The host began to cry in the middle of his remarks, while discussing the milestone.

"This is a big moment for me, because it's really the next step for me and for the program," Mr. Gregory said. "It has not been an easy transition, but I've always felt like I'm never alone in that."

[via TV Newser]

One is the pride-driven defeated presidential candidate who hopes Americans will compare him to President Obama and realize the error of their ways. Another is a true-believer neoconservative, dedicated to using his Senate perch to push for aggressive military efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. And then there’s the third, an unexpectedly vulnerable incumbent senator who could face a career-threatening Republican primary challenge next year.

All three McCains were on display during his appearance on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.”

Ostensibly, McCain was invited to be on an edition of the show focused exclusively on the Afghanistan game-plan Obama unveiled this week. But host David Gregory’s questions weren’t limited to foreign policy – and McCain’s answers reflected his need to juggle multiple political imperatives.

Consider Gregory’s first question, about McCain’s overall assessment of Obama’s plan to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

Other national Republicans have dodged praising Obama’s strategy, but McCain led off by declaring, “I support the president’s decision. I think it’s the right decision. I think it can lead to success” – a basic formulation he returned to several times during the interview. He also lauded Obama for delivering “a very effective speech” at West Point last week.

McCain was speaking as a Neocon true-believer. For months, he’s loudly agitated for the White House to grant Stanley McChrystal’s request for 40,000 additional troops. He’s done this because, as with the 2007 troop surge in Iraq, he genuinely believes that the “war on terror” can be won through massive overseas military deployments and nation-building. Obama didn’t give McChrystal and McCain all they wanted, but he gave them much of it.

But his praise was hardly unconditional. On Obama’s plan to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011, McCain asked, “Do you break the enemy's will by saying, ‘We're going to be there,’ or send a message that we're going to be there for a year-and-a-half or so and then we’re going to begin to leave, no matter what the circumstances are?”

He also criticized Obama’s lengthy decision-making process, arguing that it “made our allies very uneasy as to what we were going to do.  And it wasn't just the length of time; the leak of secret cables from our ambassador in Kabul saying we shouldn't send reinforcements, that leads to a certain turmoil.”

With these critiques, McCain assumed the role of armchair commander in chief – a man who prides himself on (what he sees as) his unusual foreign policy wisdom and who would clearly like Americans to conclude that a President McCain would have handled Afghanistan (and all foreign policy matters) better than President Obama.

Toward the end of the segment, Gregory quizzed McCain on domestic issues. Asked if the this year’s stimulus package is working (unemployment actually fell last month), McCain replied, “Of course not” and branded it “an act of generational theft.” He also took shots at Obama’s healthcare effort (this after offering an amendment in the Senate that would have voided Medicare cuts championed by Obama and the Democrats), said that any new jobs bill should be focused on tax cuts, and defended Sarah Palin.

His defense of Palin, obviously, has much to do with legacy protection; he’d be indicting his own judgment if he ever took a shot at her. But McCain is also facing the serious threat of a primary challenge next year. A poll two weeks ago showed him in a statistical dead heat with J.D. Hayworth, the former six-term congressman who lost his seat in the 2006 Democratic tide.

Standing up for Palin certainly won’t hurt McCain with the conservative voters who will hold sway in any McCain-Hayworth showdown. Nor will denouncing Obama’s domestic agenda.

But historically, defeated presidential nominees like McCain have struggled in subsequent campaigns.

George McGovern, for instance, nearly lost his South Dakota Senate seat two years after his 1972 presidential defeat; only the anti-Republican Watergate tide saved him against Leo Thorsness. And six years later, he was soundly beaten by James Abdnor. Walter Mondale was dissuaded from running for the Senate from Minnesota in 1990, in part out of fear that his 49-state loss to Ronald Reagan in 1984 had reduced his standing. And when he did jump back into politics in 2002, as the last-minute replacement for the late Paul Wellstone, Mondale was beaten.  Michael Dukakis has had trouble. His popularity in Massachusetts tanked after his 1988 White House bid so much that he was forced to swear off running for re-election in 1990 – and so profoundly that two decades later his hopes of winning an interim appointment to the U.S. Senate after Ted Kennedy’s death were scotched by Governor Deval Patrick, who was unwilling to closely identify himself with Dukakis.

