I have participated in enough committee work and volunteer boards to know that a large part of what gets done and voted on does not occur at the meeting, but behind the scenes in private conversations. This may shock people who have never been in a chamber of commerce board, or in a church session, or a school board, or what have you.

The reason that it works this way is that it is highly inefficient to do all the work that would be necessary at a meeting of an organization. It must be done behind the scenes and presented at the formal meeting. This way coherent proposals can be made. It is not surprising then that by the time ideas are presented there is often already a consensus on what decision will be made. At least partisan lines will have coalesced around the idea. Parliamentary procedure has already formalized this way of doing business and it is called the “committee structure”.

Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power, by John Harwood and Gerald F. Seib is all about the give and take that goes on behind the scenes at our national government. It describes many incidents that become footnotes in the history books, but all of these footnotes add up to one big thesis. The authors contend that the partisan politics in Washington has led to virtual grid-lock and, consequently, the only way that things can get done is through the backrooms.

Yet Harwood and Seib do not contend that all this backroom brokering is necessarily a bad thing. The biographies of the various backroom players are not scathing or scandal ridden. They are, rather, straightforward and for the most part positive. We find that people like Karl Rove and David Rubenstein are filling a niche that has become necessary to grease the wheels of government so that things can actually get done.

“Pennsylvania Avenue” contends that:

Today’s combination of ideological polarization and partisan division, of distant personal relations and intense heat from constituents, of viselike pressure from old money and new media, is historically unique. At various times, different incentives and circumstances produced a different capital city.

This has largely come about due to the high speed of communications and the number of outlets which means that information comes to the public in a form that is raw and unfiltered. This has its good points and its bad points. When information is not digested, it can sometimes be false and misleading, because all of the facts have not had the opportunity to come to light before reactions and hard positions are forming. The authors give out the Dubai Ports deal as an example of how this can happen.

Along with the 24 hour news cycle, the constant public opinion polls can be another factor. Americans are very often polled on subjects upon which they are not well informed and they have given little thought to, giving knee-jerk reactions from the public a pronouncement akin to the “voice of the people.”

Ultimately, as a conservative/libertarian, I see the new media as good (as it is one of the few outlets for conservative thought), and I believe that there is still too much compromising by our side in the political debate. However, there is perhaps too much rancor on both sides of the aisle. (I would say it is mostly on the side of the Dems, but that would sound partisan.)

Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power, by John Harwood and Gerald F. Seib is a primer on how things really get done in Washington, with a who’s who of the current power-brokers.