Washington's Pepe LePew.

• Author: Whitney, Jake
• Position: This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral - Plus Plenty of Valet Parking! In America's Gilded Capital - Book review

This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral--Plus Plenty of Valet Parking!--in America's Gilded Capital

By Mark Leibovich

Blue Rider Press. 386 pages. $27.95.

In the summer of 2011, President Obama geared up for his reelection campaign by launching a series of strategy meetings. The contents of the meetings were private, and although he worried that a large number of people were involved-attendees included top aides from the White House, the Chicago operatives, and outside consultants-Obama trusted everyone. It was, after all, basically the same group that got him elected in 2008.

The meetings proved productive. Soon, Obama unveiled a list of issues he wanted to focus on in his second term: climate change, same-sex marriage, immigration reform, and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Shortly after he disclosed the list to his team, however, two journalists approached Obama's campaign manager and asked him about it. Obama was furious. During his 2008 campaign, he had managed to keep a lid on leaks. In office, he had come to view leaking as symptomatic of one of D.C.'s major maladies: a need to prove your own importance. The following week, Obama said he hoped the meetings would continue without him, and walked out.

In the finger-pointing that ensued, former press secretary Robert Gibbs flew into a rage. Gibbs viewed the episode as a watershed moment for a group that had previously worked together for a common good but now increasingly traded public service for self-service. "I remember saying in that meeting, 'Somehow we have all changed. Or maybe Washington just changed us.'"

Mark Leibovich recounts the anecdote in This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral--Plus Plenty of Valet Parking!--in America's Gilded Capital, his blistering assault on Washington's insider culture. Leibovich uses the story to establish his book's premise: Washington, D.C., has become such a deeply corrupting place that despite the noble ideals you may enter with, you'll end up selling out like everyone else. Leibovich portrays Obama--deservingly or not--as a man of principle, initially sincere in his desire to serve the greater good and govern from above the fray. Ultimately, however, he proved naive--and nearly as corruptible as everyone else. There's a touch of the Shakespearean in this portrayal, but while Leibovich makes much of the Administration's double standards and sell-outs, Obama is not his prime target. His colleagues in the press are.

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To Leibovich, our nation's capital has devolved into a cesspool of vanity, greed, and conflicts of interest so ubiquitous that it is openly joked about, even bragged about. This...