Favorite-son candidates almost always win their states decisively in presidential elections. But their status as national celebrities can end up breeding fatigue and resentment among home-state voters when the election is over. Criticizing Obama and sounding tough on foreign policy won't hurt McCain's chances in '10, but it won't change the fact that he's no longer Arizona's rising star.

How could a pre-planned, much-publicized appearance on national television end up this uncomfortable?

David Paterson went on Meet the Press yesterday morning to discuss reports that the White House has asked him not to run in 2010, and somehow the governor managed not to have a clear, canned statement about exactly what happened between him and the president.

Gov. Paterson said he had "confidential conversations" with the White House, but as David Gregory predictably--inevitably--followed up, the governor seemed bewildered. Gov. Paterson strained not to say much of anything, Mr. Gregory kept pressing and it all came to this less-than-dramatic denouement:

“But the White House specifically said, ‘Don’t run’?”

“I don’t know that,” Gov. Paterson replied.

“You don’t know that?! You certainly know you don’t have their support.”

“I'm blind, but I'm not oblivious.  I realize that there are people who don't want me to run.  I've never gotten an explicit indication authorized from the White House that I shouldn't run.”

Only then did Gov. Paterson succeed in shifting the conversation to his talking points--which were pretty good. He talked about how, as a blind man, he was always told there were things he couldn't accomplish, and said it was his directness in solving the state's problems--without regard to poll numbers--that are to blame for his historically low poll numbers. But by then it was too late.

Steve Kornacki felt the same way; he has a more detailed look at the governor's missed opportunity.

Instead of simply acknowledging what the whole world can plainly recognize for itself—that the White House wants him out of the governor’s race, immediately—Paterson spent Sunday morning pretending he had no idea what David Gregory was talking about when the “Meet” host asked (and asked and asked and asked) about Barack Obama’s recent intervention in New York politics.

The result was typical when it comes to Paterson. Sort of like his governorship itself, he managed to take a terrific opportunity—the featured-guest slot on the gold standard of Sunday morning shows—and to twist it into a painful exercise in protracted frustration and self-defeating pointlessness.

Gregory began by recalling the great promise with which Paterson’s tenure began 18 months ago and juxtaposing it with the White House’s current effort to force him out. “What happened?” he asked.

Paterson replied that he’d had “confidential conversations” with the White House that he wouldn’t discuss but that “the president has never told me not to run for governor.” Like that means anything. (And more to the point: like Gregory was just going to sit there and let that one go.)

“Let’s be very clear what happened here,” Gregory incredulously countered. “The president’s team and others speaking on their behalf said to you that you should not run. Isn’t that right?”

Paterson would only allow that “there are people who’ve told me not to run. There are lots of people who’ve told me not to run.”

“But the White House specifically said, ‘Don’t run’?”

“I don’t know that,” Paterson replied.

“You don’t know that?! You certainly know you don’t have their support.”

“I'm blind, but I'm not oblivious.  I realize that there are people who don't want me to run.  I've never gotten an explicit indication authorized from the White House that I shouldn't run.”

Gregory went on to point out that Paterson’s own wife, Michelle, even told the press last week that her husband was “stunned” by the White House’s move. So, if they weren’t trying to get you out, what was it that stunned you, Gregory asked.

“Michelle is very protective of me,” said Paterson. “I don't know that I was stunned.  I am not.”

This whole semantic exercise was painful to watch—not so much because it insulted the basic political intelligence of the host and his audience, but because Paterson could easily have turned the line of questioning to his own advantage.

In a way, it was a gift to Paterson when news of the White House’s intervention broke last week. Until then, he’d been hopelessly drifting toward the inevitable moment, probably in the middle of this winter, when he’d be forced to acknowledge reality (at least to himself) and get out of the race.

But the massive coverage of Obama’s move (it helped that he came to town the morning after the story broke)—and the response of New Yorkers, 62 percent of whom told Marist pollsters last week that the president should keep his nose out of their state’s politics—presented the governor with an unexpected opportunity to show resolve and backbone (popular attributes he’s hardly known for) with just about everyone watching.

