Back-clapping friends, we all.

Mannion on the press:

They cover politics as if it is a game, as if the people involved, the "players," are players, colorful characters whose quirks and foibles make their stories funnier or more dramatic, but whose political views are no more important than a ballplayer's pet superstitions or diligent pursuit of an arcane record. It's not just Joe Klein. He's the model. That Tom Delay is a thief and a thug and a posed a real threat to the useful functioning of the government never seemed to figure in the coverage of him, even as he disappears back down the sewer out of which he came. The Bug Man, the Hammer, he's just contemporary Washington's Ty Cobb, isn't he?

(As if Cobb's racism and sociopathy were of no real consequence.)

The assumption underlying and propping up all this chummy let me buy you a drink and we'll call it even bonhomie is that "We're all in this together." Everybody in Washington is there for the same reason. To do a job. And that job is to keep the country moving. We may have different ideas about how to get there, but finally we all want to end up in the same place, don't we?

No.

Not true.

Excellent post, top to bottom. Go read the whole thing.