few years earlier at one tenth of its value, according to the Los Angeles Times.188

Reid hasn’t just been clever in the real estate game. National Review reported that he sold off shares in the Dow Jones U.S. Energy Sector Fund, which includes major oil companies, in August 2008. A month later Reid helped pass legislation that, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, would cost those companies “billions of dollars in taxes and regulatory fees.” By early October the price of shares in the Energy Sector Fund had dropped 42 percent.189 Reid’s investments no doubt helped him purchase a home in Washington, where he is sure to remain unbothered by any tourist, stinky or otherwise. Since 2001 he has owned a condo in the Ritz-Carlton Residences in the fashionable West End area of downtown DC. Reid got in just a year after the building opened, and the value of his unit is currently estimated at around $1.1 million. His neighbors include his old pal from the Senate, Tom Daschle, along with a former UN ambassador, a former governor of Puerto Rico, and top lobbyists for Goldman Sachs and Toyota. A profile of the building—yes, you read that correctly—in Politico, a publication DC elites use to keep tabs on one another, explains what makes it so appealing to Reid and friends:

Indeed, the 162-unit, West End enclave . . . has gradually amassed a roster of Washington power brokers from politics, business and society. Which isn’t that surprising considering its amenities: everything from Ritz-Carlton hotel services like room service, housekeeping, private chefs, valet parking, access to the Equinox Sports Club, Cafe and Spa, 24-hour doorman security and proximity to posh restaurants like Ris and the West End Bistro.190

Just try to imagine this description read in the distinctive voice of Robin Leach from the old TV show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Now remember that many of the “power brokers,” like Reid, who are enjoying their room service and valet parking are supposed to be public servants. That makes it a lot less funny.

Reid’s journey from a tiny shack in Searchlight, Nevada—where he still has a home—to “DC’s Tower of Power” was a long one, helped along by his doing, as he put it in a 2010 debate, “a very good job investing.”191 But nothing gives him the right to dismiss those who come to Washington and don’t stay at the Ritz-Carlton as foul-smelling obstacles to his own enjoyment of Capitol Hill. It’s a sad sign of how far this miner’s son has fallen out of touch with Flyover Nation—and his own roots.

Chuck Schumer: Sit Down and Shut Up

Just because someone hails from Flyover Nation doesn’t mean they don’t do plenty of flying themselves. These days plenty of jobs require hopping on a plane and jetting around the country, or even to elsewhere in the world. It’s never fun to have to leave your home and family, and the actual business of air travel itself is not always an enjoyable experience. But when Flyover Nation folks do travel, we remember the basic lessons of decency and respect we were brought up with. These boil down to one rule you might call, well, golden: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Common courtesy knows no boundaries, and everyone deserves to be treated with respect, whether you meet them on land, at sea, or in the air.

Senator Chuck Schumer famously forgot this rule in December 2009. The New York Democrat was aboard a US Airways plane getting ready to take off for Washington—one of the short flights coastal types are fond of calling “the shuttle,” often without specifying which city they’re shuttling to (because if you can’t figure it out, you’re not important enough for them to be talking to). In this case Schumer and his fellow New York Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand were heading back to DC for crucial Senate business. President Obama was trying to shepherd his signature piece of legislation—the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare—through Congress. Though both the House and Senate were held by Democrats, there were still points of contention about the bill, with some of the more committed liberals still angling for the inclusion of a “public option,” a long-standing left-wing policy goal. Just a few weeks later, on Christmas Eve, the Senate would pass its version of Obamacare—with no public option—on a strict party-line vote. Schumer, Gillibrand, and every other Senate Democrat would vote for it, and every Republican against it.192

But as he waited for his flight to depart from LaGuardia Airport, Schumer found himself in a conflict more personal than political. Because he is a Very Important Politician, he was naturally jabbering away on his cell phone, probably talking to someone as important—or almost as important—as him. In the midst of his call, the pilot made the customary announcement that all cell phones needed to be switched off prior to takeoff. Schumer—because he is a Very Important Politician—naturally ignored this instruction, because such rules apply only to mere mortals. A flight attendant approached and asked him to turn his phone off, in accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration regulations that the vast majority of Americans observe and respect on thousands of flights every single day. Chuck Schumer’s response, however, was to ask if he could finish his call. He could not, the flight attendant explained, because it was his phone that needed to be turned off before the aircraft could depart. He was holding up the entire flight.

