Reading the news today, I’m coming to the conclusion that for scandalous news-cycle items, P=NP; that all scandal/intrigue/graft stories are the same story, and merely adapt to suit their new circumstances. Look at this story about the shenanigans over what one of the tunnels in Boston’s Big Dig will be called: the old guard wants it named after Tip O’Neill, while the new guard wants to call it the “Liberty” tunnel (presumably because there aren’t enough New England monuments with “Liberty” in their names).
In my next novel, set in the 2020s, the Big Dig is still going, a kind of permanent revolution in earthworks, a neverending state of traffic emergency. Given that its future is in some ways being hitched to the Middle Eastern conflict — which has been going since Old Testament times — this scenario is growing ever-more-plausible.