“It’s like Vienna in 1914,” said James Carville in his unmistakable drawl. “It’s like the opening of The Guns of August.” Barbara Tuchman’s classic account of the first days of World War I opens with the funeral of King Edward VII, which, for all its pomp and circumstance—nine kings arrive, followed by “five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens,” and a “scattering of special ambassadors”—marks the start of a steep descent into war.
Near Carville stood two police officers, guarding a metal detector erected outside the expansive basement ballroom of The Ritz-Carlton in Washington, DC. There, a few hundred of the people who once ran the town gathered on Monday to mourn the passing of one of their own.
The memorial was for Robert Barnett, the famed Washington lawyer, power broker, and confidant of presidents who negotiated blockbuster book deals for superstar clients, including the Clintons, the Bushes, and the Obamas. The invitation-only service, held on a sunny November morning and attended by a dizzying collection of Washington’s boldface names, was a fitting tribute to Barnett, who died in September at the age of 79. Nearly 700 people packed into the ballroom, filling every seat, to hear speeches from his many clients: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bob Woodward, and James Patterson, to name a few.
Barnett was once labeled “the kingpin of Washington book deals” by The New York Times, but his influence extended far beyond the capital. He negotiated contracts for politicians, television stars, writers, royals, and celebrities, but also acted as a trusted counselor to many; Hillary Clinton wrote in her 2003 memoir—for which Barnett secured her an $8 million advance—that he was the first to suggest to her that Bill might have indeed had an affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Washington has changed a lot since Barnett made his fame there. Donald Trump twice stormed into office with a pledge to drain the swamp, which manifested not in a departure from grubby DC corruption, but certainly a humbling of the establishment insiders who ruled the capital for decades. In Trump’s Washington, many of the powerful in the room at The Ritz felt more powerless than ever. They loathe what he’s done to the East Wing. There is nothing they can do about it.
There was CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, whose network’s parent company paid $16 million to settle a spurious lawsuit from Trump. There was Woodward, whose Washington Post, to hear people in the room tell it, has been vandalized by its billionaire owner in an effort to appease the new regime. After the service, Woodward stood by the stairs. Andrea Mitchell, another client, squeezed his arm and gave him a warm smile as she left. Senator Amy Klobuchar consoled a pair of mourners inquiring about the possibility of a constitutional crisis. Klobuchar was optimistic. Supreme Court justice John Roberts, she offered, “has saved the Republican Party from itself before.”
Barnett, a staunch Democrat, was one of those special Washington creatures who managed to balance clients on both sides of the aisle. “Bob embodied a lost Washington where one person could connect every planet of power,” said Mike Allen, the cofounder of Axios. Barnett hailed from a more bipartisan era, one in which Republicans and Democrats backslapped at these kinds of events after shredding one another on Crossfire. Nowadays the vitriol is more vicious, more sincere. The bases want blood, their intolerance for that kind of swampy bipartisan hobnobbing enough to get a congressman primaried or attacked by the president on Truth Social.
More than a half dozen Fox News hosts and executives attended the memorial, including both Steve and Peter Doocy, star host Jesse Watters, and national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin. Karl Rove and Sarah Palin paid their respects as well. After the service, Barnett’s loved ones and clients—it’s hard to separate the two—shared fond memories of the man, and fond memories of the Washington he left behind, over platters of fruit and focaccia sandwiches.
“This is the old DC,” said Carville. “The new Washington is the Washington of Kash Patel.” Carville was a client but also a close friend, so when Barnett’s daughter, Meredith, turned 16, he took her on as an intern (Meredith, now 46, works in content development in New York). Carville was honored that Barnett had entrusted her to him. He was also terrified, recalling one incident in which he asked the teenage Meredith to drive him to pick up Hunter S. Thompson, who, upon sliding into the back seat of the car, “pulls out a fucking joint that’s bigger than my thumb and starts smoking the fucking thing. I said, ‘Jesus Christ. We’re gonna get in a wreck, we’re going to get arrested, and I’m gonna have to call my wife and tell her Bob’s 16-year-old daughter is in central lockup.’ And she couldn’t even drive.”
Nearby, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, Birkin bag in tow (it’s been a good year), bade farewell to Watters and his wife, Emma, a former Fox producer. “Bob became my lawyer as a young reporter, and I have never had another,” Watters told me. “He helped get me where I am today and was very good at making sure I didn’t get into too much trouble. Bob was a Democrat, but he always reached across the aisle with clients…and with me, I was probably the furthest Bob could reach. He was old-school, and I am going to miss him.”
Are we witnessing the death of the old Washington? “People said that Bob’s memorial represented old Washington…where people from both parties could argue but could get along,” Watters said. “That Washington will never die. Bob’s spirit will always live on. Perhaps it can be rekindled in Trump’s big, beautiful ballroom one day.”
As Watters walked toward the exit, he stopped to chat with Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose performance during the COVID pandemic made him a dunk-tank villain on Fox News. Just a few years ago, Watters urged an event audience to “ambush” the doctor in public and “go in for the kill shot,” comments that naturally caused some outrage. Fauci said Watters “should be fired on the spot,” but Fox defended the host as merely having called for the oratorical murder of the doctor, not his literal assassination. At Barnett’s memorial, the two laid down their arms. They shook hands and chatted amiably. Fauci slapped Watters on the back as he left and said, “Good to see you.”
“Last week I met Gayle King, this week Dr. Fauci. I feel like I’m going to run into Barack Obama at the grocery store,” Watters joked.
When Mark Leibovich wrote about another quintessentially Washington send-off, that of Tim Russert in 2008, he observed that the services “affirm[ed] everyone—by their presence—as worthy in the pecking order” of Washington power. Inside the room at Barnett’s memorial, it felt more like a farewell to a Washington that no longer exists than an assembly of the elite insiders who would shape its future. It boasted many of the same guests who attended Russert’s memorial, such as David Axelrod—then the chief strategist for the presidential campaign of a young senator from Chicago—and, of course, Bill and Hillary Clinton, whom Leibovich described as “pros at death and sickness.” Hillary, who delivered a eulogy for Barnett, is no longer much of an authority in today’s Washington. Like everyone else, she’s a podcaster now, and not a particularly influential one.
Speaking of podcasters: A giddy Oliver North worked the room. I spotted Carville again. Ever the operator, he told me he’s got a $1,000 bet going with Piers Morgan that Democrat Abigail Spanberger will win Tuesday’s election for Virginia governor by more than five points. If he wins, Morgan will owe him lunch at Scott’s, a posh restaurant in London’s Mayfair district. Is Carville confident? “Cocky,” he told me. “It’s gonna be a blowout.” (“I’m quietly confident,” texted Morgan, a man who is rarely quiet.)
Upstairs in the lobby of the hotel, a group of businessmen in town for a conference bantered about the good old days. Once upon a time, they had worked at the White House themselves, apparently. They wondered what it would be like to go back, and just how much things had loosened up. One turned to the subject of gooning, which is very much in the zeitgeist these days. “Jerking off in the West Wing would be cool,” he mused.
In The Guns of August, Tuchman quotes British viscount and politician Lord Esher, who wrote after the king’s funeral: “All the old buoys which have marked the channel of our lives seem to have been swept away.” There was a feeling of the old guard being swept away in the basement of The Ritz on Monday, making way for a more extreme, more partisan, more impolite Washington.
“It was a beautiful tribute to Bob,” Watters said. “You’ll never see a room like that ever again.”
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