A few years ago, I received a phone call from someone who had just attended the funeral of a Nevada political luminary.
He was in shock not because of the man’s death but because of what he had seen outside the church: A candidate was handing out campaign literature.
A funeral as a prime networking opportunity! If anything was emblematic about the shameless and shameful side of political life, that was it.
I was reminded of the incident as I read This Town, Timesman Mark Leibovich’s often hilarious, occasionally revolting trip through the DC grotesquerie. As I flipped through the story of the author’s love/hate relationship with the nation’s capital and its myriad political and media characters, I realized the book is hardly sui generis.
I could substitute Nevada media and political names for many of the bigfoot national pols and journalists sprinkled through Leibovich’s book, which uses Tim Russert’s funeral as an introduction, and the tale would be the same. (I am sure other state-based political reporters would say so, too.)
Yes, there is less big money in Nevada, although during the boom a lot of people made a lot of cash. And I daresay no one in Washington can match the epic rise and fall of superlobbyist Harvey Whittemore, who gave high-fives in the hallways (to colleagues and legislators!) and raised a fortune for those he lobbied before being convicted of illegal contributions to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Lawmakers seamlessly slipping into lucrative post-elective careers as paid advocates? We have such creatures in Carson City and one, departing Assembly Majority Leader Williams Horne, who publicly objected to a cooling-off period because of his constitutional (and God-given?) right to cash in on his public service. Here, too, the revolving door spins very quickly and sometimes it doesn’t need to spin at all – some of our lawmakers concurrently work for law/lobbying firms, too. The Town has nothing on Our State.
Oh, and media folks with huge egos getting too close to the people they cover and socializing with them while trying to maintain a professional distance, with some more successful than others? You talkin' to me?
I have to acknowledge the book made me (again) think about my own relationships and how they have evolved and affected my journalism. Some of my best friends…..
Indeed, my wife is a politician, so navigating through conflicts of interest is something constantly on my mind (and hopefully done well). Washington is a small town, with a disturbing epidemic of political incest reported by Leibovich; Nevada is a small state, where lobbyists raise money for campaigns, then push legislation to those they have elected and where conflicts of interest are often the rule, not the exception.
You know, just like DC, but in a smaller universe. Political animals are alike all over, as Rod Serling might have said. (Maybe it’s time for MY book.)
Leibovich’s point, though, is that the concept of public service for public service’s sake hardly exists in Washington anymore, which he suggests is a place while idealism comes to die and people come to eventually make fantastic amounts of money. He writes “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.’”
As opposed to working for us, I suppose.
Leibovich, who distinguished himself with many impressively reported and scintillatingly written pieces for The New York Times Magazine, brings all of his talents to bear here. The man has a keen eye and writes with panache.
Leibovich punctures the pomposity of DC elites while meticulously detailing how the city is not so much a cesspool as one big whorehouse where it is often difficult to distinguish the clients from the prostitutes. (Insert joke about brothels being legal in Nevada….)
I found the Russert funeral tableau especially telling. I only met the "Meet the Press" legend once, and we chatted about our mutual hometown and he expressed faux outrage that I had needled him in print about giving my beloved Nevada short shrift. Like Leibovich, I hate political funerals because they so often are treated not as places to celebrate a life and mourn a passing but as places to be seen. Leibovich captured that perfectly, including a vignette of a producer trying to ingratiate herself to Hillary Clinton (who is ingratiating-proof, I think) and how several people at Russert’s service were not really his admirers or friends – or worse.
I still remember the Las Vegas funeral of the great Marvin Sedway, the fiery assemblyman, and how I did a double take when I saw an elected official who I knew despised him (and the feeling was mutual) walk into the service. I have attended few political funerals since because the SCENE just sickens me.
I think Leibovich is disgusted, too, but throughout the book, he shows that one of the more important qualities a political-watcher can have is a sense of humor. You can be tough and hard-hitting, but if you don’t laugh at THE GAME, well, it’s serial-killer time.
