Fifty years ago, I was single and, with my then-steady girlfriend and a vintage MG Midget British convertible sports car, headed east from Alton, Illinois towards Washington, DC, to celebrate the then-200th anniversary of America on the Fourth of July.
This was after Watergate and the chaotic end of the Vietnam war, two national controversies that divided America, but the celebration in 1976 helped bring the nation back together for celebration of Independence Day.
We arrived in the National Capital Region and as we pulled into the parking of the Sheraton Hotel in Arlington, the MG lurched hard to the right. The right front wheel was tilted at a sharp angle. A close look with a flashlight revealed a broken tension bar and other suspension damage, apparently from a pothole the car struck on I-395 about a miles from Washington, DC.
The front desk at the Sheraton recommended a car repair shop in Arlington that specialized on British cars and they sent a flatbed tow truck to pick it up. We had dinner at the restaurant in the hotel and had a good night’s sleep, after a few other things. I rented a car the next morning to start exploring the Capitol, including a visit to the office of Rep. Paul Findley, the Congressman who represented our hometown back in Illinois. He set up a tour of the Capitol.
The repair shop in Arlington fixed the car in one day. With our convertible back, we enjoyed touring the nation’s Capital: The White House, the Capitol, the Smithsonian and the then new Air and Space Museum. We had great dinners at fantastic restaurants, including one that featured a show by the waiters and staff, and nother, with fantastic seafood on a Potomac riverboat restaurant.
On the two-day drive home, we talked about having a good time and a good feeling about the America that was our home.
Six years later, my new wife Amy and I moved to the Washington, DC, area. We lived and worked there for 23 years. When we arrived, the city was vibrant and exciting. I first worked for Findley as a communications dirrector, then became a chief of staff for another Congressman and, later, Special Assistant to the Ranking Member of the Science and Technology Committee. I got to know GOP leader Bob Michel, who said the political parties disagreed with each other in legislation but usually found a way to work things out through coalitions.
“In the end, we can and do remain friends,” he said. We saw that early on with then-new Republican President Ronald Reagan, who sat down with Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill and they, over drinks, worked out a compromise deal for a new budget.
Reagan and O’Neill are gone now. A new Republican, a less-than-honest Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich took over a Speaker of the House, he announced that coalitions were dead and “it’s my way or the highway.” Gingrich later left Congress amid an investigation by the Ethics Committee. The compromise budget worked out by Reagan and O’Neill became the last budget approved by Congress. Since then, the United States government exists now only through “continuing resolutions” that often lead to shutdowns.
The 9/11 attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks seemed to bring America back together, but it didn’t last. I had returned to journalism in 1994. When I came back from Afghanistan in 2003 after a photojournalism assignment, Amy and I decided to leave Washington, selling the condo that had been our home for more than two decades and we bought our home in Floyd County.
Washington had become an armed camp, divided by bitter partisanship and suffocating paranoia. The National Capital Region is even worse now, driven by a convicted felon president, a wannabe dictator, con man and grifter. On this Fourth of July, and 250th anniversary of our fading democratic republic, we see no independence left to celebrate.
