Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, mailing address for the White House, is only 1.2 miles long and once cut through a swamp. Some would say it still does —- a suffocating thicket of bureacracy, lobbying and political gridlock.

How did it get that way? Can it be fixed? In their new book "Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power" (Random House, $26), journalists John Harwood (New York Times) and Gerald S. Seib (Wall Street Journal) explain Washington's current state by profiling more than two dozen movers and shakers tethered, literally or figuratively, to "The Avenue" —- "the most celebrated mile of pavement in America."

Harwood (above), a Times political writer and CNBC correspondent, was in Atlanta recently and answered a few questions in a quiet corner on rival turf (at CNN Center):

Q: Another book about Washington gridlock. What makes this different and why did you want to write it?

A: I grew up in Washington [the son of a Washington Post reporter]. I knew that it had changed from the way it was when I was a kid. I went to school in suburban Washington with the sons and daughters of members of Congress, both parties. That doesn't really happen anymore, because they [members of Congress] don't live in D.C. [anymore], which is one of the changes that we talk about. So it was a quest for me to try to understand why it's different, how it got that way, and how it might change.

Q: You look at 27 or 28 power brokers in the book. How did you choose the ones you did?

A: We sort of chose people until we felt like we had enough to work with. Some of these were people we had covered for years, who we thought were interesting and would be reflective and candid in conversation. People like Rahm Emanuel [D-Ill.], Karl Rove, Tom Cole [R-Okla.], Chris Van Hollen [D-Md.].

Others were people who ... knew something that we needed to know: [cable TV lobbyist] Kyle McSlarrow. Bernadette Budde [of the Business Industry Political Action Committee], Andy Stern [a labor union leader]. We were trying to get a range of people in elected office, out of elected office, White House, Congress, lobbyists, activists, campaign hacks —- because they all play a different role in creating this kind of mess that is now Washington.

Q: Some people in the book could be perceived as working toward a solution. Did you want to present a solution to gridlock, or just explain it?

A: One of the challenges of this is, do you write about the dominant part [of Washington] that is more familiar, or the parts of the margin that might be changing and might be different? The dominant reality is still partisan warfare and gridlock. But there's some glimmers of hope that that might change. And even people who are part of the system [are] frustrated that it's not delivering results.

Q: For instance?

A: Everybody knows that we've been talking for decades about health care. Bill Clinton got elected to do something about universal health care [and] couldn't even get a vote from a Congress controlled by his own party. We've talked for a long time about entitlement reform; President Bush got elected in 2004, narrowly, on a promise to reform the Social Security system. [He] had a Republican Congress [and] could not even get a vote out of Congress. People who are participants in that system realize it's a bit of a losing game right now. If Karl Rove had achieved his goal of realigning the whole country in a way that sort of gave Republicans the large stack and the Democrats the short stack, then you can at least implement some things. They might be Republican solutions, but the public would know where they come from, and they could make a judgment. But now we've got it so evenly split that if ... you have 41 votes in the Senate, you can block basically anything you want to. So there's frustration with that.

One of the chapters I enjoyed working on the most was about the labor leader Andy Stern, a really innovative, brilliant guy who's trying to change the way labor operates, and Bernadette Budde, the business lobbyist/strategist. Both [are] saying there's no way that either side can get anything done, so we've got to talk and try to figure out a different way of doing business. Stern is lamenting that this skill, this talent for actually negotiating a deal [between Democrats and Republicans] seems to be absent from politics, because the parties have gotten so much farther apart.

Q: You write that Pennsylvania Avenue is 1.2 miles long; I didn't realize it was so short.

A: I didn't, either. When I was just sort of getting my mind around the idea of the book, our agent, who has been through this process many times, liked the idea of a physical hook. So we chose Pennsylvania Avenue, and I went to walk it a few times. You can do it in half an hour.

Q: Do you have a favorite part?

A: My favorite part is the Capitol. The White House is cool, but it's not open. You go to the press room. You may get escorted into a briefing with a top White House aide, or even, on a very rare occasion, the president. But the Capitol is the people's house, and you could talk to anybody. Everybody's walking the same hallways. It is total democracy on display.

Q: What do you think has to be done to fix gridlock?

A: I don't think it's an accident that we have different kinds of Democratic and Republican nominees. The establishment Democrat, Clinton, lost. And all of the guys trying to be the establishment Republican lost to the maverick Republican, McCain. Each party has nominated someone who has explicitly embraced the idea of crossing divides.

Now, an objection to that which the Republicans offer is, "Yeah, but he [Obama] is really a liberal Democrat and that's his program." That's mostly true. However, you cannot ignore the meaning of what the guy has embraced as his overall theme. So I think he wouldn't necessarily govern as a one-party leader.

John McCain is somebody who has quite openly defied his party time and time again. He voted against Bush's tax cuts. He pushed through campaign reform; conservatives hated it. He's for a cap on carbon emissions. That makes him different. I think both of these guys ... are going to draw on different sources of support, both financially and in votes, than Kerry and Bush did. And the more you scramble the bases underneath the politicians, the more chance there is for new arrangements in Washington.

—- Tom Sabulis is editor of the Arts & Books section.