I also sense Leibovich has a real affection for even the most cartoonish of DC players; he sneers at only a few and seems to marvel at the audacity of the likes of Terry "The Macker" McAuliffe (whom I’ve interviewed more than once and had drinks with and who comes across just as portrayed here).
I thought Leibovich, while recycling some old stuff, also added more color to the portrait of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that I know better than most. (Disclosure: Leibovich quotes me about Reid in the book.)
Reid comes off as quite unlike most of the slick and slimy creatures slithering through the DC swamp, although his “bumpkin” mode is not always so flattering. (I have detailed some of the Reid parts of the book here.)
Leibovich is so detailed in his reporting that he regularly describes in detail one thing that seems to exemplify what he calls in a subtitle “America’s Gilded Capital” and that is: the food.
Nothing so captures the decadence of the milieu as “baby prime-beef burgers drizzled with truffle oil and mini eggs Benedict” or “milk chocolate fondue, mini lobster rolls and $420 bottles of Louis Roederer champagne.” You can almost…taste it.
Leibovich is very hard on Politico, the online chronicle of Washington, which he lampoons as the exemplar of what’s wrong with journalism – constant attention to the trivial, the fluff in Mike Allen’s daily Playbook, the missing the substantial forest for the flimsy trees.
Here I think he is not fair. Perhaps I am biased. I put out a daily newsletter, too, and I love the trivia and games of politics as much as anyone, and I also try to write about issues and discuss them in depth on my program. But while Politico may be crack for junkies – and we know how unhealthy crack is! – that’s hardly all it does.
I have dealt with many reporters at the organization and read others. Some of them clearly are top-notch. Jonathan Martin, who recently left to go to the New York Times, and Ben Smith, who left to start BuzzFeed (I shudder to think what Leibovich thinks of THAT), are superb, thoughtful journalists who know history and provide context.
There are others, too. Alex Burns, who comes in for some rough treatment in the book, is consistently excellent, as are the likes of Maggie Haberman, John Bresnahan, Manu Raju, Ken Vogel, Jake Sherman and others.
They get what I know Leibovich also knows because of all of his wonderful profiles: Politics is much more about personalities than policies. That doesn’t mean elected officials don’t believe in things besides re-election and being on MSNBC; many do. Or that policy reporting isn’t important; it is, and there are many great wonk writers in DC.
But personalities, relationships, logrolling: It’s how and why things happen – and also how and why elected officials so quickly become multimillionaires after their federal elected service.
Politico gets the game. It’s also generally how the best reporters get things done.
Leibovich goes to the parties and soaks up the atmosphere – and maybe a lobster roll or two. But just as going to Adele’s in Carson City after a long day at the Legislature is what reporters should do to catch the lawmakers and lobbyists during their off time, you have to be careful.
Purity is for saints, and reporters are not saints. Nor should they be.
Can you hang with the sinners and still do your job? I think so.
Rules are not always so clear – just like life. But set the line you won’t cross – and don’t cross it.
You can’t be so enamored of or even intoxicated by the game (or the liquor they serve) that you forget what your job really is. It’s those who balance that line in our business, who get close to the flame but don’t get burned, who adopt a journalistic version of the Jesse Unruh standard, who will do the best job.
Elected officials – and even journalists and lobbyists – are human beings with the same foibles as the rest of us but working under a spotlight that makes them bigger and seem worse. (OK, sometimes they ARE worse.)
What makes them different, of course, is that often their depredations are conducted with the people’s money while the people, as Leibovich regularly notes, often are struggling to make ends meet. And that makes more salient and provocative the issue of whether David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell more easily relate to those they are socializing with than the people whose interests they are supposed to be serving. I get it.
Leibovich doesn’t provide any solutions to the legalized incest he details in “The Town.” But what he does do is magnificently portray what an unseemly mess it is behind the “Blue Velvet” sheen while raising questions that every political journalist should think about.
As for most of the lobbyists, my guess is their capacity for introspection will not be enhanced by this book. That’s how “This Town” – or any political world – “works.”
