Washington Babylon — February 15, 2008, 2:15 pm
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“I’m here three or four times a week,” Congressman Tom Price of Georgia told a small crowd last Thursday at the Capitol Hill Club, a private establishment for Republicans and their supporters. “But,” he added quickly, “that’s not for public consumption.”
Even though I’d finished work on my latest article for the magazine, “Beltway bacchanal: Congress lives high on the contributor’s dime”, I couldn’t resist making a follow-up trip last week to the Club, which is located in a townhouse just one block from the U.S. Capitol. Price was speaking as an Honorary Chair of Southern States Night, a corporate-sponsored Club fundraiser that honored the G.O.P. congressional delegations from Old Dixie. Price isn’t the only Republican lawmaker who’s a regular at the Club. During the first nine months of 2007, G.O.P. members of congress spent more than $600,000 there for meals and fundraisers paid for from political funds, according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
The Capitol Hill Club is one of the most popular gathering spots in Washington for lawmakers, government officials and other members of the political establishment. (The Democrats have their own club just a few blocks away.) The Presidential Dining Room–menu favorites include the $32 Filet Mignon with gorgonzola sauce and the $29 tuna steak with balsamic thyme glaze–is “a favorite place for Senators, Representatives, and their guests to dine and discuss the day’s political agenda,” according to the Club brochure. The “75 Room” features a fireplace and member library and “is a superb venue for viewing House and Senate deliberations, small meetings, relaxing between appointments, or catching up on your messages.”
The Club also sponsors annual golf tournaments with Congressional leaders, theater evenings, winemaker dinners, holiday brunches and other events. Lobbyists and business executives join “because they get a lot [of] face time and privacy with members,” a former board member told me.
Applicants for Club membership must be sponsored by at least two current members. Those approved pay a $1,000 initiation fee and monthly dues of $125. The initiation fee drops to $300 for members of Congress and government officials, who pay monthly fees of $62.50. Journalists can enter the Club if invited and escorted by a member, but the former board member told me that it was encouraged to “phone ahead” if a member of the press was coming. A few years ago I had a drink there with a Club member who had apparently not taken that precaution. Congressman John Boehner, flush-faced and glass in hand, approached our table and immediately began talking with my companion, whom he knew, about recent meetings he’d had with government officials from Kazakhstan. Boehner was just getting warmed up but my companion cut him off to let him know that I was a journalist. The story came to an end and Boehner, who looked stricken, quickly sought other company.
Last month, a lobbyist friend took me to the Club for drinks. On the way in, I picked up a flyer that listed Club events for January. The Seafood Extravaganza, a $45-per-person buffet featuring a raw bar, Maine lobster, Crab and Prime Rib, was “back by popular demand.” On January 28, the Club offered a $35 per person Texas Style Buffet with brisket, ribs, potato salad and corn bread in honor of President Bush’s last State of the Union Address. But I was especially sorry to have missed a “Complimentary Ethics Briefing” for Club members,” which had been presented by Cleta Mitchell, a prominent Washington attorney and G.O.P. strategist who serves on the board of the American Conservative Union. The title of the briefing: “The New Lobbying and Ethics Law: Know Enough NOT to Be Dangerous.”
My friend and I sat downstairs in the Auchincloss Grill, where Fox News was beaming from a large wall TV. It was 5:30, still early for members of Congress – the brochure described the Grill as always “especially busy after a late-night session of Congress” — but a number of lobbyists and Hill staffers were on hand. At one table a lobbyist from the Southern Strategy Group was discussing his firm’s capabilities with a companion; at another a young woman was talking about her friend who works for Congressman Tim Murphy; and at a third table, out of earshot, sat Jeff Speaks, a lobbyist and powerful former aide to Congressman Hal Rogers, who was chatting with several colleagues.
Anyway, I returned last Thursday and plunked down $20 for a ticket to Southern States Night, an open-to-the-public event which was held in a third floor room that featured portraits of First Ladies Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan and Pat Nixon. There were two other fundraisers taking place at the same time. In a room to the right was an event for Congressman Connie Mack of Florida and on the left one for Minority Leader Boehner.
About 50 people attended Southern States Night, many representing the event’s sponsors. The biggest underwriters, dubbed the Peachtree Street Sponsors, were Norfolk Southern, USAA, which sells insurance to military members, and Altria (formerly Philip Morris). The next level of support came from Bourbon Street Sponsors–Progress Energy, Southern Co. and UPS–while the third level, the Beale Street Sponsors, included AFLAC, the American Petroleum Institute, Capitol Hill Consulting Group, Eastman Chemical, Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey, Home Depot, and NBC/Universal.
Food was bountiful, though the quantity far surpassed the quality. There were steam trays of Texas chili, North Carolina pulled pork, Tennessee cured ham, Mississippi fried catfish and hush puppies, and Louisiana crawfish over fettuccine. Drinks, which cost extra, included an assortment of beer, the Club’s own label Cabernet (not recommended), and signature cocktails like the potent Sezerac from New Orleans, made with rye whiskey, sugar, and bitters.
