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This weekend, I got invited to a Capitol Hill cocktail party. Scheduled months in advance, a little deluge from Hurricane Joaquin wasn’t going to put a damper on things. Our host was Duane Atkins. He and I went to high school together. He’s a lobbyist. You and I could never afford an apartment like that: stained glass windows, in Georgetown, overlooking the Whitehurst Freeway. I also served in the Army with Duane’s younger bro’ Stewart. Affectionately, they call me “Our Swedish terrorist” after I tried to take an engraved artillery shell casing through customs at JFK back in the 1980’s. Guess if the customs people unleashed the cops on me.

Duane has invited me specifically to run the video projector. Being a gentleman, however, he includes me among the guests rather than the catering staff. That’s called tact. The video program Duane wants to show us is entitled “ ’Payback is a bitch’ — Islamic State propaganda.” Basically, it’s five minutes of commentary and 25 minutes of beheadings. Although I suspect the guests don’t yet realize that.

Right away, I see Margaret “Maggie” Carlisle, recognizable by her often photographed flaming red hair, lustrous green eyes and that gorgeous Grecian profile. This is the same Maggie Carlisle who sculpted a bust of President Jimmy Carter, gave testimony in the Iran-Contra scandal and has worked for years as Chief of Staff to Senator Hiram Greene. She is dressed in a Navy blue skirt and a pink blouse whose cleavage borders on the pornographic. Well above my pay grade, I give her a wide berth. Besides, there is already a dude in pinstripes talking with her, gushing fulsomely, quaffing beer from a glass boot. “I worked on the Mark Salinger campaign in Iowa for three months,” he brays. “I must say, that was the most exciting time in my life, driving the corn fields and small towns of Iowa. I was heartbroken when campaign headquarters called and told me the coffers had run dry. I’ve always been doubtful about measuring political campaigns in dollars rather than popularity. ”

Everyone sucks up to Maggie Carlisle. You don’t want to be on her enemies list and it never hurts to have a well-placed friend in Congress. Look, I get it. Anyone as gorgeous as Maggie just assumes people are going to suck up. It’s practically part of her job description: “Washington bureaucrat, a power player, wielding an unusual amount of influence, expects high levels of suck-upism.”

The evening is lubricated by mimosas, Bloody Marys and whiskey sours. A falling-down drunk earlier in life, I don’t drink. Attempting to give a Congressman my card, he eyes me sardonically and says, “This is the ticket to your parking garage. It says ‘You are parked on Level G3.’ Anything you want me to do with this?”

“My bad!”

A lawyer announces, “I’m representing a divorcé who had a major stroke and forgot he was divorced.”

“Ist das wahr?” archly asks a diplomat in a Giorgio Armani suit, nursing his drink.

Duane and I eye one another helplessly.

A dweeb from the Library of Congress asks, “Have you ever noticed how those black bookends in crossword puzzles are shaped like a handgun?”

Not a member of the NRA, the IRA or the IRS, I do not comment.

And after everyone finishes complaining about the way rootin’, tootin’ Putin has made a total fool of Obama by bombing our allies in Syria, Maggie Carlisle suddenly spots me and exclaims, “Kevin! Hello!”

I say hello.

“I need to thank you,” she explains. “Your dad got me my first internship in Senator Greene’s office.”

Yes, okay, fine. I already know this, a tale redolent of the nepotism in Maryland politics. My father Bernie was a personnel director in the federal government. When he could, he helped young people in their careers. He was also among the first to break the color bar in Jim Crow Washington and hire blacks to managerial positions in the federal government.

“You had me at hello,” I tell Maggie. “I grew up on this stuff.”

“I owe my entire career to Bernie,” she insists. “He was a wonderful man.”

As gently as I can, I tell her that he was a godsend to innumerable souls, yes, but he was catastrophic to live with. Everything bothered him. He made me sleep in the carport shed if my grades sank below a 2.5 average or I mowed his lawn poorly or I sassed back and acted surly. I don’t tell Maggie that. I merely point out that public life and private life are two very different animals.

Then, because it is annoying me— and it was Maggie who flagged me down and not the reverse— I start venting over the horrible mess caused by Tom Winslow giving away the farm to the Iranians. “Secretary of State Tom Winslow is an egomaniac, trying single-handedly to win the Vietnam War, untie the Gordian knot in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and now opening a can of worms vis-à-vis Iran!”

“I’ve known Tom Winslow for years,” insists Maggie. “When he got back from Vietnam, I mimeographed the testimony he gave before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He’s a wonderful man.”

Huh?

By now, we’ve attracted an interested group of Washington insiders who are shocked— shocked — that someone is talking back to Maggie Carlisle and giving her a hard time. No one ever does that.

“This treaty,” Maggie explains, “will guarantee that the Iranians do not have a nuclear bomb in the next 15 years. The only alternative is to let them plow ahead and develop nuclear capability. Then we’ll be forced to attack them militarily, leading to war.”

What was I thinking? Of course Maggie defends the Iranian nuclear agreement.  “C’mon,” I complain, “The Iranians are gonna cheat. They are Persians. They’ve had a thousand years to refine their bargaining technique. Nobody ever wins an argument with a Persian.”

“When Tim Thompkin’s presidential campaign was floundering in the year 2000,” confides Maggie, “I told him he needed a Persian rug merchant to sell his message.” She assures me that Iranian atomic physicists will act as whistleblowers and report any chicanery, and that 21 days before an inspection is much too little time for the Iranians to haul away any culpable evidence and get it off-site.

Maggie thinks the inspections and treaty specifics are going to work. I think the Iranians are going to build a bomb clandestinely. Within five years.

“There are all these Iranians who go on the Internet and want a normal life,” Maggie points out.

“Yes,” I counter. “They all live in Tehran, belong to the intellectual elite and constitute only 14% of the population.”

Give her credit, Maggie laughs. “Listen,” she tells me, “Tom Winslow was deeply scarred by watching his boat mates die in Vietnam. His attempts to broker peace in the Middle East and to defuse Iran are specifically aimed at saving lives!”

I’m not a Republican and I’m not a naysayer. “All right,” I agree, “but this is the first time I have heard about Tom Winslow’s trauma over dead comrades. I mean, has he written a memoir about it and I’ve missed it?”

“I’m in touch with Tom Winslow all the time,” she replies. “No, he has not written a memoir. He tried to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians because no one else in the State Department was doing anything about it. Listen, Kevin, we are all friends of Israel! When Israeli peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Senator Greene carried dirt from the grave of John F. Kennedy to the funeral in Jerusalem and sprinkled it on Rabin’s coffin.”

Talk about symbol over substance! “That’s very nice,” I say, “but Rabin is dead and we are facing World War Three. If the Secretary of State is so fired up about bringing peace and saving lives, at least tell his press secretary to portray the man that way. Right now, the public thinks he’s a megalomaniac.”

Smiling wanly, Maggie Carlisle says, “You are the first person to ever call Tom Winslow a megalomaniac.”

“Wait a minute, wait a second,” I protest. “If I call Tom Winslow’s office and say ‘You need to explain what’s motivating the Secretary of State,’ I’ll get written off as a crank. At least if you tell them that there’s a perception gap, they’ll take the comment seriously.” By now, I am virtually pleading.

“I don’t think there’s a problem,” declares Maggie Carlisle.

End of discussion.

Dead silence.

“Uh,” suggests our host Duane Atkins, “perhaps you’d like to start the video program, Kevin?”

The world is a sorrier place because the people in a position to do some good are so full of themselves, good things seldom get done.