Instead of trying (hopelessly) to make it seem like Obama doesn’t really want him out, Paterson could have used his “Meet” forum to embrace the fact that he does. While showing proper respect for a president who is, on the whole, quite popular with New Yorkers, he could have laid out a forceful, principled case for why he thinks the president and his team were wrong to throw their weight around.

I love what Barack Obama is doing for our country, Paterson might have said, but I also happen to like what I’m doing for New York. I’ve made hard choices, but I think they’re the right choices. And while I may be down now, I also know New Yorkers are going to give me a fair hearing. It’s too bad the president and those around him won’t do the same.

Or something like that. The point is that Paterson actually has latitude to engage Obama directly on this issue. The public is on his side. By calling the White House out, he’d attract a heap of attention and the story would grow even bigger. And that would be fine, because he’d be making an argument that is already resonating: this is New York’s fight, not Obama’s.

Sure, this would certify Paterson as an enemy of the White House. But what more are they going to do at this point?

Since the story broke last week, Paterson had an opportunity to lead what would be a popular fight—one that, if nothing else, would earn him new respect from New Yorkers who’ve dismissed him as a weak, incompetent accidental governor. And in the last week, he didn’t have a better platform from which to launch such a fight than he got on Sunday.

Instead, though, he played to type, killing the clock on “Meet the Press” with pointless non-denial denials, looking every bit the over-his-head fill-in that New Yorkers have taken him for.

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ALBANY—The David Paterson that showed up for a live interview on Meet the Press was defiant, clear that he was running for governor in 2010 and insistent that he is focused on the state's mid-year budget deficit.

Appearing live at the end of the nationally televised program, Paterson was first grilled by host David Gregory as to what conversations had taken place between the governor and the White House, reading a headline from last Sunday's New York Times about Obama administration officials asking Paterson not to seek election in 2010.

"I have had confidential conversations with the White House; I'm not going to reveal what those conversations were other than to say that the president has never told me not to run for governor," Paterson said. Gregory asked if the message was explicit that he did not have support from the White House, and Paterson responded "I don't know."

"The White House has a country to run, and I have a state to run," Paterson said. "I'm blind but I'm not oblivious. I realize that there are people who don't want me to run. But I have never gotten an explicit indication authorized from the White House that I shouldn't run. But what I would say is that what I think I should be doing is managing the affairs of my state, and when I run making my case to the people and letting them decide who the next governor should be."

He then repeated that he is running for governor in 2010.

So with the booking advantage effectively neutralized, who would triumph in the ratings?

In the end, it was David Gregory who came out on top.

On Sunday morning, NBC's Meet the Press attracted 3,290,000 total viewers and 1,070,000 in the 25 to 54 demo, narrowly topping ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (3,080,000 total viewers; 1,010,000 in the demo) and CBS' Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer (2,740,000 total viewers, 900,000 in the demo).

In D.C., Meet the Press' relative advantage was even greater.

From NBC's press release:

In Washington, D.C., "Meet the Press" won with 108,000 viewers (4.1/12 HH)  more than all the competition combined. The NBC program had a +125% lead over ABC's 48,000 (1.8/5 HH), +414% more than CBS' 21,000 (0.8/2 HH), and a +272% advantage over FOX's 29,000 viewers (1.2/3 HH).

It was back in December 1987 when, with just over a year left in his second term, Reagan played host to a Washington summit with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. In terms of domestic politics, it was a touchy, sensitive moment for the president, with his own conservative base enraged by his plans to sign the I.N.F. treaty during the meeting.

So, in an effort to rally the nation before Gorbachev’s arrival, the White House arranged for the anchors from all four major television news outlets—Dan Rather of CBS, Peter Jennings from ABC, NBC’s Tom Brokaw, and Bernard Shaw of CNN—to interview Reagan together. On December 4, the anchors took turns asking questions, and then their networks repackaged the footage into 30-minute specials that aired at different times that night.

Facing a similarly critical moment—the fate of his health care reform push is now on the line—Obama went for the same saturation effect on Sunday. But his modified “Full Ginsburg”—sitting for individual interviews on every major Sunday morning interview show except “Fox News Sunday”—wasn’t quite as efficient.

The problem was as unavoidable as it was easy to see coming. It was obvious what topics each interviewer would bring up in his 15 or so minutes with Obama, and there really aren’t that many different ways to ask about them.

