This Town (13 page)

The liaison between sex appeal and Washington has always been stout but clunky. This Town is a place where for many years Henry Kissinger was considered a sex god. Now entire publications and cable shows are predicated on the day-to-day drama and personalities of the Gang. It is not so much the right or wrong or results of politics, the doing good or making a difference. Rather, it is the politics themselves. They are supposedly sexy, packed with high drama (“narrative”) and the jockeying for power, which, as Kissinger famously said, is “the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

The formula has imposed an often absurd level of breathless attention on the prosaic grind of Washington reality.
It was suddenly news in the capital when (actual items) former House speaker Dennis Hastert had his gallbladder removed, Representative William Lacy Clay of Missouri got his braces taken off, Karl Rove was spotted at a Kennedy Center performance of
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
, and Paul Wolfowitz was busted in a photograph that revealed holes in his socks. Never has the national political story been so awash in the burps, warts, and appendectomies of the People Who Run Your Country. (Full disclosure:
I authored a story on the proliferation of flies in the White House that appeared on June 17, 2009, in the
New York Times
.)

Politico
often gets blamed for defining down and amping up political news today. The “haters,” as Politico’s editors call their critics, are often the same Washington insiders whom the publication reports on—and who read the thing religiously. “I’ve been in Washington about thirty years,” Mark Salter, a former chief of staff and top campaign aide to John McCain, says. “And here’s the surprising reality: on any given day, not much happens. It’s just the way it is.” Not so in the world of Politico, he says, where meetings in which senators act like themselves (maybe sarcastic or like asses) become “tension-filled” affairs. “They have taken every worst trend in reporting, every single one of them, and put them on rocket fuel,” Salter says of Politico. “It’s the shortening of the news cycle. It’s the trivialization of news. It’s the gossipy nature of news. It’s the self-promotion.”

Politico’s mission is to “drive” conversation in the capital—“drive” being a higher-velocity version than the stodgier verb “influence.” If, say, David S. Broder and R. W. Apple Jr. were said to “influence the political discourse” through the
Washington Post
and the
New York Times
in the last decades of the twentieth century, Politico
wanted to “drive the conversation” in the new-media landscape of the twenty-first. The target audience is the “insiders” and “opinion makers” with no pretense of being representative of the population at large.

Politico’s chief franchise is Playbook, an online tip sheet delivered mostly via e-mail that has become a more influential morning document than the Note was in the early to middle 2000s. Written and sent out 365 days a year by the hyperactive and nocturnal Eagle Scout Mike Allen, Playbook is an insider’s dog’s breakfast of overnight news, press release previews, random sightings around town, and birthday greetings to people you’ve never heard of. These are “data points,” as Allen calls his dawn offering—the business of the nation in the form and voice of a summer camp newsletter. It reaches a target audience of what Politico
calls “influentials”: elected officials, political operatives, lobbyists, journalists, and other political-media functionaries. This is the expanded Club or entourage of contemporary Washington—“the Playbook community,” in the words of Allen, who, around early 2009, many White House officials, members of Congress, staffers, and journalists began describing as the most influential journalist working in Washington today.

Politico
is an organization of healthy self-regard. Company higher-ups tout Allen as not just its franchise player but something greater. Fred Ryan, a former Reagan administration official who is Politico’s CEO, told me that Allen will go down as a momentous figure in the annals of American journalism. “In the same way that Murrow was with one era and Walter Cronkite was with another era,” Ryan said, “I think Mike Allen is going to be viewed as one of the defining journalists of this period.”

Playbook’s success is emblematic of modern life in a time-starved place in which the power-and-information hierarchy has been upended. It also offers daily fodder for those who deride Washington as a clubby little town in which usual suspects talk to the same usual suspects all day.

A big part of Allen’s appeal, I’m convinced, is the volume of names he mentions. He will sometimes list more than a dozen birthdays alone on a given morning, which he will cull from Facebook, news sources, and his enormous word-of-mouth/e-mail network. He parcels out simple recognitions, fossil fuel to the Washington ego.

At any given time, the city is filled with formers and has-beens whom we might charitably describe as “still kicking around town.” Allen, with his mentions, gives a warm tingle of notice. The acknowledgment section of Terry McAuliffe’s memoir runs six single-spaced pages and includes the names of every member of the Democratic National Committee during his time as the party’s chairman. The index runs several more pages, making it a perfect vehicle for “the Washington read,” defined as the practice of “reading” books by scouring the index and acknowledgments for the Holy Grail, aka your name. (
New York Times
columnist David Brooks has an alternative definition of “Washington read”: the act of telling someone, “I didn’t read your book but did praise it on TV.”)