Schumer was trapped. Perhaps he feared upsetting his fellow passengers, most of whom were almost certainly New York voters. Begrudgingly he turned off his phone. But he couldn’t let the argument drop. Still intent on establishing his superiority over this insolent flight attendant, he proceeded to tell her that he actually should have been allowed to remain on the phone until the aircraft’s door had been closed. The flight attendant handled this badgering from a U.S. senator very professionally. According to a witness: “She said she doesn’t make the rules, she just followed them.” With that, she walked away.193 But Senator Schumer had to have the last word. When the flight attendant had left, he turned to Senator Gillibrand and growled: “B*tch!” The process of flying involves plenty of annoying rules. When you can sit, when you can stand, when you’re supposed to take your shoes off at the airport, and, yes, when you have to hang up your phone. We all have to deal with them. Schumer, then the chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, thought that he didn’t—because, as New York magazine later quipped, “he is Chuck Schumer and he’s working on important things.”194 And he was so angry about it that he had to insult the person who simply informed him of an across-the-board rule.

A flight attendant’s salary often starts as low as $25,000, and someone who has been on the job for a while can pull down as much as $50,000.195 That’s what they’re paid to spend their days in a metal tube dealing with the demands of bored, uncomfortable, or disgruntled strangers. They must have the patience of saints and should be saluted for it. Dealing with tough customers is part of any job, in Flyover Nation and everywhere else, but a U.S. Senator should know better. Politicians, especially those with political-animal instincts as well honed as Schumer’s, are supposed to have a folksy touch, right? A way with the “common people”? Maybe Schumer’s patience with regular folks had already been exhausted by that point in the day. In any event, no woman should be called a “bitch”—by anyone—just for doing her job.

When I was growing up, there were always certain people in town who would get themselves talked about. Whether you’d talked to them recently or not, you always knew what they were up to. This kind of tendency is always more present in politicians, but Chuck Schumer seems to have taken it to a pathological level. He courts media attention with a zeal that impresses even his fellow DC personalities. Bob Dole, who served with Schumer in the Senate, said that “the most dangerous place in Washington is between Charles Schumer and a television camera.”196 President Obama himself once told a crowd of elites at a white-tie dinner in New York that he was glad to welcome Senator Schumer’s “loved ones,” adding, “Those would be the folks with the cameras and the notebooks in the back of the room.”197 In 2014 Schumer arranged for the news media to cover an especially momentous milestone in his Washington career—moving out of his house. Schumer had been living for more than thirty years in a townhouse on Capitol Hill with two other Democrats—Representative George Miller of California and Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois—in an arrangement that reportedly “inspired the Amazon web series ‘Alpha House,’ as well as countless punch lines about the crash pad’s fraternity-meets-policy seminar vibe.”198 They also apparently paid around eight hundred dollars a month in rent while the average rent in DC when they moved out was nearly two thousand.199

Sensing that this was obviously something that was of serious world import, the roommates invited a New York Times reporter and an NBC camera crew to watch them move out. And they showed up. Only in DC would anyone think three late-middle-aged men finally moving on from the group-house life actually qualified as news. The Times gave it the full dramatic treatment, telling how “Mr. Schumer—his eyes moist—stood outside in the cold, clutching his comforter. ‘I didn’t realize that’s when we’d be saying goodbye,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘Whoa.’”200 Whoa, indeed.

It’s easy to see how someone who thinks spending a cold December morning moving stuff out of his house warrants national media coverage wouldn’t take kindly to being put in his place by a flight attendant. But beyond his own armor of personal ego, Schumer’s political allegiances might help explain his distaste for “common people.”

