One of the things that most irritates outsiders about Washington is that bureaucrats and other officials, people who are supposed to be working for us, act as if they were royalty.

Hillary Clinton's closest aide and shadow Huma Abedin is the latest to be caught behaving with unbecoming rudeness (to put it mildly!).

A story by investigative reporter Ronald Kessler for the Daily Mail blows the whistle on this alleged undemocratic nastiness:

According to Secret Service agents interviewed for my book The First Family Detail, Abedin can be just as rude and nasty as Hillary. A former agent recalls helping Abedin when she got lost driving Chelsea to the February 2008 Democrat presidential debate in Los Angeles.

'She was belligerent and angry about being late for the event,' the former agent says. 'No appreciation for any of it, not a thank-you or anything. That was common for her people to be rude.'

At another event in Los Angeles, a female agent challenged Abedin because she was not wearing a pin that identifies cleared aides to Secret Service agents. The agent had no idea who she was.

'You don't have the proper identification to go beyond this point,' the agent told her.

'Huma basically tried to throw her weight around,' a former agent says. 'She tried to just force her way through and said belligerently, "Do you know who I am?"'

That got her nowhere. Eventually, Abedin – who is married to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner – cooperated with the agent and suggested a contact who could verify her identity.

'Huma Abedin looked down on the agents and treated them as second-class citizens,' a former agent says. While agents are not supposed to carry luggage, they will do so as a courtesy if they like a female protectee, such as Lynne Cheney or Rosalynn Carter. 

But with Abedin, 'the agents were just like, "Hey, you're going to be like that? Well, you get your own luggage to the car. Oh, and by the way, you can carry the first lady's luggage to the car, too."

'She'd have four bags, and we'd stand there and watch her and say, "Oh, can we hold the door open for you?"

I know I quoted a long patch, but I couldn't help myself. It is interesting that snobbery and arrogance often come from those who are self-proclaimed advocates of "the middle class" or "the people."

These reported incidents may seem like simply cases of what appears to be personal nastiness, but I think it is something more: If our is government permeated by such attitudes (and it is), what does this say about it as a democracy that is supposed to represent all the people?