“There is no sweeter word in Washington than your own name,” said Marshall Wittmann, then a top aide to Senator Joe Lieberman and one of the great career vagabonds, ideological contortionists, and political pontificators ever to inflict himself on a city full of them. Wittmann is a Trotskyite turned Zionist turned Reaganite turned bipartisan irritant turned pretty much everything in between—including chief lobbyist for the Christian Coalition, the only Jew who has ever held that position. After leaving Lieberman’s office upon the senator’s announced retirement in 2012, Marshall became the top flack for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Marshall was raised in Waco, Texas, worked for Cesar Chavez in the 1970s, Linda Chavez (a Republican Senate candidate from Maryland) in the 1980s, Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition in the 1990s, and Bruce Reed of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in the 2000s. Above all, Wittmann reveres his many political heroes. They include Teddy Roosevelt, Kinky Friedman, and his two most recent patrons, Lieberman and John McCain.

Washington, Marshall says, is all about having a shtick and a role and an ability to hone them in a way that builds a brand. Seeing and hearing your name is an important part of this. It conjures a split second of mindshare. Mike Allen is the local king of mindshare. He doles out morsels of proof that your brand is ticking, that your name is out there, that you’re alive in This Town.

5

Embedding

I
n early 2010, I set out reluctantly on
a
New York Times Magazine
story about Mike Allen.

I was reluctant for a few reasons. One, the story was an exercise in meta-journalism—journalism about journalism—that would reinforce the (largely true) notion that the media is overly self-involved. My own association with Allen would have to be a data point. I have known Mike—whom many people call “Mikey”—for more than a decade. We worked together at the
Washington Post
, where I also came to know Politico’s cofounders, Jim VandeHei and John Harris. We all have the same friends and run into each other a fair amount. In other words, I would write this from within the tangled web of Allen’s “Playbook community.”

My reluctance to write about Allen dissipated, as it was clear that Playbook had become an inescapable catalyst for the day-to-day Washington conversation. Allen’s selections of which stories to highlight or disregard were pivotal in “driving” coverage throughout the day. “The people in this community, they all want to read the same ten stories,” Allen told me. “And to find all of those, you have to read one thousand stories. And we do that for you.”

As with much in today’s political world, media is a derivative operation. Mikey, who draws heavily (or “aggregates”) from the work of others, has become a de facto assignment editor for many of the time-starved (or lazy) journalists who stare at screens all day under intense pressure from similarly screen-fixated and Playbook-devouring bosses.

At eight a.m. on a campaign bus, there’s a good chance that at least half of the passengers are reading Playbook. Or they are reading a story linked from Playbook, or are e-mailing with nervous editors about chasing a story flagged in Playbook. “Washington narratives and impressions are no longer shaped by the grand pronouncements of big news organizations,” says Allen, a former reporter for three of them: the
Washington Post
, the
New York Times
, and
Time
magazine.

Allen’s bearing combines the rumpledness of an old-school print reporter with the sheen of a new-school “cross-platform brand” who has become accustomed to performing on camera. Every time Allen starts to speak—in person or on the air—his eyes bulge for an instant as if he has just seen a light go on. His mannerisms resemble an almost childlike mimicry of a politician—the incessant thanking, the deference, the greetings, the smiles with teeth clenched, and the ability to project belief in the purity of his own voice and motivations. He speaks in quick and certain cadences, on message, in sound bites, karate-chopping the table for emphasis. In different settings, Allen will often repeat full paragraphs almost to the word.

As Tim Russert did, Allen has an intuitive sense of Washington as a small town and interlocking power structure—Lake Wobegon with power. Allen is an unabashed Washington exceptionalist. He marvels about the “amazing times” he is living through here and all the “amazing friends” who inhabit This Town.

Allen’s “Playbook community” is an electronic corollary to the media-cluster phenomenon portrayed in
The Boys on the Bus
, Tim Crouse’s travelogue and critique of the elite political operatives and journalists on the 1972 presidential campaign. Crouse popularized the concept of “pack journalism,” which referred to the groupthink and implied self-censorship rules that govern the “freakish, insular existence of the press bus.” Subversion was frowned on. Even the most independent scribe could not “completely escape the pressures of the pack,” Crouse wrote.

