I hesitate to suggest excessive nostalgia here, or certainly to imply some “Well, wasn’t it all better here in Nixon’s day” lament. Nor would it be right to say Bradlee was a paragon of journalistic mission, independence, and subversion. His career was suffused with ample coziness with the powerful that many would condemn today. There’s virtually no way that any journalist could carry on the close friendship that Bradlee did with John F. Kennedy while he was covering the president as Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief (a time when, by many accounts, Kennedy was sleeping with Bradlee’s then wife’s sister). In other words, to impose some false modern standard of purity on Ben would illicit from him a trademark “Fuck it.”
Still, one of the glories of Watergate was that it ended in a clean kill. The Post prevailed, Nixon was exposed. There were spoils and consequences. “For the first time, really, I felt in my guts that we were going to win,” Bradlee wrote of a period in 1973 in which a vindicating groundswell of revelations laid bare the scope of the White House’s wrongdoing. “I had no idea still how it would all come out. But I no longer believed that Watergate would end in a tie.”
Journalists often debate whether the Watergate story could have been broken today, or would at least have the legs that it did four decades ago. Forget the question of whether Woodward and Bernstein would have been given the time, space, and editorial backing to pursue such an endeavor. Even if they did, the Nixon White House would now have a massive Fox/Rush/Drudge apparatus at its back. A complicated story would devolve into the familiar left-right rock ’em, sock ’em. “Okay, the liberal media is at it again,” the first defense would be, and then everyone would assume their places in the noise machine.
Soon enough, Watergate would be over, eclipsed by the next shiny object, and no one would remember who won or lost, and even what “winning” and “losing” meant beyond the ESPN-style scoring: To wit, a modern analog to that unfolded a few days later. After the fiscal cliff battle was finally resolved on Capitol Hill, Mike Allen included in Playbook an “e-mail du jour” from a Democratic aide. In it, the aide distilled—with perfectly of-the-moment, of-the-medium simplicity—the current state of play in the complicated economic debate that has dominated This Town through the Obama years:
So we have a split decision as of now: GOP won 2010 elections, then got the Budget Control Act deal with all cuts, no tax hikes. Obama won 2012 elections, and scores this deal with all tax hikes, hardly any spending cuts. So each side has one victory each.
You can’t decide who wins overall until the rubber match happens in March. That side will be the winner—best two out of three.
• • •
Ben Bradlee used to throw around a favorite phrase, “The caravan moves on.” This was his way of always moving forward, not dwelling. It was a quality familiar in powerful WASP types—and, even more, to combat vets of a certain era, like him, who fought a good war in the Pacific and lived to “move on.”
At a time when journalism was becoming a hot profession—in large part thanks to Watergate and All the President’s Men—Ben became the object of the biggest personality cult in This Town. I spent much of the first half of my career imagining what it would be like to work at the Washington Post under Bradlee.
By the time I reached the paper in 1997, Ben had been retired for six years and was working out of the Post’s emeritus wing on the seventh floor. He was well removed from the newsroom, though he strolled through it frequently and ate lunch most days in the cafeteria. “I’m a stop on the tour,” he said then, and still does. He would sometimes send me fan mail after a worthy piece. “Your story today makes our newspaper so good,” he wrote once after I’d been at the Post a year or so. To this day, if someone forced me to relinquish everything I owned except what could fit into a single box, I would make room for that note.
We had lunch a few times, Ben and I, usually some nice place in the neighborhood where he would speak French to the maître d’. Once, when I was weighing another job offer, he said to me, “You’re working for the best fucking newspaper in the world. Don’t be an asshole.” He was a Post exceptionalist, even when he knew better (and he did). “You’re a fucking traitor,” he scolded me in 2006, when I finally did leave—for the Times. “And now you’re working for a bunch of assholes.” He knew that the Post had “lost a lot of its horsepower” and that I was probably making the right move. On the way out, he reminded me to “keep your pecker up,” a common Ben-ism.
• • •
As it turned out, The Last Party was not meant as any special tribute to Ben, at least officially. Rather, it was meant as a play on the end of the world—which, according to the Mayan calendar, was scheduled for the next day or so. A lot of people had been making end-of-the-world jokes, and this was Sally’s offering—although she later told me that she was fully aware of the double meaning here. Whatever the occasion, it’s always a thrill to score the invite to Ben and Sally’s: a landmark house, once owned by Robert Todd Lincoln (Abe’s son), whose grounds occupy nearly an entire block. Portraits of Bradlee’s ancestors, Josiah and Lucy Bradlee, hang in the foyer, while a mingling local royalty mosey through, sipping drinks. (Is “ColinPowellJimLehrerAndreaMitchell” one word?)
My first entrée into a Ben and Sally soiree had come exactly four years earlier, at the end of 2008, a few weeks after Obama was elected. Bill Burton, the former campaign press secretary, was there, along with a host of hot new Obama arrivals. Burton was a big “destination” that night, as was David Gregory, who had just prevailed in the competition to replace Russert as host of Meet the Press.
