Shared Sacrifice (except Congress)

”We should be doing, not what’s right for the party or for the next election, but what’s right for the American people.” So says President Obama. So say Congressmen of both parties today, stalwarts by the names of Schumer and Boehner and McConnell and Reid.

What a flock of phonies! They are all posturing for the cameras, hoping that a few voters will believe they are sincerely fretting about our national debt. The debt, as if you didn’t know, stands at more than 14 trillion dollars. How big is 14 trillion? If you counted one dollar every second, you would still be counting when the only living things on earth were fish. But 14 trillion isn’t enough money, so they are looking for ways of authorizing a higher limit.

Pundits laugh at the bailout of Greece, because everyone knows that Greece doesn’t have a chance of repaying the new loans. Does anyone think the U.S. will ever be able to pay back 14 or 15 trillion dollars? Only when a Big Mac costs $1000.

Speaking of Congress, do you think we really need 435 representatives and 100 senators? That’s 535 highly paid public servants, each with a staff (which does all the heavy lifting), travel allowance, expense account, medical insurance, pension, and God knows what else. One wouldn’t mind if these were the cream of the crop, men and women of obvious intelligence and talent, the kind of people who could run companies in the private sector. But for most of them, politics is their only hope of making a living. If the size of the House of Representatives were cut from 435 members to, say, 200, would we notice? I don’t think so.

It is fashionable for politicians to talk of “shared sacrifice” these days. The poster boys for sacrifice-sharing are hedge-fund managers and people who fly on private jets. But have you heard one syllable about Congressional sacrifice? It would only be a token, of course, but what a token! A member of Congress is entitled to a full pension at age 62 if he or she has five years (!) of service. Who’ll be the first to file a bill dealing with Congressional Pork? Barney Frank? Chuck Schumer?

(Congressman Ron Paul of Texas has always refused to participate in the Congressional pension system, calling it “immoral.”)

The Separate States of Europe

What have we learned from the recent collapse of Greece’s economy? That the economic integration of Europe was doomed from the beginning. To think otherwise is to ignore centuries of history, centuries of turmoil, almost always because of economic frictions among countries of widely divergent national tendencies. It doesn’t help that the 700-plus people who live in Europe speak about two dozen different languages.

Greece, in area and population, is roughly the size of Illinois. Let’s suppose that Illinois people spoke their own language, a language that the folks in Indiana and Wisconsin and Michigan couldn’t understand. Would you say that the Illinois economy might have a problem?

Let us thank God for the British, who erased the Dutch language from New Amsterdam and the French from Louisiana and the Spanish from California. (I know, I know, they’re coming back.) Today, Illinois and the other 49 states share a common language. We take that for granted, but it’s a huge advantage.

Then there’s the matter of culture. Yes, there are cultural differences between Maine and Texas and California, but they are nothing compared with the cultural divides across Europe. Once Jill and I were on a tour bus in Portugal, and we were discussing an incident that morning, when someone robbed some fellow tour passengers on a trolley in Lisbon.

“It happens often in Southern Europe,” our tour guide said, “but hardly ever in Northern Europe.”

He was right. We had never encountered such incidents in Oslo, or Helsinki, or Stockholm or Copenhagen. I thought of that the other day when I watched the mobs of protesters laying waste to downtown Athens, while the police ducked under the flying bottles and backed away from the advancing hooligans. Could that scene have been replicated in Oslo?

Greece is bankrupt because, unlike Illinois, it doesn’t have an industrial base. It exports olives and olive oil. It has a shipping base. It attracts tourists, or used to until the tourists saw law and order, Athens-style, on CNN.

The Euro-zone countries, seeing no alternative, have loaned Greece enough money to cover their current expenses – money that Greece will never be able to repay. And so it goes. The dominoes are lined up, and investors are looking anxiously at Spain.

Europe is a continent, nothing more. Poles consider themselves Poles, and Italians consider themselves Italians. Europe has no national anthem, no ruling parliament or monarch. It has a wobbly currency, but the British must be breathing a sigh of relief that they voted to keep the pound and not embrace the euro.

With all our economic woes, the U.S. looks very healthy compared with Europe.

Two Cheers

In the field of investor relations (mine for a number of years), the key to success can be summed up in two words: manage expectations. Of course, everybody in the game – securities analysts, company executives, financial journalists – knows this, so a calibration goes on, and then a counter-calibration, and so on. Among today’s high-tech companies, it seems to me that Apple is the master. Everyone knows by now that Apple sets expectations low, so they inflate their estimates, yet Apple manages to beat most of the optimistic estimates. That takes real talent.

President Obama has caught on to the trick. So before last night’s speech on the Afghanistan troop draw-down, he allowed (some might say encouraged) the pundits to set expectations low – 5000 troops now, another 5000 next year, a rate his military chiefs were promoting.

Surprise! President Obama exceeded expectations by announcing a draw-down of 10,000 this year, 25,000 next. He thus cheered the rising tide of war-weary voters by appearing to side with them, even though by the end of 2012 there will be 68,000 American troops on the ground in Afghanistan, compared with 32,000 when he took office, after a campaign in which he trounced the ghost of George Bush by promising disengagement from foreign adventures.

Meanwhile, some members of Congress are demanding that President Obama honor the War Powers Act by asking Congress to authorize our actions in or over Libya. No, said President Obama and his lawyers; the War Powers Act doesn’t apply because the United States isn’t involved in hostilities (try telling that to the bombing victims in Tripoli), and the President as Commander-in-Chief has the power to act without Congressional permission. Does that sound faintly like “I’m the Decider”?

The reactions today were mostly favorable (save for the usual hawks), proving once again that managing expectations is the key to success, whether in investor relations or in politics. The most impressive commentary came from Robert Gates, in a PBS interview. Gates supported the President’s call, but he did it so thoughtfully, so intelligently, that I found myself again in awe of this man who has served as Defense Secretary under both Presidents Bush and Obama, in one of the trickiest situations in our military’s history. His soft-spoken manner, his knowledge of his subjects, his deft handling of the most challenging questions made me wonder why somebody hasn’t mentioned his name as a possible presidential candidate. We could do a lot worse – and probably will.

The War That Never Ends

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Jill and I used to ask ourselves why anyone would want the job, given the mess the country was in. Turns out we were right; the job is not one you would wish on your worst enemy. The economy is in shambles, and our relations overseas deteriorate with every passing day (or with every drone attack).

What’s a right-minded President to do? If he were strong enough, he might say, “enough, already,” and pull our military out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen (yes, we’re in Yemen). His liberal base would cheer, but the hawks would howl. General Petraeus, whose approval ratings are sky-high, would appear on the Sunday talk shows to lament our lack of will. So it will not happen. Barack Obama is not strong enough, or confident enough, to do what he knows is right.

Here’s the math: We are spending $10 billion a month in Afghanistan. That’s about $230,000 a minute. It’s money we don’t have, money we have to borrow. But to do that, we have to raise the debt limit, already $14 trillion. How big a number is 14 trillion? There are about 31.5 million seconds in a year, so 14 trillion seconds ago puts you back at the dawn of time (31,746 BC).

Yet those who favor a “robust” foreign policy will not quit. Senators Chambliss and McCain, among others, are pushing back against any attempt to disengage. (Can you imagine what our foreign policy would be like under a President McCain?) And their point of view resonates with many, for fighting is popular among a certain segment of the population, just as brawling is the attraction for many who attend professional hockey games.

More than half a century after World War II and the Korean War, we still have thousands of troops in Germany, Japan, and Korea. Our military footprint is on every continent, and it is expanding. And it is expanding under a President who campaigned and was elected as the anti-Bush. Meanwhile, China, on track to become the world’s largest economy, keeps its troops at home. What’s wrong with this picture?

But there is hope. Republican Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina has broken with his party in cosponsoring an amendment to accelerate the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan – an amendment that drew the support of 26 Republicans, including three freshmen elected with Tea Party Support. Then there is Ron Paul, the presidential
wannabe who sensibly favors trimming our overseas military commitments.

After 10 years in Afghanistan, it is time to cut our losses and withdraw. Failure to do so is lunacy.

In the musical Miss Saigon, the Engineer (Jonathan Pryce in the original) sings about the seeds of the Vietnam War:

“Then it all changed with Dien Bien Phu. The Frogs went home. Who came? Guess Who?”

If there is ever a Miss Kabul, the lyrics might go like this:

“Then it all changed with Helmond Province. The Russians went home. Who came? Guess who?”

Where Have All the Ballads Gone?

The other day, while driving, I kept punching the SEEK button on my radio, looking for a station that played pop ballads. No luck. Just yelling, against a heavy-metal beat, plus talk, plus one classical music station.
Where have all the ballads gone? Where is Jerry Vale, now that we need him?

Musical tastes have changed dramatically, and not for the better, say I. The long, flowing melody lines, the cleverly drawn lyrics are out of style. They say that such things move in cycles, that ballads will come back into favor. Until that day, I will rely on my CD collection and on the iPod jack in my Hyundai to keep me entertained.

What kind of music am I talking about? Here is a representative list of some of the great ballads of yore.

All the Things You Are (Kern, Hammerstein)

A treasure, for its harmony and its lyrics. Every quality singer seems to have “covered” it.

If I Loved You (Rodgers, Hammerstein)

Should be heard as part of the famous bench scene from Carousel.

I Got Lost in His Arms (Berlin)

Berlin’s magic: Keep it simple. Almost every word in this gem is one-syllable long.

Moonlight Becomes You (Van Heusen, Burke)

A beautiful, underrated ballad, by two old pros. The “although” near the end is sheer artistry.