Schumer is a known favorite of big banks. The top five donors over his political career read like a tour down Wall Street: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley.201 When Harry Reid announced his intention to retire in 2016 and Schumer was immediately touted as the favorite to replace him, CNN proclaimed this “welcome news to Wall Street.” It called Schumer, a longtime member of the Senate Banking and Finance Committees, a “fierce champion” of the financial services industry who consistently supports its agenda and maintains “close personal relationships with many of New York’s financial elite.”202 Coastal elites—even Democrats—always flock together. Maybe Schumer was on the phone to one of his banker pals when he was so rudely interrupted by a flight crew trying to take off. No wonder he thought he could get away with spitting venom at a flight attendant making a mere five figures. At least the publicity generated by Schumer throwing around the b word generated an apology, even if his office dismissed it in the same breath as “an off-the-cuff comment.”203 Interestingly, the New York Post reported that Schumer “has a reputation” among crews for being, in the words of one flight attendant, “not nice.”204

To her immense credit, the flight attendant on the receiving end of Schumer’s bad-mouthing on that December 2009 flight took the high road and accepted his apology. That was a move that took absolute class. It showed that she had been raised to show civility and respect even in the face of rudeness. Maybe she was raised in Flyover Nation.

Davos: Entitled Elitists Pretending to Care About the Poor

Where have the world’s richest liberals decided is the best place to talk about global poverty? Why, Switzerland, of course, the richest, whitest, most expensive nation in the world. Between earnest talks about righting “income inequality”—a nonsense phrase that basically means taking money from successful people and giving it to losers—these do-gooders have plenty of time to hike the Alps or hobnob on their yachts. To most people in Flyover America, the World Economic Forum in Davos means nothing. They’ve never heard of it—and they’re the lucky ones. Unfortunately what happens in Davos is a perfect example of why the world’s elites are so out of touch with the rest of us.

Davos welcomes guilt-ridden rich people to sit around on panels, smile and nod, and pretend like they’re saving the world. It’s a place for people like Bill Clinton, America’s professional groper-cum-gadfly, and his buddy Tony Blair to compare their latest iPhones and other trendy gadgets with celebrities, billionaires, and corporate criminals. One of the forum’s “partners”—which shell out big bucks to these people so they won’t be criticized by anyone—is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, of course, are notorious for caring about the rights of women—who are forbidden even to drive cars in their country. I’m sure they empathize with the world’s poor—while spending millions to maintain their privileged lifestyles and keep as far away from the great unwashed as possible.

Yet together these people come up with all sorts of harebrained schemes to make America worse—fretting about taxing people more to solve “climate change” or explaining why we need to open the borders in America to every terrorist, cretin, or sad-sack failure with a dirty face and a sob story.

Luckily, thanks to the coastals’ taste for solutionless solutions, they often come back from events like these feeling like the conference and resulting press conferences get the job done.

The rarefied world of receptions and dinners at high-end steakhouses has taken its toll, making them so far out of touch with real Americans that they get positively angry when they get in their way. Whether it’s the smelly tourists ruining Reid’s summers or a “bitch” flight attendant who dares to tell Schumer to follow the same rules as everyone else, it’s clear they can’t stand people like you and me. They are much more comfortable hobnobbing with their neighbors at the Ritz-Carlton Residences over room service or with their banker cronies on Wall Street. But the toxic environment that envelops Washington, DC, doesn’t necessarily mean you should avoid it like the plague. This may go against your better judgment, but it’s still a good place to visit. Why? Because seeing the monuments, the museums, and the buildings dedicated to the great American experiment still have the capacity to inspire. They may be populated by distasteful people who don’t share—and actively hate—our Flyover values, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still appreciate what our capital city represents. Even the most hardened cynic still feels some pride looking up at Lincoln’s marble gaze and reading the immortal words carved into the nearby wall—his pledge that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Our government is bigger than some overfed, contemptuous politicians.

So take the kids to DC—just for a short trip. Soak up that pride in the American dream, and carry it home in your hearts. Because DC is not the heart of America—Flyover Nation is. And spare a thought for the folks you see scurrying in and out of the government buildings in Washington, the folks who’ve been there too long. Maybe they had dreams once too. They were like those bugs I saw droning toward the zapper on my grandparents’ porch—they got sucked in and had the life zapped out of them.