Need to Reach Mark Plotkin? Make Sure the Right One's on Speed Dial

As far back as 1976, the commentator known for his puckish and pugilistic interviewing style was spouting off in a Washington Post story. A young political operative, he was skewering former vice president Spiro T. Agnew. Confusion quickly followed. At cocktail parties that weekend in Potomac, the parents of the lawyer -- then a teenager -- got grief for their son's supposed effrontery.

"My parents were so embarrassed," he recalls.

Years later, one of his bosses at the law firm pulled him aside to warn that he'd be thrown off the partner track if he kept being so politically vocal in print.

The commentator and lawyer have bumped into each other on social occasions, not always amicably. But the first time the three Mark Plotkins got together was when they accepted a reporter's recent invitation to lunch.

Plotkin the lawyer, tall and bookishly awkward, arrived wearing a charcoal suit, red power tie and blue shirt. Plotkin the commentator, with his fireplug stance, wore no tie and had a finger that wouldn't stop jabbing at others to make his point.

Plotkin the ethnobotanist, in his black, mandarin-collar shirt and black slacks, brushed-back mane of silver hair and tribal beads that shot from beneath one of his cuffs with every handshake, watched serenely as the other two scrapped.

Mark L. ordered the salmon. Mark J. ordered the lobster. Mark E. ordered the shrimp curry.

The ethnobotanist, 51, hails from New Orleans. He headed east for school -- Harvard, Yale and Tufts -- and settled in Washington. His name is often preceded by adjectives such as "world-renowned" and "intrepid."

The lawyer, 45, grew up in Potomac. He, too, attended Yale and Harvard. He is an expert in banking and security, and on behalf of Fortune 500 clients he has negotiated many national security agreements with the government.

The commentator, 59, came from Chicago to Washington to study American history at George Washington University. He never really left, except to teach in Chicago for six months. He worked on a succession of campaigns for such blue-chip Democrats as Edmund Muskie, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and Edward M. Kennedy.

He also had a memorable, albeit short, stint at Harvard.

"You know, I've always wondered why I was asked to speak at Harvard," the commentator said. He described a childhood spent with a Harvard pennant pinned to his wall and a college career that never reached the Ivy League heights that his family hoped to instill by buying the little Plotkin the collegiate suggestion.