This Town (39 page)
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.
some of them (18.7 percent) even below the poverty line
:
Mike DeBonis, “Census: D.C. Poverty Rates Stay Level as Incomes Rise,”
Washington Post
, September 20, 2012.
Chapter 1. Heaven’s Green Room
“that handful of insiders who invent”
:
Joan Didion,
Political Fictions
(New York: Vintage, 2002), 22.
In an interview with
Playboy
years earlier, Matthews volunteered
:
Mark Leibovich, “The Aria of Chris Matthews,”
New York Times
, April 13, 2008.
Sally Quinn, an avowed atheist for much of her life
:
Sally Quinn, “The Faith and Joy of Russert,”
Washington Post
, June 23, 2008.
“Senator Kennedy on the left!”
:
Dana Milbank, “Russert’s Grand Goodbye,”
Washington Post
, June 19, 2008.
“If he’s dead or alive, it doesn’t matter”
:
Mark Leibovich, “Fall from the Top Lands McCain in a Scaled-Back Comfort Zone,”
New York Times
, October 7, 2007.
“To whom much is given, much is expected”
:
Dana Milbank, “Russert’s Grand Goodbye,”
Washington Post
, June 19, 2008.
“In a Washington way”
:
Jason Horowitz, “Before Meeting the Press, They Met Green Room Attendant ‘Mr. Aly,’”
Washington Post
, January 26, 2011.
“A man’s either trying to make up for his father’s mistakes”
:
Jon Meacham, “On His Own,”
Newsweek
, August 22, 2008.
“Is anyone still an atheist now?”
:
Tammy Haddad, “The Russert Miracles,” Daily Beast, June 19, 2008.
“No benign deity plucks television news show hosts”
:
Christopher Hitchens, “Mourning Glory,” Slate, June 23, 2008.
Chapter 2. Suck-up City
“The founding fathers, whose infinite wisdom gave us a Constitution”
:
Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer,
Washington Confidential
(New York: Kessinger, 2009), 14.
His image had been “tarnished”
:
Greg Ip, “His Legacy Tarnished, Greenspan Goes on Defensive,”
Wall Street Journal
,
April 8, 2008.
“She knows where to draw the line”
:
Brian Stelter, “For Greenspan’s Wife, Covering the Financial Crisis Is on a Case-by-Case Basis,”
New York Times
, October 12, 2008.
like Laura Bush covering the federal government’s reaction to Katrina
:
Megan Garber, “The Elephant in the Control Room,”
Columbia Journalism Review
, September 24, 2008.
“We see a distinction between pure analysis of the bailout”
:
Don Kaplan, “Near Mrs.,”
New York Post
, September 29, 2008.
“back to school and get a postgraduate degree”
:
John Harwood and Gerald F. Seib,
Pennsylvania Avenue
(New York: Random House, 2008), 134.
People who worked on the Obama transition staff received
:
Jonathan Alter,
The Promise: Obama Year One
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 16.
“No one who has ever passed through American public high school”
:
Joan Didion,
Political Fictions
(New York: Vintage, 2002), 215.
“Loners may be able to sell themselves electorally”
:
Meg Greenfield,
Washington
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), 36
.
“One thing our founding fathers could not foresee”
:
Ronald Reagan, “Meet the Students” taping for television, Sacramento, California, September 17, 1973.
Speaking of Teddy, it was Mike Allen
:
Mike Allen, “In Buffalo, President to Make Aggressive Case on Economy,” Politico, May 13, 2010.
“In a world in which we all tend to pay not enough attention”
:
Erik Wemple, “Why Is Politico’s Cash Cow Asking Readers to ‘Support Our Journalism’?”
Washington Post
,
November 29, 2011.
Allen even included the name “Washington Superlawyer Robert Barnett”
:
Mike Allen, “Dems Sketch Obama Staff, Cabinet,” Politico, October 31, 2008.
“If God were writing the Bible again”
:
Ellen Gamerman, “He Makes Deals for D.C. Elite,”
Baltimore Sun
, July 6, 2004.
“
To list Barnett as a signifier of Washington connectedness”
:
David Montgomery, “Washington Lawyer Bob Barnett Is the Force Behind Many Political Book Deals,”
Washington Post
, March 7, 2010.
Barnett is bipartisan
:
Peter Lattman, “Washington Law Firm Finds Niche in Sports and Entertainment,”
New York Times
, June 21, 2012.
“Robert Barnett, who also represents the president-elect”
:
Mike Allen, “Publishers Jump at Plouffe Book,” Politico, December 5, 2008.
“felt this thrill going up my leg”
:
“Chris Matthews: ‘I Felt This Thrill Going Up My Leg’ As Obama Spoke,” Huffington Post, May 25, 2011.
a reported nineteen would join the administration
:
Michael Hastings,
Panic 2012:
The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama’s Final Campaign
(New York: Blue Rider Press, 2013), 65.
“As Barack Obama stacks his staff with studs”
:
“Hotties of the Obama Cabinet,” New York
Daily News
, January 9, 2009.
