Overheard in Washington: Politics and Cherry Blossoms

I write in restaurants. I find my corner, find the plug, choose the restaurant and the table where I am not taking up needed space, where I can hunker down and concentrate with just enough ambient noise to take me back to my roots of writing in the middle of a newsroom. I have my favorite spots around town. I know the nicest waiters and waitresses, the best cups of coffee, the places I can write through breakfast and lunch without taking up space for other customers and can get fed at the same time.

The routine also gives me access from time to time to interesting conversations. I am not a natural eavesdropper, but it is unavoidable when people sit nearby and talk as if I am invisible. People’s lives come together and fall apart in restaurants and sometimes in my presence. In Washington I have also overheard conversations I’m sure were meant to be confidential. It surprises me how one assumes a lone person ten feet away can’t hear just because she appears engaged in her work.

This morning I am in one of my favorite spots, big floor to ceiling windows, few people here but me this early, truly fresh squeezed orange juice (one of the reasons I come here). I plug in my computer; the waiters and waitresses know me well and bring decaf coffee and yogurt parfait, and I settle in for several hours work. But twenty feet away a meeting is going on around a big table, everyone perched on high stools leaning in. I am good at ignoring such talk, but I hear the word ISIS and then talk about their finances and other interesting international issues. As I’m setting up my work for the morning, I listen casually, wondering if this is a group of government employees strategizing in the open at this restaurant with good coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice. Or is it a team from an NGO or a think tank, and then I hear the word “campaign.” And I know with a sinking feeling that the long campaign season has begun. Whose campaign? The name is never mentioned, but by the pronoun, it is not hard to guess.

Cherry blossom weekend has just ended in Washington when the trees all around town and around the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and on the Mall by the Lincoln Memorial have been in full pink and white bloom. It is officially the beginning of spring. Washington shines at this time. After the endless snows of winter this year, we are all ready for spring. But are we ready in spring, 2015 for the campaigns to launch for the next 18 months? I am not. But there is nothing to do but settle in. And I can assure you from the heart of the U.S. political universe, it is underway. The volunteers and staffers and strategists are on their high stools, developing policy and campaign positions which will soon be on the air waves. The U.S. Presidential political season has arrived. Alas.