For instance, any host who didn’t spend a few minutes on Jimmy Carter’s comment last week that some of the most outlandish opposition to Obama’s health care effort comes from people who believe a black man “ought not be president and ought not be given the same respect as if he were white” would have been accused of journalistic malpractice; but what else can you really do except ask Obama whether he thinks there’s something to it—as David Gregory, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer, and John King all did?

Obama, of course, had his talking points down cold for the Carter question. Whether, in his heart and soul, Obama actually shares Carter’s view is immaterial; the White House believes (probably accurately) that the political cost of saying so would be unbearable. So Obama spent a few minutes giving the same basic answer to each interviewer: Yes, there are people who don’t like me because I’m black, just like there are people who do like me because I’m black; but no, that has nothing to do with the health care debate.

He even repeated exact phrases, for instance telling both Gregory and King that the Carter story had been “catnip” for a media that rewards rude behavior with “15 minutes of fame.”

It was the same story on other topics. After grilling him on health care and Carter, each interviewer reserved a bloc of time for Afghanistan, where Obama may soon be asked by General Stanley McChrystal to send even more troops. But no matter what unique twist they put on their questions, the interviewers all received the same stock answer, with Obama noting that Afghanistan policy had been “adrift” when he took office and, essentially, asking for time to get it right.

Both King and Schieffer asked why he was still talking about formulating a plan after announcing a new one back in March; Obama reminded them both that he’d said back in March that he’d revisit and re-examine the plan after six months.

On health care, the major reason he granted the interviews, Obama clearly had middle-class voters who currently have insurance on his mind. Invariably, he tried to frame his answers in a way that might convince them he’s aware of their concerns and is looking out for them. On each network, he made sure to point out that the average premium went up by 5.5 percent last year, “this despite the fact that inflation was negative on almost everything else.”

The result of all of this was a series of interviews that all looked and sounded pretty much the same. In total, Obama was on the four shows for about 70 minutes. But after you watched one, there really wasn’t much new ground plowed in any of the others, and it became an exercise in message repetition, with his answers sounding less considered and authentic than pre-rehearsed and packaged.

That said, there were some differences between the interviews. Stephanopoulos was by far the most aggressive questioner, trying to play gotcha with a question—and about 12 follow-ups, one in which he invoked the Merriam-Webster dictionary—about whether an individual health insurance mandate is tantamount to a tax hike.

Schieffer was more curious about foreign affairs, asking the only question about the Bush-instigated missile defense shield that Obama abandoned last week. King was the only host to spend time on jobs and the economy (and to ask if Obama would be getting an H1N1 vaccine shot); and Gregory asked for a non-White Sox World Series prediction.

From a viewer’s standpoint, though, the old Reagan model would have been preferable on Sunday. Once one interviewer had asked about Carter, the rest would have been free to ignore and ask about other subjects. And the interviewers, instead of each straining to make sure they hit every major topic of the day in their 15 minutes with the president, would have had more leeway to pursue interesting follow-ups and to press Obama for more specificity. And Gregory could still have asked about baseball, too.

But mostly it was an opportunity for the two mayors, cross-generational allies who lead vastly different cities separated by a 20-minute PATH ride, to give each other a few politically beneficial pats on the back.

Take Gregory’s first question on the economy to Bloomberg, about whether a recovery might be under way.

Bloomberg replied that he first wanted to “say something about what Cory can't say, but it happens to be true. He has one of the most difficult jobs in America.  He’s taken over a city where you've had many years of underinvestment and lack of foresight and terrible government, and he really is the future of Newark.  With him, they have a chance to rectify things.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Bloomberg made sure to sing Booker’s praises on the subjects of gun control, tort reform, reducing health care costs, and economic competition with foreign cities.

When it was his turn to speak, Booker was happy to reciprocate. Praising Bloomberg for launching Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Booker said, “This is an American issue, it's a left-right issue and another coalition that Mayor Bloomberg has pulled together across party aisles.” He also heralded a poll of gun owners as evidence of “Mayor Bloomberg—again—his extraordinary leadership.”

But he saved his best for last, volunteering near the end of the segment that “I have endorsed Mayor Bloomberg. He's a Republican. We cast our country too simplistically in left-right debates.  He's been a leader in bringing America together around gun issues that are sensible for all Americans.  He's brought people together around lowering carbon footprints in cities, the left-right coalition. This is the way we need to move forward.”

