The Most Powerful Journalist in D.C.

Politico journalist Mike Allen is, in the words of White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, “the most powerful journalist in Washington.” Who is Allen? He is the son of “an icon of the far right in the 1960s and 1970s”—his father, Gary, wrote speeches for George Wallace. But the most interesting parts of The New York Times Magazine profile of Allen are about Politico: Mark Leibovich writes, “Politico today remains a White House shorthand for everything the administration claims to dislike about Washington—Beltway myopia, politics as daily sport. Yet most of the president’s top aides are as steeped in this culture as anyone else—and work hard to manipulate it. ‘What’s notable about this administration is how ostentatiously its people proclaim to be uninterested in things they are plainly interested in,’ Harris, Politico’s editor in chief, told me in an email message.”