In Ward Just's 1997 novel Echo House, the titular house is a mansion that has been owned for three generations by the Behl family. This family is one of the hidden powerhouses behind American politics, who are always shaping public policy and keeping secrets for people. Three generations of the Behl family are focused on in the book, which demonstrates the potential for political power as well as its price in the 20th century. Senator Adolph Bell, in the 1930s, is first nearly guaranteed that he will have the vice-presidentship. However, once he is refused that title, he is despondent. Secondly, the book follows his son, Axel - he has learned from the bad tidings that his father received and learned to operate "quietly as a fixer without portfolio," much of his story being focused in wartime and being said to have "won the Cold War singlehanded." Finally, Alec, learning from the political leanings of his father Axel, turns into one of the most unscrupulous lawyers in Washington, gaining a reputation for getting politicians out of trouble. These three characters comprise one main character, that of the process of behind the scenes Washington power players, no matter who they are.
Just's Behl family does not behave like any overt power players in Washington politics, at least few that can be identifiable besides, perhaps, the Koch brothers or other DC insiders. However, that is the point of Just's book: these characters, who undoubtedly are real, are unidentified because they refuse to be identified or glorified. As the President thinks to himself near the end of the book, when Axel Behl is going to receive an award: "Axel Behl was a man very much like himself and the many other fine men and women who served the government - and here it seemed to occur to the President that Axel had always shied from the arena, preferring work in the shadows, the master craftsman who sharpened the swords and prepared the bulls but did not remain for the cutting" (p. 313).
These characters are evidence of the grooming and primping for American politics by high-level officials and their immediate families. Politics is not something that one falls into; they are bred for it, they prepare for it. The failure of Adolph Behl to achieve a vice presidential nomination is humiliating, especially because of his wife's aspirations. Axel Behl, as previously mentioned, is a shadow operator, becoming a secret agent for the OSS in France during the war only to become a behind-the-scenes operator for the Democratic Party. Alec Behl becomes equally amoral, as he patches the holes in American democratic scandal by discreetly solving their legal problems. All three members of the Behl family are different sides of the Washington insider - those whose names will never show up on the news, but who will make powerful decisions that affect everyone in the nation.
The implications of Echo House are very important; namely, that American citizens have less of a grasp on how their politicians really work than they think they do, and that their votes maybe mean less than they should. The campaign pushes for voter sympathy means that each election is a scattershot, uneven endeavor. "No one knew what voters would do in the privacy of the booth because voting was never truly private. People walked into their polling places with a multitude of voices competing for attention" (p. 131). Having so much power in the hands of a privileged few (e.g. the Behl family), who are not elected or chosen by the people, threatens to create an aristocracy in Washington that further removes the citizen from the political process. The Behl family is an example of that - the Washington experience also poisons from within, as it kills Axel with a stroke and threatens to kill Alec as well. If anything, the book teaches us that the real determination of elected officials and the way the country is run is not through a majority vote, but the actions and hard, depressing work of an invisible elite that will never be recognized, but merely hope for some small recognition of their own from the Washington insiders.
In order to address this problem, the single most important move that could be made would be to increase transparency. The Citizens United decision of a couple years ago, which allowed the creation of "super PACs" that permit endless, boundless donations from corporations and private individuals, is a poisonous way to give power to a privileged few. Citizens are not able to see who is donating to these super PACs and how much, which leads them to be further removed from the political process. Families like the Behls could donate whatever they wanted to gain advantage over a political opponent, and the people would never know what was going on. While the Behls are a slightly different case, their problem - that of invisibility - also needs to be solved. Their stock in trade is backdoor deals, discretion, making sure problems are solved without the knowledge of the public. This turns democracy into a nanny state that prevents them from knowing what is really going on. As a result, if there were ways to increase transparency within the legislature, such as increased journalistic integrity and access to Washington processes, it would be possible to bring families and forces like the Behls into the limelight and let people know how politics really works in Washington.
In conclusion, Echo House oftentimes feels like political science fiction, because it deals with a nearly Illuminati-esque political family that has been working behind the scenes for decades, playing varying roles and being destroyed in their own way by the Washington system. This proves just how awful and poisonous the system is for both parties involved - the American people are robbed of transparency and have no idea how their political system truly works, while those who are behind it tumble under the weight of anonymity, as well as the moral grayness of their actions and the betrayal of their own country in not getting the glory they so richly deserve. While this story has no direct parallel that is apparent in American politics, the basic story tells the tale of how exclusive Washington politicians can be, creating a near-aristocracy of political families that seek power (or at least influence). It is evidence of how stunted and dishonest our political system is capable of being, and demonstrates that we, the people, need to know who is making the big decisions in our country.
References
Just, W. (1997). Echo house. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
