This Town (15 page)

My mind leaps to a
Daily Show
parody that played during a weeklong visit to D.C. that year by the cast of the Comedy Central show. The correspondent Wyatt Cenac played a hungry reporter who comes to Washington vowing that “it will be my life’s purpose” to tell the real story of how corrupt Washington really is. “Hey, is that a Town Car?” Cenac says, interrupting himself, and notes how cool it is that the Town Car in fact has his name in the window. In the next scene, Cenac excitedly reports that he has moved on to a cocktail party in Georgetown at the home of “a wealthy senator’s ex-wife” in which (over by the braised duck) he sees the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, “who’s talking to a college roommate who happens to be an ABC News reporter and his girlfriend who’s a lobbyist.” Cenac again vows to “nail these bastards” but by now has drifted into a drunken bliss, sipping from a martini (“as dry as Harriet Tubman’s vagina!”) before moving on to a “postcocktail jammy jam” hosted by the defense contractor Lockheed Martin. When Jon Stewart expresses concern that Cenac should not be partying so much with the bastards he is promising to nail, Cenac promises to check himself—right after he uses the free tickets he scored from a lobbyist to the Washington Wizards home opener!

•   •   •

C
lever locals refer to the Correspondents’ Association dinner as “Nerd Prom.” This is one of those self-congratulatory Beltway terms masked as self-deprecation. “Nerd” implies that everyone would of course much rather be immersed in the deep wiring of some issue, something of weight and substance—they are “nerds,” after all—rather than this obligatory fizz. They could be curled up at home with a Brookings Institution white paper if not for this distraction from the serious work they do.

But they are obliged to make the dinner, because it is big. The Club swells for the night into the ultimate bubble world, the evening’s pinnacle moment coming when the three thousand tux-and-gowners rise as one in the ballroom of the “Hinckley Hilton” and offer a solemn toast “to the President of the United States.” It is an instant when the bicoastal cast reminds itself that everyone here—not just the commander in chief at the head table, but everyone—wishes the best for the team; that the nexus of politics, media, and celebrity resides at the most garish heights of patriotism.

It is of paramount importance that the president show up to receive his toast and confirm the great seriousness of it all (the First Amendment, leaders being held accountable, being “fair” and fact-based and tenacious and things like that). And they show up without fail, fifteen presidents in total, going back to Calvin Coolidge in 1924. If you think about it, a president blowing off the Correspondents’ Association dinner might be a political boon in this anti-Washington day and age, a nod to the “average Americans.” Indeed, to the outside world, the dinner and its collateral goings-on present an image of Washington as one big game and costume party, everyone bathed in the same frothy mix of fame and fun and flattery and (most of all)
belonging
. It all looks terrible.

But for a president to miss this dinner would also send a terrible message to This Town. And a president—especially a Democratic president—is never advised to offend it too badly, because (let’s be honest) This Town leans left and assumes like-mindedness, so it tends to be especially tough on its own if respect is not paid. Jimmy Carter annoyed This Town by acting all too pure for the permanents (you can run against Washington, fine, but don’t make it personal). The Clintons got off to a rotten start when the
Washington Post
’s Sally Quinn invited Hillary to a welcome-to-Washington luncheon in 1993 and the first lady declined. Bad feelings ensued.
“There’s just something about her that pisses people off,” Quinn later told the
New Yorker
. Some years later, when Bill Clinton was preparing to nominate Quinn’s husband, Ben Bradlee, for a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the president quipped thus to his aides: “
Anyone who sleeps with that bitch deserves a medal!”

After Monica, Quinn penned a memorable piece in the
Post
’s Style section about how Bill Clinton had not only betrayed his wife, his oath, and his country but also his duty to his hosts, the Washington “establishment.” The establishment was “
outraged by the president’s behavior,” Quinn declared while acknowledging that “the polls show that a majority of Americans do not share that outrage.” She went on to quote a string of aggrieved establishment types saying things like “This is
our
town” (Senator Joe Lieberman), “This is a demoralized little village” (Reagan’s social secretary), “You don’t foul the nest” (politically versatile talking head David Gergen), “We all know people who have been terribly damaged personally by this” (NBC’s Andrea Mitchell), and, perhaps most pointedly, Clinton “came in here and he trashed the place, and it’s not his place” (the
Washington Post
’s David Broder).

