This pre-release freak-out was itself a corroborating data point: not the most flattering study of This Town doing its vainglorious bidding, in other words. Everyone was so convinced of their outsize place in the grimy ecosystem that, surely, this book had to be about them. They feared narcissistic injury, whether by inclusion or omission. At the very least, this desperate hustle reinforced the not-terribly-new assumption that This Town imposes on its actors a reflex toward devious and opportunistic behavior, and also a tendency to care more about public relations than any other aspect of their professional lives—and maybe even personal lives. Several people had warned me this would happen.
I had gotten a taste of the self-loving paranoia a few times as I reported this monster. It was especially pronounced during the Kurt Bardella–Darrell Issa affair. That was when many people first learned that I was writing the book. When Allen wrote of the Bardella saga, he referred to it as my “D.C. takedown book,” which is essentially how he described it this time too.
The most stunning by-product to the Playbook mention in January was an e-mail received by at least two of my editors at the Times and maybe to others (not to me). It was from Sidney Blumenthal, the former journalist for the New Republic, the New Yorker, and other places, who became fully intoxicated with the Clintons and joined the White House as a senior adviser in 1997. Caught up in the Lewinsky matter, he was called before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury and was also one of three witnesses called to testify at the Senate impeachment trial. Blumenthal was renowned in the Clinton orbit for his egotistical bent, bare-knuckled loyalty, and robust imagination. Coworkers referred to him as “GK,” for “Grassy Knoll.” He joined Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007, and Clinton wanted to bring him with her to the State Department until a small White House revolt ensued. When Blumenthal’s name came up as a job candidate, Axelrod said he would quit first. Gibbs, sitting next to Axelrod, seconded this. Kibosh.
Last anyone heard, Sid was doing some writing, a book or something.
Back in the 1990s, Blumenthal had apparently written a play called This Town about the Washington press corps. I was not aware of this. In the course of my telling my title to dozens of the city’s political-media insiders, not a single one mentioned that This Town had also been the name of a play. I doubt more than a handful had a clue.
Finally, in late December, as I was leaving The Last Party, Sally Quinn mentioned to me that she liked the title This Town and that, by the way, it had also once been the name of a play in the 1990s by Sidney Blumenthal. Who knew? But I was not surprised. It is a good title. Elvis Costello had a song called “This Town,” I remembered, and Frank Sinatra, too, I think. It goes without saying that titles cannot be copyrighted.
But Sid was nonetheless aggrieved. His e-mail to my editors—again, not to me—included the subject line “Re: Mark Leibovich: Potential Plagiarism Problem.” Yikes.
Blumenthal, whom I think I have met once, began the e-mail by demanding that I acknowledge that he “wrote a widely produced and reviewed satirical play, entitled ‘This Town,’ on the Washington press corps . . . and that is the origin of the phrase and concept.” He boasted that his play had been “prominently staged at the Washington Press Club.” He concluded that “of course, titles, unlike trademarks, can’t be copyrighted, but they shouldn’t be plagiarized. Perhaps Leibovich is unaware of the problem. Perhaps he was born yesterday. But he should not open himself up to a silly plagiarism problem.”
The key word here is “silly,” though admittedly my credentials are suspect because I have never had anything “prominently staged at the Washington Press Club.” Still, I feel bad to have inflicted hurt unto Blumenthal by overlooking a play that’s been forgotten by nearly everyone, in “this” or any town. And by Sidney’s own Wikipedia page too. So, in good faith, I will acknowledge that Blumenthal apparently wrote a play in the nineties called This Town, and future editions of this book will hereby be known as the New Testament.
• • •
As Obama’s sequel inauguration approached, dreariness overhung This Town (formal citation: Sidney’s play). No one seemed that excited about the quadrennial pageant, especially compared with the historic hopefest of four years earlier. The “peaceful transfer of power” felt more obligatory, especially since no power was being transferred, but even more so because another massive corporate-funded celebration of the political class seemed completely unnecessary and undeserved. Not that this ever stopped anyone before, or that Obama and his helpers didn’t deserve a party; but no one’s heart seemed really in it.
