Photo by cstein96.

DCist Senior Editor Martin Austermuhle on the argument that the District must earn voting rights and self-determination.

During Saturday’s D.C. voting rights rally at the White House, Garrett Graff, the editor of Washingtonian magazine, blithely tweeted, “Congress might be more willing to give DC more rights if DC elected people who seemed more worthy of power.”

I quickly tweeted back, “That’s ridiculous. How many other states have scandals worse than DC, but still maintain rights denied to DC?” He responded: “Yea, but those states already possess the rights DC wants. We need to be a model of good governance & we certainly aren’t.” I fired back: “So we need to be better than everyone to get the same as everyone? C’mon.”

That was pretty much the end of that, until the City Paper got Graff to expand upon his contention that maybe we’re not worthy of voting rights and self-determination.

Graff wrote:

My tweeted observation had less to do with voting rights—there’s no reasonable excuse for D.C. residents not to have voting rights—and more to do with the governance issues D.C. faces as a federal district. I do think there’s a certain disconnect when the D.C. Council and mayor’s office complains that Congress treats them like children, when their own behavior seems to indicate that they shouldn’t be trusted with more authority… If the mayor and the city council want to prove they’re capable of governing D.C. without Congress looking over their shoulder, they should strive to be paragons of good governance. This spring especially, I don’t think they’ve met that standard.

Graff’s argument is worth pulling apart, because it’s one we often hear: essentially, D.C. needs to earn itself democratic rights. And with all the scandals involving Mayor Vince Gray and member of the D.C. Council, well, maybe we’re not up to the responsibility of governing ourselves.

Let’s go back to Graff’s comment. He starts by saying that there’s “no reasonable excuse for D.C. residents not to have voting rights,” and then proceeds to outline an excuse that he believes is adequate enough to do just that. Put another way: unless District residents elect leaders that are both squeaky clean and sheer geniuses in municipal planning and execution, well, then maybe D.C. shouldn’t be able to govern itself at all.

Setting aside the snobbery of such a comment, Graff fundamentally misunderstands why Congress gets involved in the District at all. Sure, during the Control Board era, there may have been legitimate concern that the city was going belly up — but since then, Congress has only ever really stepped into the District’s affairs to score cheap political points on hot-button social issues. Medical marijuana, abortion, needle-exchange, gun control — these are the types of things that Congress wants to legislate for us, not property tax rates, campaign finance laws, open government standards or regulatory schemes. In a recent hearing on the Hill about the D.C. budget, District Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi made a good point — he couldn’t remember when Congress even changed the city’s annual spending plans, more than just layer on unwanted social riders.

Additionally, Graff seems to miss the irony in what he says. For the District to govern itself, he opines, we have to be “paragons of good governance.” Obviously, no one better to judge that than Congress, right? Or the states? They’re doing pretty well these days, huh? Or maybe a learned council of citizens?

When the Founding Fathers conceived of democracy and liberty for their new homeland, they certainly didn’t make them conditional — they made them inherent. If Graff’s contention stands, we’ll eventually get our full democracy after some unnamed party decides that we’ve proven our mettle as true, responsible, well-meaning citizens that won’t quickly drive our own city into the ground, and with it, the republic for which we serve as the capital.

The worst part of opinions like these is that they ignore the fact that the District is starting with less and has to do more to get to the same place as every other state in the union. (Go ahead, you try and run a city where the majority of the land and incomes can’t be taxed.) And when we invariably falter, then it only supplies cynics with the ammunition they need to further fire accusations that we’re just not mature enough for full citizenship.

None of this is to forgive or excuse the recent prevalence of local scandals. But just as with every state — not to mention the federal government — scandals, controversies, mistakes and improprieties are all part of how democratic societies grow, learn and mature. The District isn’t any different than the 50 states. Hell, if you stand it up next to some, it’s probably got a cleaner, more efficiently run government. But you don’t hear our officials arguing that Illinois should lose voting rights because its two most recent governors are convicted felons. Or that maybe Congress should govern for Nevada or New Jersey, states that have deficits exceeding 35 percent of their entire budgets. (The District’s? 5.1 percent.)

I’m willing to accept that our case is certainly made easier when an unembroiled politician is heading up the District’s government. But if the majority of our residents choose to go in that direction, well, that’s democracy. The District’s case for voting rights and self-determination isn’t based on who’s in charge, but instead the simple power of the moral argument that District residents deserve the same rights as all other Americans. It’s that easy.