Has the Capitol Visit Lost Its Utter Mendacity Charm?
In today's Roll Call, reporter Emily Yehle observes the first anniversary of the Capitol Visitor Center, the 580,000-square-foot foyer to the legislative branch of the United States of America. Opened a year ago to the tune of $621 million, the Capitol expansion has quietly changed the way that visitors interact with the Congress -- transforming it in a way that would prompt even a heartless Hill suit to reflect on what a shame it is.
Before the advent of the CVC, a visit to the Capitol meant a tour for taxpaying citizens guided by hapless interns who would straight up lie to them. Just bald-faced, outrageous, entirely untrue claims about the nation's history and its legislative process. Neither interns nor tourists were any worse for it, as neither interns nor tourists represent gifted classes. The Georgetown Independent ran a story last year by a one-time legislative aide who fessed up to all the lies he never realized that he constantly told to Illinois constituents: that the Statue of Liberty could fit inside the Capitol dome, that John Quincy Adams used the acoustics of Statuary Hall to spy on House opponents, that Thomas Jefferson bribed artist John Trumbull to portray Jefferson stepping on John Adams's toes in the painting depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence. All the untruthiest of untruths. Jesus Christ, Illinois, you believe that?
The CVC changed the nature of Capitol tours, and with them, a Washington tradition. As Yehle explains:
Before the building opened, tours of the Capitol were sometimes a spontaneous experience; low-level staffers often led constituents on a personalized tour with little regulation, though Congress also employed a few professional tour guides.Now, most visitors go on the official tour, which follows a set path through the Rotunda, Statuary Hall and the Crypt. The impromptu rides on the Capitol subway, the tailored stops and the passed-down myths are all but gone.
If interns aren't lying to gullible Illinoisans, who in government is, besides the elected leaders? I am not comfortable with the notion that a charmingly West Wing–y tradition has come and gone, replaced by a museum-exhibit experience that distances the represented from the Representative, or at least from the gremlins that the Representative nominally employs.
One such Representative -- Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) -- went so far as to paint the CVC as a "large bureaucracy," one that emblandens the tour experience: “I think that a number of the tours have no specific references to heroes or political stories to any specific state,” Kirk said. “They have built an empire which is very out of line with the customized service that is a tradition of the Capitol.” (How else are his constituents to hear tell of the brave exploits from Rep. Kirk's battles against the Saracen invaders?)
Another way in which the CVC drifts from congressional tradition: It's too efficient. Those three or four hours that tourists used to spend waiting for a tour was time for you and I to hit the National Gallery gelato bar in peace. I think that Democrats, Republicans, and legislative urchins alike can all agree that change is good, except when it makes for Illinoisans armed with information loose in our city.