Anthony Lake served as one of Barack Obama’s principal counselors on foreign affairs during the campaign and exchanged e-mail messages with him regularly. But now that Obama is president, Lake no longer has his e-mail address.
“No,” he said when asked whether he had it. “Did. Don’t.”
Neither does Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, nor Steny Hoyer, the majority leader, but they do not use e-mail much anyway.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, is a BlackBerry fiend, but he does not have Obama’s address. Nor do many members of the cabinet, including Robert Gates, the defense secretary.
Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. has it, along with his own new super-secret BlackBerry and e-mail address. So do Obama’s chief of staff, his top advisers and some of his oldest friends from Chicago.
Senator Richard Durbin, a fellow Illinois Democrat, probably has it, but he refuses to say. “We’re not going to discuss it,” said a spokesman, Joe Shoemaker. Asked why, he said, “That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
It is now the ultimate status symbol in a town obsessed by status. Obama was spotted last week trying out his new BlackBerry — or actually a more sophisticated, encrypted variation — and aides say that he uses a computer in the study next to the Oval Office but that he has agreed to limit the number of people with whom he would exchange e-mail. In the process, he created a new measure for Washington to judge who really has the ear, or the thumb, of the president.
For decades, the capital scoured state dinner invitation lists and Camp David visitor logs for clues to who was in and who was out.
Former President Bill Clinton established a new class of insider with his Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers, although those usually came with an implicit price tag as…