The “trashed the place” quote from Broder received a great deal of attention. “Not his place” was read as an assertion that Washington—“This Town”—does not belong to Clinton or the people who elected him but to a presiding class of city fathers. With such status comes a heightened sense of moral duty and authority. Outsiders could never fully appreciate their sense of custodianship. “Every time I went into the Oval Office I put on a coat and tie,” said the supreme former, Ken Duberstein, reassuring a grateful nation.

Even in the late Clinton era, the Correspondents’ dinner was still smallish compared with what it has since become—a moneyed and multiday Mardi Gras that resembles a national political convention except that it occurs annually. Like a convention, the festivities are covered top to bottom by the media but typically produce no news besides the marathon roundups of boldface names and a rehash of whatever the best lines were in the president’s comedy routine.

On the day of the 2010 Correspondents’ Association dinner, Obama delivered a commencement address at the University of Michigan in which he bemoaned the “
24/7 echo-chamber” of cable news and tendency of pundits to make “their arguments as outrageous and as incendiary as possible.”

Obama viewed his Correspondents’ Association dinner duties as something of a chore but also enjoyed a good comedy routine and delivered it deftly. He also viewed his act as a humorous outlet to say how he really felt, and one of his favorite peeves—on this and other occasions—was the idiocy of the media. In his speech at the 2010 dinner, the president played a clip of CNN anchor Rick Sanchez discussing a volcano in Iceland whose eruption wreaked havoc on transatlantic flight schedules. Sanchez laughed while expressing surprise that Iceland was not “too cold to have a volcano.” After the video played and Obama remained silent through the crowd’s laughter, he added dryly of CNN: “I guess that’s why they’re the most trusted name in news.”

The president was especially harsh on Politico, deadpanning that it is unfair to say Politico
puts new focus on “trivial issues, political fodder [and] gossip” because in fact they have been doing it for centuries. He described a faux historic Politico
headline, “
Japan Surrenders—Where’s the Bounce?”

The president’s attentions were flattering to Politico, authenticating its ascendance at an event that the publication treats as its Super Bowl. It produces dozens of stories about the event leading up to it, a commemorative insert, and a newly established day-after brunch at the publisher’s mansion at which crowds of gawkers assemble outside, hoping for a glimpse of the Jonas Brothers, or Dennis Kucinich.

There can be upward of twenty-five parties planned around the event, a long and rolling heave of martinis and Miller Lites and “Good Causes.” It is The Club’s version of the High Holidays, without the fasting or spiritual nourishment (unless you count those who pray for an invite to Tammy’s).

In recent years, the Correspondents’ Association dinner kickoff party has taken place a full five days before the actual dinner, on
Tuesday
. It has been hosted by Jack Quinn’s lobbying shop, Quinn Gillespie. “We know that the dinner itself is not actually a celebration of the White House press corps but instead a celebration of politicians and celebrities,” Quinn explained to the
Washington Post
. “To us, journalists are celebrities. White House correspondents are the rock stars of Washington for the political class.”

This was gracious of Jack to say, although it was not always the case. For many decades, journalists were considered the freezer-burned broccoli of the D.C. buffet spread, compared with the caviar politicians, diplomats, and lawyers of influence. When the
New York
Herald Tribune
columnist Joseph Alsop arrived in town in 1935, Arthur Krock, the D.C. bureau chief of the
New York Times
, warned, “
You know, Alsop, the first thing you have to realize is that in Washington newspapermen have no place at the table.”

Now they have standing places at multiple tables. They do all year, but it becomes an orgy around the Correspondents’ Association dinner: a blurry romp of lobster tails and truffles and Andrea Mitchell getting her heel stuck in the cobblestone driveway of the St. Regis hotel outside the
Time
/
People
party. The latter episode, by the way, was witnessed by Reid Cherlin, an assistant White House press secretary at the time, who gallantly came to Mitchell’s aid and helped keep her massive
Time/People
gift bag from spilling. “She thanked me graciously,” Cherlin recalled.