He was in shock not because of the man’s death but because of what he had seen outside the church: A candidate was handing out campaign literature.
A funeral as a prime networking opportunity! If anything was emblematic about the shameless and shameful side of political life, that was it.
I was reminded of the incident as I read This Town, Timesman Mark Leibovich’s often hilarious, occasionally revolting trip through the DC grotesquerie. As I flipped through the story of the author’s love/hate relationship with the nation’s capital and its myriad political and media characters, I realized the book is hardly sui generis.
I could substitute Nevada media and political names for many of the bigfoot national pols and journalists sprinkled through Leibovich’s book, which uses Tim Russert’s funeral as an introduction, and the tale would be the same. (I am sure other state-based political reporters would say so, too.)
Yes, there is less big money in Nevada, although during the boom a lot of people made a lot of cash. And I daresay no one in Washington can match the epic rise and fall of superlobbyist Harvey Whittemore, who gave high-fives in the hallways (to colleagues and legislators!) and raised a fortune for those he lobbied before being convicted of illegal contributions to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Lawmakers seamlessly slipping into lucrative post-elective careers as paid advocates? We have such creatures in Carson City and one, departing Assembly Majority Leader Williams Horne, who publicly objected to a cooling-off period because of his constitutional (and God-given?) right to cash in on his public service. Here, too, the revolving door spins very quickly and sometimes it doesn’t need to spin at all – some of our lawmakers concurrently work for law/lobbying firms, too. The Town has nothing on Our State.
Oh, and media folks with huge egos getting too close to the people they cover and socializing with them while trying to maintain a professional distance, with some more successful than others? You talkin' to me?
I have to acknowledge the book made me (again) think about my own relationships and how they have evolved and affected my journalism. Some of my best friends…..
Indeed, my wife is a politician, so navigating through conflicts of interest is something constantly on my mind (and hopefully done well). Washington is a small town, with a disturbing epidemic of political incest reported by Leibovich; Nevada is a small state, where lobbyists raise money for campaigns, then push legislation to those they have elected and where conflicts of interest are often the rule, not the exception.
You know, just like DC, but in a smaller universe. Political animals are alike all over, as Rod Serling might have said. (Maybe it’s time for MY book.)
Leibovich’s point, though, is that the concept of public service for public service’s sake hardly exists in Washington anymore, which he suggests is a place while idealism comes to die and people come to eventually make fantastic amounts of money. He writes “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.’”
Leibovich, who distinguished himself with many impressively reported and scintillatingly written pieces for The New York Times Magazine, brings all of his talents to bear here. The man has a keen eye and writes with panache.
Leibovich punctures the pomposity of DC elites while meticulously detailing how the city is not so much a cesspool as one big whorehouse where it is often difficult to distinguish the clients from the prostitutes. (Insert joke about brothels being legal in Nevada….)
I found the Russert funeral tableau especially telling. I only met the "Meet the Press" legend once, and we chatted about our mutual hometown and he expressed faux outrage that I had needled him in print about giving my beloved Nevada short shrift. Like Leibovich, I hate political funerals because they so often are treated not as places to celebrate a life and mourn a passing but as places to be seen. Leibovich captured that perfectly, including a vignette of a producer trying to ingratiate herself to Hillary Clinton (who is ingratiating-proof, I think) and how several people at Russert’s service were not really his admirers or friends – or worse.
I still remember the Las Vegas funeral of the great Marvin Sedway, the fiery assemblyman, and how I did a double take when I saw an elected official who I knew despised him (and the feeling was mutual) walk into the service. I have attended few political funerals since because the SCENE just sickens me.
I think Leibovich is disgusted, too, but throughout the book, he shows that one of the more important qualities a political-watcher can have is a sense of humor. You can be tough and hard-hitting, but if you don’t laugh at THE GAME, well, it’s serial-killer time.
