Rob Bluey and John Aravosis live and breathe politics—but they blog about it from opposite sides of the aisle. Aravosis blogs at Americablog.com, a liberal blog he started more than four years ago. The site began as a place to vent about presidential politics. “George Bush simply ticked me off one too many times,” he says. Now Aravosis manages a small staff of writers who cover everything from international politics and financial news to healthcare and the media. During election season, he logs 15 hours a day on his site.

Bluey, a conservative, is director of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation and editor-in-chief of Heritage.org and its blog, the Foundry. The 29-year-old from Utica, New York, is also a regular contributor to the right-leaning blog RedState, and—though we don’t know where he finds the time—he keeps a personal blog at RobertBluey.com. “It’s a great place to bolster my ego and pretend to be a top-notch pundit,” he says.

We managed to pin down these two busy politicos for an election-style showdown. Will Virginia go red or blue? Will McCain best Obama? Will the District ever win voting rights? Read on to find our their predictions.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of dispatches that Washingtonian.com will be publishing in the months leading up to the inauguration. We’ll provide an insider’s look at how high-profile inaugural events come together—from food and decorations to entertainment and security. Our reporting will be focused on the inaugural activities at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.

Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Photo courtesy of the hotel

The inaugural wheels are in motion at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in DC’s Woodley Park—and the new president hasn’t even been elected yet. Regardless of who is sworn in on January 20, the hotel is busy preparing for three days of jam-packed partying to usher in the 44th president of the United States.

Inaugural balls have been part of the presidential rite of passage since George Washington. He danced two cotillions and a minuet at the first ball in New York City on May 7, 1789. James Madison celebrated the first official inaugural gala in Washington in 1809. John Quincy Adams, who attended, wasn’t impressed. “The crowd was excessive, the heat oppressive, and the entertainment bad,” he said.

Do your coworkers say you look positively Palin? We want to see! We’re collecting photos of Washingtonians who look like senators Obama, McCain, and Biden, and governor Palin for an online slide show.

Send your best presidential snapshots to eleaman@washingtonian.com. Try to make sure your images are at least five by seven inches and 72 dpi. Let us know the name of the look-alike and which candidate he or she most resembles. Bonus points if the person dresses the part.

We’ll update the slide show through Election Day—November 4—so check back often!

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The 2008 presidential campaign has been one for the ages when it comes to parody. From spot-on impersonations of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama to hundreds of viral Web videos mocking the candidates, this race might be remembered more for the spoofs than for the real thing.

People such as Tina Fey may be grabbing all the headlines for their spoofs, but bubbling under the surface of the Web is a growing trend of folks using a microblogging service called Twitter to effectively parody the candidates. Twitter—which allows you to send out messages of 140 characters or fewer to a group of friends via the Web or cell phones—is used most often by people to let friends know what they’re up to or for organizing purposes.

But a few people in the Washington area have commandeered the accounts FakeJohnMcCain, FakeSarahPalin, and FakeJoeBiden to skewer and impersonate the candidates—and have gained thousands of readers in the process. (There is a FakeBarackObama, but the account hasn’t been updated since July.)

We sat down—er, or chatted over e-mail—with the people behind these accounts. (Though the Twitterers all wished to retain their anonymity, we can tell you they all live and work in DC, either for progressive political organizations or public-relations firms. Two people are behind FakeSarahPalin, so we refer to them as FakeSarahPalin1 and FakeSarahPalin2.) They talked about everything from why Twitter works so well for parody to what they’ll do with their accounts when the election is over.

Whether Barack Obama or John McCain wins on November 4, transition planning for both sides is well under way. There are some 3,000 presidentially appointed positions. Amassing all the résumés is a big job, which is why it starts before there’s a winner. Somewhere filed away are the plans for the Al Gore and John Kerry White Houses.

Jockeying for positions is also well under way. Kerry’s said to be angling for secretary of State under Obama, a move that on the diplomatic circuit might make potential vice president Joe Biden seem the more concise speaker.

Susan Rice, one of Obama’s top foreign-policy advisers and considered a likely secretary of State, is said to be more interested in becoming national-security adviser—bad news for James Steinberg, the former Bill Clinton deputy national-security adviser and current head of the LBJ School at the University of Texas. Steinberg’s on any Obama NSA short-list, and the only class he’s teaching this fall wraps up just before the election.

In Susan Rice’s case, foreign-policy officials are worried about continuing a trend in which the President appoints a friend to the top NSC position. It didn’t work well for either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush—and raises talk of bad karma around another national-security adviser named Rice.

Watch more Washingtonian.com videos, or check out our photo galleries.

Don’t call McCain’s staff “DC insiders”—they’re in Arlington.

When the worker bees in John McCain’s Crystal City presidential campaign headquarters need coffee, they take the elevator to Dickey’s Frozen Custard.

There’s a Starbucks nearby, but campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds says the path to Dickey’s is so well trodden that the shop’s employees recognize the campaign workers and know their favorite drinks.

For lunch, campaign staffers head to the SoHo Deli, which, like Dickey’s, is on the ground floor of the campaign’s offices at 1235 South Clark Street.

When aides need to unwind from the campaign’s long days and late nights, they head to the Crystal City Sports Pub a full ten blocks away.

While Barack Obama’s campaign aides can drink and dine along Chicago’s chic Michigan Avenue, McCain aides inhabit one of the look-alike office complexes that make Crystal City a place many Washingtonians speed past on the way to the airport.