Dear Friend (Bock, Harnick)

From She Loves Me, this one is justly celebrated as lyric-writing of the finest order. Get this:

Couples go past me
I see how they look
So discretely sympathethic when they see
The rose and the book.
I make believe nothing is wrong
How long can I pretend?
Please make it right
Don’t break my heart
Don’t let it end
Dear friend.

And I Was Beautiful (Herman)

Not in quantity, certainly, but in style composer/lyricist Jerry Herman most approaches Berlin. This one, from Dear World, was well sung by Angela Lansbury. (“….and then he walked away, and took my smile with him.”)

This Heart of Mine (Warren, Freed)

Harry Warren it is said, is the most successful composer no one has ever heard of. He wrote a zillion singable tunes that were often undercut by pedestrian lyrics by Al Dubin and Mack Gordon. (Check the weak last line of “The More I See You.”) But this one, given an over-the-top treatment in the film The Ziegfeld Follies, is one of Warren’s best.

There are so many others, hundreds of them, now pushed off the airwaves by rock and rap. If you’re over 50, you probably have your own list of favorites. I know we’re not part of the demographic advertisers are looking for, but we do spend money. And fellows, we’re not listening to your radio stations these days.

When Rapture is Not Enough

Front-page headline in today’s Financial Times: “Obama’s Speech in Westminster Affirms the Special Relationship, but Fails to Raise the Roof.”

Now, as we all know, Barack Obama is the very best orator we Americans have. If he can’t raise the roof, who can?

Benjamin Netanyahu can. Here’s yesterday’s New York Times, reporting on the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress: “Mr. Netanyahu received so many standing ovations that at times it seemed that the lawmakers were listening to his speech standing up.” It was, according to the Financial Times, “a rapturously received address.”

Talk about raising the roof! Mr. Netanyahu obviously is even a better speechifier that Mr. Obama, whose State of the Union address was received politely, at times even enthusiastically, but the adverb “rapturously” does not spring to mind.

How does Israel’s Prime Minister elicit the kind of rapture that no American politician, no business leader, no religious leader, not even the “American Idol” winner, can hope for? In fact, it is a good bet that Mr. Netanyahu himself would not encounter such an adoring audience in Israel. But Washington and Mr. Netanyahu were made for each other. The Times lets us in on his secret: “The lawmakers appeared eager to demonstrate their support for Israel as part of an effort to receive backing from one of the country’s most powerful constituencies, American Jews.”

So politicians will trade rapture for dollars; there is nothing new about that. We will survive the sight of members of Congress pandering to the Israeli lobby, or to any lobby that has enough power and money.

The real loser in all this is Israel. The take-away from this week’s events is that the U.S. has such a special relationship with Israel (much deeper that our special relationship with Britain, for instance) that we can no longer act as a credibly honest broker between Israel and Palestine. The peace talks, insofar as America is concerned, are dead. That much must be obvious to the entire Arab world, as it was to George Mitchell, who threw in the towel recently. Israel’s success in Washington comes at a price, and the price is increasing isolation on the world stage. A rapturous U.S. Congress is not enough.

The Americanization of Emily

Julie Andrews says that of all the movies she’s made, The Americanization of Emily is her favorite. So says James Garner, her co-star. So says Arthur Hiller, who directed. Why has this movie, released in 1964, captivated so many people who know so much about movies?

There are many reasons, but at the top of the list must be the literary, highly pungent script of Paddy Chayefsky. Producer Martin Ransohoff spotted the William Bradford Huie novel in 1959. The book tells of a romance between an Admiral’s aide (the dust cover says it’s “the further adventures of Lieutenant-Commander James Monroe Madison of The Revolt of Mamie Stover”) and a British young woman in WW2 London, and Ransohoff optioned it, thinking it might make a pleasant enough romantic comedy. In time, William Holden was penciled in as the hero, and James Garner was slated to play Bus, Madison’s sidekick. Ransohoff’s choice to direct was William Wyler.

Then Wyler and Holden pulled out, Arthur Hiller was named director, Garner was given the lead, and, most importantly, Paddy Chayefsky was asked to write the screenplay. And what a screenplay he created! The book is a fairly routine love story, with the climactic D-Day invasion the only memorable action. Commander Madison is a writer whose skills as a procurer (of booze and broads, mostly) for Navy brass have landed him in the lap of luxury in London. Emily Barham is a volunteer driver attached to Madison’s unit. Madison and Barham fall in love and, after he makes a movie of the D-Day landing, live happily ever after. End of story.

Enter Paddy Chayefsky. He is not interested in telling a typical Doris Day/Rock Hudson love story. In his hands, Commander (now Charles) Madison is a practicing coward, whose overriding ambition is not to get killed in the war, and whose service as a valued “dog-robber” seems to guarantee survival. Emily Barham, who has lost a father, a husband, and a brother to war, is a Yank-hating moralist, who buys into the nobility of a hero’s death.

This is all Chayefsky. In the book, Madison is as patriotic as the next man, and when the Admiral orders him to film the invasion, he gets a camera crew and obediently joins the invasion fleet.

In the movie, Chayefsky writes a sparkling scene in which Madison and Emily’s mother spar over the reality of war and the folly of glamorizing it. In that one scene, Madison expresses his entire philosophy of life, sacrifice, and honor, and he makes his entire pursuit of survival sound sensible and almost noble. It is an absolutely indispensable scene – and yet, in the book, Ms. Barham never appears, and there is not an iota of dialogue about these subjects.

One shouldn’t be too hard on the book’s author. He was simply writing a different story, a much simpler story. Yet if the screenplay followed the book’s outline, the movie would have been forgotten long ago.

Arthur Hiller was a rookie Hollywood director in 1963, when he began shooting Emily. He would later direct some good movies, like The In-Laws, The Hospital, and Plaza Suite, but nothing, in his mind, to compare with Emily. Julie Andrews, of course, is everybody’s sweetheart no matter what she does, but she, too, singles out this movie as her best. And James Garner is an absolutely perfect Charlie Madison. The rest of the cast is solid: Joyce Grenfell as the dotty mother, Melvyn Douglas as the Admiral, and James Coburn as Bus. There is practically no music in the film other than the song Emily, which was ineligible for an Oscar because the lyrics were never sung.

Hard as it is to believe, The Americanization of Emily was made almost a half century ago. But it is still immensely enjoyable, and Paddy Chayefsky’s message still makes sense today.

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Three collections of these blogs are available at lulu.com. They are, in chronological order, Searching for Joan Leslie, Lines from the Beachcomber, and Tides in the Affairs of Men.

Dancing on Graves

There was widespread jubilation in the U.S. at news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. One can certainly understand satisfaction, especially on the part of relatives of those killed in the 9-11 attack. But jubilation? One would have hoped that Americans would temper their celebration with the realization that a martyr has been created and vengeance is in the air. Satisfaction, certainly. Dancing on the graves? I don’t think so.

The day before, it was announced that NATO air strikes on Tripoli had killed Col. Qadaffi’s youngest son. While NATO people denied that “protecting civilians” has expanded to “regime change,” Senator McCain, said that if Col Qadaffi were to be killed, “that would be fine.”

The taste of blood is spreading, and it is no time to be a leader of a country in NATO’s gunsights. I am reading The Tourist, a novel about a CIA unit (the Tourists) that exists to eliminate people deemed worthy of elimination. The book was written by Olen Steinhauer, who lives in Budapest (ex-Virginia) and obviously knows the intelligence world inside out. As described by Steinhauer, it is a world totally devoid of morality, sentiment, or what we think of as human instincts. It is easy to imagine a tourist making his way through the streets of Tripoli or Islamabad or Damascus or Tangier, a Glock and a fake passport in his pocket, no expression on his face, intent on offing a head of government or a minister or just someone who knows too much. The book is chilling in light of recent events, as you will probably see on the big screen. (George Clooney has optioned the book.)

I suppose someone has to do the dirty work, and you don’t want to see how sausages are made, but neither do you want to take the inspiring principles that embellish President Obama’s rhetoric too literally, because Washington is one big sausage factory.

The Last Station

The Last Station is a little-known movie about the last year or so of Tolstoy’s life, starring Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as his wife Sonya. It is also a clinic in the acting art by two of the finest professionals in the field.

The conflict that animates the drama is the question of who will own the rights to Tolstoy’s work when he dies. Tolstoy and his legions of followers do not believe in private property. As they see it, the public at large is the rightful inheritor of his creative output. His wife Sonya just as strongly believes that Tolstoy’s primary obligation is to provide for the welfare of his family. A stand-off? No, because of the powerful influence of Chertkov, a leader of the Tolstoy movement and a friend and confidante of the master, played brilliantly by Paul Giamatti. The title of the film refers to the station at the end of the railroad line where Tolstoy spends his last days.

The facts as portrayed by the film are as accurate as one should expect of a movie (I checked it against Henri Troyat’s biography). But the grabber here is not verisimilitude but the power of the acting. Plummer is Tolstoy. Mirren is Sonya. (Did you know that Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Vasilevna Mironov?) I have not seen an acting tour de force of this magnitude in a long, long time.

As so often happens in this house, my enthusiasm for the film led me to seek out Christopher Plummer’s memoir, In Spite of Myself. It is a long book, 648 pages in hard cover, and there is no evidence that anyone collaborated with him in the writing. Now, Plummer, Canadian by birth, is 81 years old, and the book was published in 2008, so one must be impressed by his energy if nothing else. But the writing quality is excellent, revealing an impressive memory and real wit.

