America: The mid-term elections have reversed everything in Washington, putting an unaccustomed spring in the step of Democrats and offering Republicans an unwelcome opportunity to show humility.
At restaurants like The Palm, Charlie Palmer's Steak House and the Capital Grille, tables of Democrats talk and laugh more loudly while Republicans comfort one another in hushed tones.
After 12 years in the political darkness, Democrats are preparing to take control of powerful House and Senate committees and to fill thousands of new staff vacancies with kindred spirits. Republican staffers are touching up their CVs and smartening themselves up for job interviews in the hope of a soft landing after last week's defeat.
Nowhere is the change more apparent than on K Street, a broad esplanade running through downtown Washington that is home to many of the city's lobbyists. For the first time since the early 1990s, Democratic firms are in demand as Big Oil, Big Pharma and others manoeuvre to limit the damage of new legislative initiatives from an unsympathetic Congress.
Even before the election, one Democratic Senate staffer told me that he was fielding offers of three times his current salary to become a lobbyist. Since last week, the phone calls have multiplied, along with the salaries being offered.
One of the biggest election casualties was the K Street Project, a Republican strategy to harness the fundraising and advocacy power of lobbyists to promote the party's agenda. By the late 1990s former majority leader Tom DeLay was telling lobbyists that they could not expect access to senior Republicans unless they employed Republicans rather than Democrats.
Lobbyists and their clients have long been major donors to both parties but DeLay made clear that it was not enough to give to Republicans; lobbyists must cut their contributions to Democrats. In recent years, the K Street Project went further, demanding that lobbyists persuade their clients to promote the Republican legislative agenda in return for favours.
The project's most shameless figure, Jack Abramoff, went to jail this week for corrupting politicians and misusing clients' funds, notably money from Native American tribes. Many other lobbyists who owe their success to DeLay remain on K Street, however, and some vengeful Democrats are determined to root them out.
Some lobbyists welcome the changing of the guard, even looking forward to new ethics rules that are likely to forbid congressional staff from accepting any gifts or meals from lobbyists or firms that employ them.
As things stand, staffers are not supposed to accept anything worth more than $50 but lobbyists' tales of staffers' greed are legion, including midnight calls to pick up a bar bill and casual demands to take care of friends' restaurant bills.
One reason staffers have become so powerful is that congressmen and senators spend so little time in Washington, usually sitting only from Tuesday to Thursday. (As the joke goes - what do congressmen say to each other on Wednesday? "Have a nice weekend.") With powerful staffers controlling access to legislators during the day, the best chance lobbyists have for access is at the fundraisers that take up an increasing share of every politician's time. Usually held at the homes of wealthy party supporters, these events usually cost between $500 and $1,000 to attend, although some offer a VIP enclosure with guaranteed face time with the star attraction for up to $10,000 per person.
As the legislative process has become more complicated, lobbyists have become more sophisticated, employing policy experts as well as well-connected, likeable party stalwarts. A disproportionate number on K Street are Irish-Americans, a fact one lobbyist put down to the innate sociability of the Irish and the tightness of the Irish-American network.
A good lobbyist must have experience and contacts on Capitol Hill but K Street also demands certain personality traits - including good manners, an easy smile and a gift for plausible flattery. For the moment, however, and for the first time in more than a decade, the best qualification in this industry turned upside down is to be a Democrat.
