In the Blue Room on Jan. 23, with President George W. Bush as host, several dozen of Greenspan's closest friends gathered to toast him before his retirement as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

But it was the list of guests, old friends whom Greenspan had specifically asked the White House to invite, that highlighted his stature as both an icon and an iconoclast.

At one table was Vice President Dick Cheney, the hard-nosed combatant of the Bush White House, whose friendship with Greenspan began 30 years ago during Gerald Ford's presidency.

Just a few tables away was Robert Rubin, a Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and a man so disliked in the Bush White House that many officials use his name as a put-down - "Rubinomics."

The guest list also included Vernon Jordan, the millionaire lawyer and ubiquitous adviser to Democratic leaders, and Peter Peterson, a Republican who has infuriated the White House by lambasting Bush's budget deficits.

The list underscores how Greenspan, despite being a lifelong Republican, had a knack for building close friendships across the political spectrum and, almost unheard of in today's bitterly divided capital, made few enemies in his 18-year tenure.

Calling Alan Greenspan a political hack is a serious and, evidently, unforgivable offense. It makes everyone uncomfortable and upsets his wife. This wreaks havoc on the seating arrangements at numerous cocktail frankfurter gatherings. Of course, Andrea Mitchell is capable of creating her own angst:

Like a great many prominent journalists -- certainly in Washington, but no less so in other centers of power, wealth and celebrity -- Andrea Mitchell of NBC News wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, she wants to be the prototypical, hard-nosed, gumshoe reporter whose specialty is " 'talking back' to presidents and dictators," but on the other, she wants to be part of the parade, on first-name terms with the powerful, wealthy and famous, invited to their dinner parties and salons, courted and cosseted by them. Thus at the end of this memoir she describes prowling "the VIP section" at the 2005 inauguration of President Bush, which she attended with her husband, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve:

"In a prominent seat, next to the CIA director, was Alan. . . . As his wife, I could have sat with him among the official guests instead of covering the event as a reporter. But for me, this was a dream assignment: we had a live broadcast, hundreds of prominent politicians with no way out, and no one stopping me from snagging interviews. . . . Knowing me as he does, Alan understood that it wasn't even a close call. But looking across the way at him, I was struck by how different our roles were on days such as this: he was inside, looking out, while I was outside, looking in."...

..."I enjoyed being a fly on the wall at a private dinner in the White House; at the same time, I felt that the 'designated shouter' from the press corps was a little out-of-place upstairs, sitting with officials whom I covered. I knew I could neither ask questions, nor quote anything that was said to me. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling that I might be gaining unusual access, but losing some independence."

Mitchell and Broder are a special breed, and they stick together. Consider their reaction to Bill Clinton receiving a blow job.

"He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place."...

...NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell adds a touch of neighborly concern. "We all know people who have been terribly damaged personally by this," she says. "Young White House aides who have been saddled by legal bills, longtime Clinton friends. . . . There is a small-town quality to the grief that is being felt, an overwhelming sadness at the waste of the nation's time and attention, at the opportunities lost."

Clearly, Clinton's dalliance was more than enough to put the A-List off their martinis and...in a way that, say, blundering into Iraq cannot compete.

Who is Harry Reid to insert his 'displaced aggressiveness...[on] the part of the onetime amateur boxer' into this scene and call someone a hack? There can be no revenge too sweet. And Broder delivers.

Never mind that Broder misrepresents what Harry Reid said, nor that his column uses the comments of Senator Chuck Schumer as if they were the comments of Reid. What's important is to protect the hive. And what a hive it is. Here's a good list, from Katherine Graham's last dinner party (to celebrate George W. Bush's 2001 inauguration).

The guest list included Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Steve Case, Alan Greenspan, Colin Powell, Commerce Secretary Don Evans, Henry Kissinger, Vernon Jordan, and Ethel Kennedy. There were a few media types: Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Andrea Mitchell, Al Hunt and Judy Woodruff, Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, Jim and Kate Lehrer, George Will, Howell Raines, Margaret Carlson, and the top brass from The Washington Post - all invited to welcome Dubya to the nation's capital.

If you call any of these people 'hacks', or 'losers', you can expect a serious backlash. You may even be compared to Alberto Gonzales.

Also Spach Broderustra.