The title of the book, I guess, refers to the fact that he has lived a successful life in his chosen career in spite of the fact that he was generally irresponsible, a drinker, a womanizer, and an ingrate. He rather cheerfully admits all this, and the gallery of the rich and famous whose lives intersect with his makes the book endlessly fascinating – in spite of himself.

I recommend the movie and the book, unreservedly. And now I will start Helen Mirren’s memoir, In the Frame.

In for a Penny......

Like millions of Americans, I watched the President’s speech on Libya the other night. As usual, it was an oratorical gem, logically written and delivered with conviction and poise.

But I didn’t believe a word of it.

That’s the curse of a great speech-maker. You listen so often to the mastery of the language and the style, and then you start wondering whether those tools are being used to seduce you. In this case, the speech was fine, but the arguments were specious.

We were involved in Libya, he said, because we were unwilling to stand by and let civilians be killed. But isn’t that what happens in a civil war? People get killed on both sides, and not all the casualties are combatants. Historians tell us that our bloodiest war was neither of the world wars, but the American Civil War. We are intervening in a civil war, and the fact that the government is a dictatorship is beside the point. As many have pointed out, the world is full of dictators, and civilians are being killed in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and Ivory Coast. Yet only the dictator in Libya is worth our intervention.

The Great Orator was careful to set limits: “No boots on the ground.” Yet today’s papers tell us of a debate raging in Washington whether to supply arms to the Libyan rebels, with Hillary the Hawk leading the charge. The UN resolution to protect civilians could be broadly interpreted to encompass arms shipments, she says. By that reasoning, bombing Tripoli could also be sanctioned. Some people also wonder if arms shipped to Libyans will come back to haunt us, as it has in Afghanistan, where we armed the locals who fought the Russians.

The other night I watched a movie called The Special Relationship. in which Tony Blair pressured Bill Clinton to intervene in the Balkans. As the film ends, George W. Bush has just been elected President and Blair is about to apply his charm in a new cause. “You’re ready to fight for what you believe in,” says a Washington insider to Blair in the movie, “right down to the last American soldier.”

What’s an American President to do, when a British or French leader says that a civilian slaughter is imminent and only American action can save the day? A strong President might say, “You do it; it’s not in our national interest to intervene.” Weak presidents, unsure of themselves, often stumble into war; it sometimes takes nerves of steel to resist the passions of the moment. Barack Obama's stern rhetoric is a sham, and the odds are that his latest adventure will end badly.

George W. Obama

Thousands of people stay indoors in their battered houses, because it isn’t safe to go outside. They don’t have electricity, and they’re running out of food and water. Many of them are old and infirm. The fuel to heat their houses is exhausted. That’s the way it is in Yamagata and other towns in the earthquake zone.

Meanwhile, President Obama, doing his best impersonation of George W. Bush, is on television, threatening Colonel Qaddafi of Libya with “consequences” if he continues battling the rebels in his country. It all sounds eerily like what preceded the invasion of Iraq. First it was Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. Then, when the WMD proved to be a mirage, the story changed to “the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.' How long will it be before we hear how much better off we are without Muammar Qaddafi?

It’s easy to sound tough, and, when you’re the strongest military power on earth, it’s easy to drop bombs on people you don’t like. But it’s much, much harder to unscramble the eggs you have messed up. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan ages ago, and we’re still there. Barack Obama was elected president as the anti-Bush candidate, but he has morphed into George W. Obama. The war rages in Afghanistan, the CIA still runs drones in Pakistan, we can’t seem to leave Iraq, and Guantanamo is still open for business.

And the starving and homeless in Japan? President Obama has pledged support, but little is visible in the coastal communities around the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Station. President Obama has other fish to fry in northern Africa. Today he is in Brazil. Next stop: Chile. Presidents like to globe-hop on Air Force One when Washington reporters might ask embarrassing questions.

The Japanese people are doing their best, helped by government agencies and private companies. They huddle together in their homes or in the crowded emergency shelters, waiting for assistance to come.

In my dreams I see hundreds of U.S. helicopters dropping thousands of cartons of food and bottles of water for those unfortunate people, but it’s just a dream, because our government’s attention is focused, not on Yamagata, but on Tripoli.

Japan: What Must be Done?

The video clips have been horrific. The sea sweeping everything in its path, the automobiles and trucks and ships just so many toys bulldozed by the onslaught, the survivors standing in shock, wondering what’s to become of them.

I have been to Japan many times, and I’ll confess to a deep admiration for the Japanese people – proud, polite, principled people. On one of my visits, I joined a farewell party for a manager who was being transferred to Europe. There wasn’t a dry eye in the restaurant as the assembly, about 50 people, sang “Auld Lang Syne.” The Japanese love to sing; karaoke is something of a national sport. Never have I felt so much kinship with a group as I did that night.

Here’s what I think: The world, and particularly the United States, should mount an all-out effort to help the Japanese rebuild. Money now spent killing people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq should be redirected to saving people in Japan. It would be an ironic twist if the only country ever to use an atomic bomb in anger now led an international campaign to help minimize the fallout from the nuclear power plant at Fukushima.

Two-thirds of the American people, according to a recent poll, no longer think the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting. How many of us would think a worldwide effort to help the Japanese people is worth the cost?

President Obama, tossed this way and that by events in Libya, Bahrain, Pakistan, and Iraq, must be longing for a cause that he can embrace without talking out of both sides of his mouth. Here it is, Mr. President. But the time to act is now. Next week, China or Russia or Germany may step up to the plate, and then our moment will have passed.

Les Miz

There are those who believe that Les Miz is the greatest of all musical plays, and I am not going to argue with them. “The greatest” is by definition a subjective category, but people vote by buying tickets at the box office, and by that standard Les Miz certainly measures up.

Last night I watched the 25th anniversary concert version of Les Miz, staged at the cavernous O2 arena in Greenwich, with an audience that resembled what you might see at the Super Bowl, and a company seemingly almost as large. The previous night I had watched the 10th anniversary concert (I had taped it in 1995), so I had a fine opportunity to compare the two productions.

The similarities: A boyish-looking maestro conducted the orchestra in 1995, and the same man, still looking boyish 15 years later, held the baton in the 2010 production. Lea Salonga played Eponine, the waif, in the 1995 concert, but of course Lea is no longer a waif and played Fantine this time. And Jenny Galloway played Madame Thenardier in both productions. Otherwise, the two casts were different.

Alfie Boe, an operatic tenor, played Jean Valjean in the new concert, and I preferred his performance to that of the widely acclaimed Colm Williamson. Williamson was on hand for the reunion festivities at the end, but his voice is a bit frail now. Even in his prime, though, Colm did not have the horsepower of Alfie Boe, who is still relatively unknown but not likely to remain so.

For my money, the best role in Les Miz is that of Javert, the inspector who stalks Valjean mercilessly throughout the play. The material is so good that it is hard to misplay, and both Javerts were excellent, but the new Javert, an actor named Norm Lewis, was more than that; he was brilliant. He looked like a man you wouldn’t want on your case, and he sang powerfully and threateningly, as is demanded of the character.

Fantine, as mentioned, was played in the 25th anniversary concert by Lea Salonga, a good actress with a fine voice. Her daughter Cosette was played adequately by Katie Hall, but 1995’s Judy Kuhn had a much better voice.

The weakest member of the 25th anniversary cast was Nick Jonas, who with his brothers sets teen-age girls' heart aflutter in England and the U.S. He looked the part of the adolescent Marius, but his singing was marginal and his acting was, well, I am reminded of the critic who said of some actress that she expressed the whole gamut of emotions from A to B – in Nick Jonas’s case, unbearable pain. Michael Ball, the 10th anniversary Marius, is clearly too old for the role today, but he joined in the post-concert nostalgia, along with many other performers “from days gone by.”

The important character of Thenardier was taken by comedian Matt Lucas, who tried unsuccessfully to fill the shoes of Alun Armstrong, the master of the house in the ”dream cast” of 1995.

All in all, I thought the principal characters (Valjean and Javert) were stronger in the 25th anniversary production, and the secondary characters were better in 1995. Since Valjean and Javert really carry the play, the newer concert was on balance a stronger production.

But Les Miz is a must-see, whatever the production. It is a towering creative achievement, based on one of the great novels of all time. It’s a good bet that people will still be enthralled by the music of Claude-Michel Schonberg in the 23d century, when the 200th anniversary concert of Les Miz will be shown to the world on holographic video.

They Came to Play

If you play the piano – even poorly, as I do – and you are looking for a good DVD to watch, I have a dandy for you. Actually, it’s a dandy even if you don’t play at all, because it’s a feel-good film about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

It’s called They Came to Play, and it lets you look in on a most unusual piano competition held every few years in Fort Worth and sponsored by the Van Cliburn Foundation. Now, you may have heard about the Cliburn Competition, which is the world’s series of piano playing. It is held every four years, and it is for young prodigies who have given their lives to the piano. At least two of these competitions have been the subjects of films, which are very good.

But They Came to Play is not about the Cliburn, although it borrows the name and the venue. This competition is strictly for amateurs, people who have “day jobs” and are over (in some cases, well over) 35 years of age.

One of the contestants is a doctor at a New York hospital. One is a lawyer from Phoenix. Another is a Systems VP at Lockheed-Martin. Another is a tennis coach (and former rated player) in France. Another is a German physicist retired from Siemens. Another is a jewelry trader, another runs a glass business. Some of them learned the piano as children, then quit for years to raise a family or go to medical school. You get to know the “back stories” of many of these people, and you can’t help but like them and admire them for the dedication that they bring to the game.

