Opinion: On commuting to Washington

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Beau Biden reminded Democrats on Wednesday evening that his dad, vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, has taken the train to and from his home in Delaware ever since being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972. The elder Biden works in Washington, his son said, but has never been part of it.

Set aside the obvious point that perhaps no one is more part of Washington than Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., the senior senator from Delaware, who has worked in the Capitol since he was 30 (he’s now 65). And set aside as well the silliness of the whole outsider trope -- the argument that unfamiliarity with the people and mores of D.C. is somehow an asset.

One of the biggest problems in government today is that jet travel has made a Biden-like commute to work in Washington available to everyone, according to political journalist and author Richard Reeves.

Reeves kicked off one of the hundreds of convention-adjacent events in Denver lamenting the culture of ‘the new Washington, where people jet in and out.’ They work around the clock, Reeves said, then go home. In the old days, politicians like U.S. Sen. John Kennedy might walk to work, chatting with colleagues, staffers and other D.C. types, becoming an integral and intimate part of the scene. Now, ‘each man is an island, almost, in Washington.’

The rest of the Politico.com/USC-Annenberg program focused on the (all too) familiar theme of changes in media and how they affect the political divide. But Reeves’ comment hits home. It’s quite the fashion for politicians to call the political world corrupt and to offer oneself as the ultimate outsider, untainted by politics.

Think Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, and then think of the commuter relationship California lawmakers have with Sacramento. If it weren’t for Southwest Airlines and the ease of getting from, say, San Bernardino or Santa Monica to the Capitol for the day, would members of the Legislature spend more time getting to know each other as colleagues? Would we have a state budget by now?

Or think, frankly, of Barack Obama, the very junior senator from Illinois. He’s something new. Sure, he’s the first African-American presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. But he’s a relative newbie, untainted by Washington. Are we sure that’s good?

If not, his selection of Biden seems all the more on target, regardless of Biden’s professed commuting patterns.

AP Photo/Nick Ut, File