I work for a big newspaper, and I guess I'm an insider. I don't have the luxury of calling myself a foreign correspondent and just swooping in and then leaving.

I always keep my repertorial hat on.

Washington has always had a pretty healthy amount of self-loathing.

Media has changed dramatically, as you and I know. We're in a world now where you're rewarded for being outrageous. Punditry has replaced reporting as the gold standard of journalism.

To cover politics in Washington allows you to live in the very, very wide gap between what the actual truth is, and how people are trying to manipulate the truth. They speak in the language of spin, obsequiousness, obfuscation. The meta of politics is just this endless source of material that can shed light on the psychology of the process.

I think the job of a good journalist, especially in Washington, is to create discomfort, and I think for a certain class of people, and for whom life is quite comfortable, I've created discomfort. So I take that as a badge of honor.

I think one of the dirty little secrets that I try to reveal here is that Washington is not hopelessly divided. It's very interconnected. We're talking about people sort of feeding from the same insider trough, where if you are known as an insider, you are going to get paid and do very, very, very well.