Van Cliburn himself is present, and he is a God-like figure. One Russian contestant says, “If you ask anyone on the street in Moscow today who Van Cliburn is, he will know.” Then he shakes his head and adds, “I am not so sure whether people in New York know.” There are other ties to the Cliburn competition, including several judges, among them Olga Kern, a winner in 2001 and now a successful concert pianist. (Her 2001 performance is captured on the DVD The Cliburn: Playing on the Edge). The amateur event lacks the budget of the more prestigious competition, and there are no piano concertos cum symphony orchestra. Still, for sheer enjoyment, you can’t beat the spirit and enthusiasm that fills every minute of this film. I’d tell you more, but I have to quit now to practice the piano.

Pixar 2, Facebook 0

I watched three movies last week: Toy Story 3, Up, and The Social Network. The first two were from the Pixar gang, which rolls out one fantastic film after another, with a hit ratio matched by no company other than Apple. The third film labored under a severe handicap: It had to deal with real people in real-life situations. Here are my takes on the three.

Toy Story 3 was easily the best of the lot. Written by Pixar’s plotmeister John Lasseter, it continues the saga of Woody the toy cowboy, Buzz Lightyear, the toy astronaut, and the entire menagerie of toys owned by Andy, a teen-ager now preparing to leave home for college. What to do with the toys? Andy decides to store them in the attic, but owing to a mixup they are carted off to a day-care center from hell. Woody eventually leads the Great Escape, but not before Lasseter has fashioned a variety of adventures, including a budding romance between two dolls named Barbie and Ken. As usual, Tom Hanks voices Woody, and Randy Newman composes the bouncy music. The Toy Story trilogy (there would seem to be no room for a fourth, but with Pixar you never know) is solid gold, and number 3 is the best yet.

Up is a bittersweet story that begins when a young boy meets an adventuresome young girl named Ellie, who dreams of traveling to exotic places like Paradise Falls in South America. (I was hooked when the little girl, rhapsodizing about the attractions of South America, said, “It’s just like America. Only it’s south!”) Eventually the couple marry and enjoy a long and happy life together – and then Ellie dies. The man, Carl Fredricksen, is now a 78-year-old curmudgeon, living in the same old house, an island of yesterday surrounded by skyscrapers and legions of lawyers offering to buy him out. Finally he has had enough, and he attaches a zillion balloons to his house and flies off toward South America. But he finds that he has a stowaway: a young boy scout eager to earn a merit badge for helping an old person, even an unwilling old person. The balloon-tethered house eventually makes it to Paradise Falls, where our duo encounter a series of hazards, notably including a storied explorer named Charles Muntz, who was the inspiration for Ellie’s odyssey of long ago. Muntz is now a madman with an entourage of vicious dogs (the Pixar animators do vicious dogs very well). All ends well, as you knew it would. The voices of Carl Fredricksen and Charles Muntz are supplied by Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer.

Now to The Social Network, about which I have mixed feelings. First, the good news: The screenplay, by Aaron Sorkin, is brilliant. Its machine-gun dialogue is just right coming from the mouths of computer whizzes, and the structure – a legal hearing, with flashbacks telling the main story – builds the tension neatly. The acting is terrific throughout. Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, the creator (or was he?) of Facebook and is a valid Best Actor nominee. Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake also give memorable performances in supporting roles.

What’s not to like? The story. These are, for the most part, unprincipled people treating each other like dirt (or worse, if you include the few women in the cast). The ethical and legal questions at the center of the plot center on who shares how much credit for Facebook. If you take the characterizations as authentic – and one assumes that the producers had a regiment of lawyers vet the book and the script – you have to wonder why these young men are (1) worth wrapping a $40 million film around and (2) worth spending two hours of anyone’s viewing time. Facebook and its ilk are social phenomena, I will grant, and that’s a reasonable subject for a documentary. But a movie without any sympathetic characters is hard to classify as entertainment.

The Super Bowl

Sunday night a good football game competed for the attention of the viewers with commercials and the halftime show. The football game lost, not because the other stuff was better, but because the other stuff was so bad. You knew it was going to be a rough night when Christina Aguelera destroyed the national anthem, first by shrieking the song as if she were in pain, second by departing repeatedly from the tune the composer had in mind, and third, by forgetting the lyrics midway through. That’s right; this poor excuse for a singer found “O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming” too much to handle, so repeated an earlier line (but she even botched that).

As for the much-hyped commercials, with very few exceptions, they were just awful. The worst of the sorry lot was an incomprehensible promotion for Doritos. The best were the car commercials; at least they focused on the product instead of computer graphics.

But back to Christina. Why, oh why are singers of the national anthem at sporting events so determined to avoid the melody as written? Is the song that bad? Or are they afraid that an as-written rendition would expose the inadequacy of their voices? One look at the faces of the Packers and Steelers during Christina’s solo told it all. “This is painful,” they seemed to be thinking, or “Let’s play football – please.”

I was rooting for the Packers ever since the Patriots were eliminated. It’s a matter of fairness. Pittsburgh has the Pirates and the Penguins. It is the City of Andrew Carnegie and U.S. Steel. It was Gene Kelly’s home town. Green Bay has the Packers. Period. And now they are the Super Bowl champs. Justice has been served.

Graham Greene's Movies

Graham Greene was a wonderful storyteller. More than that, his stories made wonderful movies, especially when he also wrote the screenplays. The Third Man is one of the most memorable films ever made – who can forget the long closing shot of Valli walking along the cemetery road, or the fat-faced little Austrian boy shouting “Murther!”? The Comedians is another of my favorites. How could it miss, with Alec Guinness and Richard Burton? Our Man in Havana, The Fallen Idol, The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter – so many good stories, so well told.

Now a new Graham Greene picture is about to open: Brighton Rock, with Helen Mirren, Sam Riley, and Andrea Riseborough. This is a remake of a 1947 film noir starring Richard Attenborough. The original was good, but this promises to be better (at least the trailers look promising). Greene’s novels are the kind of stuff that film studios can’t stay away from. The End of the Affair was made in 1955 (with a strong performance by Deborah Kerr), but Hollywood, no doubt hooked by the title, remade the movie in 1999, with Ralph Fiennes. I have mixed feelings about the two versions. Ralph Fiennes was a much better Bendrix than was his predecessor, Van Johnson, but screenwriter Neil Jordan (1999) mangled the story as told by Greene. But sometimes the remake is far superior to the original. The Quiet American with Michael Caine was infinitely better than the 1958 version with Audie Murphy.

One of Graham Greene’s best spy thrillers, The Human Factor, was filmed in 1979. Directed By Otto Preminger, it starred Richard Attenborough, Nicol Williamson, Derek Jacobi, Robert Morley, and John Gielgud. Despite all this starpower (plus a screenplay by Tom Stoppard), the movie ran afoul of cold-war politics, and to this day no DVD is available.

Anyone interested in learning more about Graham Greene’s films can do no better than Graham Greene: The Films of his Fiction, by Gene Phillips S.J. Published in 1974, it does not cover the remakes, but it is good reading nonetheless.

The President's Speech

Having been bowled over by the President's Tucson speech earlier this month, I was eagerly awaiting his State of the Union address. He had loaded the bases in Tucson; now all he had to do was hit the ball out of the park. A grand slam, with all the world watching!

It didn't happen. What we got was standard political boilerplate. We're going to attack the deficit (nod to the right), but not by cutting investments in education (nod to the left). And so it went, with the President endlessly talking about investment, without ever acknowledging that investment presupposes the availability of money to invest. The United States is in hock to China alone to the tune of $900 billion and is currently spending a trillion dollars more than it takes in each year. The word "investment" has a nice ring to it, politically, and that's where the President headed last night, and the result was a sad misuse of his rhetorical power.

Today the President flew to Wisconsin, where he commended a manufacturer of solar shingles. The company was unable to get bank loans, it turns out, so Uncle Sam came through. The banks apparently thought the company a poor risk, but the Government knew better.

Cynics might say that a Presidential visit to Green Bay two weeks before the Super Bowl had a political component. How could anyone think that?

The trouble with being a great orator is that your failures as well as your successes are magnified. The State of the Union address was a monumental failure, because so much was expected, and so little was delivered. If the speaker had been George Bush, it wouldn't have been so bad.

Of Builders and Traders

Andy Grove, ex-CEO of Intel and a recognized technology guru, was asked to comment on Steve Jobs the other day. “There are builders and there are traders,” he said, “and Steve is a builder.”

The builder/trader dichotomy has been with us for ages. In the last half of the twentieth century, the traders were ascendant. We didn’t call them traders, we called them venture capitalists, and they and the builders coexisted well. I worked for a bonafide builder, Alex d’Arbeloff, for many years. Alex was a good friend (and fellow Francophone) of General Doriot of American Research & Development, an iconic venture capital firm and an early investor in Digital Equipment and many other successful companies. General Doriot, a long-term holder, would never have thought of himself as a trader, but all venture-capital firms, including ARD, had exit strategies. Alex had no exit strategy; all his thoughts were on building the Company he cofounded.

Steve Jobs, when he was first told he had a serious medical problem, could have checked out and spent the rest of his years on Bora Bora. But that wasn’t in his DNA. Instead, he spent the next five years turning his Company into the most phenomenally successful story in the history of high tech. Today he could probably buy Bora Bora, but when his medical leave of absence ends, he will return to Apple, for he is a builder.

The American dream is based on creating a society that cultivates a steady supply of builders, people like Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, and of course Steve Jobs. If we have an edge on our global competitors, it is our capacity to produce and motivate builders. No other country approaches us when it comes to that. And the curious thing is, very few in our society object to the great wealth amassed by successful builders. “Americans aspire up and resent down,” The Economist editorialized once. When we start resenting up, that will be an ominous signal.

