heard the term “Suck-up City” from a top Obama adviser during the 2008 campaign. He was describing the Beltway culture that Obama was running against—and then, after he won, that his White House vowed to change. “Suck-up City” holds multiple meanings, the most obvious being the sycophantic: you suck up to someone you want to please and, more to the point, when you want something from them. You could make the case that sucking up is the mother’s milk of politics itself, or politicking. It is also central to Obama’s disdain for the usual process. Back in the 2008 primary campaign, his New Hampshire political guy, Mike Cuzzi, set up a dinner for Obama in the town of Rye with a bunch of self-important local activists (a redundancy in New Hampshire, given the top-level attention lavished on them every four years). Obama stayed for hours, told stories, talked about the campaign, asked everyone about their lives, concerns, etc. They all had a splendid time, by every indication. But not a single one of them committed, recalled Reid Cherlin, an aide to Obama in New Hampshire. “What do I have to do,” Obama asked Cuzzi as they were leaving, “wash their cars?”
Sucking up is as basic to Washington as humidity. There is a financial component. It has never been easier for “strategists” and “consultants” and “agents” of all stripes to affix themselves like barnacles to the local money barge, sucking in green nutrients.
There is no better connected operator in Washington than Robert Barnett, the superlawyer/dealmaker who can legitimize a person’s earning power just by representing him or her. This service to his country includes a strenuous ability to promote his clients in the media and an equally strenuous ability to remind people of those deals in the interest of promoting himself. This makes him a “superlawyer.” The degree to which so many elite D.C. players stream to a single superlawyer cash redemption center is striking even by the parochial standards of the ant colony. Barnett has all the antique cuff-links he could ever collect and all the money he could ever need. But he still loves the thrill of being at all the big parties and dinners and funerals, and also reading his name in Mike Allen’s Playbook.
Bob loves Playbook. He touts Mike hard and is always good about giving him a heads-up on deals set to be announced. Playbook, in turn, mentions Barnett all the time, even if it’s quoting some boilerplate praise from a lesser-known politician in the acknowledgments section of a book Barnett arranged.
And it tickles Bob when Mike mentions his birthday and that of his wife, Rita Braver, and daughter, Meredith, and baby grandson, Teddy.Speaking of Teddy, it was Mike Allen who broke the news of his birth in Playbook in 2010. I ran into Barnett a few days later and he told me he had received “probably four thousand e-mails” of congratulations after that Playbook mention; Bob was clearly over the moon with his new grandson.
To Barnett, Allen—with his mentions, his birthday wishes—helps Washington keep its priorities straight and encourages a sense of community. “In a world in which we all tend to pay not enough attention to people around us and their real lives, that’s a real public service,” Barnett affirmed in reference to Allen and Playbook in an interview with the
Washington Post
. In a bylined piece for Politico
that ran on the eve of the 2008 election,Allen even included the name “Washington Superlawyer Robert Barnett” on a short list of potential Obama appointments to the Supreme Court (Barnett led the list, ahead of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan).
A native of Waukegan, Illinois, Barnett retains a sharp midwestern accent but is unabashed in his love of Washington. By attaching himself to the owners of the most rarefied job titles in town—presidents and first ladies on down—Barnett has created a boutique industry that he fully dominates.
While public officials
Sucking up is as basic to Washington as humidity. There is a financial component. It has never been easier for “strategists” and “consultants” and “agents” of all stripes to affix themselves like barnacles to the local money barge, sucking in green nutrients.
There is no better connected operator in Washington than Robert Barnett, the superlawyer/dealmaker who can legitimize a person’s earning power just by representing him or her. This service to his country includes a strenuous ability to promote his clients in the media and an equally strenuous ability to remind people of those deals in the interest of promoting himself. This makes him a “superlawyer.” The degree to which so many elite D.C. players stream to a single superlawyer cash redemption center is striking even by the parochial standards of the ant colony. Barnett has all the antique cuff-links he could ever collect and all the money he could ever need. But he still loves the thrill of being at all the big parties and dinners and funerals, and also reading his name in Mike Allen’s Playbook.
Bob loves Playbook. He touts Mike hard and is always good about giving him a heads-up on deals set to be announced. Playbook, in turn, mentions Barnett all the time, even if it’s quoting some boilerplate praise from a lesser-known politician in the acknowledgments section of a book Barnett arranged.
And it tickles Bob when Mike mentions his birthday and that of his wife, Rita Braver, and daughter, Meredith, and baby grandson, Teddy.Speaking of Teddy, it was Mike Allen who broke the news of his birth in Playbook in 2010. I ran into Barnett a few days later and he told me he had received “probably four thousand e-mails” of congratulations after that Playbook mention; Bob was clearly over the moon with his new grandson.
To Barnett, Allen—with his mentions, his birthday wishes—helps Washington keep its priorities straight and encourages a sense of community. “In a world in which we all tend to pay not enough attention to people around us and their real lives, that’s a real public service,” Barnett affirmed in reference to Allen and Playbook in an interview with the
Washington Post
. In a bylined piece for Politico
that ran on the eve of the 2008 election,Allen even included the name “Washington Superlawyer Robert Barnett” on a short list of potential Obama appointments to the Supreme Court (Barnett led the list, ahead of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan).
A native of Waukegan, Illinois, Barnett retains a sharp midwestern accent but is unabashed in his love of Washington. By attaching himself to the owners of the most rarefied job titles in town—presidents and first ladies on down—Barnett has created a boutique industry that he fully dominates.
While public officials
Similar Books
