By Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor

Meg Greenfield, the late editorial page editor of the Washington Post, has written a book called Washington that received more attention before it was published than after.

Because she wrote the book in secret and no one (i.e. other media people in Washington) knew about it, there was great hope that the book would be full of the kind of information Official Washington likes best-that is: scandal, gossip and invective.

It's too bad the book didn't get more play after its publication because it is, instead, a pretty thoughtful look at how what most of us think of "Washington" works. The Washington described in the book is a town-within-a-town, made up of elected politicians, government mandarins, assorted hangers-on and the press.

Greenfield had the happy, if not entirely original idea, of likening this Washington to high school. In this place, however, everyone-from the interns to the Supreme Court Justices to the most quoted columnists-was the most successful kid in his or her high school.

By successful, Greenfield doesn't so much mean popular, as she means the kid who got good grades and that adults, especially teachers, liked and held up to others as a role model, what the English used to call "The Head Lad."

It's something that's useful to keep in mind when dealing with elected officials, and their representatives. Americans are smart enough to know (most of the time) that these people are not feudal dukes and duchesses to whom we owe obsequiousness and allegiance merely because of their position. But, in the real world of politics, it's probably a good idea to appear as if you thought nearly as well of politicians as they think of themselves. Of course, there are always those politicians who have hung their career on the peg of contempt for American gunowners (and by extension most other Americans as well), and those folks are the same people who scoff at constituent letters pleading with them to look at the facts. Aside from calling them publicly (and politely) to task so as to reach not only the politicians, but others watching the debate, and working for their opponents in elections, you are not going to gain much ground on them.

"Successful people in Washington," Greenfield writes, "will be engaged in some form of this activity: Operation Make Them Love You, Operation Pay Them Off, Operation Watch Your Flank," and this, too, is an important lesson in the book

This, in a pretty neat nutshell, is how politicians work and how politics function, whether in Washington or anywhere else. To forget that is to lose any and every political battle.
From the perspective of gunowners, it's much easier to get in on the ground floor, the "Make Them Love You" phase of a politician's life. Most places only have so many Head Lads so the newcomers start at the "bottom."

This is the time and place to have them expend their energy on the romance portion of politics. The first election is always the toughest in terms of money, support and exposure, and this is where the Head Lads, will settle for a blind date instead of the prom queen.
The first time politician (male or female) would write one of those "personal ads" that sound mighty darn inclusive: "in search of caring, intelligent partner, not into head games, age immaterial." It's only later on that their "ads" start sounding a lot more like a profile of Denise Rich.

If you are successful in the first phase of Greenfield's model, the second part, "Pay Them Off," should run fairly smoothly.

Of course the way it works is more "I'll scratch your back" than "Golden Rule." That's why lobbying, backed by the grassroots (i.e. living breathing voters), as sophisticated as that practiced by such disparate groups as AARP, NRA and NOW, pays off. The politician, having invested in the ring as it were, is pretty reluctant to turn down other requests, lest he or she have to go through the "dating" process with a slew of others.

The final phase of politics, "Watch Your Flank," works as much for those wishing to affect politics and politicians as it does the politicians themselves. Politicians are very, very important and very, very busy, at least in their own minds. So unless you remind them every now and then that their flank is vulnerable they are going to be worrying about how exposed they are with another constituency (politicians being, for the sake of this metaphor, polygamists), and forget about your concerns.

There is always another election. And if there isn't, there are close substitutes along the lines of, "the place in history," or the almost daily polls measuring officials' "likability" and "trustworthiness." A simple reminder that there's only one poll that counts, is a good idea when your politician starts whining about stuff like that.
Some people like to think all the mechanics of politics is rather grubby and lowering. My own view is that while it sometimes does get grubby and even lowering, it is not inherently so. Instead, it's like any other piece of machinery-subject to the laws of its particular physics and mastery by people who care enough to study it.

Peggy Tartaro
Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission.