“Oh, I remember you,” said the receptionist. “You were here last week.”
Indeed, I replied, adding that I’m likely to become a familiar face. When she asked my name, I handed her a business card, and she bid me to have a seat while the person whom I’d come to see was summoned.
Sitting in the lobby of this office, I inquired about directions to another office. The receptionist gestured this way and that — “go down by the elevators and out that way . . . go left . . . past the Capitol and across . . .” — in such a manner that even an old Boy Scout like me might never get there in time for his appointment 45 minutes later.
“Hmmm, sounds complicated . . . do you have some kind of map?” I asked. She walked over to hand me a tourist-type 7″x14″ map bearing the motto “Getting Around Washington.”
This map was of such a scale as to have the intersection of Florida and New York avenues in the northeast corner and Arlington Cemetery in the southwest corner. The type was in a nearly microscopic font — 4-point Helvetica, I’d say, although I didn’t have a pica gauge handy.
With its itty-bitty buildings, teeny-tiny streets and miniature lettering, this map was unlikely to be much assistance to a guy from out of town trying to make his way hurriedly from one office to another. Yet the map could still be useful to an experienced Washington journalist.
“Now, which building are we in?” I asked, holding the map in front of me. The receptionist leaned over and pointed as she explained the directions again.
“Yes, I see,” I said with sincere appreciation.
Just then a door opened and the person I’d come to see entered the lobby, interrupting my cartographic inquiry. He and I spoke in a small conference room for about 15 minutes. There was someone else he wanted me to meet but, checking his Blackberry, he reported that this person did not seem to be returning his calls and text messages.
What is it with these young people in Washington nowadays? Must all communication be conducted by Blackberry and iPhone? Does it never occur to them that in certain circumstances the best method might be to do a little walking and knock on somebody’s door?
“Listen, if you know where this guy’s at, I say we go get him,” I suggested, but he balked.
We talked some more — I’ll tell you about it in an upcoming story — and then I mentioned my appointment in another building.
“What time do you get off work here? Maybe we could meet for beers and burgers later.” Alas, no — his girlfriend was returning from New York and they needed to catch up.
Drat. Well, another appointment awaited on the other side of the Capitol and who knew how long it would take to get there? The fellow walked me back into the lobby, and was prepared to take his leave, but I suggested he step out into the hallway with me.
“This Iran thing is sucking up all the media oxygen right now, but that won’t last forever,” I said, and explained what I intended to do. He agreed that more people ought to be doing it my way.
Was he just trying to humor me? Does he think I’m . . . OK, eccentric would be the polite way to say it, but “eccentric” is for rich folks. I’m just plain crazy.
No one could argue with that, but crazy works, if it’s the right kind of crazy. Walking up First Street toward Constitution Avenue, then cutting across the Capitol grounds toward Independence Avenue as if I knew exactly where I was going, I called my next appointment to inform her of my ETA. Then I immediately called another source, who also knows Capitol Hill like the back of his hand, arranging to have coffee Wednesday morning before Grover’s meeting.
The high temperature was 85 in D.C. Monday, and I was wearing a blue blazer, striped silk tie, button-down blue shirt, olive slacks and black leather shows. Crazy, but sharply dressed.
Considerations of honor require that a Georgian never complain about summer heat within earshot of a Yankee, and my next appointment was one such. So while going through the magnetometers — damn those terrorists, for imposing all these bothersome security hassles on a patriotic American journalist — I soaked up the air-conditioning and concentrated on becoming mentally cool. On the elevator up, I buttoned the blazer and wiped the sweat off my face.
Down the corridor, around the corner, into the office, poke my head in and ask to see the person with whom I had the appointment. She emerges wearing a T-shirt and shorts, since her next appointment is at the gym for an African dance class, to be followed by a jog around the Mall.
What is it with these young people in Washington nowadays? Exercise! I’d walked about seven blocks already since parking my car at Union Station, but that was mere transportation — utilitarian pedestrianism — whereas one can’t exercise without donning shorts and paying a gym fee.
Exercise is a form of conspicuous consumption, an ostentation of leisure: Look, I’m exercising! To qualify as exercise, the activity must never take the form of anything useful, remunerative or commonplace — pushing a lawnmower or moving furniture may have cardiovascular benefits, but are too plebian to be considered exercise. The roofer who totes shingles and swings a hammer for eight hours a day is not exercising, nor can the adult entertainer who does table dances between her stage routines on the stripper pole be said to exercise.
Well, never mind the sociological observations. I’m shown around the office and introduced. There’s a water cooler, so I get a cup of that. Then I offer to walk the health-conscious staffer to her gym appointment — another four blocks for me, but I’m not exercising, because it’s about finding out how the staffer can help me get the story. (Useful and perhaps remunerative, if less commonplace than it once was.)
Am I indifferent to death and grievous injury in a train wreck? No. But the slumping market is relevant to my business on Capitol Hill, you see. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is the genius who’s on the hook for the neo-Keynesian “bailout” that is
manifestly failing to achieve its objectives as economic policy. (It Won’t Work.)
There’s plenty enough room under the Obama bus for Geithner, you see, and he’s starting to look like an increasingly convenient fall guy. So even if my Capitol Hill trip Monday wasn’t as fruitful as I’d hoped, the story continues developing, and I’m steadily accumulating more face-time with possible sources.
Maybe I wasn’t exercising as I walked back to Union Station, but I was certainly smiling. Ain’t no school like the Old School. And you’d be surprised what scandalous facts an experienced journalist can uncover.
All I need is a map.
The Wall Street bailout has been unpopular from its inception. . . . Now, we see unemployment soaring (more than 15% in Michigan, near 12% in California) and consumer confidence falling, while the stock market surges upward. You can’t blame people for suspecting that massive taxpayer-funded assistance to financial giants like AIG, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America might have something to do with this widening chasm between prosperity on Wall Street and misery on Main Street. . . .
Polls indicate a growing perception that the Obama administration is mismanaging the economy, with special favors for politically connected Wall Street fat cats at the expense of ordinary American taxpayers. . . .
Thanks to 
