Washington is said to mimic high school. Meg Greenfield, the longtime editorial page editor of the
Washington Post
, loved and nurtured the notion, as did the
New York Times
columnist Russell Baker and a clique of others. The cliché is apt, to a point. There are plenty of bullies and nerds here. Familiar tableaus, like the floor of the Senate and the White House briefing room, are set up like classrooms. Congress goes out on “recess.” It also provides a useful frame for some inescapably high schoolish characters. “No one who has ever passed through American public high school could have watched William Jefferson Clinton running for office in 1992 and failed to recognize the familiar predatory sexuality of the provincial adolescent,” Joan Didion wrote in her book of political essays,
Political Fictions
. In a
Rolling Stone
profile of John McCain set during the 2000 presidential campaign, David Foster Wallace described the then maverick Republican as a “varsity jock and a hell-raiser whose talents for partying and getting laid are still spoken of with awe by former classmates.” McCain’s actual nickname in high school was “Punk.”
Eager-to-please crossing-guard types are certainly drawn to Washington in large proportions. Lone wolves don’t do as well here as in, say, the market-gaming Wild West of Wall Street or misfit genius labs of Silicon Valley. “Loners may be able to sell themselves electorally at home,” Greenfield wrote in her civic memoir,
Washington
. “But they cannot win in Washington, no matter how bad or good they are. Winning here means winning people over—sometimes by argument, sometimes by craft, sometimes by obsequiousness and favors, sometimes by pressure and sometimes by a chest-thumping, ape-type show of strength that makes it seem prudent to get with the ape’s program.”
But the high school comparison breaks down in the modern version of This Town. For one thing, Washington—like high school—used to be a transient culture. People would expect to graduate eventually or drop out. But almost no one leaves here anymore. Better to stay and monetize a Washington identity in the humming self-perpetuation machine, where people not nearly as good as Tim Russert or the Obama dynamos can make Washington “work for them.”
Quaint is the notion of a citizen-politician humbly returning to his farm, store, or medical practice back home after his time in public office is complete. “One thing our founding fathers could not foresee was a nation governed by professional politicians who had a vested interest in getting reelected,” Ronald Reagan said in 1973. “They probably envisioned a fellow serving a couple of hitches and then looking forward to getting back to the farm.”
Obama often told friends that, like Ronald Reagan, it was important for him to convey a message of a candidate who did not
need
the job of president. He wanted it known that he derived none of the psychic gratification that so many others seek in public life. When he was in the Senate, Obama once instructed a colleague to “shoot me” if he ever wound up staying in Washington after he left office.
One friend of Obama’s says that the president despises the “derivative culture of D.C.,” meaning that people become defined by their proximity to other people and institutions. The presidency is a popular target for those seeking derivative status. People glom on to it in some way, emphasizing their own connection as if that makes them, too, a bit presidential. The Las Vegas wedding of Ed Henry, who covered the White House for CNN and later Fox News, featured a cake that was a seventy-pound replica of the White House.
Over time, people achieve a psychic fusion to their public personas and their professional networks. The essence of self becomes lost, subsumed in a flurry of Playbook mentions and high-level name-drops. Self becomes fused with brands, and brands with other brands.
• • •
I first
Washington Post
, loved and nurtured the notion, as did the
New York Times
columnist Russell Baker and a clique of others. The cliché is apt, to a point. There are plenty of bullies and nerds here. Familiar tableaus, like the floor of the Senate and the White House briefing room, are set up like classrooms. Congress goes out on “recess.” It also provides a useful frame for some inescapably high schoolish characters. “No one who has ever passed through American public high school could have watched William Jefferson Clinton running for office in 1992 and failed to recognize the familiar predatory sexuality of the provincial adolescent,” Joan Didion wrote in her book of political essays,
Political Fictions
. In a
Rolling Stone
profile of John McCain set during the 2000 presidential campaign, David Foster Wallace described the then maverick Republican as a “varsity jock and a hell-raiser whose talents for partying and getting laid are still spoken of with awe by former classmates.” McCain’s actual nickname in high school was “Punk.”
Eager-to-please crossing-guard types are certainly drawn to Washington in large proportions. Lone wolves don’t do as well here as in, say, the market-gaming Wild West of Wall Street or misfit genius labs of Silicon Valley. “Loners may be able to sell themselves electorally at home,” Greenfield wrote in her civic memoir,
Washington
. “But they cannot win in Washington, no matter how bad or good they are. Winning here means winning people over—sometimes by argument, sometimes by craft, sometimes by obsequiousness and favors, sometimes by pressure and sometimes by a chest-thumping, ape-type show of strength that makes it seem prudent to get with the ape’s program.”
But the high school comparison breaks down in the modern version of This Town. For one thing, Washington—like high school—used to be a transient culture. People would expect to graduate eventually or drop out. But almost no one leaves here anymore. Better to stay and monetize a Washington identity in the humming self-perpetuation machine, where people not nearly as good as Tim Russert or the Obama dynamos can make Washington “work for them.”
Quaint is the notion of a citizen-politician humbly returning to his farm, store, or medical practice back home after his time in public office is complete. “One thing our founding fathers could not foresee was a nation governed by professional politicians who had a vested interest in getting reelected,” Ronald Reagan said in 1973. “They probably envisioned a fellow serving a couple of hitches and then looking forward to getting back to the farm.”
Obama often told friends that, like Ronald Reagan, it was important for him to convey a message of a candidate who did not
need
the job of president. He wanted it known that he derived none of the psychic gratification that so many others seek in public life. When he was in the Senate, Obama once instructed a colleague to “shoot me” if he ever wound up staying in Washington after he left office.
One friend of Obama’s says that the president despises the “derivative culture of D.C.,” meaning that people become defined by their proximity to other people and institutions. The presidency is a popular target for those seeking derivative status. People glom on to it in some way, emphasizing their own connection as if that makes them, too, a bit presidential. The Las Vegas wedding of Ed Henry, who covered the White House for CNN and later Fox News, featured a cake that was a seventy-pound replica of the White House.
Over time, people achieve a psychic fusion to their public personas and their professional networks. The essence of self becomes lost, subsumed in a flurry of Playbook mentions and high-level name-drops. Self becomes fused with brands, and brands with other brands.
• • •
I first
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