Periodically, someone will ask me what I miss about Washington, D.C., and I always have a ready answer: I miss my community of political geeks.

What I mean by that is that Washington attracts a certain type of person, and it’s not the bottom-feeding soulless SOB you so often see portrayed in movies and television. Nope. If you want to get rich, you move to New York. If you want to be famous, you move to Hollywood. If you want good weather, you go to the south or to the west coast. But the people who move to work in Washington generally care about something bigger than themselves, and are generally a little bit crazy about it, and it makes for a much more interesting and fun city than outsiders give it credit for. Sure, after a while cynicism sets in, but every year brings in a new crop of young people who are generally smart, very hard working, and driven by an intense interest in… well, you name it - abortion, the environment, taxes, foreign policy, terrorism, gay rights, traditional values, economics…

One of the ironies of this community of thousands of twentysomethings and thirtysomethings is that there’s actually less partisanship than many communities outside the Beltway. It’s very difficult to refuse to deal with people you disagree with, because chances are, they’re everywhere around you. And on a Friday night, everybody in the corner booth at the bar just wants to tell you what a pain in the neck their boss is.

I figure these young people stick around and become part of Washington’s professional class — the bureaucrats, activists, lobbyists and media who know they’ll be in Washington long after any current administration’s leaders have retired outside the Beltway. At its most cynical, the view could be, “Presidencies come and go; a slot on the Washington Post’s editorial page is real influence.”

Many of Bill Clinton’s most ardent supporters got offended when some members of Washington’s professional elites got critical during the Lewinsky mess. This Sally Quinn article defined it; some key quotes:

“He came in here and he trashed the place,” says Washington Post columnist David Broder, “and it’s not his place.” …

Bill Galston, former deputy domestic policy adviser to Clinton and now a professor at the University of Maryland, says of the scandal that “most people in Washington believe that most people in Washington are honorable and are trying to do the right thing. The basic thought is that to concede that this is normal and that everybody does it is to undermine a lifetime commitment to honorable public service.”

“We have our own set of village rules,” says David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, who worked for both the Reagan and Clinton White House. “Sex did not violate those rules. The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them. That is one on which people choke.

“We all live together, we have a sense of community, there’s a small-town quality here. We all understand we do certain things, we make certain compromises. But when you have gone over the line, you won’t bring others into it. That is a cardinal rule of the village. You don’t foul the nest.”

By the way, many of you know it galls me to approvingly quote David Gergen. But to a certain extent, he’s right; many Washingtonians believe they could be making more money if they had decided to work on Wall Street. The belief that they’re doing something noble, something that qualifies as public service, is a big part of their self-image. And there’s a respect across the partisan divide, that even though the other guy or girl is a tree-hugging kumbaya liberal or a maniacal right-wing arch-conservative, they’re a similar species: The North American Political Geek (Policius Nerdius). Sure, that dweeb has the wrong political views, but at least he or she understands that politics is important.

So when Jim Webb comes to Washington, and has his famously brusque interaction with President Bush, well… official Washington pushes back, in the form of columns by George Will and Peggy Noonan. When the President asks how your son is doing in Iraq, you grit your teeth and say, “I wish he was home, but so far he’s doing okay.” Or “I wish he was home, because it sounds like he’s having a tough time over there. But thank you for asking.” (I note that the President’s response to Webb’s response, “That’s not what I asked you,” was rude and needlessly confrontational.)

Anyway - I’m sure that some folks who rarely if ever have to work with people with differing opinions will denounce this as inside-the-Beltway snobbishness, as dishonesty, as a sign that Washingtonians are delicate flowers who can’t handle “the truth” from a man “born fighting!” like Webb. They’ll say that Webb’s brusqueness, and his later comment that he wanted to physically assault the commander in chief constituted standing up to “Washington Elitism.”

But I like Washington. I like that the guys who run RedState and AmericaBlog get along famously. I like that half my circle of friends believed that when I was doing the Kerry Spot, I was professionally employed by Evil Incarnate. I like that most of my wife’s friends visibly shudder when I say, “My friend Rush Limbaugh.” (I’m not even going to get into my wife’s reaction.) I  know what David Broder meant when he described Washington ”not his place” and I don’t know if I like Webb’s attempt to bring outside-the-beltway manners to that city of Northern Charm and Southern Efficiency.

If that constitutes Washington Elitism, then I say “hurrah, hurrah.”

 Cam says: Jim and I have had variations of this conversation before, and it never fails to drive me batty. I’ve lived in the D.C. area for less than three years, and while I like my neighbors, co-workers, co-bloggers, and a few friends I’ve made, I have to say that there are far too many people who have an overinflated sense of self-worth. Jim says every bar on Friday night is full of people who just want to complain about their boss. I’d like to see that bar, because every time I’ve gone out it’s people who want to brag about how freakin’ important they are.

I realize this has nothing to do with Jim Webb, but frankly I find this aspect of D.C. life more annoying than Webb’s comments. And it is, after all, all about me. Don’t you know who I am? Why I host a talk show on Sirius Satellite Radio and on the internet! I’m a very important man!!!

Hello?

Jim: Okay, I admit, there’s a fine line between, “Boy, is my boss a lunatic” and “Why won’t that lunatic listen to me, if I were running things everything would be better, because I’m a genius.”

But without specifics, it’s hard to say whether the “people who have an overinflated sense of self-worth” you describe genuinely have an overinflated sense of self worth, or whether worth is in the eye of the beholder. A twentysomething press secretary may not seem like King of the World, but to a small segment of the world - Congressional correspondents - he or she is really really important, for they are the gatekeepers to the lawmakers when reporters on deadline. A small-time columnist may seem unimportant, until he mentions your name in a column and spells your name wrong.

If you’re referring to what I think you’re referring to - say, bloggers who openly state at CNN’s Election Night party that their primary priority is getting on-camera face time  — well, that’s a whole other conversation/blog posting.