I spent three days in Washington DC last week. It was only my second visit, and the first was so brief and condensed that it barely counts. DC is a suitable capital city for the United States. It’s broad, diverse, beautiful, ugly, deeply symbolic, and crassly commercial. The parks and monuments around the national mall are a gorgeous natural oasis surrounded by an urban hellscape. As my wife and I walked from our hotel past luxury apartments and 5-star restaurants, we encountered more panhandlers that I see in a couple of weeks in NYC.