The 2008 gala was ostensibly to welcome the new editor of the Washington Post, Marcus Brauchli, to town after a long career at the Wall Street Journal. My major recollection was being confronted at the buffet table by Chris Matthews, who was mad about a profile I had written about him earlier that year. Matthews blamed that story, he said, for “costing me a job that I really wanted.” It was not clear what he meant exactly, although I wondered if it was the Senate seat in his native Pennsylvania that he had been making noises about running for—just noises, as it turned out. Anyway, he stormed away before I could ascertain more. Ben, who was standing nearby and apparently heard the exchange, met my eyes and shrugged. “Fuck ’im,” he said, patting my back. And then, as he walked away, he said, “Keep your pecker up.”
Four years later, there was Ben again, now parked in the front hall, greeting guests as they arrived. He looked typically stellar—silvery white hair, barrel chest out, grinning handshakes and ever the impresario in full command of his charisma, if not his memory.
A few feet from Ben, Brauchli was taking condolences on his removal from Ben’s old job as executive editor. He had been canned a few weeks earlier (“invited to resign,” if you prefer) after an extended spiral of the diminished print subscriptions, ad revenues, and headcounts that have hit the entire business, but the Post especially. Brauchli had in fact just been “caked” in the Post newsroom that afternoon—“caking” being a term coined for the sugary farewell rituals that had been breaking out repeatedly at the paper in recent years. It is not clear if anyone could have weathered those declines better than Brauchli had. But regardless, he was now fully deposed to the emeritus wing and not happy about it (and neither was his wife, who was uncomfortably open about her feelings via Facebook). On the upside, Brauchli had plenty of time now for lunch, as he told people who were consoling him at The Last Party.
In the back of the foyer schmoozed Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who made for a timely destination herself tonight because she was “in the news.” Earlier that week, Rice’s prospective nomination to be the next secretary of state had been harpooned, mostly by Republicans. John McCain, who had picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate four and a half years earlier, said Rice was “not very bright” and “not qualified” for the job. In truth, Rice rubbed a select bipartisan contingent the wrong wa
y. She was often called a “brusque” and “doesn’t suffer fools gladly” type, which can be big trouble in This Town, especially for a woman. Richard Holbrooke, too, was the epitome of brusque and doesn’t-suffer-fools-gladly, yet he was a particular darling among the same set of Thought Leaders he spent much of his life cultivating. Rice did not, and one member of the White House national security team noted that her ultimate kiss of death was inflicted by the supreme Thought Leader himself, Times columnist Thomas Friedman: “I don’t know Rice at all,” he wrote, “so I have no opinion on her fitness for the job.”
In the vein of too-little-too-late, it was ironic that Rice would show up at The Last Party. It was also precisely the kind of shindig Richard Holbrooke would never have missed. He had so many great friends here, starting with Ben and Sally, and his name had also been invoked a fair amount of late—two years after his death—for an incident that took place during the Clinton years in which Rice gave him the finger during a senior staff meeting at the State Department. Not classy! Less remarked upon was the condescending diatribe from Richard that allegedly incited Rice.
Walter Isaacson had Rice corralled while Colin Powell walked a few feet away. This was notable because Walter Isaacson is someone who absolutely lives to be in the same room as people like Colin Powell. Not so much the likes of me, whom Walter always blows right past en route to the Colin Powells—and if he greets me at all, he calls me “Matthew,” which I’ve never bothered to correct because Walter is so smart, for all I know my name IS Matthew and I’ve been going by the wrong name all these years. Anyway, the fact that Walter was staying fixed on Susan Rice and letting the gravy train pass was testimony to her timeliness in This Town, at least for another day or so. Isaacson eventually proceeded into the living room, which was adorned with plush couches, fresh flowers, and Vernon Jordan. Whenever I see Jordan, the perennial This Town insider, I think of a story told by Jeff Connaughton, a former top aide to Joe Biden and superlobbying partner of Ed Gillespie and Jack Quinn. Connaughton, who made plenty of money as a lobbyist, then became disgusted with This Town and moved to Savannah, Georgia, recalled an encounter he and Quinn had with Jordan back in the 1990s.
“Let’s have lunch someday,” Quinn told Jordan. “Give me a call.”
“You call me,” Jordan replied. “You’re the junior partner in this friendship.”
Rice was still a junior partner in the Obama cabinet. But by dint of her status now—in the news, a useful destination—she was a senior attraction at The Last Party. Even Vernon Jordan himself sidled up to her. As Rice navigated the masquerade, people staring at her like a zoo animal, it struck me that she was the only top Obama administration official that I recognized here. Few journalists under the age of forty attended, either, let alone any of the new political superbloggers like the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, just dubbed by the Atlantic to be “the presumptive dean of Washington Journalism.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida were the only actual elected officials I saw. Wasserman Schultz said she felt like she had “walked into a novel.” In general, the party was conspicuously devoid of “earpieces,” denoting the presence of sufficiently high-value targets. One of the few guests meriting a security detail was Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador, who hovered dangerously over the buffet table, eyeing a massive Christmas ham (his detail was trained to protect him only from terrorists, not treif).
