Exurbs

No cried an alert Reader. ”Don’t try to explain the stupid Intelligence Bill again! You are not on the Hill working the issue, and there is nuance that you are going to miss. And besides, a Socotra piece about ”How a Bill Becomes Law” will just drive everyone face-first into their Cheerios. They hate that. You should do something peppy and ironic.”

”But the Times revealed a Secret!” I said indignantly. ”Maybe two! And I can’t even say what they were!”

”No one cares about that. They are just getting comfortable with the Mother of Battles in Falluja!”

”The battle is going better than the authorities said it would,” I sniffed. ”But of course that means the real Bad Guys probably took a powder.”

”If you were able to explain what Suha Arafat is doing with her husband Yasir, and whether she has the account numbers on the $2-3 billion the Chairman has tucked away in Swiss Bank Accounts, that would be interesting.”

”Well, it certainly explains some of the dancing around that the PLO leadership is doing.   Yasir was a cagy old coot. But the Intel Bill affects people right here in town. I know people who go to work every day to argue about it.”

”That doesn’t make it any more interesting than people in Detroit who operate drill presses for a living. You don’t want to hear about that.”

”Yeah, yeah. But we all know how a drill press works. You pull a handle, apply some weight, and a twirling piece of tool steel reams you a new hole.” 

”And your point about it being different that Washington is what, exactly?”

I surrendered. I know I should stop trying to analyze the Congress and write something related to the extraordinary change in the population demographics. Now that is light and peppy.

The American People are on the move. They are decentralizing at a faster rate than any time since the great Westward Expansion. The demographics of the election demonstrate it, and Karl Rove and his Republican operatives understood it. They grasped a concept that the poor Democrats did not understand, that the Blue Bastions of the cities are becoming irrelevant.

The Republicans seem to understand why I reside in close-in Arlington, and yet surf the real estate ads for bucolic country properties out in Loudoun County. Several of my associates have made the jump already. One of them has banded with his neighbors to overturn the pro-growth County Commission, and are resolute that the bedraggled gravel road in front of their estates will never be paved, not over their dead bodies.

They have glorious mountain views and broad sweeping pasture land. They could have horses, if they wanted. And that is why people are moving to the Exurbs, the counties way out beyond the Suburbs, and I would dearly love to do exactly the same thing.

Sometimes I go into a reverie over my computer downtown, searching real estate ads for just the right sort of place. Some folks are lucky, or have managed well, and are retiring young enough to enjoy it. Some have lost the tie to the city altogether, working in the high-tech campuses along the interstates so that they never have to venture near the metro area. But of course, I never see them anymore.

The old cities are colored blue, if you recall the electoral map, and they are not even aware of what is happening. All the rest of the country, all the exurbs, are colored red.

So when I rouse from my reverie of escaping the city I wonder about the elliptical looniness we practice here. I knew the Bill was dead back at the end of October. I said there would be no reorganization of the Intelligence Community, and all the labor was going to be wasted.   I boldly predicted that the bill would be Dead On Arrival if not passed before the Nov. 2 election.

And it wasn’t. But I forgot the key to life in this elliptical city. Nothing is ever settled, and no good or bad idea ever really dies.

Put simply, the bill enacts major recommendations of the independent 9/11 Commission. It would place a single cabinet-level official in charge of the entire fractious Intelligence Community. The Senate version follows the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which found that the chuckleheads at the CIA and FBI could not share information, and thus should be brought under a single intelligence director.

Supporting the Senate bill is a coalition of House Democrats. House Republicans want to limit the powers of the new Intelligence Director. The Pentagon is allied with the latter.

The President says he wants it, and he is prepared to sign it into law if it emerges from the Conference Committee.

”You had to do it, didn’t you? You had to do How a Bill Becomes Law.”

”I’d rather move to Loudoun County, or Traverse City. But I couldn’t help myself.”

Senator Susan Collins is the Big Dog from the Senate side. She thinks the President ”gave a real boost to our negotiations; he put this at the top of his agenda.” But she warned, “I do think that if we don’t do it this year, all is lost.”

She has a strange bedfellow in Representative Jane Harman of California, the fierce Tigress of the House Democrats. She wants the President to order the Pentagon to stop pouting and get with the program.

”They can’t do that!” I protested. ”This is about real money! Tons of money! There is an estimated $40 billion in the annual intelligence accounts, and eighty percent is in the Defense Budget. They will give that up over their dead bodies.”

There are hints of compromise. Senate negotiators might be willing to consider some of the law-enforcement and immigration provisions inserted by the House Republican leaders. They might even countenance the de-classification of the budget numbers.

In the latest Senate counterproposal, sent to the House Monday, Senate conferees agreed to continue channeling the Intelligence appropriation through “cover accounts in the Defense Department and other entities.”

The old version of the bill gave the National Intelligence Director unlimited authority to change the budgets of the Agencies. The compromise limits such transfers to 10 percent of an individual agency’s total funds. That could still amount to a hefty chunk of change for any of the Big Five Agencies.

Complicating matters this week is an e-mail to the Conferees from the former staff director of the 9/11 Commission.

Doctor Philip D. Zelikow was somehow suborned into supporting the weaker provisions of the House Bill. Why he would undermine the recommendations of his own Commission is unknown. He teaches history at the University of Virginia, and it would be uncharitable to suggest that a little something might be inserted into the omnibus appropriations bill that will also be considered in the Lame Duck session.

I’d like to get something inserted into the appropriations bill myself. I have noted that people are moving out to vast sprawling exurbs, free of the cities. I think there should be a directed survey to be conducted by a former senior Administration official, one in which he could be challenged to find a house on a dreamy piece of property and get up late in the morning to look at the mountains.

I think I can identify precisely the official who could do it. Maybe I can even get him to produce a Report. And I can assure you it will not be about how a bill becomes law.

Copyright 2004 Vic Socotra

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