The path from
The Boys on the Bus
to Playbook is not a straight line. The evolution must obviously account for the anarchic environment of the Internet, the perpetual nature of today’s news cycle, and the rise of ideological journalism, all of which Allen incorporates into his daily e-mail. The “pack” still exists, in other words; it’s just bigger and more diverse.

But the one-world notion of the “pack” remains unchanged. Whether journalists are gathered on a physical bus or reading a virtual document, it is a shared space. They are encountering the same names and characters and, after a while, acquiring a shared language and sensibility. “If there was a consensus,” Crouse wrote, “it was simply because all the national political reporters lived in Washington, saw the same people, used the same sources, belonged to the same background groups, and swore by the same omens. They arrived at their answers just as independently as a class of honest seventh-graders using the same geometry text—they did not have to cheat off each other to come up with the same answer.”

The troublemakers of the bus are stigmatized just as today’s version, Playbook, generally avoids trouble. Mikey is more of a pleaser, a delighter, and, perhaps, an enabler.

If Mikey has a bias, it is in favor of Washington—the village, the mind-set, and the big, heady dream of it all. Since Washingtonians tend to engage oppressively in inside baseball, his focus tends toward the game itself—a morning romp through the city’s thriving vanity sectors: elites listening to elites, trading sound bites, and going into business together. In the post-Russert era, Mikey was, in his own eccentric and online way, a new mayoral figure. The great presider.

•   •   •

A
llen spent his childhood in Seal Beach, California, in Orange County, the oldest of four—two boys, two girls. He told me he had an apolitical upbringing but wanted to attend college near Washington. He enrolled at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, which he said seemed close to D.C. on a map but was in fact a five-hour Greyhound ride away.

Sometime in his teenage years, Allen became fascinated with the doings of the Capitol. He arrived in Washington as he remains now: wide-eyed, reverent, and in constant motion. Allen darts in and out of parties, at once manic and serene, chronically toting gifts, cards, and flower arrangements that seem to consume much of an annual income that is believed to exceed $250,000. He kisses women’s hands and thanks you so much for coming, even though the party is never at his home, which not even his closest friends have seen. It is as if Mikey is the host of
one big party
, and by showing up anywhere in Washington, you have served the Playbook community and are deserving of the impresario’s thanks (or “hat tip” in Playbookese).

Playbook has become the political-media equivalent of those food pills that futurists envision will replace meals. He offers a twist—if not a rebuttal—to the notion that the Internet promotes democratization of the news and diminishes the returns on clubby access. But Allen “wins the morning” (in the lingo of Politico) in part because of his extreme clubby access. It’s just that the political and news establishment—The Club—is so much bigger now, and includes so many wannabe insiders that it lends a more democratic feel. They love Mikey. The feeling is mutual and transactional. They use him and vice versa (“love” and “use” being mutually nonexclusive in Washington). He seems to know everyone and works at it. “I consider him a very good friend,” said Peter Watkins, a former press aide to President George W. Bush who now runs a small communications shop in Salt Lake City. “Of course, there are about fifteen thousand people in Washington that consider him to be their best friend.”

If such qualities can coexist, Mikey can be perceived as both a decent and solid friend, and also an exemplar of the D.C. operator. He is always touting Playbook, cultivating his brand as the city’s ultimate “entrepreneurial journalist,” another one of those fashionable news business terms.

“The most successful journalists have their own unique brand and circle of friends,” VandeHei, Politico’s executive editor, said. “This is the Facebook-ization of politics and D.C. The more friends or acquaintances you have, the more time you spend interacting with them via e-mail and I.M., the more information you get, move, and market.” VandeHei’s conceit equates Allen’s circle of friends to a commodity—exactly the kind of mutual back-scratching undercurrent that gives “friendship” in Washington its quotation marks. “Playbook is D.C.’s Facebook,” VandeHei concluded. “And Mike’s the most popular friend.” Allen’s closest friend is probably VandeHei, who is protective of Allen and posits him as a rare island of goodness in a racket of frauds and two-faced operators. “Mike is unique in our world,” VandeHei says. “He has authentic power while being authentically gracious, honest, and selfless. He’s the real deal—and it drives the haters mad.”

•   •   •

N
ot long ago, I received an e-mail that read: “Craig likes Craig Crawford on Facebook and suggests you like him too.”

Who is Craig Crawford and why does he like himself?

