Norm Ornstein has a nice informative piece about the transformation of Washington over the last 40 years or so. I think he overstates the case when he suggests that DC is even close to London or Paris as a first rank city. I also think that while he’s right in focusing on the underlying cause of Washington’s transformation and the rise of the lobbyist culture–the growth of government–Ornstein ignores the only real remedy: Shrink government. So long as government gets ever more involved in the business practices of American firms, those firms are going to get more involved in government. There is another solution, I suppose. You could nationalize businesses which would . . . oh wait, that’s what they are doing.