Many reporters, when they go to work in the nation's capital, begin thinking of themselves as participants in the political process instead of as glorified stenographers. Washington journalists are seduced by their proximity to power, and that was me. Power had my lipstick smeared and was toying with my corset hooks before I even got off the Trump Shuttle.

Newsmen believe that news is a tacitly acknowledged fourth branch of the federal system. This is why most news about government sounds as if it were federally mandated -- serious, bulky, and blandly worthwhile, like a high-fiber diet set in type.

All of Washington conspires to make reporters feel important -- a savvy thing to do to people who majored in journalism because the TV-repair schools advertised on matchbook covers were too hard to get into. The U.S. government, more than any other organization on earth, takes pains to provide journalists with "access" to make the lap-top La Rochefoucaulds feel that they are "present at the making of history." Of course, the same high honor can be had by going around to the back of any animal and "being present at the making of earth."

If you can get accreditation to the congressional press galleries -- which, when you're employed by a "major news outlet," is about as difficult as falling asleep in a congressional hearing -- you receive a photo ID tag to wear on a chain around your neck. Everybody who's anybody in Washington wears some kind of ID tag on a chain around his neck, so that the place looks like the City of Lost Dogs. I wore mine everywhere until one day in the shower, when I had shampoo in my eyes, the chain caught on the soap dish and I was nearly strangled by my own identity. This happens a lot to members of the Washington press corps.

Within days of getting to Washington I began to write pieces featuring all the access I had and frequently mentioning that real political figures, some of them so important you'd actually heard their names, spoke directly to me in person. Thus, readers were left with an indelible sense of "A politician talked to him?" I even got a part-time slot on one of those public affairs TV shows that air at 6:00 A.M. on Sunday mornings. It was a sort of farm-team "McLaughlin Group," but it gave me a chance to say things like "Washington journalists are seduced by their proximity to power."

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