HOW TO SURVIVE IN WASHINGTON:

HOW TO SURVIVE IN WASHINGTON:

8. Don't believe your own spin.
"I was guilty of that," said Mr. Davis, the Clinton defender. Mr. Davis said he first spun out the argument that there was nothing wrong with political donors attending coffees at the Clinton White House because no money was actually collected there. "I tried to believe it, because I was technically correct," Mr. Davis said. "But people were expected to give money before or after the event."

9. Don't forget who your friends are.
"The biggest mistake that people make is that they base their friendships on who is in power and who is not," Ms. Quinn said. "This is short-sighted, because very few people in Washington stay in power for a length of time. In the same vein, people will count people out once they lose power. This is always a huge mistake, because people are never out unless they're in the ground with a stake in the heart."

10. Don't forget where you came from, and that integrity matters.
"People think the values here will be different than the ones they left at home, and they're not," said Robert S. Strauss, a Washington sage who is the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime Bush family friend. "It's the same damn thing that you have in Dallas or Los Angeles or Houston. People value loyalty here as much or more as they do anywhere else."

If all else fails, Mr. Fielding has the surefire way to avoid social, political and legal ruin in Washington.
"Move to Kansas," he said.