The Orator Returns

January 12, 2011: On this day, in Tucson, Arizona, Barack Obama, the master orator who inspired so many of us on election night in Grant Park and then disappeared as he was overtaken by the hurly-burly of politics, reemerged to give what may have been his greatest speech yet. It was eloquent in language and tone, and entirely appropriate to the occasion. This, I remember thinking as I listened, is what oratory is all about.

The setting added to the drama. Arizona is hardly a blue state and certainly not in the President’s comfort zone. Boston or Chicago would have been more simpatico. Also adding to the drama was the President’s revelation that Congresswoman Giffords had opened her eyes that very day, for the first time since she was shot But a dramatic setting can take one only so far. The President could have milked the emotional points but did not. He walked the fine line between bathos and passivity with skill that cannot be rehearsed; it’s in his DNA.

Barack Obama has made some terrible blunders in policy and in politics. He has lashed out at fat-cat bankers and rallied his colleagues to "keep the drug companies honest.” He promoted his health-care program as a cost saver, admitting after passage that no one should have thought that 30 million Americans could be added to the insured rolls at no cost. So President Obama has much to answer for.

But give him his due: He is a giant among the orators of our time. This talent must not be underestimated or undervalued. The country is dangerously divided, and oratory ranks high among the leadership qualities the nation so desperately needs. On January 12 the President found his voice again, in a speech that will reverberate for a long time. One hopes that among those who take its message seriously is Barack Obama himself.

The Death of Debate

Much has been written about the killings in Arizona, much of it centered on the overheated political climate in this country and the effect of so much vitriol on minds that are already unhinged. Convince a nutcake that a politician is guilty of treason, add a chorus of encouragement on the Internet, and throw in ready access to guns (even for the nutcakes), and you have a recipe for disaster.

All that is true enough, but there is another element worth mentioning: the death of rational debate.

People shoot their perceived adversaries because they don’t know how to debate them. It calls to mind the frustration of Billy Bigelow in Carousel, when asked by the heavenly star-keeper why he hit his wife. “We’d argue about something,” says Billy, “and she’d be right. So I hit her.”

A young man in Arizona thought of Gabrielle Giffords as an enemy. Maybe it was her stand on immigration, maybe health care, but he wasn’t capable of organizing his arguments into a rational discourse in that Tucson parking lot. So he shot her.

Rational discourse is not the stuff of FaceBook pages or 40-character tweets. It demands logical argument and a command of language. As a civilization, we're losing that, for a variety of reasons, including the coarsening of language. In so-called action movies, the heroes shoot four-letter words as fast as they shoot bullets. The same four-letter words, because they don’t know any other adjectives. Sad.

In my high-school days, debating was a big deal, and my best friend was the President of the Debating Society. We called him our golden-voiced orator, and not just because of the way he spoke. It was what he said for or against the proposition. He didn’t have to use four-letter words, because he had a rich vocabulary.

And he didn’t have to shoot people he disagreed with. He could mow them down with words.

Christmas Eve on Sand Point

It is late on Christmas Eve on Sand Point, and all is quiet. Of the 20-odd houses on the point, only two are lit, mine and my neighbor’s. The other owners are in Florida and Texas and Connecticut and other places in the lower latitudes. It is 24 degrees here now, and the ground is snow-covered, just enough to make it a white Christmas.

Across the tidal river to the north one house has Christmas lights in the windows, and their reflection on the water is picturesque. I have two white stars in my windows, and the lights are on at the front entrance, so that those people across the river have something to look at. To the south lies the Atlantic. You can hear the surf, because it is almost high tide, but beyond the windows there is only blackness.

Earlier, I went to Mass at St. Martha’s, in Kennebunk. I arrived at least 15 minutes before Mass was supposed to start, but I was still too late. The large parking lot was filled, so that I had to park a few blocks from the church. Inside, it was jam-packed, not just in the church proper, but in the adjoining spaces as well. Father Tom Murphy said the Mass, and a red-and-black-robed choir, about 15 voices strong, sang Christmas hymns. Somehow I found a few square feet to inhabit, amid a sea of people, many in wheelchairs. Father Tom’s brief but eloquent sermon, the choir’s note-perfect singing, and the sensation of being present at an Event were all very moving.

Tonight I have been watching the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas Eve concert. I have seen it before, about a week ago, but it was good enough for a reprise. There is something about a large, well-trained chorus that raises goosebumps on me - but only if there are both male and female voices. I have heard good ladies’ choruses and good male choruses, but only a mixed chorus sounds complete to these ears. And the Mormon Choir is as good as it gets. A highlight of tonight’s concert was a recitation by historian David McCullough, who recounted Churchill’s visit to Washington on Christmas 1941, only weeks after Pearl Harbor. McCullough claimed that Churchill, hearing O Little Town of Bethlehem sung on Christmas Eve, said that he had never the hymn before. I thought that unlikely, so I raced to my library and quickly found the episode in Churchill’s history of WWII, and – as I should have known – McCullough was right. Another of McCullough’s stories illuminated the origins of I’ll Be Home for Christmas, surely one of the best of the Christmas ballads.

Now Christmas Day is only minutes away, so I will wish everyone who takes the trouble to read these scribblings a blessed Christmas and a happy new year.

Postcards from the Edge

To judge by its subject matter, Postcards from the Edge is a movie I would not under any circumstances watch. But there it was on the telly, and before I could change the channel I caught a bit of dialogue that sounded clever. And then another bit of bright dialogue, and then a whole scene, and I was hooked. That was about 10 years ago. The other night I watched it again to see if my first impressions deceived me. They did not. It’s a good movie, a little sloppy in the editing, but otherwise a film with one standout scene after another.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s a story about a mother-daughter relationship, written by Carrie Fisher, an authority on the subject. The mother, played by Shirley Maclaine, is an alcoholic. The daughter, played by Meryl Streep, is a junkie. (Now you see why it’s not my type of movie.) Three things elevate the film above its story line: (1) Meryl Streep, (2) Shirley Maclaine, and (3) the sharpness of Carrie Fisher’s writing.

The movie takes place in Hollywood, for the mother is an over-the-hill movie actress and the daughter is trying to climb the hill. Say, doesn’t that sound like Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher? No, but close. Carrie carries around lots of bittersweet memories about Mom and Eddie Fisher, her dad, who left Debbie for Elizabeth Taylor, who left Eddie for Richard Burton, who left…… Some of the memories undoubtedly “informed” Postcards, but Carrie was saving the best stuff for her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, which was just shown on HBO.

In Postcards, Mom advises daughter that she should give up acting in third-rate movies and focus instead on a singing career. The advice is sound, but the daughter is wary: Mom sings, and she doesn’t want to compete with Mom, because Mom always wins. Interesting sidelight: A review of Wishful Drinking notes that Carrie Fisher is a talented singer, though Mom is of course the “name” singer. (Personal note: As an emcee at an industry conference, I once shared a stage with Debbie Reynolds and found her great fun to work with. It is hard for me to believe that Shirley was channeling Debbie in the movie.)

The scenes between Streep and Maclaine are the core of this movie. They are duels dripping with bitterness, and they are terrific. Others flit around the edges of the story: Gene Hackman is just right as a film director, and Richard Dreyfuss, Rob Reiner, and Dennis Quaid help out in roles that are inconsequential at best.

It was no surprise to find Meryl Streep delivering another memorable performance; all her performances are memorable. But Maclaine outdid herself. She is best known as a talented singer and dancer, but here was a dramatic turn that was very demanding, and she scored a bull’s eye. At least some of the credit for her bitchy performance must go to Director Mike Nichols, who also directed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with Elizabeth Taylor as the bitchy Martha.

Hollywood is a very small world.

Needed: A Coalition Government

Great Britain has it right: They are tackling the hard times by entrusting their fate to a coalition government. David Cameron is the conservative half, Nick Clegg the liberal half. And they seem to be making a go of it, despite student riots over tuition hikes and assorted other squabbles. The point is, while we’re on the brink of at least two years of deadlock, Britain cannot have deadlock, because both sides are running the country.

It can’t happen here, you say? Don’t be too sure. Erskine Bowles, a credentialed Democrat, and Alan Simpson, a staunch Republican, head a task force studying the mother of all problems, the deficit, and they have just submitted their report spelling out the harsh medicine that is needed. Outgoing Senators Evan Bayh (D-Ind) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) are regulars on television, displaying uncommon civility, respect for each other, and great common sense. Either of these pairings would make a dream team in the White House. And why not? It is not constitutionally ordained that the President and Vice-President must be of the same party, and all you would need is a pre-election promise that the two would govern as a coalition. Given the pickle we’re in, it is time to think outside the box.

The political difficulty of tackling the deficit is huge, but that is not the only problem that cries out for a coalition. Here’s another: The politicians whose conservative economic policies we tend to favor are also the politicians most hawkish in matters of foreign policy. In the voting both, we are always forced to choose either someone who will bankrupt the country or someone who is willing to risk World War 3.

It is easy to start a war (just ask George Bush), but it can be devilishly hard to end one (just ask Barack Obama). It’s a much smaller world than it was in 1941, so that in any war involving the major powers, the continental U.S. would certainly be attacked. As General Turgidson said in Dr Strangelove, we would have “10, maybe 20 million killed – tops – depending on the breaks.”

We certainly want to have a first-class military to defend our homeland, but we don’t, or shouldn’t, put China or Russia in a position where they feel threatened. There’s a balance to be struck in foreign relations, and the political chemistry these days makes balance in anything nearly impossible.