•   •   •

A
ll the while, nasty news kept spewing out in the American elsewhere. A massive explosion destroyed the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, which was being leased by BP. An underwater camera showed a rush of crude into the Gulf, which made a tidy visual for an out-of-control problem and, as the ever-literary media pointed out, a metaphor for a
suddenly helpless presidency
. It also symbolized the free flow of cash from British Petroleum into Washington to “manage” the crisis. BP was moving to secure every Republican and Democratic flack and lobbyist they could soak up for help with their “positioning” problem.

Washington becomes a determinedly bipartisan team when there is money to be made—sorry, I mean a hopeful exemplar of
Americans pulling together in a time of crisis
. BP’s Beltway dream team included Republican whales like Ken Duberstein and the Democratic superlobbyist Tony Podesta; a top spokeswoman for Vice President Cheney, Anne Womack-Kolton; a longtime spokesman for Republican speaker Dennis Hastert, John Feehery; and a well-known Democratic media mastermind, Steve McMahon, also a regular on
Hardball
. It boasted McMahon’s business partner, the Republican media guru Alex Castellanos; their firm, Purple Strategies,
spearheaded a $50 million television campaign on the company’s behalf, according to a report on CNN (where Castellanos is a contributor). “Purple” was brought into the fold by Hilary Rosen, a devout Democrat and tireless advocate for same-sex marriage who was then running the Washington office of Brunswick Group, a London-based PR firm that was also working for BP. A CNN pundit herself, Rosen was also an unpaid contributor to the Huffington Post—until the BP thing became a potential “optics” problem, and a temporary breakup ensued.

The human toll of BP’s spill was great and far-reaching. Chief among the tragedies in This Town was that it meant
Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi had to stay home to monitor the crisis and could not attend the Correspondents’ Association dinner.

It’s always good to see Haley at the dinner. He is an old stalwart in This Town and was thinking seriously about running for president in 2012. Barbour was scheduled to travel to Washington the night before the dinner to speak at a party for the CNBC host Maria Bartiromo—aka “the Money Honey”—who had just published a book called
The 10 Laws of Enduring Success
. Everyone in The Club was happy for Maria, a fierce and vivacious presence who had made a nice brand for herself. Ed Rogers, a founder of Barbour’s old lobbying firm, was the party’s host.

Prudishly speaking, a journalist’s agreeing to be celebrated at a party hosted by a lobbyist and headlined by two newsmakers might be seen as compromising—especially when one of the newsmakers (Barbour) was thinking seriously at that point about running for president and when the honoree (Bartiromo) wound up moderating a Republican debate the following year.

But you could nitpick a few “troubling appearances” involving journalists and lobbyists and politicians every week in Washington if you wanted to. “It is what it is,” as everyone says here all the time.

The Money Honey reception was held in an elegant function room off the lobby of the W Hotel. Guests could conveniently stop by to congratulate Maria and then head upstairs to another pre-party hosted by the
New Yorker
on the roof, or several others within a few blocks. Ed Rogers always does a tasteful job with these things, and the wine on this Correspondents’ Association dinner eve was particularly excellent. Haley loves a good glass of wine, or six, another reason it was such a shame he could not be here. Few politicians are as fun as the former Republican National Committee chairman, political director in the Reagan White House, and legendary tobacco lobbyist. Barbour is a throwback to a time when politicians would tell dirty jokes, boast of all the cigars they smoked, and refer to their friends—on the record—as “drinking buddies.” He speaks in a mud-mouthed Mississippi drawl and looks like a grown version of Spanky from the Little Rascals.

Barbour’s favorite political memento is a framed sequence of photos of himself trading off-color jokes with his former boss, Reagan. In the first photo, the young White House aide is seen telling the president a joke, “the one about the three couples joining the church,” Barbour says. The punch line features one of the couples doing something enormously inappropriate in the frozen-food section at Kroger.

In the next picture, Reagan is saying, “Haley, have I ever told you the one about the two Episcopal preachers?”