Gregory even joined in the fun at one point, reading a recent Booker “tweet” in which the Newark mayor playfully suggested that his New York counterpart mimic him and Washington mayor Adrian Fenty by shaving his head. It was all smiles.

What exactly was going on here? After all, if Meet the Press had really been interested only in a report card on stimulus activity in American cities, invitations could have been extended to mayors who might have offered more pointed comments and not turned the segment into a meeting of the Mutual Admiration Society.

But those other mayors wouldn’t have provided the same ratings punch as Bloomberg, the leader of the nation’s largest city, and Booker, the telegenic media darling who’s already starred in an Oscar-nominated film. Very understandably, star power won out.

Once they were booked together, the on-air love-fest became inevitable. Booker and Bloomberg are friends and allies, each keenly aware of the political benefits of his association with the other.

Start with the 40-year-old Booker, whose political aspirations extend far beyond the mayor’s office that he finally claimed in 2007, after a nearly decade-long pursuit. He’s been smart about positioning himself, rejecting numerous entreaties to join Jon Corzine’s (probably) doomed ticket in this year’s gubernatorial election. His big move figures to come in 2013, when the Democratic gubernatorial nomination will be wide open.

An alliance with Bloomberg gives Booker invaluable credibility with the suburban New Jersey voters who look on Newark with disapproval and condescension. Booker won many of these voters over back in 2002, when he emerged as every suburbanites’ favorite Newark politician—the young, brilliant and urbane reformer standing up for clean government against Sharpe James’ ruthless machine. As the joke went, Booker lost Newark in that election, but won the rest of New Jersey.

But preserving that image is a little tricky now that he’s actually mayor. Any bad news that comes out of Newark is now a potential threat to Booker’s Golden Boy status in the suburbs.

That’s where Bloomberg comes in. To New Jerseyans, who mostly know New York as commuters and day- (or night-) trippers, Bloomberg is immensely popular—a strong, capable master of efficiency who has tamed a massive bureaucracy. For a time in the ’90s, it was said that the most popular politician in New Jersey was Rudy Giuliani. Today, Bloomberg could probably make a run for that title.

So it’s quite helpful to Booker when Bloomberg goes on national television to remind viewers that Booker “has one of the most difficult jobs in America.” The message to suburban New Jersey might just as well be: Hey, even if he doesn’t turn it around, what can he really do? It’s Newark, for God’s sake.

It’s a nice partnership for Bloomberg, too. The chief threat to his reelection bid is the overwhelming registration advantage in the city that Democrats enjoy—and the reflexive loyalty of many of those Democrats to their party’s line, no matter how much they might like the other candidate in the race. This is a major reason why Bloomberg’s lead over his Democratic foe, the almost invisible Bill Thompson, was just 10 points in a recent poll.

The effusive support of Booker, a nationally prominent Democrat, makes it that much easier for New York Democrats to defy the party line. That Booker, like Thompson, is black doesn’t hurt, either.

So everyone won on Sunday. Meet the Press got the two most compelling mayors in the country. Cory Booker received an endorsement that resonated in living rooms in Westfield and Summit. And Michael Bloomberg showed New York Democrats another reason why it’s O.K. to vote for him. Oh, and they said some stuff about the economy, too.

One of the responsibilities that comes with picking a vice presidential candidate is never admitting that you might have made a bad call—even if it becomes painfully obvious to the rest of the world that you did.

So it was that John McCain withstood a six-minute grilling on Sunday from David Gregory on the subject of Sarah Palin, the woman who would now be a heartbeat away from the presidency had McCain prevailed last fall. McCain would have none of it.

“I love and respect her and her family,” he said. “I’m grateful she agreed to run with me. I am confident she will be a major factor on the national stage and in Alaska as well.”

He wouldn’t agree that Palin is “quitting” as governor (“I think she changed priorities”), said he doubts that she made “a, quote, promise” to Alaskans to serve out her full term, and called her a victim of “the most sustained personal attacks certainly in recent American political history.”

Also, McCain suggested that he and Palin would have won last November, absent the mid-September stock market meltdown: “We were winning and we could have won.” (Alternate explanation: McCain’s post-convention bounce, which very briefly gave him a double-digit lead over Barack Obama, explains why he was still ahead—in some polls—when the market tanked, but even without the crash, polling trends clearly favored Obama.)