The leaders of the coalition that is needed obviously cannot be from the extreme left or right. A coalition teaming, say, Sarah Palin with Nancy Pelosi would never get beyond the first round (but would have high entertainment value). We need grown-ups to put their heads together and plot a course out of this mess. Unfortunately, grown-ups are in short supply in today’s Washington.

The Big Bang and Other Noteworthy Incidents

Perceived wisdom has it that the universe began with the Big Bang, which occurred about 13.7 billion years ago, when a cosmic speck inflated to a zillionth times its size in a zillionth of a second. The Big Bang then slowed down and became a small bang, which keeps the universe expanding to this very day. To me, that was never very convincing, as it still left unexplained where the speck came from or what preceded it. Now an astronomer, Roger Penrose of Oxford, says that the Bang was just another in a series of bangs that go on forever. Each universe expands to a point where all the matter is sucked into black holes, becomes infinitely small, and a new Big Bang is generated. Moreover, these bangs leave imprints in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and – this is the best part – Dr Penrose claims to have found such imprints in data from a US satellite dedicated to studying the CMB. Infinity is hard for us humans to understand, but I find Penrose’s story more believable than a single Big Bang that came out of nowhere.

Stephen Sondheim’s new book, Finishing the Hat, is a very satisfying trip through the first half of the composer/lyricist’s career on Broadway. (A sequel is in the works.) The book contains the complete lyrics of a number of Sondheim’s shows, but the grabber is what the book’s subtitle calls “attendant comments, principles, heresies, grudges, whines and anecdotes.” Among the heresies is the author’s trenchant criticism of the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein (who, as is widely known, was Sondheim’s surrogate father and mentor). Sondheim dismisses the lyrics to “All the Things You Are” as just pretty words, devoid of meaning. Which just means that Sondheim, no romantic he, doesn’t get “the promised kiss of springtime that makes the lonely winter seem long.” That sort of thing seems tone-deaf and ungrateful, but it doesn’t diminish the reader’s appreciation of the book. For one thing, he reserves his barbs for lyricists who are dead (and therefore unlikely to be offended). For another, he is equally harsh on some of his own lyrics, as he should be. The lyrics for “I Feel Pretty,” from West Side Story, are Sondheim at his worst. But Sondheim at his best is very good indeed, and his explanations of the art and craft of lyric-writing are worth reading.

While we’re on Sondheim, his 80th birthday concert, held at Avery Fisher Hall, is a must-see. I particularly liked the inclusion of so many relatively unknown songs and the finale, with six divas dressed in red each giving a tour de force rendition of one of Sondheim’s classics, the high points being Marin Maizzie’s “It Never Entered My Mind” and Elaine Stritch’s “I’m Still Here.”

The acting troop at the Saco River Grange Hall can be counted on to serve up an entertaining evening of drama, and this fall’s presentation, Shivaree, by William Mastrosimone, was no exception. Jennifer Porter, SRGH’s perennial leading lady, took the title role and was good as always. But the group tends to choose plays (and movies) with downbeat subject matter, and I personally enjoy its musical outings (Always Patsy Cline, And the World Goes ‘Round, An Evening with Jennifer Porter and Friends) much more.

The Tone-Deaf President

For someone who thinks of himself as (and at times is) a great communicator, Barack Obama has rather badly botched communications the one audience he needs to mend the economy: the business community. Let us count the ways.

First, he instinctively talks using terms that he thinks will register with his base. That was fine when he was in campaign mode, but once he was elected President, he should have changed his default manner of speech. Calling bankers “fat cats” may have brought knowing nods to his community-organizer public, but business people began to wonder what business he would target next.

They soon found out. He sold his health-care plan by demonizing the insurance industry. If the American people didn’t watch out, he warned, the larcenous insurance industry would steal their socks without removing their shoes.

Next came the pharmaceutical industry, or “big pharma,” as he liked to think of them. (Little pharma is apparently okay, as are little banks and little insurance companies. It is only when a business dares to become big that it invites attack.)

Two weeks ago, on the campaign trail, the President visited a small steel company in the rustbelt to “show and tell” how much he was doing for business. “Without these programs,” he boasted, “Stromberg’s workers wouldn’t have been able to compete with foreign companies or non-union firms.”

How’s that again, Mr. President? Don’t you realize that Apple, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, and most of the fastest-growing companies in America are non-union? Are you tone-deaf? Don’t you understand that your comment, televised on CNBC, was a loud message to business that your heart is still with your base, and your base doesn’t include the most dynamic part of the American economy?

A business-savvy communications adviser could have warned Obama that he was sending all the wrong signals, but there is no such person on the White House staff. There will be cosmetic changes, but the President will have to work much harder to convince business leaders that he really understands the machinery of free-enterprise and entrepreneurism, and that he has been converted to Cheerleader-in-Chief.

The Wisdom of the Masses

A very long time ago, I put in a month on jury duty. The law was since changed to limit tours to a day or a trial, but back then, jury duty meant getting your employer to give you a month’s leave of absence. This was rarely a problem; in fact, most employers supplemented your court per diem to make you whole.

The most memorable thing about my month’s tour in the jury pool was my discovery that my fellow man, though not always reliable as an individual, was completely trustworthy as a group of twelve. There was something about the gravity of the situation (my tour included a case of homicide) that brought out the very best in man. You come to know your fellow jurors pretty well after weeks of chatting, having lunch together, and swapping stories, and, inevitably, you find that some of them are a bit rough around the edges. But put twelve of them on a jury, and a miraculous thing happens: Everyone assumes a higher dignity, a refined sense of responsibility, a rationality that would have been impossible without the special chemistry of the jury.

That experience informed my attitude about the American electorate. I believe that, no matter how many attacks one hears and how many whackos among the candidates, the American public as a group can be relied on to deliver the goods. The larger the voter turnout, the better the odds. A five- or six-man jury is not as trustworthy as a dozen.

Much is made of voter polarization these days, and many people will indeed vote emotionally rather than logically. But the sum total will, like a jury verdict, be a true expression of the public's best reading of the situation at hand. As a compass, you just can’t beat it.

So let’s not hear any Wednesday morning quarterbacking about how voters were deceived by lies or mountains of evil money. The voters en masse will have done a good job.

The Elections

The political campaigns are as poisonous in Maine as they are elsewhere. Some television ads don’t even bother to tell you whom to vote for; they just tell you whom not to vote for. Paul LePage is a candidate for Governor who came out of nowhere to win the Republican primary. He is the mayor of Waterville, and a general manager of a discount retail store. And he is apparently a monster, in the opinion of a woman who pleaded, at the end of a TV ad, “Please, don’t vote for Paul LePage.” She didn’t say who her preferred candidate was; it apparently was beside the point.

This sort of thing is going on all over the country, candidates trashing each other with half-truths, out-of-context sound bites, and the like. Their advertising gurus must tell them negative ads work, but I spent a lot of years running advertising for a fair-sized company, and I don’t know. At some point I think the attackee starts getting a sympathy vote. I don’t know much about Paul LePage, but I know less about the lady begging me not to vote for him.

The robocalls come all day and all evening. I thank God for caller ID, which catches most of them, but every now and then one sneaks through because the number is local and looks innocent enough. “I just want to ask you to vote for….” the voice says before I can hang up. Political campaign are exempt from the “do not call” restrictions, because our politicians have thoughtfully legislated themselves beyond the law.

For Congress, Representative Chellee Pingree is battling Republican Dean Scontras. Chellee is the Congressman who vented against fat-cat Wall Streeters flying around in private jets – until she was seen exiting a private jet in Portland. That doesn’t count, she said, because jets owned by family members are okay. What family member owns a jet? Her fiance, who runs a hedge fund. Oh.

The Maine landscape is now littered with political signs – not just for candidates, but for ballot questions as well. One of the more contentious battles is being waged in nearby Biddeford, an old mill city that has seen better days. Some investors want to site a trotters’ race track and casino (slot machines) in Biddeford, and the City fathers, impressed by the scale and architecture of the proposal and by the money behind it, are all for it. But any major new enterprise in Maine will trigger loud opposition, especially if gambling is involved. Those urging a yes vote emphasize JOBS, while the antis warn that slot machines spell degradation right here in River City.

Since the radio station I depend on for news and weather is WBZ in Boston, I hear the political ads for the Massachusetts candidates, too. Same thing: attack, attack. Governor Patrick, the Democrat incumbent, bad-mouths Charlie Baker, the Republican challenger, and Baker attacks Patrick. In one of the most bizarre examples of the art, Suzanne Bump, Democrat running for Auditor, cites a Boston Globe article in attacking her opponent, Mary Connaughton – although the Globe has endorsed Connaughton! Another Bay State contest to watch is Sean Bileat’s crusade to unseat Barney Frank. If he succeeds, it will be an earthquake to rival Scott Brown’s miraculous upset in the Bay State senatorial contest last year. Needless to say, Barney Frank, patron saint of Fannie Mae, is a favorite target of Republicans across the country.

The polls suggest that an enraged public is ready to make a huge change next Tuesday. (An e-mail titled “A Friendly Reminder” says “Tuesday: Throw the trash out.”) The rage has developed its own momentum, so that many voters will want to be part of a revolution whose nature they’re only dimly aware of. After the celebrating, many voters, and probably many winning candidates, will ask themselves, “What happens now?”

And two years from now, if the economy hasn’t improved, we’ll have more rage, more attack ads, more robocalls. It’s the price of democracy.

Miss Baghdad? Not.