During his talk, Congressman Price called the Club a “home away from home,” and “a place where you can make sure that what you’re thinking on the floor [of Congress] is what you ought to be thinking.” He promised that the other Honorary Chair, Congressman Jim McCrery of Louisiana, would be drop by soon but at the moment was “doing the Lord’s work,” by which Price was referring to the economic stimulus bill (that Congress would pass later that night).
After his speech Price mingled with the crowd. “What office do you work in, honey?” he asked one young woman standing by the food tables.
On the way out I picked up a collection of door prizes: a small bottle of hot sauce, compliments of Louisiana Congressman Rodney Alexander; a container of hand sanitizer from the Starkville, Mississippi Convention & Visitor’s Bureau; and an annoying stuffed baby duck from Aflac that squawks the company’s name three times when you squeeze its back.
Meanwhile, G.O.P. lovebirds were also invited to a Valentine’s Dinner & Dance, to be held yesterday. For $50 per person, guests could ingest a meal of thousands of calories in the form of a jumbo lump crabmeat salad appetizer, an entrée of shrimp, medallion of beef and jumbo scallops topped with a morel cream sauce, and dessert of Chocolate Passion Fruit Mousse. The Radio King Orchestra, “Washington’s most exciting and elegant Big Band” which “encompasses the sophistication yet carefree nature of the cherished Rat Pack,” would provide the night’s entertainment.
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Amonth after Donald Trump took office, an activist named Lana Lokteff delivered a speech calling on women to join the political resistance. “Be loud,” Lokteff said in a crisp, assertive voice. “Our enemies have become so arrogant that they count on our silence.”
Lokteff, who is in her late thirties, addressed an audience of a few hundred people seated in a room with beige walls, drab lighting, and dark-red curtains. The location, a building in the historic Södermalm neighborhood of Stockholm, Sweden, had been secured only the previous night, after several other venues had refused to host the event, billed as an “ideas” conference. Lokteff wore a white blouse and a crocheted black shawl over her trim figure, with a microphone headset fitted over her long blond hair. In addition to the attendees seated before her, she spoke to viewers watching a livestream. “When women get involved,” she declared, “a movement becomes a serious threat.”
There were no civilian cars on the streets of Mosul, Iraq, last December, when the veteran war photographer Don McCullin and I hitched a ride in an Iraqi Army pickup. A few children smiled and flashed V signs at us, but the adults’ stares betrayed hostility or, at best, caution. If Islamic State fighters returned, anyone seen consorting with the army would be punished.
The soldiers took us to an abandoned house in Hay Tahrir (“Liberation Quarter”), a working-class neighborhood in the northeast. Islamic State fighters had only recently been expelled from the area. A blanket was tacked up over the doorway, and daylight came in through the mortar holes in the walls. We dropped onto the dirty floor, folding our legs bedouin-style. The soldiers offered us tea, which had been brewing on a gas burner.
The Iraqis asked McCullin how old he was. Eighty-one, he said. Did he have children? Four boys and a girl. One soldier asked permission to marry his daughter. McCullin told him he couldn’t afford the dowry. After more banter, the soldiers agreed to let us stay the night and go with them to the front in the morning.
The bright-green hulk of our John Deere combine harvester crept across the field of soybeans. It was late in the day, early October, the sun low. A cloud of hulls and chaff spewed from the back of the combine, then swirled up around us and blazed in the glow. Sealed in the dustless quiet of the cab, Rick Hammond steadied the wheel with one hand and punched coordinates into a touchscreen computer with the other. The reel of the harvester head spun steadily below us like the paddle wheel of a river steamer, standing up stalks so that the toothed blades could cut a dozen rows at a go. The feed auger corkscrewed the cut plants into the mouth of the combine, where a throbbing set of threshers splintered the dry pods, collecting the oily seeds inside and sending them spiraling up to the grain tank behind Rick’s chair. Harvested beans ticked against the back window like a light summer hail. The only other sounds were the Pong-like beeps from the computer.
When I came into the kitchen, Ward was using a knife to help his wife, Irene, peel the skin from two buffalo tongues. The skin was discarded in a small heap along with the glutinous veins cut from the undersides, then Ward left it to Irene to cut the meat into cubes. He pulled out a chair opposite me at the table in the dining area and opened up a John Deere repair manual, which was my reason for being there, and began thumbing through it. Meanwhile, Irene put the cubes into a cast-iron Dutch oven and seared them. She added butter, garlic, onion, white wine, and spices, causing me to grow alert to aromas. Besides garlic and onion, I picked out the scents of rosemary, oregano, and something else I couldn’t identify. A pressure cooker slowly heated up on a back burner, and on the counter beside Irene stood ranks of quart mason jars.
Irene turned down the heat under the Dutch oven, placed a lid on it, moved out of the cooking area to a niche in the wall, and sat on a stool. She wiped her hands on her apron and reached up to the back of her head, adjusting the clip on her bun.
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"It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis."
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