Plus, everyone seemed to be getting sick with the flu, or worse, or double-worse. Hillary Clinton suffered a nasty concussion and was not heard from for weeks, except when she was checked into the hospital after being diagnosed with a blood clot near her brain. Whoa. Hillary! This Town had big plans for her, had already written her fully into the 2016 narrative. She can’t leave yet. (Luckily, she recovered nicely.) George Herbert Walker Bush, the last gentleman, was in and out of intensive care. As is routine these days, at least one outlet—Dallas radio station WBAP, in this case—had to report him prematurely dead. They were first with the news.
The great Richard Ben Cramer died January 7 of a lung cancer that few knew he had. Cramer’s exhaustive portraits of presidential candidates in What It Takes was the kind of immersive and access-driven blowout that no politician would tolerate today, and probably no writer would have the guts and genius (and indulgent publisher) to pull off. Cramer inspired me in big and small ways. When people ask me why this book has no index, I will point to what Cramer told the New York Times in 1992. “For years I watched all these Washington jerks, all these Capitol Hill, executive-branch, agency wise-guys and reporters go into, say, Trover bookstore, take a political book off the shelf, look up their names, glance at the page and put the book back,” he said. “Washington reads by index, and I wanted those people to read the damn thing.” But Cramer won me over for life in the late nineties when I saw him declare, at a conference in Seattle, that journalism had been “overtaken by a biblical plague of dickheads.”
Even Tammy Haddad seemed not her usual Tam-o-sonic self. Her husband, Ted, had been sick with lymphoma, and you could tell the whole thing was taking a toll on the Force of Nature. I saw her a few days before the inauguration, after she returned from her annual hop to Las Vegas for the Miss America Pageant. She was also getting ready to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, which she does every year—and mentions this a few times. Just as I’ve never been to Aspen, I’ve never been to Davos, which makes me sad, though I was able to experience the magic through things like the Twitter feed of my Times colleague Andrew Ross Sorkin: “Nice to meet you @johnlegend,” @andrewrsorkin wrote. “I’ve been to good parties @davos before but your performance @sparker’s blowout tops them.”
In between Vegas and Davos, Tammy would also be producing two big shindigs on inaugural weekend, one for the Daily Beast on Sunday and the other for Third Way at the Old Ebbitt Grill on Monday. She said she convinced the Huffington Post to sign on to the Ebbitt Grill party, which Tammy arranged to be simulcast on her WHC Insider website. But then, on the eve of the festivities, Tammy’s mother died and she had to rush to Pittsburgh, leaving This Town to carry on without her.
It wasn’t the same. The Sunday thing, at Cafe Milano in Georgetown, offered a high-end diplomatic spread of John Kerry and Colin Powell, a Hollywood sprinkling of Eva Longoria and Harvey Weinstein, and lots of fresh shellfish and cannoli and not-so-fresh moustache-related jokes for David Axelrod, who is always gracious but seemed a bit done with all this. Chris Dodd worked the room, eating a brownie, laughing at everything.
Someone introduced me to Powell, whom I was careful to address as “General,” not “Secretary,” because he supposedly notices this stuff. (Several Bush White House officials believed this was an attempt by Powell to distance himself from an administration he was at odds with. Mat
t Latimer, a former Bush speechwriter, suggested this in his memoir, Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor, which received little notice. But Powell noticed. He fired off an e-mail to Latimer that read, in part: “Someone told you or your speech writers that I preferred the title ‘General’ after I left the State Department. That is true. In typical paranoid White House fashion, it was thought I was not using the Secretary title in order to distance myself from the President and you guys wrote in ‘Secretary’ in the President’s remarks. At least, that was what you thought. The reality is that ‘General’ is proper. I was no longer Secretary Powell, but ‘former Secretary Powell.’ I am never ‘former General Powell.’” The e-mail, which Latimer forwarded to me, went on from there.)
Now fully ensconced in his campaign for governor of Virginia, Washington outsider Terry McAuliffe walked the Cafe Milano red carpet, just like they do in Roanoke. The superlobbyist couple of Heather and Tony Podesta were leaving as I arrived. They had, a few days earlier, announced their separation, “as best friends,” and everyone tried to respect their privacy during this difficult time. They said they were off to a Google party.
