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Mark Leibovich on the insider's game called Washington

The author of a clever, cutting and candid expose on Washington describes a capital where celebrity edges out policy and where the voter is a bit of a nuisance. Mark Leibovich takes us through This Town ... Washington, the city he says that puts the Me in Media....
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The Current23:59Mark Leibovich on the insider's game called Washington - Feb 5, 2014
The author of a clever, cutting and candid expose on Washington describes a capital where celebrity edges out policy and where the voter is a bit of a nuisance. Mark Leibovich takes us through This Town ... Washington, the city he says that puts the Me in Media.

They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams. That's what drew our forebears here. It's how the daughter of a factory worker is CEO of America's largest automaker; how the son of a barkeeper is Speaker of the House.U.S. President Barack Obama in his State of the Union Address

this_town_book180.jpgThe son of the bar-keeper, the often-combative Republican House speaker John Boehner, gave a delighted thumbs up at the mention of his roots by the president.


• State of the Union, as It Was Spoken and as Decoded — By Mark Leibovich / New York Times


For Mark Leibovich, the chief national correspondent for The New York Times magazine, it was another telling moment in a city where political hostilities can melt into opportunistic alliances without warning and where the competition among politicians, lobbyists and journalists is often less about politics and more about celebrity. And it's never about the voter.


Mark Leibovich is the author of This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral - Plus Plenty of Valet Parking - in America's Gilded Capital and he was in Washington D.C.


 


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This segment was produced by The Current's Karin Marley.

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