My piece on the Senate in this week's issue is the second of two Washington stories that I did while filling in for Ryan Lizza. At the start of this gig, someone high up in the Obama Administration gave me some advice: "Cover Washington as if it's a foreign capital. Cover it like Baghdad." It was an excellent idea, but not so easy to follow, since most journalists and consumers of journalism assume that they already know Washington, more or less, since they read and hear so much about it...