Third World on the Potomac

What's the mark of a Third World country? I've seen a lot of them, and to me the clearest trait is the squalor of the public realm.

The rich people in your standard dictatorship/kleptocracy of course do just fine. But anything that's public -- schools, museums, roads, hospitals, legal system and courts, customs office and civil service -- is either run down or corrupt. If you had to trade places with the top level of a "bad" country, you'd be OK. But if you had to rely on the public facilities, you'd be in trouble -- as their people are.

Which somehow comes to mind as the U.S. Government prepares to shut down. Two tiny little anecdotes of impending Third World-ism in Washington:

- Yesterday I met a senior diplomat from a very large and important country. (Hint: I write about it a lot, and used to live there. Also, it has pandas.) A very senior delegation from that country is scheduled to meet this coming week with a very senior U.S. official. (Hint: her husband used to be president.) This meeting has been in the works for months, and involves areas of cooperation, as in energy research or policy toward Iran and North Korea, and of disagreement as well. These are talks that should be held and business that needs to be done.

But if the U.S. government is shut down, the meeting can't happen, because the State Department will be officially "closed" except for emergency functions. The delegation is set to leave from this other country's capital at just about the same time as the shutdown deadline. If they don't take off -- and the shutdown's averted, they'll miss their meetings. If they do take off and the shutdown occurs, the trip will be an (embarrassing) waste. The diplomat was sweating bullets: would he have to call them on the runway and say: Sorry, this government has been up and running since 1787, but it's out of business now?

- I have relatives who live in Saudi Arabia. A large group of high schoolers, including their son, from an international school in Riyadh is excited about their upcoming spring trip to Washington, which begins this weekend. For many it will be their first view of the United States. And they will find: Smithsonian museums closed. National Zoo closed. DC trash collectors furloughed. No parking-law enforcement (well, there's a bright side). The kinds of things one associates with ... the third world.

I could wrap this up with a little "Can't we all just along?" homily. But the truth is, it's not a question of nicely splitting the differences. One side of this dispute -- the House Republican majority, especially the 80+ freshman -- is spoiling for a showdown and shutdown that not even their titular leader Mr. Boehner wants. They'll hurt themselves politically, as their forebear Newt Gingrich did 16 years ago. But in the meantime they take the rest of us down with them.

(Illustration of fare card from DC Metro, which will stay open, via site of the Smithsonian, which will not.)

James Fallows is a staff writer at The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the 2018 book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which was a national best seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary.

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