Craig is a classic poli-media specimen who has worked for places like the Hotline and Congressional Quarterly and written a few books and shows up serviceably on cable. I run into him at the occasional book party or spin room. He is jolly and friendly, mid-fifties-ish, giggles a lot, southern accent, slicked hair, fancy glasses, stylish suits. I wouldn’t say he is a “friend,” except maybe in the Facebook sense, although apparently that window is now closed with him, according to this auto-generated Facebook message. “Craig says, ‘I’ve reached my friend limit!’” he relayed in the deflating e-mail. “Please join me on my new Facebook fan page.—Craig”

It was nice of him to ask, but I decided I didn’t know Craig well enough to be a “fan.” It would be something for us to work toward.

Parallels between Facebook and D.C. come up a lot. Both are spaces to collect people, show off our shiny hordes, and leverage our “connections.” The Washington friendship is best kept public. What’s the use of a high-level bond with “my good friend from (state name)” if the world doesn’t know about it? It is not uncommon for senators and congressmen to have encyclopedic recall of all the colleagues who supported them publicly in leadership elections, or screwed them by endorsing someone else. But everyone is a “friend.” Protocol demands it.

Like D.C., Facebook is a vast and growing network, evolving and under some assault, but secure in its permanence as an empire. It is no surprise that a pipeline of Washington political talent has joined Facebook in recent years—most prominently Joe Lockhart, the Monica-era press secretary in the Clinton White House who was for a time the company’s head of corporate communications.

Washington, the most socially networked city in the United States, is a perfect incubator of a latter-day “network effect.” Commonly invoked in Silicon Valley, the term “network effect” refers to products gaining value through the size of the network they serve. Mikey is of course on Facebook. But his true network is the Playbook community. As of April 2013, that had included the roughly one hundred thousand who have signed up to receive it.

The Playbook community puzzles some over Allen. People wonder whether he actually lives somewhere besides the briefing rooms, newsrooms, campaign hotels, and going-away dinners for Senator So-and-so’s press secretary that seem to be his perpetual regimen. And they wonder, “Does Mikey ever sleep?”

The query tires him. He claims he tries to sleep six hours a night, which seems unrealistic for someone who says he tries to wake at two or three a.m. to start Playbook after evenings that can include multiple stops and virtual trails of midnight-stamped e-mail. He speaks all over the country and makes constant TV and radio appearances. I asked Allen if he slept during the day and he said no.

Allen has been spotted dozing in public—on campaign planes, at parties—clutching his BlackBerry with two hands against his chest like a teddy bear. He has also been seen asleep over his laptop, only to snap awake into a full and desperate type, as if momentary slumber were just a blip in the 24/7 political story Mikey is writing.

No shortage of friends will testify to Mikey’s thoughtful gestures, some in the extreme. They involve showing up at a friend’s son’s baseball game (in South Carolina) or driving from Richmond to New York to visit a fraternity brother and heading back the same night. He attends a nondenominational Protestant church and a Bible study group. “He is one of the most thoughtful people I have ever met,” Josh Deckard, a former White House press aide, says. “Philippians 2:3 said, ‘In humility, consider others better than yourselves,’ and I think Mike exemplifies that better than anyone.”

Yet even Allen’s supposed confidants say that there is a part of Mikey they will never know or ask about. He is obsessively private. I asked three of Allen’s close friends if they knew what his father did. One said “teacher,” another said “football coach,” and the third said “newspaper columnist.” A 2000 profile of Allen in the
Columbia Journalism Review
described his late father as an “investor.”

When sharing a cab, Allen is said to insist that the other party be dropped off first. One friend describes driving Allen home and having him get out at a corner; in the rearview mirror, the friend saw him hail a cab and set off in another direction. I’ve heard more than one instance of people who sent holiday cards to Allen’s presumed address, only to have them returned undeliverable.

Allen is a serious hoarder and pack rat. When I worked with him at the
Post
, enormous piles of yellowing papers, clothes, bags, and detritus leaned ominously above his cubicle. It got so bad at
Time
, where Allen was given his own office, that it became difficult to even open the door. (Note: Allen is hardly the only journalist with a slovenly workspace. When the
Washington
Post
’s David Broder died in 2011, Nixon-era sandwiches were reportedly still being excavated.)

Allen has achieved a seamless merging of life and work, family and Playbook. He is deeply committed to his mother, younger brother, two younger sisters, and eight nieces and nephews scattered on both coasts. They make Playbook cameos. A former editor at the
Post
told me that Allen today has taken refuge in his status as a public entity. He deploys Playbook as a protective alter ego. It reminded me of something former Senator Tom Daschle told me once: that a lot of politicians are shy, private people and that they enter the business because it allows them to remain shy and private behind a public cut-and-paste persona—to hide in plain sight.