“honor Robert and Mary Catherine Gibbs with drinks, laughs”
:
Mark Leibovich, “Between Obama and the Press,”
New York Times
, December 17, 2008.
Obama ate portobello mushroom salad
:
Mark Leibovich, “The Making of a New Washington Insider,”
New York Times
, January 16, 2009.
“the best brand on earth: the Obama brand”
:
Amy Chozick, “Desirée Rogers’ Brand Obama,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 30, 2009.
“
Obama’s People”
:
Nadav Kander, “Obama’s People,”
New York Times
, 2009.
The appetite was insatiable
:
Mark Leibovich, “Minutiae? In This White House, Call It News,”
New York Times
, March 13, 2009.
the new president’s hair was going gray
:
Helene Cooper, “For Young President, Flecks of Gray,”
New York Times
, March 4, 2009.
a withering profile of Arianna
:
Maureen Orth, “Arianna’s Virtual Candidate,”
Vanity Fair
, November 1994.
“The social question is, Who are the closest people to the Obamas personally?”
:
Julie Bosman, “The Pleasure of His Company,”
New York Times
, January 2, 2009.
None of these donors have been disclosed
:
John Cook, “White House Refuses to Release Donors to David Axelrod’s Charity,” Gawker, November 29, 2010.
Chapter 3.
Three Senators for Our Times
“A man never stands taller than when he is down”
:
Jonathan Alter,
The Promise: Obama Year One
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 166.
“So I say to John Kerry”
:
Congressional Record
, vol. 153, pt. 2, January 18–February 1, 2007.
He once drew a favorable parallel between his press secretary
:
Mark Leibovich, “Between Obama and the Press,”
New York Times
, December 17, 2008.
Reid writes about how his father was never as happy
:
Harry Reid with Mark Warren,
The Good Fight: Hard Lessons from Searchlight to Washington
(New York: Berkley, 2009), 36.
Reid’s unfavorable rating in Nevada had risen to 52 percent
:
Laura Myers, “Reid Hits New Low in Poll,”
Las Vegas Review-Journal
, January 9, 2010.
“Reid fatigue,” diagnosed Ralston
:
“Reid’s Public Option Push Comes amid Tough Re-election Bid,” CNN, November 2, 2009.
“in the event that he could not carry out his duties”
:
Mark Leibovich, “Despite Fragile Health, Byrd Is Present for Votes,”
New York Times
, December 24, 2009.
I wrote a profile of the brash Pennsylvania Republican
:
Mark Leibovich, “Father First, Senator Second,”
Washington Post
, April 18, 2005.
“The sensation of stepping inside the Inner Ring of Congress”
:
Tom A. Coburn with John Hart,
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders
(Nashville: WND Books, 2003), 32.
“spiritual godfather”
:
Peter Boyer, “Budget Debate’s ‘Dr. Maybe,’”
Newsweek
, July 25, 2011.
his vote could not be bought but “could be rented”
:
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson,
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 6.
“waterboarding” his five grandchildren
:
Mark Leibovich, “A Senate Naysayer, Spoiling for Health Care Fight,”
New York Times
, October 29, 2009.
“one of the most influential and conservative members”
:
Steve Kroft, “Is the U.S. Senate Broken?”
60 Minutes
, CBS News, November 4, 2012.
Chapter 4.
The Entourage
the unemployment rate was approaching 10 percent
:
National Conference of State Legislatures, “Unemployment Drops to 7.6 Percent for March 2013,” April 8, 2013.
special interests collectively spent $3.47 billion
:
Communications, “Federal Lobbying Climbs in 2009 as Lawmakers Execute Aggressive Congressional Agenda,” Open Secrets, February 12, 2010.
“This agenda has been great for OUR economy”
:
Arthur Delaney, “It’s Official: 2009 Was Record Year for Lobbying, Despite Recession,” Huffington Post, April 14, 2010.
“No single development has altered the workings of American democracy”
:
Jill Lepore, “The Lie Factory,”
The New Yorker
, September 24, 2012.
“Those inside the process had congealed into a permanent political class”
:
Joan Didion,
Political Fictions
(New York: Vintage, 2002), 9.
“this wild self-congratulatory ski-jump”
:
Jeff Himmelman,
Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee
(New York: Random House, 2012), 323.
By the time he left to run for Congress
:
Michael Luo, “In Banking, Emanuel Made Money and Connections,”
New York Times
, December 3, 2008.
The dinner has sold out every table since 1993
:
Todd Purdum, “The Evolution of D.C.’s Premier Event,”
Vanity Fair
, April 30, 2010.
“If either of them had been in love with a tree surgeon”
:
Walter Shapiro, “Star-Crossed Politicos,”
Time
,
June 24, 2001.
It was suddenly news in the capital
:
Mark
Leibovich, “Titillating or Not, Washington Gossip Blossoms,”
New York Times
, February 3, 2007.
I authored a story on the proliferation of flies
:
Mark Leibovich, “What Has 132 Rooms and Flies?”
New York Times
, June 17, 2009.
