Raising Political Spirits

Now the group eats Trader Joe's peach salsa and memorizes four pages of guidelines for a State of the Union drinking game. It's the same game that comes up as the first Google hit when "State of the Union 2008" is typed into the search engine. Rules: drinking at the buzzwords "terror," "foreclosure" and "Pakistan"; drinking at Bushisms; drinking when current presidential candidates are shown; drinking.

"Do you remember in 2006, when Laura sat next to the woman in the head scarf?" snickers Lizzie Tomber, 25. "It was very touching."

This is a crowd on a first-name basis with its politicians, offering dishy assertions of a vaguely stalking and sometimes illusory nature:

Condi has a dress very similar to one Michelle Obama wears. It's the pink suit? Very similar!

I heard Cheney can barely walk. He has a heart surgeon with him at all times!

Did he just say Hispanish? Bushism! Everybody drink!

Nancy SO has something stuck in her teeth!

Barbara Mikulski is my home state senator! Driiiiiiink!

Pakistaaaan!

Driiiiiiiiiiiiink!

One attendee is Ben Kreider, 24, who moved to the city four months ago for a graduate program in German studies at Georgetown. He knows Allyson from college in Maine; this is the first politics 'n' partying event he's been to.

"It was just a little bit . . . weird," he says, to see the invitation in his inbox. He'd heard the rumors that gatherings like this existed. "But I was a little surprised to find myself at one."