“Welcome to the land of no eye contact,” said Mike Barnicle, the former Boston Globe columnist, now fully reinvented as a regular on Morning Joe. People kept rushing up to him, excited, because he’s on TV now, a presence, which is everything. “The fucking pope could be here,” Barnicle said between well-wishers, “and if people think you’re a fucking weatherman on TV, they’re more excited to meet you.”
The Huffington Post joint was more of the same. Arianna couldn’t make it because she, too, was in Davos, where she sat on a “Will Washington Work?” panel with the likes of Darrell Issa, David Gergen, and a few others for whom Washington has in fact worked quite well. In Arianna’s absence, ample star power shined in her stead at the Old Ebbitt Grill. Paula Abdul was leaving a unisex bathroom as I waited to use it. We were introduced by an upstart D.C. publicist, Susan Toffler, and I went to shake Paula’s hand but she demanded a hug. Why? “Because I’m a hugger,” she shouted, and so Paula and I hugged.
Susan the publicist told me that she and a few others were trying somehow to fill Tammy’s unfillable void as the party’s prime orchestrators. “We keep asking ourselves, ‘What would Tammy do?’” she said, invoking the Force of Nature as one might Jesus. And one day, like Jesus, Tammy will return. But then Susan the upstart publicist was gone, before I could even wish her well and thank her for her service.
The Inauguration itself moved me. This was surprising but shouldn’t have been, because I’m moved every time no matter who’s taking the oath. I spent much of the day wandering the streets: orderly frozen crowds, more diverse than usual in D.C., filing toward the Mall and parade route. Kids sat on parents’ shoulders waving little flags, a street-corner chorus sang “God Bless America.” These were good moments on one of those stately occasions that transcend the serial battering that This Town inflicts. The monuments were scrubbed clean and the Metro was mobbed but festive and on time. I ducked into a bar to watch the president’s speech on TV. It was crisp and short, and then I started reading tweets until I was jarred from my handheld trance by David Gregory on TV, distilling for America the momentous proceedings before her.
“I think what we’ve learned from this president,” he said, restoring the narrative to its pundit lingua franca, “is that his outside game is much better than his inside game.” Well, yes, if we’ve learned anything.
And the future was officially under way again in This Town.
Acknowledgments
Infinite thanks to Arthur Sulzberger, Jill Abramson, Dean Baquet, Bill Keller, and everyone at the New York Times for your support professionally and, even more so, personally. You run the best newspaper in the world, but more important, you know what matters.
Thanks to Rick Berke for bringing me to the Times and looking after me, and to Janet Elder for being an angel. In the Washington bureau, to David Leonhardt, Carl Hulse, Bill Hamilton, Paul Volpe, and researcher supreme Kitty Bennett (!). Dick Stevenson, a fantastic journalist, has been a great mentor and friend. Rebecca Corbett, the editor here whom everyone wants, was mine for five years, and she made everything about coming to work better, especially the finished product. She is, foremost, a wonderful pal.
I’m in daily awe of my fellow reporters here. I’ll exclude some if I start throwing out names (Zeleny, Rutenberg, Nagourney), but as my real-time co-masochists in this book-work-dad juggle, Peter Baker and Mark Mazzetti get special exemptions. Columnists Maureen Dowd and David Brooks are menschen across the spectrum, and I think about Robin Toner all the time.
Since I joined the Times Magazine last year, Hugo Lindgren’s distinctive genius has been a boon. He has also been a patient, indulgent, and wickedly fun boss, especially as I’ve finished this project. It’ll be good to have him as a friend when we’re both run out of our respective towns. Joel Lovell is a rock-solid, whimsical, and risk-encouraging editor who is also skilled at saving me from myself. Thanks, too, to Gerald Marzorati and Megan Liberman for letting me write for the magazine as a novice and for teaching me the joys of it. Stuart Emmrich and Laura Marmor in “Styles” are a pleasure to write for when the spheres align. I feel an enduring affection and gratitude for Don Graham and everyone at the Washington Post, a great newspaper where I spent nine familial years.
