Then the rules of the jungle started changing. In the past few decades the crusade to tighten lobbying gift restrictions shut down titillating three-martini caviar dinners and boats-for-votes St. Barth’s lobster junkets designed to buy Congresspeople’s and staffers’ favor. Ridding the animal kingdom of fatcat lobbyists who survive not on the strength of their cause but the size of their expense account is a generally accepted good thing, and the rules have mostly forced that species into extinction.

But rules have become so tight sometimes they throw the burrata out with the whey.  Trace the steady breakdown in bipartisanship alongside the breakdown of substantial Capitol Hill food gatherings on the same graph and it’s hard to claim coincidence—those who work on