An awful lot of people were swept into DC with me. Must have been that vacuum that I mentioned before. In fact, as the Blue Line Metro enters the tunnel under the Potomac River as it crosses into the District, you can feel the pressure change in your ears. As it pulls air along with it into the dark.
Then we ascended on the other side into Foggy Bottom - a neighborhood in DC named for the smoke that industry along the north side of the Potomac used to belch out. Now it's condos and universities and offices. Cars, busses and patrons of restaurants are the only things that belch now. But it's still Foggy Bottom.
Then it was on to K Street, where my training was. The Foundation Center. A small office squeezed in among the lobbyist's offices just a couple of blocks north of Lafayette Park and the White House. I walked there during lunch. Through the Park. To the gates of the White House.
I was vaguely aware of a woman who was walking the couple of blocks along the way with me. Not so much "with" as along. Stopped at the same lights. Walking between K and I Streets (there was no J Street) on the same sidewalk. On the same side of the street. Not quite at the same pace but the traffic and lights are the great equalizers.
As we got to I Street and crossed into Lafayette Park. I stopped and so did she. "Excuse me," she said (twice I think, because I didn't quite hear the first time), "I'm lost. Do you know where the White House is?" "Well," I answered, "I'm new to the area but I think it's right there," pointing through some trees in the Park to the north portico of the Bush house.
The North Portico
George Bush probably feels a bit lost, too, right now. It must be hard to be a lame duck. On the way out. Housesitting. Country-sitting. Especially hard to do when two-thirds of the people you wanted to lead don't think you should be there anyway.
