While A Virus Spreads, DC Washes Its Hands

“I’m sure there are many people in Washington who have envisaged their capital destroyed by a nuclear missile, a fate for which it seems almost expressly designed,” wrote the British travel writer Jan Morris in 1975, wandering the city’s post-Watergate cocktail set, “but I suspect there are few politicians who see their ambitions, their successes, and their professional sorrows merely as transient contributions to…