President-elect Barack Obama's transition may look cooler than Miles Davis in shades, but, honestly, it's all a charade. Beneath the steady press conferences and drama-free cabinet announcements, Washington DC is in turmoil. I should know. I'm one of the many people secretively scrambling to press my CV on anyone who will give it a second look.
I, and others like me, will now do anything for a federal gold eagle on our business cards. Someday soon a girl in a bar will ask that perennial DC question: "So, what do you do?" And I'm longing to deliver the thrilling, irony-free answer: "I'm working on that whole change thing, you know, for the president."
Obama himself is doubtless working long hours, behind the serene exterior. In homage to the great man, for the last month I too have been toiling, but mostly to mask my job-seeking efforts. It turns out that hiding how hard you work isn't just an undergraduate trait. No one in Washington wants to admit to nights spent writing cover letters, or the loss of dignity coming from awkward phone calls with vaguely remembered contacts.
Nonetheless, such face saving can't hide the fact that America's capital has turned into a massive episode of the The X Factor. Sure, you don't have to line up round the block to do a nervous first audition in an anonymous office building. But, in November, I did the next best thing, and uploaded my CV to the website "change.gov." Sadly, this first-of-its-kind web 2.0 portal was live for only a few hours before it fell over, unable to cope with the volume of over-eager believers.
So, if not via a website, how will I get my rightful place in Bamalot? I suspect that it will come down to social capital, which has always been the yardstick of power in a town where few make more than just enough money to cover their rent and bar tab in the same month.
But who do I actually know? In the old, pre-Obama days it was easy to rank your place in what was called the "progressive community"—a kind of government-in-exile populated by grumbling liberals who enjoyed extolling the virtues of Howard Dean. Reliable measures included being name-checked by prominent left-wing bloggers, the number of private political discussion e-mail listserves you were on, and how vocally you promoted the impeachment of Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Now, it's a different game. More and more I find myself seeking only the company of people who may be gatekeepers to my dream job. Most of these are survivors of the Clinton era. Go to any DC party at the moment and you'll soon overhear some blowhard drawing attention, because their "boss's sister's ex-wife was deputy assistant to the undersecretary of commerce for midwestern trade, in Clinton's second term." In the "progressive community" these recovering mid-level staffers were derided. How did all that triangulating, third way stuff pan out during the Monica thing, we'd say. But now, I spare no efforts securing a coffee, a lunch or, if the stars align, an informational interview.
These aging Clintonistas are themselves hardly casual observers. When not dodging lunch dates with the likes of me, they dream of getting their old jobs back—perhaps, even, a rung or two up?—and showing those Obama people that Team Clinton still has game. They forget the long hours and middling pay. They were DC rock stars once.
But who I am to criticise? They must decide if they're willing to sacrifice a little dignity, a lot of salary and taking the kids to soccer games, for a shot at a senate confirmation. Equally, I must decide how much I am willing to fawn to get them to meet me for breakfast.
The Clinton folks are the demigods of my secretive job scrabble. But the real olympians are those blessed few on the transition team itself. Sadly, their identities are closely guarded. Most are fresh off the campaign. Some are parachuted-in Clinton veterans. And all have email inboxes stuffed with gleaming CVs, mine somewhere among them.
Transition isn't all bowing and scraping, though. There's also a tiny tinge of schadenfreude, as thousands of loyal Republicans prepare to leave the sort of jobs I am quietly so eager to take. They're still holed-up in stuffy Georgetown bars, waiting for the evacuation order to come. But around town they are less and less of a daily presence.
It's hard not to feel a little empathy. Eight years ago, were those triumphant Texan transplants so very different from me today? Perhaps among them is even someone who once claimed, as I did last week in front of some guy from the transportation transition team that, yes, of course, highway reconstruction policy had always been a personal passion.
Nonetheless, I imagine that, somewhere, JFK is smiling. Washington is thick with people like me echoing the question that he asked 48 years ago: "What can I do for my country?" After eight years of George W Bush, that might be just the change we need. But first things first. I need to find the perfect spot to entertain that girl from the justice department transition team, later on this evening.