So many people—in This Town and beyond—have nurtured these pages. They include a special cabinet of wise men (and “Weisman,” i.e., Steve), Frank Foer, Dan Balz, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Anne Kornblut, Hank Stuever, Susan Glasser, Ned Zeman, and Matt Brune, and a bipartisan council of friends/readers/sources whom I can’t acknowledge by name, for obvious reasons and sensitivities. We’ll all have lunch again after an appropriate interlude.
Elyse Cheney is the best agent! Exclamation point! (Special thanks to Alex Jacobs at Cheney Literary.)
David Rosenthal at Blue Rider/Penguin is the real father of this book. I don’t know what that makes me (the bastard son?), but David was its first inspiration at Simon & Schuster, and I was lucky to follow him to Penguin. He has handled me with humanity, hilarity, and guts. He is everything a writer would want in an editor and publisher. Associate publisher Aileen Boyle is a total pro, and I’ll be thrilled to have her at my side in the next phase of the adventure. Thanks also to Linda Cowen, Linda Rosenberg, Phoebe Pickering, Eliza Rosenberry, Gregg Kulick, David Chesanow, Janice Kurzius, and Anna Jardine.
Grateful to all at the Wilson Center for their hospitality in 2011; props to the awesome researcher Molly Corbett, daughter of the awesome Rebecca, and to Lindsay Crouse, my researcher/fact-checker extraordinaire during the nervous-breakdown phase.
This book is dedicated to my family, which encompasses a far-flung brood of non-blood members: my oldest pal, Josh King, and the King family; Paul Farhi and all the Farhim; endless affection for my Michigan and Boston friends, and also the Oyster-Adams comunidad. Greatly cherish the family’s kibbutzian life-merge with Hanna Rosin, David Plotz, and all the Markey-Daveys, with whom we share the most sacred of occasions and ordinary of minivans.
Big and eternal love to my parents, Joan and Miguel Leibovich, whose grace, survival skills, and unconditional support have sustained and inspired me; and to my amazing sister, Lori Leibovich, whose love and friendship I will hold dear forever. Parents 2.0 Ted Sutton and Betty Grossman are godsends, as are in-laws Jack and Barbara Kolbrener, hermanos Bill and Michael Kolbrener, and Larry Kanter (of Resistor!), and kids 2.0 Carlos and Clara Kanter. I am guided every day by the memory of my brother, Phil Leibovich, but mostly I just miss him.
Best for last: To my daughters, Nell, Lizey, and Franny, who make my heart grow about a million sizes every day. I could never put this crazy love for you into words. Likewise, my wife, Meri Kolbrener, who has always been too grounded—not of This Town—to care about public shout-outs. “Just don’t make me seem long-suffering,” she told me. So I’ll
skip the part about Meri’s sacrifices for this damn thing over three years—solo parenting, etc.—and just say that she makes it all possible and joyful, and me the luckiest.
Notes
This book is the product of more than three hundred interviews, some of which were conducted in the course of reporting stories for the New York Times and New York Times Magazine. Portions of this text have appeared previously in those publications and, for any material gathered before 2006, in the Washington Post. I rely additionally on quotations and information that have appeared in other media outlets, including books and, in many cases, memoirs. When the source is not noted directly in the text, the citation appears below.
Prologue
Gibbs is the son of librarians: Mark Leibovich, “Between Obama and the Press,” New York Times, December 17, 2008.
Gibbs once called Axe “the guy who walks”: Mark Leibovich, “Message Maven Finds Fingers Pointing at Him,” New York Times, March 6, 2010.
“Your Majesty, this is one of our premier American journalists”: Andrea Mitchell, Talking Back (New York: Penguin, 2006), 177.
Duberstein made inquiries about running his theoretical transition team: Jake Tapper, “McCain Camp: Duberstein Lobbied to Be Our Transition Chief; Duberstein Calls That ‘Bulls***,’” ABC News, October 21, 2008.
“All of the most important people in politics and media are in the same room”: Anne Schroeder Mullins, “The Russert Memorial,” Politico, June 19, 2008.
Washington has defied the national economic slump: Derek Thompson, “Report: Washington, D.C., Is Now the Richest U.S. City,” The Atlantic, October 19, 2011.
“Did he use me? Of course he used me”: Jeff Himmelman, Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee (New York: Random House, 2012), 78.
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