I also sense Leibovich has a real affection for even the most cartoonish of DC players; he sneers at only a few and seems to marvel at the audacity of the likes of Terry "The Macker" McAuliffe (whom I’ve interviewed more than once and had drinks with and who comes across just as portrayed here).
I thought Leibovich, while recycling some old stuff, also added more color to the portrait of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that I know better than most. (Disclosure: Leibovich quotes me about Reid in the book.)
Reid comes off as quite unlike most of the slick and slimy creatures slithering through the DC swamp, although his “bumpkin” mode is not always so flattering. (I have detailed some of the Reid parts of the book here.)
Leibovich is so detailed in his reporting that he regularly describes in detail one thing that seems to exemplify what he calls in a subtitle “America’s Gilded Capital” and that is: the food.
Nothing so captures the decadence of the milieu as “baby prime-beef burgers drizzled with truffle oil and mini eggs Benedict” or “milk chocolate fondue, mini lobster rolls and $420 bottles of Louis Roederer champagne.” You can almost…taste it.
Leibovich is very hard on Politico, the online chronicle of Washington, which he lampoons as the exemplar of what’s wrong with journalism – constant attention to the trivial, the fluff in Mike Allen’s daily Playbook, the missing the substantial forest for the flimsy trees.
Here I think he is not fair. Perhaps I am biased. I put out a daily newsletter, too, and I love the trivia and games of politics as much as anyone, and I also try to write about issues and discuss them in depth on my program. But while Politico may be crack for junkies – and we know how unhealthy crack is! – that’s hardly all it does.
I have dealt with many reporters at the organization and read others. Some of them clearly are top-notch. Jonathan Martin, who recently left to go to the New York Times, and Ben Smith, who left to start BuzzFeed (I shudder to think what Leibovich thinks of THAT), are superb, thoughtful journalists who know history and provide context.
There are others, too. Alex Burns, who comes in for some rough treatment in the book, is consistently excellent, as are the likes of Maggie Haberman, John Bresnahan, Manu Raju, Ken Vogel, Jake Sherman and others.
They get what I know Leibovich also knows because of all of his wonderful profiles: Politics is much more about personalities than policies. That doesn’t mean elected officials don’t believe in things besides re-election and being on MSNBC; many do. Or that policy reporting isn’t important; it is, and there are many great wonk writers in DC.
But personalities, relationships, logrolling: It’s how and why things happen – and also how and why elected officials so quickly become multimillionaires after their federal elected service.
Politico gets the game. It’s also generally how the best reporters get things done.
Leibovich goes to the parties and soaks up the atmosphere – and maybe a lobster roll or two. But just as going to Adele’s in Carson City after a long day at the Legislature is what reporters should do to catch the lawmakers and lobbyists during their off time, you have to be careful.
Purity is for saints, and reporters are not saints. Nor should they be.
Can you hang with the sinners and still do your job? I think so.
Rules are not always so clear – just like life. But set the line you won’t cross – and don’t cross it.
You can’t be so enamored of or even intoxicated by the game (or the liquor they serve) that you forget what your job really is. It’s those who balance that line in our business, who get close to the flame but don’t get burned, who adopt a journalistic version of the Jesse Unruh standard, who will do the best job.
Elected officials – and even journalists and lobbyists – are human beings with the same foibles as the rest of us but working under a spotlight that makes them bigger and seem worse. (OK, sometimes they ARE worse.)
What makes them different, of course, is that often their depredations are conducted with the people’s money while the people, as Leibovich regularly notes, often are struggling to make ends meet. And that makes more salient and provocative the issue of whether David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell more easily relate to those they are socializing with than the people whose interests they are supposed to be serving. I get it.
Leibovich doesn’t provide any solutions to the legalized incest he details in “The Town.” But what he does do is magnificently portray what an unseemly mess it is behind the “Blue Velvet” sheen while raising questions that every political journalist should think about.
As for most of the lobbyists, my guess is their capacity for introspection will not be enhanced by this book. That’s how “This Town” – or any political world – “works.”
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