I am not familiar with DC old money or their habits, but I do know that smart senators do not move their families to the District anymore (rarely since Santorum and surely never since Robert’s easy chair in Kansas).

I also know that if Fox News invites a Senator to appear as a talking head, he can’t just send his press secretary in his place; the network will decline and find a Senator who will come in person.

And, let’s be honest, newly elected Republican Senator from North Carolina is not, in 2020 (the year this book was published), going to take the lead on expanding the Violence Against Women Act to include ‘psychological coercion.’

But it was a reminder of the so-called cave dwellers, nickname for the very rich, socialite families who are mostly not directly tied to politics, but too old money and who hobnob with cable tv personalities, establishment figures in the Cabinet, and a sprinkling of foreign diplomats and their families. It is no longer a case where much is decided in their drawing rooms, as in a Gore Vidal novel, but I am at least aware they still exist. The depiction of the adolescents, whose antics took up much of the novel, were rather depictions from an R rated Gossip Girl, mixed with an early Jay McInery novel. And the ending was a reminder how the invulnerable world of the one percent both has, but mostly has not changed.