On claiming to be an optimist about Washington
"When you live in Washington, D.C., you do get a sense, in a very direct way, of the durability of our government and really, the greatness of the American system. Having said that, I think one of the important things for a journalist to do is hold a mirror to a culture, and I think that this is probably as good a time as any to hold a different kind of mirror, maybe a more cinemagraphic mirror towards Washington than what the city is used to having."
On profiling Kurt Bardella, former press secretary to Republican Congressman Darrell Issa
"This was a chapter in the book that I was very much a part of. As part of my agreement to follow Kurt around for a few months, Kurt and I decided that he would forward me a dozen or so emails a day that he was getting from other reporters, or from members of Congress, or whoever, to try to give me a realtime window into how he was spending his time. So every day a whole bunch of emails would come in, and eventually, he, I guess, told a few too many people, 'hey, I got this New York Times reporter following me around, and I'm sending him emails,' and a reporter for Politico eventually got wind of this, and wanted to do a story on it.
"And all of a sudden, I think, not surprisingly, the people who were having their emails forwarded without their knowledge were a little bit upset. There was a big investigation, Darrell Issa wound up firing Kurt for this, it was written about to death throughout the capital ... eventually Kurt got a job at the Daily Caller, which is a website, sort of a conservative website, he stayed there a few months, he was rehired by Darrell Issa a few months later ... he survived, the story came full circle pretty quickly, and that is also emblematic of the notion that there's really not a fall from grace. I mean, people have very short memories. Any taint of scandal was sort of quickly forgotten and sort of gave way to a neutral sheen of notoriety. And if you're in the news, if you're famous, it's all good for the brand. And I guess the take-away everyone was saying at the time was, well, this will be good buzz for the book! And what could be more important than that?"