As you click on this link, skip over Pat Boone's anti-judge douchebaggery, the State Department's Web incompetence, and Will Smith's acting prowess. Read the Think Tank column where experts advise John McCain on where to have his campaign headquarters. Especially read Brookings' Ron Nessen's quote, which I will retype here:
“Anywhere EXCEPT Washington. Voters hate Washington and anything that goes on in Washington. Do it where REAL people live. How about his hometown, Phoenix, Arizona?”
Now I (obviously) have nothing against Phoenix. Good town, great people. But someone needs to inform Mr. Nessen that the 4 million or so people who live in the D.C. area are just as "real" as Arizonans. Walk through Arlington or Georgetown or Anacostia or Kensington sometime, Mr. Nessen. Shake peoples' hands while you're at it - you'll notice that we Washingtonians are real. We exist. We're not holograms or whatever you think we are. So take your geographical bigotry and shove it.
Thank you. Rant over.
(For those of you who don't know me, I live in North Carolina, but I was born and raised in the D.C. area.)
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Nesson is nevertheless right about the perceptions of most Americans. To most Americans, there's Inside the Beltway and there's America. Inside the Beltway is the land where politicians live and get disconnected from the needs of their constituents. America is where us regular folks live and work.
I'm not vouching for the truth of that image. But it's an enduring one. Even after the American revolution, people didn't trust a distant government. That hasn't changed in the least.
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