Washington D.C. thinks of itself as the center of power of the entire universe. And in a lot of ways it is. But it's a weird city. Power in D.C. is indirect and complex. You can't really start at the bottom and work your way up to positions of extreme power (though it's a popular story)...hard ceilings are everywhere. To be clear, I'm not talking about the more or less irrelevant city government.
The best way I can explain it is this, power in D.C. is build on a tripod. You must have all three of these things to be powerful: money, widespread popularity, and cunning (not intelligence).
This is different than other cities, where elements of this tripod exist, but aren't necessary to be powerful in that city. For example, in NYC, money is sufficient to be powerful. But even billionaires have failed to attain power in D.C. In NYC political connections are useful for making more money, but aren't strictly necessary. In D.C. political connections are critical. In NYC, you have to have alpha-like mammal aggressiveness (not necessarily intelligence), but in D.C. it's reptile like cunning that's needed. You can draw different but similar differences with other cities and power.
Power in D.C. is also incredibly transient and fickle. In theory, power in D.C. can accumulate to the point that a single individual can more or less wipe out all life on the planet, then just a couple years later has trouble keeping reporters off of his vacation property. It's a tower of power that's built on sands that shift so fast it makes the stock market look like a simple linear function. Everybody falls from power in D.C. It's the tallest tower there is, but the downward drop is inevitable. The key is making a soft landing when you do. That way you can take a "fall back" position to power in NYC on the board of an investment company or the Bay Area where you can become an Angel investor.
But you'll notice that people who are really powerful in one place rarely move from where they know how to operate, and when they do, rarely gain positions of equivalent power in their new homes. They just operate differently. Throwing money around in D.C. might make you popular for a bit, but without cunning you'll just be that guy who throws lots of parties.
It reminds me of the old saying
"Rich is being a millionaire basketball player, Wealthy is being the guy who signs the checks"
add to that "Powerful is the guy who proposed the bill that got turned into a law with teeth that regulated the NBA and bankrupted the wealthy owners."