Obama Pilgrim at Washington. 
Author John Matteson, of "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and her Father," reminded me Sunday 9 of the towering influence in American history of John
Bunyan's (right) seventeenth century blockbuster "Pilgrim's Progress." The book not only dominated the imagination of the youthful Bronson Alcott in 1815, but also persuaded the whole of the New England Transcendental culture, Emerson, Hawthorn, Thoreau and the phalanx of Abolitionists and reformers, that there was a higher calling to public life than money and power. This reading by Professor Matteson reminded me of the New Puritans arriving in Washington with the new presidential protagonists. Clearly President-Elect Barack Obama is a Puritan who has followed a journey so far, at 47, that compares aptly to the progress of John Bunyan's hero, Christian.
Barack Obama is a Sensational Christian.
And now I see, with the stern, censorious pronouncement on controlling lobbyists by the fastitdious Obama transition chief-of-staff John Podesta, (left), that the style of the Obama administration will be John Bunyan's plot. (Obama to Fill Team Using Ethics Code. ) You recall that the story is an allegorical fairy tale about the ways of the world as seen from the point of view of an innocent utopian traveller. The hero Christian flees from the City of Destruction, which is this world, to seek the Celestial City, which is Heaven. Along the way, Christian is teased, tempted, befriended, blessed by Jesus at the Wicket Gate, and then horrified by acts of cruelty that animate the drama. The first act is the cruelest. Christian meets a gentle young male companion Faithful, and they pass through the village of Vanity Fair (right, below). The citizens of Vanity Fair are so corrupted that Christian and Faithful cannot understand their language. They are incomprehensibly villainous. The Vanity Fair blackguards arrest, torture and lynch by fire the
gentle Faithful while Christian flees. This is how I read the fears of the Obama team with regard Washington's epidemic of lobbyists. During the campaign, Mr. Obama spoke often how he disdained lobbyists and would not let them into his White House. Now I see the fresh twist in the change we can believe in is that lobbyists will be tolerated in the administration but
they will not be permitted to work in a policy area where they have lobbied the previous year. In other words, the Obama administration's plan to avoid the moral risk of lobbying is to mandate that you lobbyists cannot actually know what you are talking about. You must speak the language of ignorance. If you know about healthcare, you must work on mass transportation. If you are good at energy, you must work on net neutrality, and so forth. Everyone an amateur in this Vanity Fair. That will stop corruption. Faithful the Constitution will still be tortured and lynched, but not by people who know what they are talking about.
More Vanity Fair
I expect a deal of this concern from the the president-elect and his team as they settle in to Vanity Fair. Lobbyists are the least of the villains. Next, Mr Emanuel and Mr. Podesta will have a fresh rule about how they are going to avoid being captured by the giant Despair (left) and taken to the Castle Doubting where there is the threat of suicide. Hint: there is a key named Promise that opens all the doors of the castle.
Dateline: Brasilia/DF, Brazil – The weather has turned downright cold with the coming of the rains. As I sit on my fourth floor balcony, surrounded by soviet-style concrete blocks (made infinitely more attractive by the adornment of R. Burle Marx tiling) rising up out of the red earth and turgid tropical greens, I note that this city is barely 50 years old. Built around the approximate geographical center of the country, it became – against all odds – the capital of Brazil, the realization of a vision that was expected to thrust the nation into the heart of world affairs.
Meanwhile, as this city is regarded as “safe”, there are large swatches of the country – even pockets of well-known cities (not to mention the national border areas) - that have been ceded to lawlessness. There is simply not enough money for law enforcement. Police are known to be poorly paid as well as corrupt.
It has been said that the vision of Brasilia extends even beyond its national boundaries. There is a frenzied orgy of construction in progress in its numerous satellite cities despite a chronic shortfall of funds. (Where does this money come from?) I’ve been told by some who have been here from the beginning (los candangaos) that eventually the local inhabitants will be pushed out of center city and into the surrounding areas to make room for the illuminati of the new world order (presumably after the great war in which much of the northern hemisphere will be destroyed).
