It gets hot in Washington. Real hot. On Aug. 6, 1918, the temperature hit 106 degrees.

Washingtonians, including top government officials, have been coping with this heat since the earliest days of our Republic. In the days before air conditioning, there wasn't much to do about it other than get out of town. The congressional summer recess dates to 1791. As of 1970, it's a statutory requirement.

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The embarrassing revelations from Anthony Fauci's diary make me wonder if anyone ever gave him the warning I received when I served in George W. Bush's administration: Be careful what you write down. As Dr. Fauci is learning, anything written down while working for government can become a government record.

Diaries have been part of the landscape since the earliest days of our republic. George Washington kept one, filling it during his early morning "quiet time," when he also wrote letters and handled paperwork. From John Quincy Adams's diary we know that he regularly woke early and swam naked in the Potomac, occasionally with his sons or his valet.

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On a recent tour of the U.S. Capitol building—my first since working there nearly 30 years ago—I was reminded of just how beautiful and magisterial it is. Its construction and design, however, were hotly contested things, as I learned from Brian Jay Jones's "The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building."

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There's a new trend in American politics: Candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, some of whom have at least expressed affinity for communism, are winning Democratic congressional primaries.

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America's 250th birthday is now nearly upon us. The semi-quincentennial, whatever else one might say about it, has been a decidedly muted affair compared with the last big national anniversary, 50 years ago. The bicentennial was a major event, and not just on July 4, 1976, but for a long period leading up to it. It was such a big deal, in fact, that it wound up drawing into its orbit no less than four American presidents or future presidents.

Gerald Ford occupied the White House in 1976, and he presided over a series of patriotic events that many boomers and Gen Xers still view today with nostalgia. But his experience is only part of the bicentennial story.

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