The Mythology of Change

A story in Newsweek questions how Barack can change a city he's never known. Just three years into his first term, much of the last two have been spent trying to escape his new job. In his rush to get home to the family each weekend, Barack is part of a generation of Congressmen who don't get to know the city or their compatriots.

Old-guard senators bemoan their new colleagues' eagerness to get out of town on Thursday nights, a tendency that the veterans believe has helped make Washington a more partisan place. It was easier to understand the gentleman from the other party, they reason, when you saw him cheering at St. Albans' soccer games.

It was this connection that members of opposing camps felt that made it possible for them to work together in the past.

And as they contemplate capturing the White House under a banner of bipartisanship, Obama and his generation of senators face a broader dilemma: how do they work with their opponents when, for so long, they've lived their lives apart?

Is it possible to change Washington if you don't know the players? The town?

John Warner, the Republican from Virginia, retiring after six terms, remembers this Senate as "a close-knit family" where "a new senator had a big brother and his wife had a big sister." The collegial quarters made it harder to stay mad. "I remember in the good old days, there were several senators who were known to keep a pretty good bar," says Warner. "We would just go down and have a sip together and go home. The fight was over."

In Barack's case, uncomfortable in his role as Washington bachelor, he didn't spend any time developing relationships during his brief time in the capital.

Obama shunned the party scene, confining his socializing to fund-raisers, dinners with policy experts and the occasional meal with old law-school classmates. "I'm not aware that he ever went to a residential party," says Cassandra Butts, a law-school friend who helped him set up his Senate office. "He could have developed much deeper personal relationships if he had spent more time in D.C," says a senior aide who would describe a weakness only anonymously.

Yet another instance of how McCain, after more than twenty-five years there, knows his way not just around the city, but around the opposition party. The real change candidate.