As I sit here on my balcony with the day’s first cup of Brazilian coffee and a Hollywood (brand) cigarette, I am awaiting the 7 AM tolling of the bell (ten times at approximately 20 second intervals) at the Buddhist temple across the street. This will remind me once again that all is illusion.
Could you write a more potent receipe for disasterous incompetence than ensuring it's against the rules to hire someone who understands the intricacies of a problem. Perhaps the Tower of Babel is a better analogy.
A CHANGE FOR THE BETTOR? THAT IS, WHAT ARE THE ODDS CHANGE WILL EVER TAKE PLACE IN WASHINGTON?
It's nice to know that by the President-elect bringing his own moral standard to the White House, he will also be showing the whole world that his campaign of change fits perfectly in with the present-day culture of Washington: That is, as we all know, a culture of hot air and hypocrisy.
I may be wrong, but I think allowing lobbyists to work in the fashion described above is being more than cynical. It's following existing law. Well, maybe, that is a change.
Mark said:"Could you write a more potent receipe for disasterous incompetence than ensuring it's against the rules to hire someone who understands the intricacies of a problem."
I'm afraid folks outside the Beltway have no idea how prevalent that tradition is in Washington.
For years I enteracted with an organization entitled "the Office of Federal Procurement Policy." Their working staff was divided into two specialties: legal and policy. The SOP was that the lawyers, who should have been working the legal aspects, were restricted to working on policy, while the policy specialists, though not lawyers, were assigned to work legal issues. The apparent idea behind this was that expertise predisposed and issues were prejudged by the staff working on them if the staff had anything remotely resembling expertise. The organization I worked for was tireless in its efforts to prevent OFPP from ever having a decisive say in any procurement issue.
Corlyss,
Only someone with an ivy league degree, an advanced ivy league degree, could even contemplate coming up with.
I'd be happy with it if it led to gridlock, but unfortunately it doesn't. It leads to stupidities such as campaign finance reform, the CRA and Obama seriouly considering someone like John Kerry for Sec of State.
It reminds me of Clinton and Vernon Jordan saying they were going to have the most ethical cabinet and Janet Reno was the third pick for AG because the first two candidates had nannygate (not nannystate channeling Sarah Palin and Emily Latella) issues. Who can forget Ron Brown and Henry Cisneros. Most of his economic team should have criminal charges against them or have had ethical lapses.
Why is former Secretary of State Albright representing the transition team at the G-20 meeting this weekend in Washington? There seem to be alot of Clinton Administration players with their fingerprints all over this transition. How does that reconcile with the notion of "change"? 68 days until the Obama Administration takes the Oval Office. 722 days until the midterm elections. Bailout parameters changing....ominous times. Ominous times.
Good and Evil and everything in between signifies man on Earth. The thought of Journey, fraught with danger and insecurity, pushes you through until exhausted when the day’s rest pulls you safely to the side for contemplation of the day’s progression. Hopefully, it was closer to the end than when was it was started, with the end being some degree of understanding.
Inventions of the mind are so much more valuable if they have been wrought out while watching the river flow and the grass grow or living as a holy man in the midst of potato eaters and coal miners.
How long ago was it when Kerouac walked the rails and roads speaking his truth? Who compares with him now? I remember reading Miller and coming to believe that he knew freedom (damn libertine). Golding realized the allegory and set a benchmark for the time. Wells, Verne, Twain...???
Our thinkers seem to have been lost to a production line where the importance lies in what will enrich the account rather than being held accountable for what deserves to be seen as enriching. Call it a hole in the soul, call it retrogression, call it whatever, it has happened. All have seem to turned completely cynical and unwilling to probe the depths of life and what it means. One transgression happens to be one of my favorites, too... that is, historical fiction. Fact and Fiction?
If the prerequisite for the merit of a brilliant idea is the particular school of thought one comes from, then we are left devoid of a true originality. Having learned from the best doesn’t necessarily equate to being better for it. It could be just the opposite. Studying under another may very well mean being made inescapably captive to another’s ideas. The trend is there and we have seen manifestations of this throughout society... you have to have a degree from somewhere. You have to go to university to be considered as viable.
We should have known this void was coming... in politics, economics, family, identity, intellect, passions, education, the arts, life
Maybe if we just use enough big words it will all go away.