Below is my review of
This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of
Valet Parking!—in America’s Gilded Capitol that appeared on Page 6 in the February 2014 Sturbridge Times Magazine.
This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!—in
America’s Gilded Capitol
By Mark Leibovich
Public Affairs, 2013
Blue Rider Press, 400 pages
List: $27.95 Amazon: $18.58
Book review by Richard Morchoe
This
Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!—in America's
Gilded Capital is a brutal look at the nomenklatura who rule us. The author, Mark Leibovich catches the
denizens in the act of schmoozing, peddling influence, securing sinecures and
book deals and getting on TV or mentioned in the press. All too often, it is done at the
expense of the rest of us.
Mr. Leibovich should know. He’s done time in D.C., first at the
Washington Post and then for the New York Times. He is currently chief national correspondent for the New
York Times Magazine.
The author sets the tone on Page 1,
“Tim Russert is dead, but the room was alive.” It was the memorial service to celebrate the deceased, and,
not coincidentally, a networking opportunity. You might remember Tim; he was the long-time moderator of
Meet The Press. In 2008, he was on
Time Magazine’s 100 most influential list. He was big, and then he was gone.
The author quoted a friend, ““We’re all obituaries waiting to
happen,” Henry Allen, my former Post colleague,
once wrote. “At the same time, the
city of Washington feels like a conspiracy we’re all in together, and nobody
else in America quite understands, even though they pay for it.””
It should be a bit of surprise to
some that this is such a good read.
After all, it’s about the class of people who were student government
nerds in high school. Leibovich
writes well and enjoys the subject.
Also, love or hate these people, they influence our lives out of all
proportion to their intellects and abilities.
There are many stories and tidbits
about those who bless or infest (as you wish) the D.C. ether. For personal reasons, I enjoyed his
quotes about Chris Matthews, that apply to a whole class as well,
“In his book about the media’s
conduct during the Monica saga, Bill Kovach, the founding chairman of the
Committee of Concerned Journalists, anointed Matthews as part of a “new class
of chatterers who emerged in this scandal…a group of loosely credentialed, self
interested performers whose primary job is remaining on TV.””
“After leaving Tip O’Neill’s office, for example, Chris
Matthews got himself a column for the San
Francisco Examiner. He was
even named the Examiner’s Washington
Bureau Chief, though he was the only one in Washington for the Examiner and it had no footprint beyond
being the Bay Area’s sleepy afternoon newspaper. But the affiliation and title helped Matthews get on TV.”
Matthews will stick like a barnacle
and be on TV even after his memorial service.
There are also profiles of relative
unknowns. Chapter 8 is given over
to Kurt Bardella. Bardella is
refreshing if only because he was not guilty of any “I’m here for the kids”
schmaltz that most people in politics give as the reason for their
“service.” Kurt was a hard
charging press aide to Representative Darrell Issa. So hard charging that he got into trouble for his zeal. His errors got him fired and would have
been career ending in a real environment.
Bardella worked the TV and publicity circuits and was back on staff with
the Congressman. It’s not easy to
be a complete failure in D.C.
Mr. Leibovich has a way with a
euphemism and if you don’t chortle often, you are probably in the care of an
undertaker. On page 139 he calls
David Gergen a “politically versatile talking head.” If you have at all followed politics from the Reagan
administration on, you realize he essentially tabbed Gergen as a practitioner
of the world’s oldest profession.
On the BP spill debacle,
“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. “
Are there any problems with the
book? Almost none of us have any
real experience with Washington, so it is near impossible to raise
objections. Fortunately, on Page
35, Mr. Leibovich serves up a high hanging slow ball of a blunder that is easy
to blast out of the park. In
discussing the Mitchell-Greenspan power couple he wrote,
“Andrea was in the midst of a rough
moment because a lot of people were blaming her husband, Alan Greenspan, for
the financial collapse. His
free-market, Ayn Rand-influenced policies while running the Federal Reserve
were not looking good now.”
Anyone remotely familiar with
Rand’s writings knows she was a sound money gal and Greenspan’s pumping moolah
out of the Fed would have been anathema to her. On page 38 he observes, “Washingtonians love the “So-and-so is
spinning in his grave” cliché.”
Mark made Ayn revolve at warp speed.
His snarky and continuing reference
to Romney as Mittens, with the Greenspan comment might indicate his boat has a
slight list to port. Still, he had
no problem skewering Team Obama over their holier than thou attitude as all too
many of them had no problem monetizing their service when they had the chance.
Leibovich’s work makes plain that
Planet D.C. will always stand apart and be alien to the nation. As soon as the rep, senator or staffer
arrives, they go native and are forever separate from what they nominally
represent.
In the November 2012 issue of this
magazine, your reviewer proposed the nation’s capital should be moved to the
cold, desolate hills of Wyoming.
This Town has convinced me that that is not only correct, but also desperately
urgent. A new beginning is called
for. If not in a remote,
inhospitable terrestrial region, another galaxy.
Now more than ever.
