WASHINGTON is a city that produces nothing but information. And information is treated as though it were a rare and precious jewel because there is never enough of it to go around. The key to a culture based on information is that the act of hoarding it becomes second nature. Not only second nature: it has become the basis of a bureaucratic religion. And the acknowledged high priest of that religion in the Bush years was Richard Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Darman cut a fascinating figure. His greying hair was always disheveled, as befit a man who was his own barber—a fact he never failed to mention to reporters who wrote profiles of him, since it made him seem without vanity. But on an afternoon one week before he and everybody else were to be sent packing from the White House for good, what was most interesting was his trousers, which were easily two inches too tight around the waist. He wore his pants without a belt, and they folded in on themselves at his midsection. The last four years had not done wonders for his figure.
Comments