That McCain would say any of this is hardly surprising: Since it became tradition for presidential nominees to anoint their own running mates, the VP choice has come to serve as a preliminary test of presidential leadership—and, long after the campaign is over, a key aspect of a presidential candidate’s legacy.

McCain might score points with his old media admirers if he were to admit that he dropped the ball with Palin—that he made an impulse decision and that he now realizes that she is woefully unfit for the presidency—but it would be at the price of his longer-term legacy. By doing so, he’d be validating a version of history that casts him as a reckless power-seeker, the once-honorable man who took leave of his senses in the 2008 campaign and endangered the country. Give him credit for being honest after the fact, the story would go, but let’s all thank God he didn’t win the election.

McCain, of course, has a different legacy in mind, one rooted in vindication. If Obama’s presidency falters the way Jimmy Carter’s once did (and McCain just loves his Obama-Carter analogies), then maybe Americans will come to regret tuning out the old warrior-patriot in 2008. Admitting now that Palin was a blunder would ruin this; it would amount to an acknowledgement that he wasn’t up to the job.

In a way, George H. W. Bush serves a role model for McCain. Bush’s 1988 choice of Dan Quayle as his running mate was met with derision and disbelief similar to that which greeted Palin’s emergence last year. Quayle’s reputation, like Palin’s, only worsened during the fall campaign, but the political climate was too favorable to Bush for any of it to matter, and he still won the election comfortably.

As president, he remained steadfastly loyal to Quayle, even when some of his tope aides, including Jim Baker and Bob Teeter, pushed to dump the VP—fresh off his image-reinforcing “potatoe” gaffe—from the 1992 G.O.P. ticket. But Bush never seriously considered it. His own sense of personal loyalty surely played a role; but he also realized that getting rid of Quayle would amount to a damaging admission that he’d been wrong to choose him in the first place—in other words, that he’d exercised irresponsible leadership.

There is no reward in American politics for copping to an unwise VP pick. George McGovern learned this in 1972, when he tapped Tom Eagleton to be his running mate. Eagleton’s extensive treatment for depression and exhaustion was quickly revealed, and McGovern—after first declaring that he backed the Missourian “1000 percent”—gave in and forced him off the ticket, turning to R. Sargent Shriver as a replacement.

McGovern surely would have lost to Richard Nixon that fall no matter what, but canning Eagleton didn’t help; it only eroded his leadership credentials. By removing Eagleton, he essentially acknowledged everything that his critics (and the media) were saying: that he’d made a hasty, ill-advised pick and flubbed his first leadership test. It’s no wonder that 25 years later, McGovern said that, if he could do it over, he would have kept Eagleton on. He still would have lost, but the damage wouldn’t have been as bad.

Of course, just like McGovern and Bush, McCain could have avoided all of his pre- and post-election VP headaches simply by making a more considered choice in the first place. It’s a good lesson for future nominees: The VP selection process tends to revolve around electoral-map calculations, but the consequences—even for a losing candidate—may be felt long after November.

Mr. Buchanan was zeroing in on John McLaughlin's annual Sunday brunch. The place you traditionally go after the weekend of frenzied socializing to see and be seen one last time and to wash down your ibuprofen with eggs and Champagne in good political company.

Mr. Buchanan walked into Teatro Goldoni, a nouveau Italian restaurant facing K Street, and surveyed the room. He was early and the place was mostly empty. Historically, Mr. McLaughin, the blustery dean of Sunday morning political roughhousing, has held the affair on the roof of the Hay-Adams hotel looking down on the White House. But this being 2009, things had been scaled down a bit.

A few minutes later, Mr. Buchanan stood in a corner, alongside his wife, who was chitchatting with Wendy Diamond, a New Yorker, who writes about pets for a living. (Manhattan life, huh?) Ms. Buchanan was wearing a shiny brooch, in the shape of a cat, on her lapel. The conversation turned to the subject of a late beloved kitty of the Buchanan household.

Mr. Buchanan launched into a reminiscence about those heady days of the early '80s, when a young Ronald Reagan took hold of the presidency and a young kitten wandered into their lives. After one particularly promising day on Capitol Hill, Mr. Buchanan, had arrived home and joyfully named their new pet after the president.

