Inside the Beltway

Image is everything

Average amount the Bush administration has spent per year on contracts with public-relations firms: $62.5 million

Average amount spent during the entire second term of the Clinton administration: $32 million

—Harper’s Index, May 2005

Wishing for error

“The following quotation was attributed to you in a recent report,” Rep. Christopher Cox, California Republican, writes in a most unusual letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, delivered in recent days to the Russian Embassy in Washington.

The quote attributed to Mr. Putin: “First and foremost, it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

“As much as we treasure our free press in the United States,” Mr. Cox reminds the Russian president, “we understand that reporters, just like the rest of us, sometimes make mistakes. It is my fervent hope that you have been misquoted.”

The congressman instead suggested to Mr. Putin that the greatest catastrophe of the last century in Russia “was the Soviet Union itself.”

“Looking back on the suffering endured by the Russian people at the hands of the Soviet regime, it is hard for me to believe that something significant has not been lost in translation.”

Mayoral pad?

Washington Mayor Anthony A. Williams has revealed which building he thinks would make a “wonderful” mayoral residence: the historic, yet run-down Old Naval Hospital, which stands within sight of the U.S. Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast.

This interesting nugget comes to us via the current issue of the Hill Rag, the lively monthly newsmagazine that circulates on Capitol Hill. The Rag examined the recent controversy surrounding Mr. Williams’ decision not to make a decision about how to save the once-handsome Civil War-era edifice.

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