A foreign correspondent in D.C.

So I came to Washington, where I knew I would be farther away from America than I could be on some foreign shore; not that I do not respect this as a good part of America, but in its general routine the heart of America is felt less here than at any place I have ever been."-Remarks by Huey Long in the Senate, May 17, 1932.

WASHINGTON, D.C.-When

I forsook the life of a foreign correspondent to start up NR's news bureau here last year, I was a tad concerned. Unlike most of the competition, I had absolutely no Beltway experience: my Rolodex was not full of the home numbers of assorted deputy assistant secretaries; I did not get drunk with congressmen; and my only visit to the White House had been on an eighth-grade class trip from St. Anthony's. I was used to covering Third World governments whose leaders answered their own phones (when the lines were working) and could be counted on to offer up a suitably monstrous quotation in time for the next day's edition. My experience seemed woefully irrelevant.

It turned out to be an extraordinary blessing. However grotesque the functioning of Third World capitals, life on the Potomac proved remarkably similar. There is the same exaggerated sense of self-importance. There is the same wonderful theater that results when the ambitious outnumber the able. And there is the same understanding among those In The Know that the lifeblood of the city is not politics but fashion. In one primary area Washington is even at a disadvantage, Beirut notwithstanding. Art Buchwald put it this way: When I lived in Paris I always knew I was protected by my passport and the American Government. No matter what happened to me, I could always count on the backing of the United States Sixth Fleet.

. .But living in Washington is entirely different. The Americans don't care what happens to you here."

Indeed, even in areas where America might be thought to boast certain Anglo-Saxon advantages, they turn out to be largely illusory. Once, a Chinese official admitted to me that almost all the economic figures he had given me were guesses. At the time I thought it a grave indictment. But when I learned how the Congressional Budget Office uses inflated projections to turn spending increases into spending cuts, the distinction no longer seems so sharp.

Ditto for graft and hypocrisy. In most respectable Third World capitals, the leader has monuments of gargantuan proportions constructed while the actual administration of the city is given over to a brother-in-law who can be trusted to advance the clan's interest at public expense. Enterprise is there to be soaked, not destroyed, and anything not immediately within the orbit of rapacity is permitted to continue along in a more or less laissez-faire environment.

Here in Washington, Mayor Marion Barry has admirably filled this role. Under his rule the city has seen something of a building boom, and if it has also earned the accolade "Murder Capital, U.S.A." (Barry - once said that crime wasn't that bad here if you didn't count murders), the killings are mostly confined to a five- or six-block area on the "other" side of town. The important people, the white people in their Georgetown or Cleveland Park dachas, don't really have to worry about it. Except for annual visits to the Division of Motor Vehicles, Beltway Brahmins are spared any contact with the great unwashed.

This helps explain why there is such a yawning lack of interest in what actually goes on in the city. These priorities are best illustrated by the distinct roles allocated to the local press. No one, for instance, reads the Washington Post for news about Washington. Nor do they read the Washington Times, whose penchant for breaking real stories explains its tiny circulation. Those few eccentrics interested in news here follow the City Paper, a freebie rag that squeezes Washington's best coverage in between explicit advertisements for 976 numbers catering to all preferences.

This is not to deny the Post's importance, only to suggest that it has nothing to do with news, which is confined to the paper's first section, dull accounts of such-and-such a bureaucracy written from a press release with a few contentious quotations mixed in. They read like accounts in the Hindustan Times of an increase in India's wheat crop.

A Matter of Style

THE REAL significance of the Post lies in the transmission of opinions and attitudes. Ironically, this does not occur on the paper's editorial pages. The opinions there are far too direct and reasoned for the job at hand. Instead, they come from the Style section.

In the old days this was what papers somewhat disparagingly called the "women's section." It's not so much that the section has changed, only its relative importance in the scheme of things. As Joe Sobran has written, The Style section is one of the splendors of American journalism. . . . Its writers are smart, witty, sophisticated, alert, aware: stylish. To read it daily is to keep abreast of who and what is In or Out. In a large sense, it discloses the contours of what C. S. Lewis called 'the Inner Ring'-the people who really count, as opposed to the nominal structure of power."

