by Patrick J. Buchanan – August 15, 1997

For the huge taxpayer bailout of Washington, and D.C.’s loss of “home rule,” one man is being blamed. Mayor Marion Barry, it is said, dragged the nation’s capital to the brink of bankruptcy, and Congress and Bill Clinton had no choice but to snatch the city away.

Sorry, it’s not that simple. No one man created this ruin, and no numbers-crunching “control board” is going to heal this city. For the crisis is not due to mismanagement alone. Washington, D.C., represents the failure of an ideology, and until the idiot ideas that are killing this city are exposed and expunged, it will not recover.