Bob Franken

In my opinion, far too many of those who live with me in Washington are jerks — duplicitous, self-important jerks. This does not include everybody; far from it. But the town is crawling with viciously ambitious sycophantic young people cozying up to the more-established officeholders, lobbyists, consultants and, yes, us media types, who hold on to their lives of unprincipled entitlement. Frankly, I think their pervasiveness has a lot to do with the disintegration of politics and government because they control the agenda.

But here’s something I find never-endingly fascinating: Any number of th...