Deadwood, Washington DC

Let us return briefly to those glorious days, circa 1977, when I was employed in the Bank of America Building, working as an associate attorney for The Firm With Three Names which occupied the 33rd and 34th floors, on a full-floor basis, with panoramic views of the Golden Gate, the waterfront, the Bay Bridge, and of course the south of Market area, which in those days was still mostly an unregenerated slum. A big firm, with a lot of work, in a thriving legal market which could support a lot of outside counsel, before insurance companies and banks and corporations went increasingly in-house to control costs. When America was still King, sort of. Everyone wearing wool suits and white shirts, silk ties and leather wingtips. Drinking, carrying on, being unfaithful, sexually harassing.

How I hated it. I thought it was sick. Yet, obviously, other lawyers thrived. There are always humans who not only can handle a heirarchical structure of associates, partners, committee chairs, and professional associations; who navigate successfully through the shark-filled shoals of company politics; who seek and relish wins, promotions, peer-group approbation; yea, verily, and way more. There are people who positively must have all of this. So if life in a big firm slowly extinguished all life outside it, hermetically sealed off normal emotions, relations, made one's life, essentially, into Life In The Firm, then so be it.

Over time, of course, there were regrets among those who stayed the course. Looking back, all they could see was The Firm. And, given the vicissitudes of the market place, the particular lawyers at The Firm With Three Names cannot even say that, since the place imploded under pressures of competition and the in-house movement. But what I want to talk about right now is that curious cohort of lawyers known as "deadwood," in the argot of big firm partnerships as they existed way back when. By and large, these were lawyers who had worked hard for decades, got to the top of the pyramid, were wealthy and financially set, and had lost all interest in the practice of law. They had become nonproductive, objects of resentment among the hotshot trial lawyers twenty years younger who were doing all the hard work and maintaining the firm's reputation. The Deadwood put in minimal hours, kept a clean desk, left often before 5 pm, drank at lunch, and became expert only in the art of Delegation of Everything to associates and junior partners. They had long ago given up attending continuing education of the bar courses and often betrayed, in discussions of cases, an astounding ignorance about changes in civil procedure and substantive law which had occurred, say, in the last 15 years or so. Yet they assumed, for the most part, that they were still thoroughly professional, still up-to-date, still oh so au courant.

Which brings us to Washington D.C., 2006, and to the U.S. Senate. The Senators have an average age of 60.4 years. Some Senators are much older than this (Akaka, Byrd, Lautenberg, Specter, Warner, Kennedy, Grassley, Hatch, Stevens who are all in their 70s and 80s), and only a few are much younger (Obama, Sununu). For the most part, the United States Senate is an Old Man's Club, and membership is practically guaranteed to any incumbent who chooses to run. There are no term (and certainly no age) limits. And another similarity with the Deadwood brigades of the 1970s: most Senators are lawyers. A very large Deadwood law firm could be formed out of the Senate, beginning with Shelby (age 72) and Sessions (59) of Alabama, continuing through Stevens of Alaska (82), on to Dodd (62) and Lieberman (64) of Connecticut, to Biden (61) of Delaware, through Kennedy (74) and Kerry (62) of Massachusetts, to Sarbanes (73) of Maryland, to Levin (72) of Michigan, to Cochran (69) and Lott (65) of Mississippi, to Hillary Clinton (59) of New York, to Specter (76) of Pennsylvania, to Hatch (72) of Utah, to Warner (79) of Virginia, to Byrd (89) of W. Virginia. Had they remained lawyers throughout their lives, most of these Senators would be very old and tired men, and most likely Deadwood.

Instead, the 55 lawyers of the United States Senate are the majority cadre of one-half of America's bicameral system. The Senate, in fact, is almost bereft of any legislator who had a pre-Senatorial life as something other than a lawyer or lower-level politician (Boxer, Collins, Richardson, Nelson of Florida, many other career "public servants."). Maybe one way to explain Bill Frist's ascension to Majority Leader is that his background is somewhat sui generis. He actually did something in the real world at one time, as did Chuck Hagel (investment banking), Lautenberg (computerized payroll company), Kohl (department store) and Salazar (rancher and owner of a Dairy Queen). Frist must seem like a total exotic to someone like Biden, who entered the Senate at the age of 29 after the briefest of legal careers (but which he nonetheless talks about as if it were yesterday).

If you want to understand why the United States Senate was unable to come up with an immigration bill, after months of wrangling, that was anything other than a reprint of the 1986 Amnesty Bill, you need look not much farther. These guys and gals are a spent force. They are Deadwood. They are way, way past their prime.

And something else. It is inevitable that these Senior Citizens carry with them a visualization of the modern world, an image, that is based upon America in the 1950s, that halcyon period when America stood astride the world in Rhodesian fashion. They don't get it. They don't understand what's happened in China, in India, in Kuala Lumpur, they don't grasp the implications of an America running its affairs on energy policies appropriate to the Eisenhower Administration, but way way out of date for a country currently importing 14 million barrels of oil a day at $70 per barrel. They don't understand, as they head down to the infirmary in the Capitol Building, that America's health care system does not consist of Ol' Doc Robbins ridin' his buggy over to the Hawkins household to look in on l'il Timmy, to make sure that sore throat is comin' along.

These Ancient Mariners stand in the well of the Senate and deliver the most excruciatingly boring speeches in the history of modern oration, and to what effect? Why do they use this outmoded form of persuasion? No one listens. There are only two votes in the Senate that matter: cloture votes, to end debate, and...okay, only one. Because the other vote is to pass or defeat another completely useless and irrelevant piece of legislation.

Is it any wonder Senators, as a preface to every mind-numbing utterance they rise to make, fall all over themselves to praise, lavishly and nauseatingly, the sterling qualities of every Senator who has had anything to do with the matter at hand, reassuring all of us that they are all such good friends. Of course they are. They've got the greatest scam going, guaranteed, high-profile employment, a large staff of toadies, an expense account, and a gullible public which for the most part still credits them with functionality and relevance.

Or maybe I'm wrong about that last point. The public's 20% approval of Congress, which includes the Senate, is not really "for the most part." Maybe the increasingly desperate posturing and play-acting now on view via C-SPAN is an indication they realize their cover is being blown. That the junior partners, the American public, are tired of supporting their nonproductive ways. That the little black dog has pulled back the curtain to reveal a couple of bridge games at a retirement home and not much else.