OVER the 13 episodes of “House of Cards”, a new TV drama about Congress, politicians are shown lying, leaking secrets to lobbyists, framing rivals, indulging in fistfights (one in front of wide-eyed children) and snorting cocaine, as well as sleeping with prostitutes, their own staff and a story-hungry reporter. Without giving too much away, one also commits murder. Real-life members of Congress love the series, as do underlings.

The drama inspires chatter at Washington dinner-tables and in the basement canteens of Capitol Hill. After the internet-TV company behind the show, Netflix, released the whole series on the same day, tales of binge-viewing marathons abound.

Some obvious factors help explain the show’s success. For one thing, as a drama it is pretty good, combining sometimes-believable plot twists with always-plausible revelations of human frailty. Kevin Spacey stars as the House majority whip, charged with corralling the Democrats who, in this series, control the House of Representatives as well as the presidency. He conveys a sense of a man made whole by power, yet hollowed out by it too. In a nod to Shakespeare (the show’s creators talk of a debt to “Richard III”), Mr Spacey confides directly in the audience at moments of unusual tension or wickedness.

For another, the very existence of the series flatters Washington, a company town that feels misunderstood by the rest of America. Political toilers are happy to see the hard grind of legislating depicted on screen, from the endless late nights to the subtleties of vote counting. The accuracy of the props—from congressional doorplates to visitors’ badges—is much discussed, and praised. Fans do have some quibbles. In real life, says a Democratic campaign aide, members of Congress are too nannied by staff to stride about hatching plots, one-on-one. In the real Washington, says a Republican staffer, leadership coups take longer to ferment, though the sneaky ambition of journalists depicted in the drama is spot-on, he suggests. Other errors fall under the heading of flattery: the clothes are too elegant for DC, and the ratio of sexual trysts to committee meetings is strikingly high.

A weightier charge has been levelled: that the series overstates the ability of leaders to control today’s Congress. That charge is fair. The new drama is based on a 1990 BBC tale of political skulduggery, also called “House of Cards”, about an urbane-but-psychotic Conservative chief whip, who plots and kills his way to becoming British prime minister. A transatlantic transfer was bound to be hard. The most brutal American whip, Speaker or president has never had the near-tyrannical powers of a leader of the majority party in Britain’s parliamentary system. Present-day American leaders have still less control over their troops.

Tellingly, the closest model for Mr Spacey’s character that Washington can come up with is from the past: Tom DeLay, a Texan Republican and iron-fisted majority whip from 1995 to 2003. He saw that the loyal were rewarded, while the defiant faced primary challenges, funding droughts and other forms of political extinction. Today conservatives forswear the most visible forms of pork, depriving Republican whips of a reward for loyalists. Many outside groups that promote primary challenges not only work independently of congressional leaders, but also despise seniority and other marks of Washington rank.

All that points to the big problem with “House of Cards”, and to an unacknowledged reason why political Washington may love it. It is an exercise in nostalgia: not for the days of Mr DeLay, but for a time when—presiding over a post-war boom and rising prosperity—elected politicians could feel confident that they were in charge of the country’s fate. Today, honest politicians feel something closer to impotence: they are unable to bring the old economy back, and have yet to figure out a sustainable replacement. That leaves much of Washington haunted by a guilty dread of voters, and of the populists who successfully channel the public’s anger, fear and disappointment. In the words of a congressional staffer: “We know how to relate to each other in Washington. We have a harder time relating to voters back home.” That has bipartisan effects. Voter anger fuels the tea-party and anti-government groups that drag the Republican Party to simplistic solutions on the right. On the left, voter expectations tempt Democrats, starting with Barack Obama, to pander and hint that only modest adjustments are needed to entitlement spending.

Politics without the voters

The new “House of Cards” is at heart a palace intrigue, unfolding within the Beltway bubble. Politicians are raised up by decisions taken in the White House or the high-ceilinged rooms of congressional leaders. They are cast down by plots and ill-judged broadcast interviews. Whenever actual voters threaten trouble, they are soothed by the elite with improbable ease. In one episode, revellers in evening dress emerge from a party to placate a picket line with plates of free food. A drug-addicted, blue-collar battler of a congressman, facing constituents livid at the closure of a shipyard, tells them that it was beyond saving but that at least he cares about them, unlike other colleagues. “I’m all you’ve got,” he bellows, promising a federally-funded jobs scheme. Their rage vanishes, replaced by grudging acceptance.

In the real world, federal funding is a fast-dwindling resource, and populist pandering a bigger drag on problem-solving than any individual villainy. Richard III is altogether the wrong model for a modern political tragedy: better to try Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and the Roman mob. For it is not the dagger in the back that haunts today’s ruling classes, but the pitchfork in the front, brandished by voters. By skirting that truth, “House of Cards”, for all its dramatic tension and clever dialogue, amounts to a kind of Washingtonian escapism.

Economist.com/blogs/lexington