On Tuesday night, I had a bit of free time in between a whiskey tasting at Esther Coopersmith’s Kalorama mansion, a book party at Cafe Milano, and a source meeting at Off The Record, the subterranean hangout at The Hay-Adams, so I decided to pop by the bar at The Capital Grille, the Republican haunt on Pennsylvania Avenue. I bumped into Ted Cruz, who told me he was perfectly happy staying in the Senate, despite being floated as a possible Attorney General in a putative Trump II administration. Cruz, like several of his colleagues, was attending a party for Richard Shelby, the former Alabama senator. But all eyes in the room were on Shelby’s former protégé and successor, Katie Britt. 

Britt, a national fixation ever since her much-derided rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, was radiant, and we chatted briefly, until a few fans at the bar interrupted to compliment her for being caricatured on Saturday Night Live by one of the most beautiful women in the world, Scarlett Johansson. She laughed it off, and has been taking it in stride, recently joking that her micro-celebrity has its benefits: the Capitol Hill Police now wave her through security.