Sharper than Ted Stevens

In a sign of how seriously the WaPo takes Newt Gingrich and his young Turk in their attempt to make "government" more like "Silicon Valley" -- in other words, their attempt to make the GOP look relevant in the "21st Century" -- the story appears in the "Styles" section.

Surrounded by 30 guests in a spacious San Francisco apartment, Kralik tells a story that refuses to die. Always gets laughs. Nearly two years ago, Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate and former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, stunned techies when he referred to the Internet as "a series of tubes."

"Yep, I'm sorry to say it, but that's what we're up against in Washington," Kralik says to his audience, a group of Republican and Libertarian high-tech entrepreneurs called Lead21.Then, as he does sometimes, he pumps his fist, raises his voice and gets excited by a project that, for him, requires immediate attention.

He's frustrated that there isn't one site that lists the country's estimated 513,000 elected officials -- not just Washington officials but local city council members, school commissioners, judges, etc. So he's helped create what he calls 513Connect, "the Wikipedia for all elected officials." On the site, not yet available to the public, users edit a list of elected officials across the country. Type in your Zip code. Find your community. Enter the name of your local officials.

Just the kind of deep thinkers to achieve affordable health care for all.

More substantively, this is the latest in a long line of conservative dreams to make government "more like a business." Which, I guess, is better than their other dream of drowning it in the bathtub (an idea retired when New Orleans drowned). But government is not a business -- success is measured differently and employee incentives are of a different order altogether. Furthermore, is Silicon Valley the right model, anyway? Not all is milk and honey out there, and would you really want people working at the DMV to be as arrogant as Google employees?