I'll be tossing up a couple posts...

...today between household chores and other duties, but this will keep you occupied for a bit while you wait.

No matter what you think of Bruce Reed's (ahem) organizational affiliations, his new Washington Monthly feature is a great description of the way things work (and don't) in DC, and in your state capitol and city hall as well.

A couple teasers...

"Strip away the job titles and party labels, and you will find two kinds of people in Washington: political hacks and policy wonks. Hacks come to Washington because anywhere else they'd be bored to death. Wonks come here because nowhere else could we bore so many to death."

"Wonks think the differences between hacks and wonks are as irreconcilable as the Hutus and the Tutsis. Hacks think it's just like wonks to bring up the Hutus and the Tutsis."

"Every week, Morris had at least one notion crazy enough to get us laughed out of town....(For all his faults, though, Morris was often a useful spur to the bureaucracy, because he enabled the White House policy team to deploy our own Madman Theory: If the agencies wouldn't go along with our sensible proposals, we warned them that the president might just listen to Dick Morris. Agency productivity soared as a result.)"

Read it, then come back and share. Are you a hack or wonk?