My wife bought the latest Vanity Fair magazine for the cover story on Lady Gaga, and I never realized that it has some pretty decent journalism in it.

There is an article on a day in Washington, which expounds on the challenges faced by the President of the country, be it Obama, Clinton, Bush, whoever. It also addresses how those challenges have changed over the years. Very good article. Sort of pisses you off though, to realize that everything bad that you might think about politicians in Washington is more or less true.

One of the problems it points out is that Congressmen no longer "know" each other. It used to be that Congress was sort of a "club", where the members might disagree on issues but were pretty chummy outside the building, vacationing, partying, gathering together, regardless of party affiliation. Congress was in session about 9 months of the year, according to the article, and during those 9 months, congressmen moved their families to the Washington area, to live with them while in session.

Gingrich was the start of Congressmen not doing this. He said that it was better to NOT move their families to DC, and stay away from that "polluted" environment (though what it's polluted with is at least in part due to the stuff HE'S spewing). Consequently Congresmen left the families back home, and while Congress might be in session for most of the 12 months, often it's only for 2 or 3 days a week, and these new guys (most of them, now) live in their offices, as if that's a good thing. They don't know the members of their own party, let alone the guys across the aisle. They never learn anything about the other PEOPLE who are elected by their districts. They don't learn about those districts, about their unique concerns, nothing much beyond their own narrow viewpoints. And they never learn to respect those other Congressmen.

Consequently, it's very easy to stand pat, to not budge or waver on their positions, to promote gridlock and then go home proclaiming that they aren't part of the problem.

There was plenty of other stuff in the article, it was quite pro-Obama, pointing out how the media ignores the skill at which they juggle conficting issues like escalating the Afghanistan action with the troop surge (an issue that divided Dems deeply) and trying to pass health care. The article points out that few presidents have had to deal with a news organization that is out to get him (Fox News, obviously). It also points out how misinformation spreads in these days, using the example of Obama's birth certificate. Even though the notarized copy from Hawaii has been posted on the web and was available during the campaign when this was an issue, and it was pretty much totally proven that he was in fact born in Hawaii and not in Kenya, 20% of Americans still believe that he was not born in the US. This is due to bloggers and internet sources promoting these untruths, ad nauseum until they gain enough traction, sort of like an urban legend.

Anyway, if anyone gets a chance to look at this article, it's a good one!