Posted on 01/31/2006 2:32:11 PM PST by WestTexasWend
The Prime Minister's son Euan began work as an intern on Capitol Hill yesterday, with old hands predicting quiet days and wild nights for the 22-year-old.
The Bristol University graduate turned up for his first day at the domed complex which is home to both America's houses of Congress and which will be his office for the next six months.
He will work in the house rules committee, one of the most influential organisations on the Hill, run by the up-and-coming Republican congressman David Drier for three months.
After that he will spend another three with the Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman.
With Congress enveloped by a growing corruption scandal, Mr Drier has been asked by Republican leaders to develop plans to clean up Congress. But while the committee's offices will be alive with intrigue, Mr Blair is unlikely to have a front row seat as the historic spectacle unfolds.
Instead, he will probably be wandering the congressional corridors performing mundane chores.
Few interns do much more than "paperclip ordering" and are rarely offered much responsibility, said Hugo Gurdon, the editor of the congressional daily, The Hill.
And while Mr Blair may be the son of a much admired foreign leader, that is unlikely to do him many favours in working hours.
Even so, the experience will not be all tedium for Mr Blair and there will be substantial perks. Firstly, he is unknown in America. The city's haughty media have shown no interest and ignored his arrival on Saturday.
That anonymity will probably extend to Washington's police forces. So if he collapses in a drunken stupor, as he did aged 16 in London, he might escape with little more than a hangover. "How old is he? That's really the key question," a congressional staffer asked.
"If he's 21, he can drink, which means he can use all the House (of Representatives) watering holes. I assume that, like any good Englishman, he likes to tilt a glass?"
Mr Blair may be largely invisible to the police and the press. But Washington's old hands predict that he will be very visible indeed to the city's army of perky female interns, described by one (non-congressional) female intern as "sexually aggressive".
Young and with an English accent, he is sure to attract attention. "He just needs to project that accent a bit and they'll fall like flies," said a congressional staffer.
Despite the unmasking of Monica Lewinsky's relationship with President Bill Clinton and a series of congressional sex scandals, attitudes have been slow to change on the Hill.
Mr Gurdon acknowledged that Euan Blair was likely to witness sexually predatory behaviour by men but was unlikely to become a victim himself. "Most of the guys working there are earnest and pleasingly nerdish," he said.
Those Brits. Very droll humor. Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge.
Advice to Euan: stay away from Barney Frank.
Umm. Frank is at least "out." Drier's still reorganizing his closet. (You did know that, right?)
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