The Vietnam War killed more than 3 million people, uniformed and civilian. The US lost 58 thousand soldiers in a war that almost tore this country apart. Why did we fight? The idea, the politicians (Democrat and Republican) told us, was to keep the country from falling under Communist rule.

Fast forward to 2010, 37 years after the last US personnel were airlifted off the embassy roof in Saigon. This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) to cozy up to the (Communist) government in a transparent attempt to buy the friendship of China’s neighbors. The Vietnam government, presumably, have short memories. Napalm? What’s that?

There is a moral here, which is not lost on President Karzai of Afghanistan. Three decades from now, a future Secretary of State may be in Kabul, making nice with the Taliban leadership hoping to lure them away from Iran. If you were Karzai, you would be looking for all the friends you can get – in the Middle East, not in Washington.

The Vietnam tragedy was dramatized stingingly in Miss Saigon, a musical that opened on Broadway in 1991. It is an achingly poignant musical, underappreciated despite its long run (over 4000 performances), perhaps because it lies in the shadow of Les Miserables, created by the same team, Schönberg and Boubill. The essence of the play is stated in the second-act song, Bui-Doi, which is an elegy for the Vietnamese children born during the war and destined to be the dust of life. “They are the living reminder,” the lyric groans, “of all the good we failed to do.”

The parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan are haunting. We are trying to withdraw from Iraq, now a fractious state with sectarian violence still a fact of life. Saddam Hussein’s pistol is mounted as a trophy in the new George W. Bush exhibit in Dallas. Tariq Aziz, a spokesman for the old government, has just been sentenced to hang, despite an appeal for clemency from the Pope. Anbar Province is aboil over control of a natural-gas field. There is still no functioning government in Baghdad.

There will be no musical called Miss Baghdad. Miss Saigon had the advantage of a template (Madam Butterfly) against which Alan Boubill could create a love story about a Saigon bar girl and a GI. There is no template for Miss Baghdad. No one wants to see Abu Ghraib played out on stage.

But rest assured, the mess in Afghanistan and Iraq will be all right in the end. That is the real lesson of the sight of Hillary Clinton clinking cocktails with the politicians and business leaders in Ho Chi Minh City, only blocks from where the last helicopter lifted off, leaving panicked crowds of civilians behind, in 1973.

Thoughts While Looking at the Moon

I was looking at the moon tonight, high in the sky over the ocean, and it occurred to me that what I was seeing was exactly what a Roman citizen saw at the time of Christ. Now, if I were able to communicate with that Roman, as we both looked up at the moon, and I told him that in my time man traveled to the moon, landed on it, walked around a bit, and then returned to earth, he would not have believed me. “No way,” he would say (or “nulla via”). In fact, I find it hard to believe, too. Jill had serious doubts and suspected that the whole “one giant step for mankind” scene took place on a huge sound stage in Hollywood.

Now, if we could communicate with a person living in 4000 AD, what would he or she tell us that we would find impossible to believe? That genomic science extended the average life span to 200 years? That we would regularly communicate with beings on other planets? That we would use intelligent holographic “friends” as servants and entertainers? That the dominant transportation vehicle would be personal airmobiles powered by rechargeable hydrogen modules?

Of course, The Time Machine told a different story, in which the eloi were bred as food sources for the morlocks, long after the world as we know it had been destroyed by nuclear war. In the book, the time traveler (George in the 1960 movie) lands in the year 802,701, by which time we in 2010 would be regarded as the equivalent of cavemen. The movie is fascinating, and at the fifth or tenth viewing we still root for George to find his way back to Weena. Unfortunately, the grim future that H.G. Wells paints is at least as plausible as the tomorrow described in the previous paragraph. Mankind does have a way of botching things, even while he pushes technology ahead.

There is no record of Roman or Greek literature speculating on life 2000 years in the future. That’s too bad, because it would be interesting to read where Plato or Aristotle imagined mankind was heading. In their wildest dreams did they ever envision flying machines carrying hundreds of people across the oceans? In the night sky I see their flashing lights, just as I see the far off moon, and it all seems hard to believe, even today.

Thank You, Readers

Yesterday, this blog recorded its 10,000th "hit." That's a small number, compared with many blogs by celebrities. but its a big number in my league. I'm also floored by the number of countries represented by the total - evidence, I guess, of the world-wide popularity of search engines. Anyway, to all who have clicked their way through the literary beachcomber, thank you.

Cogito Ergo Sum

Philosophy joke: René Descartes entered a restaurant in Brussels, was seated, and after a while a waiter approached and asked him if he would like an aperitif. “I think not,” said Descartes.
And disappeared.

Does the fact that we think really mean we exist? It’s a good question, and I wish we were spending our time arguing about existential matters instead of quantitative easing or politics. The political discourse is getting heated, if you haven’t noticed, and it often centers on philosophical niceties worthy of a Descartes. In Massachusetts, a candidate for auditor, of all offices, tries to explain away her claim of two Massachusetts homes on tax returns by saying one was her principal home and the other was her primary home. In Maine, a Democratic congresswoman known for lashing out at Wall Street fat cats who fly around on private jets is seen exiting a private jet on a local runway. The jet is owned by a hedge-fund operator to whom she is engaged, the Congresswoman explained, flying on a private jet is okay if the plane is owned by a family member, and fiancés are family members, sort of.

The Barney Frank who was such a rabid cheerleader for Fannie Mae when the lender was making crazy loans doesn’t exist. The Barney Frank who now exists says that mortgages should be given only to buyers who can afford them. So in January, this January, Fannie launched a program that allows first-time home buyers to put down $1,000 or 1% of the purchase price, whichever is greater.

Or how about this return to insanity: In the first half of this year, credit card companies sent out 84.8 million offers to American subprime borrowers, up from 43.7 million a year ago.

I think, therefore I qualify for a mortgage or a credit card.

All About Eve

I watched All About Eve the other night, and I was just as fascinated by it as I was when I first saw it, at least a dozen watchings ago. Joe Mankiewicz’s script is still music to the ear, and the performances are all legendary. It is the best acting Bette Davis has done, and the same is true right across the cast, from Anne Baxter to Gary Merrill to George Sanders to Celeste Holm to Hugh Marlowe. None of them ever equaled what they left behind in Eve. It is hard to believe that there is any film-lover who has never seen All About Eve, but of course there are, and to them I say: Get a copy by hook or crook, and be prepared to see just how good a movie can be.

Eve is Eve Harrington, a fiercely ambitious young would-be actress. Margo Channing is the reigning queen of the footlights, and Eve is a Margo wannabe. Bill Sampson is a successful director and Margo’s boyfriend. Lloyd Richards is a playwright, and he and his wife Karen are among Margo’s small circle of friends. Addison Dewitt is the most powerful drama critic in town. Minor characters flit around these luminaries, among them Miss Caswell, played by Marilyn Monroe before she was Marilyn Monroe.

The plot traces Eve Harrington’s devious journey to the pinnacle of Broadway stardom. The script sparkles with such lines as “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night” and “It’s time to tell the piano it hasn’t written the concerto.”

Sam Staggs’s excellent book, All About “All About Eve” correctly notes that half the cast would be forgotten today were it not for their roles in the movie. Bette Davis, 42 at the time, was considered washed up until she played Margo – a role she seized when an injury sidelined Claudette Colbert, the studio’s first choice. Bette had already logged a string of hits that would ensure her lasting fame, but the same was not true of Anne Baxter (Frank Lloyd Wright’s granddaughter), who won the title role. Gary Merrill, today remembered (if at all) for his role in 12 O’Clock High, had an undistinguished film career until Eve, as did Anne Baxter, Hugh Marlowe, and Celeste Holm. George Sanders, who perennially played British upper-class gentlemen (though he was actually born in Russia), deservedly walked off with an Academy Award for his portrayal of the venomous Addison Dewitt. Margo and Addison are in fact the juiciest roles in the movie, with one commanding every scene she’s in and the other providing the emotional climax of the story and the resolution of the plot. Gary Merrill and Bette Davis were an item during the shooting, and the two married as soon as they could shed their spouses. This was life imitating art, and the on/off-screen romance adds another dimension to one’s appreciation of the film.

But the real star of All About Eve was its writer and director, Joe Mankiewicz. His script attracted and motivated an excellent cast, and his directorial style drew from each a once-in-a-career performance. This in spite of the fact that tempers were often raw. Bette Davis and Celeste Holm managed to play best friends on screen even though they detested each other and never spoke to each other away from the set. It was Mankiewicz who kept them all pushing to achieve the great film they all knew they were part of. For this was no surprise hit; each week, when the rushes were viewed, everybody was surer than ever that All About Eve was a special film.

And it was, and is.

Our $90 Billion Salesman

From “The World This Week” in the current issue of The Economist:

“The Obama administration has announced plans to sell Saudi Arabia arms worth as much as $90 billion over the coming decade, in what would be America biggest-ever weapons sale.”

Did you notice something strange about that news release? The seller is identified as “the Obama administration.” We have come to the point where the Government can make a sale (or not make a sale) for $90 billion dollars’ worth of hardware. That’s a lot of hardware and a lot of paychecks and a lot of commissions for someone. Come to think of it, the aerospace companies don’t even need salesmen any more. The sale is closed when the President says “okay.”

Here’s what Dwight Eisenhower said as he was leaving the presidency in 1960.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Arms manufactured in the United States may be found in every corner of the earth. Some of these arms, if past experience is any guide, will one day be used to kill Americans. We are in fact the world’s largest supplier of weapons of mass destruction. And as other countries cut their arms budgets, our role will get even larger. The military can’t stop it. When it tried to kill a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Congress overruled it; too many jobs were at stake.

