Frank Underwood goes to Washington

Did I watch Season 2 of Netflix’s “House of Cards”? You bet I did, me along with what, some thirty million others, streaming problems notwithstanding. Obviously, I’m not the only one fascinated and repulsed by politics and the second season confirms our worse misgivings.

The series, despite some over-the-top moments, is well-written and eminently watchable, though to me Kevin Spacey grates as much as VP as he did as congressman in the first season. A good actor, he is devoid of the grandeur of, say, his counterpart Francis Urquhart (Ian Richardson) in the 1990 English version of the show and is more believable in a “Glengarry Glen Ross” setting than in the corridors of power. Not that all the men and women who stride those corridors have grandeur, far from it, but they seem to belong more than Spacey. Even that little guy—what was his name, the elder Bush’s VP, the one given to extraordinary pronouncements such as “bank failures are caused by depositors who don’t deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement”—blended in fine. For me, Spacey just doesn’t.

Miscasting problems aside, what surprises me is the reaction from TV critics who one and all find that, entertaining as Frank Underwood’s shenanigans and evil scheming are, they give a false image of Washington. The nation’s capital, they say, may be the most corrupt city in the country (seriously? Things are better in Albany? In Austin? In Trenton, eh, Governor Christie? In scale maybe but certainly not in stench). But in Washington, according to these critics, politicians bumble along, play it by ear, don’t have a plan, and no one would come up with any plot or multiplots as nefarious as those of FU (per the main character’s initials on a pair of cufflinks given to him as a birthday present from the security guard who will end up in a threesome with VP and his wife Cruella—I mean Claire).

I’ll admit that a vicious self-serving strategy such as Underwood’s and his conspiracy aimed at getting rid of clueless President Walker in order to take his place are a stretch. But if the particulars differ, for me there’s no question that the show hews close to reality. Politicians are human, yes. To paraphrase Shylock, if you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? If you poison them, do they not die? But as the Bard also said—in Macbeth, in Richard III, in Hamlet and elsewhere, and as Machiavelli before him amply illustrated in The Prince, they don’t have the needs and aspirations of ordinary humans. Rather, blind ambition and the thirst for ever more power and territory are the incentives, the only incentives, of course cloaked in soaring rhetoric and commendable sentiments. The good of the people? Of the country? The days are long gone of politicians who were also public servants and conscious of their duty to deserve the trust put in them by voters. For all of them, from the highest office in the land down to all levels and in all parties, obfuscation, lame excuses, insincere apologies, arrangements, cronyism, back stabbing, shifting alliances and blatant lies are the rule. I’m not saying this is specific to one country, only to this particular dismal area of human endeavor (but we live in this country and are more affected by the Frank Underwoods than the Danes in Denmark or the Senegalese in Senegal.)

Frank Underwood may have had no soul to begin with but those who enter politics lose theirs anyway. It wasn’t always the case. The list is long of individuals such as Lyndon Johnson a flawed, complicated man who played the tortuous game as it’s supposed to be played but still agonized over tough decisions affecting the lives of untold numbers whom he saw as people with rights, not only voters. The flickering flames of decency and hard work to protect our democracy have been almost extinct since Ted Kennedy died or John Warner (a Republican who supported gun control laws, imagine!) retired. Elected officials such as these worked together, were friends and partied together while focused on the larger picture, not only on the next election cycle and the one after that; they didn’t spend the better part of their time and energy cajoling donors and were vested in their constituencies more than only to the extent of reaching the numbers.

There are still good people around, I’m not saying there aren’t—not above reproach, mind you, no one is or ever was above reproach—but good: Senator Mark Warner comes to mind, so does Governor O’Malley of Maryland. But their voices are drowned out–while we pay for the fiddlers–by the wackos who dance on our town squares—libertarians, creationists, Tea Party extremists, NRA members, the Rubios, the Ted Cruzes, the Koch brothers, along, alas, with a long list of my fellow Democrats who may sound more reasonable but have long accepted that clashing ideologies leave them few options.

So yes, television critics are wrong in saying that the game isn’t played as in “House of Cards.” Actually, it is played exactly like that except that there’s not the one nasty guy pulling all the strings. That task is pretty much divided across the board.

More democrats should borrow a page from Governor O’Malley

(I won’t enter the discussion about the sad events in Boston. News coverage, debates and social media have said it all, several million times over.)

Rather, my post today will be about the governor of Maryland and the question, how does he do it? I live in Virginia which I always liked better than Maryland, even when I lived there. The trees see, to be taller here, the sky higher. Also, eight U.S. Presidents were born in the Old Dominion and the state’s history is remarkable. But our politics? Except for the staunchly blue Northern Virginia, there’s not much difference with the politics of, say, Texas—and that is not a compliment.

But drive a dozen miles to the north on the beltway and you find a different situation with Maryland and its outstanding governor, O’Malley. In my book, he falls short of perfection only for being stingy on pardons, but then I don’t know the stories behind his reticence in certain cases. On every other count, he’s my man. First and foremost, of course, abolishing the barbarous death penalty, making Maryland the 18^th state without capital punishment. In the meantime, Virginia remains the state with the highest number of executions per population, ahead of said Texas. That is not a fact to be proud of, along with the ugly general picture of this country about the death penalty (all Western countries and many on other continents have abolished it over the last decades), as we remain in the one-third that still applies it and are in the top five countries in the number of executions, along with China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. What can I say, I cringe.

So, O’Malley has managed to convince lawmakers to get rid of it. He has also passed one of the most stringent gun control laws in the country (in contrast to U.S. senators who, for shame, last week refused to vote in favor of miserably watered-down legislation on background checks). He has also helped pass laws allowing same-sex marriage, student aid for children of undocumented immigrants, higher taxes for the wealthiest Marylanders and much more, always in favor of the meek and the humble. He should be held up as an example of what a determined and decent man in his position can achieve. He’s brave and also lucky to be governor of a state blue by definition, whereas Virginia is host to some of the most conservative and raucous Republicans and tea partiers in the country; it doesn’t help that we have a McDonnell as governor and a Cuccinelli as attorney general. (Only a few days ago, the Virginia Board of Health approved measures that are almost certain to put abortion clinics out of business, leaving well-off women to seek solutions out of state and the less fortunate ones to head for back alleys and botched, illegal terminations. Again, for shame!)

Of course, conservatives scoff at O’Malley and insist that he’s cut of the same cloth they are and only seeking to secure a national platform for 2016. Is he now? Well, he already has my respect and admiration, he will most certainly have my vote.