The Nation: Carterland's Fifth Estate

Jimmy Carter's election victory has set off a second race for power in Washington—this one social, but contested every bit as vigorously as the political campaign that brought the Georgians to power. The struggle, waged chiefly in and around a handful of Georgetown drawing rooms, is over who will become the new doyennes of capital society. The contest has some importance as well as entertainment value in Washington, a company town in which hostesses constitute a sort of fifth estate; they bring together the men (and women) of power to get to know...

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