This last is the clincher. In the Third World, rank outside the military means little: Deng Xiaoping has no formal position in China, but he is the undisputed power there. The government itself may even be extraneous, as in, say, Colombia. In Washington, Georgette Mosbacher is more important than her husband, the secretary of commerce. This takes some getting used to. The point is, everyone who needs to know knows-and the Post keeps you up to date. To be the subject of a flattering profile in the Style section is to be admitted into the fraternity; to be the subject of a withering profile is to be banished into one of Dante's nether regions. Obviously liberals have a great advantage, but conservatives who turn away from their principles or whose mere existence is thought to embarrass other conservatives qualify for friendly treatment.

Thus the July profile whose subtitle reveals why the former Reaganite is now In: "Kevin Phillips, the GOP's Maverick Pundit, Bashing Away at the Rich." Marvin Liebman was given the seal of approval too ("Revelations of a Right-Winger"), for coming out of the closet in the pages of NR ['Notes & Asides," July 91. Winnie Mandela did even better, despite having been implicated in the murder of a 14-year-old boy, for which she will now stand trial (Style handled the problem by calling her a "highly complex woman .. who in her recent past has been linked to military oratory and to cadres of violent people"). And when Mitch Snyder hanged himself this summer, Style ran a lead piece under the heading Appreciation."

Usually, however, the approach is more indirect, Delphic, attitude more than editorial. Occasionally it presents moral dilemmas, such as A Year after Supreme Court Decision, Women's Clear Choice amid Legal Uncertainty," turing grim-faced women talking about how difficult it's getting to continue the rate of two million abortions a year. More often, Style affirms through simple repetition. Federal funding for the arts is a biggie. Over the last three months, it has made Style's front page almost every week: "NEA Proposal Meets Resistance," "Rejected Artists Rail & Rally against NEA," N.Y. Artpark Snuffs Out Controversial Performance," Art Chief Says He May Veto Some Grants." Even the casual reader would understand that art was under assault by right-wing trolls.

Our Gargoyles 

LETTER even than the Style section is Washingtonian, a monthly glossy. Last month the magazine celebrated its 25th anniversary, and its success is due to editor Jack Limpert's devotion to one principle: no politics. A selection of cover stories from the last year gives a good idea of what Washingtonians are really interested in: a picture of Dan Quayle under the headline, "Great Smile" (subtitle: "How Dentists Use Braces, Bonding, Bleaching, and Other Techniques to Create Perfect Teeth"); a piece on "Divorce Washington Style"; and Young Again! Guide to Cosmetic Surgery: Facelifts, Liposuction, Breast Implants, and MorePlus Doctors Who Do It Well." Ironically, because it is apolitical Washingtonian can occasionally slip through a real zinger; recently it has featured first-rate attacks on public television and the animal-rights movement (then again, this may have something to do with those fur and leather-shoe adverts). Just as the gargoyles were installed on cathedrals as a reminder of the baser instincts that remain with man even at his most glorious, the articles on public causes and assorted do-gooders are accompanied by slick advertisements catering in one way or another to all the Seven Deadly Sins.

Senator Long was right. Where else could someone like Jesse Jackson appoint himself senator? Could a renegade priest like George Stallings form his own "Catholic" church and be addressed by the Washington Post as "Bishop"? Could men like Joe Biden and Edward Kennedy arbitrate the moral fitness for the highest court in the nation of others who are manifestly their superiors? In its own peculiar way Washington too stands for opportunity, however refracted the image may be.

In the end, there may be more of America here than first meets the eye. Like most of the Third World, for the past decade or so Washington has been overtaxed, overspent, and overburdened with what appeared to be Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry. Yet the surprise victor in the recent Democratic primary was Sharon Pratt Dixon, an underdog whose sole campaign theme was a promise to cut two thousand bureaucrats from the city payroll. Washington, come home.