He bursts in and out of parties, at once manic and serene, chronically toting gifts, cards and flower arrangements that seem to consume much of an annual income that is believed to exceed $250,000. Allen — who is childless and owns no cars or real estate — perpetually picks up meal and beverage tabs for his friend-sources (the dominant hybrid around Mikey). He kisses women’s hands and thanks you so much for coming, even though the party is never at his home, which not even his closest friends have seen. It is as if Mikey is the host of one big party, and by showing up anywhere in Washington, you have served the Playbook community and are deserving of the impresario’s thanks (or “Hat Tip” in Playbookese).

Allen also has a tendency to suddenly vanish. But then he will pop up on a TV screen a few minutes later. Or you then learn via e-mail that he is racing through O’Hare or via Playbook that he took an excursion to the circus (with “Owen and Grace Gallo, ages 3 and 4, who especially liked: doggies on a slide”) or Maine (“where an eagle might grab one of your fish while you’re focused on the grill”).

Or that it’s Mark Paustenbach’s birthday, whoever he is.

Allen was the first reporter hired by Politico’s founding editors, John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, when they left The Washington Post to start the Web site and newspaper in 2006. He is considered a Politico “founding father,” in the words of Harris, who, like VandeHei, tends to place great weight and mission onto the organization. Another construct (originating outside Politico) is that Harris and VandeHei are God and Jesus — it’s unclear who is who — and that Allen is the Holy Ghost. When I mentioned this to Allen recently, he was adamant that it is meant to be facetious and that no one at Politico really believes that. Allen, an observant Christian, said the line could be misconstrued. But “Holy Ghost” does seem a particularly apt description of Allen’s ubiquity and inscrutability. “I get that what I do is a little elusive, ambiguous,” Allen told me. “I try to be a force for good. And I try to be everywhere.”

I met Allen on a hot April night at the basement bar of the Hay-Adams hotel, across from the White House. I headed downstairs, and there he was, startling me in a back stairwell, reading his BlackBerry an inch from his wire-rim glasses. As we entered the bar, Allen greeted two Democratic operatives at a corner table and noted that his friend-source Kevin Madden, a Republican consultant, was at that moment on CNN.

Allen’s public bearing combines the rumpledness of an old-school print reporter with the sheen of a new-school “cross-platform brand” who has become accustomed to performing on camera. Every time Allen starts to speak — in person or on air — his eyes bulge for a split second, as if he has just seen a light go on. His mannerisms resemble an almost childlike mimicry of a politician — the incessant thanking, deference, greetings, teeth-clenched smiles and ability to project belief in the purity of his own voice and motivations. He speaks in quick and certain cadences, on message, in sound bites, karate-chopping the table for emphasis. (His work is “joyful, exciting,” he says. It is a “privilege” to work at Politico with young reporters. “I love this company. I love what I’m doing.” And all that.) Over several discussions, Allen repeated full paragraphs almost to the word.

“The people in this community, they all want to read the same 10 stories,” he said, table-chopping in the Hay-Adams. “And to find all of those, you have to read 1,000 stories. And we do that for you.”

As a practical matter, here is how Allen’s 10 stories influence the influentials. Cable bookers, reporters and editors read Playbook obsessively, and it’s easy to pinpoint exactly how an item can spark copycat coverage that can drive a story. Items become segment pieces on “Morning Joe,” the MSNBC program, where there are 10 Politico Playbook segments each week, more than half of them featuring Allen. This incites other cable hits, many featuring Politico reporters, who collectively appear on television about 125 times a week. There are subsequent links to Politico stories on The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post and other Web aggregators that newspaper assigning editors and network news producers check regularly. “Washington narratives and impressions are no longer shaped by the grand pronouncements of big news organizations,” said Allen, a former reporter for three of them — The Washington Post, The New York Times and Time magazine. “The smartest people in politics give us the kindling, and we light the fire.”