Gipper, he said, had been one hell of a cat.

A woman in a flamboyant Sunday hat charged across the room. "Hello, everybody," she said. "Thank you for coming."

Cristina Vidal McLaughlin, second wife to John, introduced herself and said hello. What parties had people gone to the night before? Ms. Diamond said that the Bloomberg-Vanity Fair after-party at the French Embassy had been amazing. Much nicer than last year's shindig at the Costa Rican embassy. Remember the leaky roof?

Ms. McLaughlin asked if anyone had ever been to Costa Rica, which, by the way, doesn't even have an army. She said that before meeting John, whom she referred to as "my shining knight," she had grown up in the Dominican Republic, which did have an army. Though sometimes she wondered why.

All of which got her started on a roundabout story, the payoff of which involved an American military gentleman, a West Point graduate, speaking insensitively about America's involvement in the Dominican Civil War of 1965. That war, Ms. McLaughlin noted, had taken the lives of some of her countrymen, her people.

"Well, not too many people died," offered Mr. Buchanan.

As it happened, he knew a thing or two about the Dominican Civil War, too. At the time of the skirmish, he said, he had been living in Washington writing editorials. L.B.J. couldn't just sit back and let another Cuba emerge in our backyard, he explained.

"Ah, the days of the empire," said Mr. Buchanan, mock wistfully.

Ms. McLaughlin frowned.

"We were protecting you from Castro!" said Mr. Buchanan playfully.

More frowning.

"Maybe I shouldn't have gone there," Mr. Buchanan said sideways to The Observer.

It was time for somebody to change the subject. Ms. Buchanan noted that John McLaughlin himself had once done some cat-sitting for the Gipper.

Some twenty-four hours earlier, the marathon round of D.C. kibitzing, that sometimes awkward mix of the professional and the personal, had kicked off at Tammy Haddad's annual garden brunch, in the verdant backyard of her home in upper northwest. In anticipation of an Obama-induced boom year, the party was outfitted with a red carpet for paparazzi on a patch of grass overlooking the driveway.

Here and there, under a steamy tent, actors stood alongside journalists and politicos: Val Kilmer, Janet Napolitano, Jake Tapper, Christian Slater, Ed Henry, Chace Crawford, Ed Schultz, David Gregory, and on and on. The Observer bumped into Bill Wolff of MSNBC.

Where was Rachel Maddow? She was skipping out on the dinner this year, said Mr. Wolff, to go to a Red Sox game and to enjoy a walking tour of gangster Whitey Bulger's old haunts in Boston. Nearby, a gossip columnist marveled at Luke Russert's outfit: Salmon shorts, loafers and a baby-blue-and-white-striped jacket. Very St. Albans Goes to Nantucket.

NBC's Ann Curry took a microphone and tried to get the crowd interested in some humanitarian causes. She was met with little response. Eventually, Ms. Haddad implored the crowd to hold up their blackberry's in the air. "Or iPhones" said Ms. Haddad. "I'm not prejudiced." Ms. Curry then proceeded to choreograph a simultaneous Mother's Day tweet. People kept drinking.

That evening, after a nap, the same crowd (plus many, many more) reemerged in formal attire at the Washington Hilton, where spirits were flowing freely at an slate of pre-dinner cocktail parties. Much to everyone's horror, the lovely, open-aired back patio was under construction, forcing the partygoers into the warren of drab, windowless rooms in the basement of the building.

Pretty soon, the hallway between the Newsweek and ABC News parties had turned into a mosh pit of power brokers and their sweaty handlers. Michael Bloomberg, Jon Bon Jovi, Chris Wallace, Natalie Portman, Stevie Wonder, Richard Belzer, Adrian Fenty, Barbara Walters—everyone jostling and elbowing for a chance to find some place to rest and have a civil conversation. There was none.

Dinner time!

Spare tickets, for the first time in recent years, were few and far between. Those who couldn't get past security to hear President Obama and Wanda Sykes left to drown their lack of importance in more cocktails elsewhere.