Increasingly, the U.S. is the go-to enforcer, because erstwhile allies are quitting the game. Great Britain proposes defense cuts of 10 to 20 percent. Germany plans to drop its draft and cut its armed forces by a third. Today’s “coalition of the willing” is shrinking fast. Meanwhile, as if Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t enough, hawks in Washington press for greater U.S. military involvement in Yemen and Somalia. It is hard to see how this lunacy will play out. President Obama, who probably wishes he could disengage, can’t, any more than he can close Guantanamo. The military is trapped in wars it cannot win. Congress, which deserves the public scorn it gets, keeps funding weapons systems the military doesn’t need.

Eisenhower saw in the military-industrial complex “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.” And Dwight Eisenhower was no pacifist. He led the Allies to victory in Europe and was regarded as a bona-fide military hero. One can only wonder what he would have thought on reading a press release for a $90 billion-dollar arms sale – issued, not by Boeing or Northrup or Lockheed, but by the President of the United States.

Our Vicious Economic Circle

My favorite economist, A. Gary Shilling, has been recommending the long Treasury bond for so long that some gurus have dismissed him as a Johnny One-Note. But the results, had you followed his advice, would have been spectacular. If you had invested $100 in a 25-year zero-coupon Treasury bond in October 1981 and kept rolling it over each year to maintain the 25-year maturity, your $100 would have grown to $16,695 in June 2010. Meanwhile, had you invested $100 in the S&P500 at its low in July 1982, you would now have $1997 (including dividend reinvestment). So much for financial advisers who tell you that stocks always outperform bonds.

Okay, the doubters say, so Shilling has been right for the last three decades, but now interest rates are so low that they can’t go any lower. Not so. The long bond is still yielding about 4%, and if it drops to 3% it will generate a healthy capital gain – even healthier if you buy a zero coupon bond, as he suggests, and roll it over. Gary has been forecasting deflation for years, even writing a book or two on the subject, and he is not changing his tune a whit.

What does all this mean for the U.S. economy? Here’s the problem: Our economy was, as everyone now sees, a house of sand, built on too-easy credit. People bought houses they could not afford, ran up credit-card debt they could not service, and lived a life style impossible to sustain. Meanwhile, a huge retail infrastructure was built to service that easy-credit lifestyle (see my blog post “Overmalled,” dated October 29, 2007). Everyone now realizes that, but what does it mean for the future?

The only way to resuscitate the U.S. economy quickly and painlessly is to restore the very easy-credit environment that brought us down. Some members of Congress are in fact advocating that approach (they would not admit that, of course), and the President and his economic team have come perilously close to the line, maintaining that a “cold turkey” approach would trigger catastrophe. But once you start pushing banks and others to relax loan standards, it’s a very slippery slope – greased, moreover, with the politics of mid-term elections.

Levering was great fun; delevering is no fun, but it must be done. So people will not rush to the malls but will build their savings, because they are, understandably, worried about their futures. Investors will increasingly avoid most stocks and look for dividend-paying securities, the safer the better.

And underlying these realities is another, more serious problem: We have a President who has made clear his distaste for the business of business, especially big business. Bankers are fat cats, the drug companies are dishonest, insurance companies are crooks. Notwithstanding all the Presidential rhetoric glorifying the small machine shop or the corner hamburger joint, it is companies who hire people by the thousands that make the difference. And this President doesn’t inspire their confidence.

Shilling was right; deflation is here.

Twilight at the World of Tomorrow

One day in 1934, Joseph Shadgen asked his 12-year-old daughter Jacqueline what she had learned in school that day.

“We learned that the United States is 158 years old this year.”

“How do you figure that?” her father asked.

“Because the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776,” Jacqueline answered.

“That is not right,” Joseph said. Joseph, an immigrant from Luxembourg, knew his American history. “The Declaration of Independence was just that – a declaration of an intention. Nothing happened in 1776 to create a country. The United States was born the day it elected its first president, George Washington, in 1789.”

Jacqueline was unconvinced, but later that year Joseph’s arithmetic led him to conclude that the United States would celebrate its 150th birthday in 1939, five years hence, just enough time to plan Joseph Shadgen’s big idea: A New York World’s Fair.

The 1939 World’s Fair, remembered, if at all, for its iconic trylon and perisphere, drew 45 million people to its Flushing Meadows site in 1939 and 1940. When it was conceived in 1934, its theme was The World of Tomorrow, but by the time it opened, World War 2 had already begun. Thus the title of James Mauro’s excellent new book on the Fair is Twilight at the World of Tomorrow.

Joseph Shadgen’s big idea was taken over by New York’s banking and political movers and shakers, and especially by a larger-than-life promoter named Grover Whalen. The World’s Fair turns out to be a metaphor for life in the United States in the 1930s, and all the headline-makers are on hand: Albert Einstein, Charles Lindbergh, Franklin Roosevelt, Fiorello La Guardia, Superman, Batman, and even Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

Pavilions showcased the visions of tomorrow as promised by GE, GM (“Futurama”), DuPont, Con Edison, RCA (television) and other industrial giants. Country pavilions included some, like Czechoslovakia and Poland, whose homelands were swallowed up while the Fair was in progress. Noteworthy factoid: When Grover Whalen’s initial sales campaign was sputtering, the two countries that gave him his breakthrough sales were the Soviet Union and Mussolini’s Italy!

Another nugget: The Flushing Meadows site chosen for the Fair was a huge ash heap known as the Corona Dumps, and its proximity to the more posh neighborhoods on Long Island led F. Scott Fitzgerald to call his new novel Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires until an editor persuaded him to change the title to The Great Gatsby.

The book is well written, meticulously researched, and fascinating to read, especially if you are old enough to remember flying into LaGuardia and seeing the skeleton of the old perisphere, stripped of its gypsum, decades after all the other traces of the World’s Fair had disappeared, looking eerily like the Statue of Liberty in the last scene of Planet of the Apes.

________________________________________
Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World’s Fair on the Brink of War, by James Mauro. Ballantine Books, $28.

Unintended Consequences

When President Obama returns to his office from Maine, he will sign an 800-page financial reform bill, which will be proclaimed (by him) as the most far-reaching and beneficial financial legislation in at least 50 years. You have to give the man credit. He has tackled some of the most pressing issues of our times, boldly and full of self-confidence, without much help from the Republicans. They are his bills.

But 800 pages is a lot to read – bigger by far than Gone With the Wind – so we have to assume that the President hasn’t read it, but has left that to staff, and therein lies the rub. It would be nice to believe that the economic gurus have vetted the document and were satisfied that at least it would do no harm. But, grading the bill for the Wall Street Journal, Henry Paulson says “there are too many unknowns as to how the regulations will be applied.” Harvey Pitt, an accounting heavyweight and a former SEC chief, grades it an F. Pimco’s Bill Gross, who manages more money than almost anyone, gives the bill a D+. Nouriel Roubini, an economics superstar these days, gives it a C+. A few are more generous, but among experts who may be assumed to have read all or most the bill, the reviews are poor. If it were a Broadway play, the closing notices would have been posted.

Okay, so whom did the President rely on to go through the 800 pages, subparagraph by subparagraph? Let me guess. Not Rahm Emmanuel, certainly. And probably not Tim Geithner, whose plate is full. How about Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, or rather their staffs? Frank and Dodd are hard workers, and we assume their staffs work even harder. It’s a political deal, after all, sewed up (barely) with the help of Scott Brown and the two senators from Maine (now we know why Obama flew to Bar Harbor rather than the Gulf Coast for a quick vacation). Let’s acknowledge that the President knows how to pull the right political levers. But does that guarantee that the legislation is sound? No.

To begin with, who told the President about the possible unintended consequences of this bill? Who laid out a scenario under which the legislation would not prevent another financial collapse but would in fact precipitate one? President George W. Bush relied on the neocons surrounding him to draw up a plan to invade Iraq. The case for invasion was a “slam dunk,” they said, but where was the voice telling him all the things that might go wrong – no WMD, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, civil war – and the far-reaching consequences. (One assumes that Colin Powell was such a voice, before he was sacked.)

The finreg bill is not as bloody as Iraq, but Afghanistan is getting there, and one can see a coming collision between the President’s deep desire to pull out and the militarists’ demands for victory. Whichever way he leans, there will be unintended consequences, and they won’t be pretty.

Nor will the unintended consequences of financial regulation. The hordes of new committees and their lawyers and a tidal wave of new regulations could strangle the economy just when the first faint flickers of a recovery are on the horizon. I hope that President Obama has put his new bill through a stress test, but I doubt it.

Schumer the Almighty

From a story in today’s New York Times on the antenna problems experienced by some users of Apple’s new iPhone 4:

“Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, wrote an open letter to Mr. Jobs on Thursday demanding that Apple give customers a ‘permanent fix’ for the problem at no cost.”

Chuck Schumer’s power knows no bounds. Private companies, sovereign countries, all are under his thumb. He doesn’t ask; he demands. His latest domain is the business and technology of telecommunications technology.

What next?

“Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, commenting on the quality of Raisin Bran, demanded that Kellogg’s increase the number of raisins in each package of the cereal at no cost to the customer.”

“Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, charging that some orange juice cartons labeled “Lots of Pulp” did not in fact contain lots of pulp, demanded that a Government commission be established to set pulp standards for orange juice.”

“Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York demanded that the Miami Heat immediately trade LeBron James to the New York Knicks.”

“Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York demanded that Japanese and Korean auto manufacturers close their Southern U.S. plants and move them to Buffalo.”

“Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York demanded that polling organizations revise their data to reflect what he maintained was the American public’s overwhelmingly positive opinion of the U.S. Congress.”