This Town parties fall into three basic categories: the parties for young, hyper-ambitious operators, who are critical—even sneering—about the people currently in power; the parties for has-beens, who spend their time being critical of the people currently in power, because they know they once did a better job; and the parties heavy with current officials, who fear the young, because they know they are circling their jobs, and who fear the old, because the ex-officials remind them of what their futures will be like. The Last Party was mostly old, with a little bit of current Washington sprinkled in.
Later in the evening, Colin Powell was seen holding court in the kitchen with a small group of journalists that included Isaacson and Jeffrey Goldberg. Powell appeared to be explaining to everyone how things really should get done in This Town, based, of course, on his experience.
I encountered Chris Matthews at the buffet table, the same place he had stormed away from me four years ago. Whenever I see him now, Matthews always mentions “that hatchet job” but says he is no longer mad at me. He does not hold grudges, which he says “proves that I am not really Irish.” Good for him. We’ll likely never have lunch in This Town, but the shepherd’s pie at Sally’s buffet was superb.
In the corner, Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell were huddled around a small table with Barbara Walters, Alan’s former girlfriend. I overheard Barbara saying something about Jake Tapper, ABC’s handsome White House correspondent who that day had announced that he was leaving for CNN, where he would have his own show. Tapper was, at that moment, back in the living room taking congratulations—performing his gracious duty as a destination—while the Alan-Andrea-Barbara trio remained parked in place, nursing their drinks.
• • •
It was around this time that I read a biography of Bradlee written by Jeff Himmelman, a former research assistant for Bob Woodward who had also collaborated on a memoir by Ben and Sally’s son, Quinn Bradlee. Published earlier in 2012, the biography, Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee, had kicked up some major dust inside This Town, mostly because Himmelman included quotations from a 1990 interview that Bradlee gave when writing A Good Life in which he seemed to suggest that Woodward might have embellished certain cinematic details about his dealings with Deep Throat. The revelation did not strike anyone as that big of a deal—good editors are supposed to have doubts, and the substantive core of the Watergate stories has certainly held up. But Woodward reacted to the Himmelman book with guns blazing and accused his former protégé of ignoring a 2010 interview Himmelman had conducted with Bradlee in which the editor said he did not think Woodward embellished anything. Sally backed Woodward and said she was speaking for Ben. Himmelman was, needless to say, no longer invited to dinner, let alone The Last Party.
I liked Yours in Truth, mostly for its primary-source mine and the window it afforded to Ben at the peak of his powers (via old letters, speeches, and interviews). It portrayed a world, especially after Watergate, in which journalists had entered the cultural spotlight as they never had. Even while this ink-stained Camelot did not last, celebrity sheen lingers on the profession in This Town, with or without the wins. And here we all were.
Bottom line, The Last Party was a good party: comfort food heaped at the buffet, shelter from the elements, and plenty of folk heroes. It barely mattered that the ornate theater held a slight mustiness, that it was a few stages removed from the prime dramas being performed that night on the business ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Or, for that matter, that it felt worlds removed, more than usual, from the solid ground of the Real America.
It still felt good to be invited—to be part of The Club, at least for now. I watched Bob Schieffer greeting Mike Allen, who would be on CBS’s Face the Nation that Sunday. There, in the green room, Allen would take a photo of the red and green Christmas bagels with his iPhone, which we all know because CBS’s Major Garrett took a photo of Mikey taking the photo of the bagels, which Garrett then put out on Twitter.
In the course of the night, I twice overheard Susan Rice telling people about her “out-of-body experience,” while the historian Michael Beschloss was getting praise for his “awesome Twitter feed” and Woodward and Bernstein walked out together into the rain. Ben disappeared for a while in the middle, but was back in the foyer by the end of The Last Party, bidding farewell to the invited as the caravan moved on.
Epilogue
At the beginning of January, Mike Allen, God bless him, mentioned in Playbook that this tome would be coming
out a few months later. He included a blurb from the publisher’s catalogue and a link to its Amazon page. He also mentioned the title, This Town, a play on the two-word refrain that people (in This Town) put into so many sentences—a cliché of belonging, knowingness, and self-mocking civic disdain. “Well, I guess that’s the way it is in This Town.”
This Town was first suggested to me as a title several months ago by my publisher, David Rosenthal. It has been the working name of the book since, the last in a series of them that has also included “Suck-up City,” “You’ll Always Have Lunch in This Town Again,” and “The Club.”
The power of Playbook continues to amaze: After Allen’s mention, e-mails flooded in immediately from friends around town, real friends and fake. They congratulated me on being finished with the book (I wasn’t) and many of them said they had preordered it (thank you for your service!). In the coming days, I was inundated with queries from people, some through intermediaries, about how they or their clients would be portrayed. Others were worried that they would not be in the book at all. Still others wanted to make sure I would be “taking down” so-and-so in some way, because he/she deserved it. And, by the way, if I took out that tiny thing about them, they would give me something better about one of their “friends.”
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