When dinner finally let out, it was time for the Niche Media Capitol File's after-party at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. A conga line of celebrities—Padma Lakshmi, Forest Whitaker, Dulé Hill, Valerie Jarrett, the Prince of Qatar, David Cross and Rachel Leigh Cook—filed into the Beaux-Arts building, its ornate interior bathed in pink lights and pulsating with hip-hop.

Fresh-faced junior staffers in short skirts stood in clusters gazing around, keeping an eye out for the celebrities. Fox News' Greta Van Susteren and her husband, lawyer John Coale, chaperoned Alaskan "first dude" Todd Palin for a lap around the party. No, they weren't interested in doing interviews, thank you very much. Nearby, the actor Tim Daly ran into Friday Night Lights' hot mom Connie Britton by the bar, where they embraced. Meghan McCain, in a form-fitting white gown, and her entourage cut a path through the party.

On the second floor, partygoers slurped mixed drinks and gazed down at all the young flesh, beginning to bump and shake on the dance floor. Slate's Mickey Kaus, in from Los Angeles, wondered if people in D.C. actually enjoyed dance music. Could everyone be faking it? A young attractive woman with editorial ambitions and a low-cut dress moved in for a frontal barrage of flattery. She recognized Mr. Kaus, she said, from Bloggingheads.tv.

There was an eruption of excitement on the dance floor below. Rahm Emmanuel was in the house. Well-wishers scrambled for a closer look.

Across town, the voltage was perking up at the Vanity Fair-Bloomberg party, which was precisely the small, intimate affair it promised to be. It took place in a mansion that belongs to the French ambassador, but easily could have been mistaken for the house in Eyes Wide Shut. It was one of those specifically D.C. nights where David Axelrod or Mother Jones' David Corn were in a conversation every time you looked up, but a star like Owen Wilson was left to his lonesome by the bar, and The Office's B.J. Novak, who has become a regular at any event in D.C. for the last year, was wandering aimlessly at several points throughout the night.

Meanwhile, others found ways to pass the time.

"He needs to figure it out, he needs to figure it out because he's a man, he's a fucking man," said an insistent Jonathan Rhys-Myers while waiting for a chance to use the bathroom. Within a few moments, he gave up on that bit of conversation and went off to give the coat-check girl a kiss, one of two women he was spotted smooching.

It was impossible to walk into a room or out onto the terrace and not see someone: Justice Antonin Scalia, James Franco, Donald Rumsfeld, Graydon Carter, Michael Bloomberg, Andrea Mitchell, David Carr, Ludacris, Jason Wu, Lally and Katharine Weymouth and editors Marcus Brauchli, James Bennet, and Rick Stengel.

But unlike last year's Bloomberg party, which was hot well past 3 a.m., this one died down at least an hour or two earlier. Two images that capped the night nicely: Valerie Jarrett and Desiree Rogers splayed on a couch, legs extended after a long day's journey into this nightcap; and VF spokeswoman Beth Kseniak with her friend Katie Couric sitting on another couch on the other side of the house, the AC blowing their hair up.

On Sunday morning, back at the McLaughlin brunch, the weekend came to a merciful end.

MSNBC contributor and former West Wing producer Lawrence O'Donnell chatted with Mort Zuckerman, the publisher of the New York Daily News. Mr. O'Donnell was looking L.A. chic—untucked shirt, lace-less Vans sneakers. A bleary-eyed photographer sized up the twosome. "If he can't bother to tuck in his shirt, I can't bother to tell him to," said the shutterbug, and snapped the picture.

Mr. McLaughlin's orthopaedic surgeon, stood nearby, nursing a drink.

Shortly after noon, the omnipresent Mr. Corn, of Mother Jones, shook hands with the host, and excused himself to go watch his kid's soccer game. The Observer swooped in and asked the host for his impressions of the weekend. Mr. McLaughlin, always fond of scores and grades and scales, said that compared to past presidents, Mr. Obama's speech the night before scored around an 85 percent.

"I thought he was relaxed and in relatively good form," said Mr. McLaughlin. "But he could have improved on his command of the material."

So why no Hay-Adams, this year?

"We were drifting around," said Mr. McLaughlin. "And there was the economic ..." He paused. "And the appearance associated with what could be seen as an indulgence. We thought we ought to be able to work out something in between."

And with that, his young, energetic wife materialized, grabbed him by the forearm, and physically pulled him in the direction of another conversation.