A Lean & Hungry Look

Ripped from the pages of The New York Times.

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Representative James Lankford, a freshman Republican, is learning the ways of Washington, and the way to the elevator.

Don't even try to convince us this guy is anything but deeply disturbed. Look. At. Him.

A former Christian camp director who, before he was elected, had last been to the nation’s capital in high school, Mr. Lankford is as much a symbol of his class as a member of it: a first-time politician who plans to send his family back home, sleep on his office couch and, he says, spurn special interests in the name of those who put him here.

“My family’s theory is that the best way not to become Washington is to not live in Washington,” he said.

The possessed do blend in better back in OK.

This was never supposed to really happen. “In 2008, I had a real sense of calling,” said Mr. Lankford, who later that year resigned from his job to campaign full time. “We described it as an unsettling. It was almost like God was telling me, ‘Get ready. Get ready.’ ”

After a prayer journey, he said, he decided, in consultation with his wife, Cindy, to run for the seat that opened in the Fifth Congressional District in Oklahoma when Representative Mary Fallin decided to seek the governorship.

Perhaps the demon who possesses him has eaten most of his body fat.