To Hell With Main Street

In a rollicking Washington Post column, Anne Applebaum takes on Sarah Palin’s charge that D.C. needs “a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street.” In fact, Applebaum moans, the capitol has been overrun by “Washington outsiders,” many of them hacks: Tom DeLay; Ted Stevens; Alberto Gonzales; FEMA’s Michael Brown. “Washington needs people who think like national politicians,” Applebaum writes, “and not like spokesmen for the local businesspeople who fill their re-election coffers and for the local party hacks who plan their campaigns.”