Merry Christmas to all...

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or just a few days away from the daily battle. I plan to take some time off. Talk to you in a week or so.

All the best,

d'blank

The U.S. Treasury is giving American Express almost $4 billion in TARP funds. Details here. This is appalling. If there is an organization less vital to the the economic viability of this country than American Express I can't name it. This is just so depressing. For what are they going to use the money? Consumer subsidies on $50 steaks at Ruth's Chris? Funding for a new pretentious ad campaign featuring the very special people who are "members?"

What in the world is Paulson thinking? He denied the car companies help and then ladles in out for these idiots, who, as anyone who follows this industry knows, is in trouble because they started pumping cards out to pretty much anybody who asked for one a few years ago, and now they can't collect. What jerks.

Bleeding heart tightwads

Bleeding heart tightwads is the title of Nick Kristof's column today in the Times, which reports the fact that conservative people donate to charity at rates 30-50% higher than their more liberal brethren. This fact has been verified in several studies, both at the individual and state level. Red states are much more generous than blue states. Conservatives are also much more likely to volunteer their time than liberals. This phenomena also exists at a national level with U.S. citizens being more generous than more liberal-leading European nations by even bigger margins.

I have no idea what this means, but I find it really interesting.

Someone to admire

Charlie Rose had Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on for the full hour last night. To be honest, I’d never thought much about him nor heard much more than a sound bite from him before the program. But after the avalanche of news about crooked, self-serving politicians and grave-robber, Wall Street thieves, it was really refreshing and even uplifting to listen to Gates for an hour. He has a PhD in Russian Studies, and will have served eight Presidents once Obama takes office. What kind of man can serve both Nixon and Carter, Clinton and Bush? A thoughtful, intelligent, humble man who sees the world in all its complexities, and despite his role running the world’s biggest military machine, a man who clearly sees diplomacy as our most valuable and effective “weapon.” The term “devoted public servant” is grossly overused, but I think it is well-deserved in his case. The interview has not yet been posted on the Rose web site yet, but when it is, I’ll put in a link.

There were a couple of really interesting pieces in the New York Times today. The first, a front page story on how drastically major news organizations are reducing their investments in original Washington reporting. In 2000, Cox Newspapers (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Austin American-Statesman, plus 15 additional) had 30 reporters in Washington to cover the transition to George W. Bush’s administration. This year they are will have zero; they have closed their Washington bureau. There are many other dramatic examples like this. Just when we need an independent eye watching over politicians and the money-men behind them more than ever, they are being washed away in the frenzy to make all media free and every idiot with a blog (cough) equal to Edward R. Murrow.

Finally, the Times digs, also on the front page, into the outrageous bonuses paid to Wall Streeters based on profits that never existed in the first place. While I think there should be bankers hanging from every lamppost, the Times is at least asking why shareholders aren’t suing to claw back the fraudulent bonuses. (I guess we could string them up after getting the money back.)

Who would have believed oil would ever sell well below $40 a barrel just a few short months ago?

Hypocritical lying whore of the week

The big story this week is the $50 billion Madoff swindle, which was made possible because hedge funds aren’t regulated by the SEC and don’t have to be audited the way public companies must be. For that you can thank Congress, and especially one of my Senators, Chuck Schumer, formerly Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and a member of the Senate Banking Committee.

A recent New York Times article called Schumer a “jackhammer” when it comes to fundraising and reports that he raised a record $240 million in his party role – including nearly four times as much Wall Street money as the RNC. He has also raised more personal campaign funds from the securities and investment industries than all but one other Congressman, Senator Kerry.

“So what,” you may be asking. Well, here’s a quote from the Times article: “He is serving the parochial interest of a very small group of financial people, bankers, investment bankers, fund managers, private equity firms, rather than serving the general public,” said John C. Bogle, the founder and former chairman of the Vanguard Group, the giant mutual fund house. “It has hurt the American investor first and the average American taxpayer.” Bogle is not exactly a lefty. What he is referring to is Schumer’s ongoing and enthusiastic efforts to gut the SEC, keep credit rating agencies unregulated, lower taxes for hedge funds and private equity firms, and much more. Wall Street got its money’s worth out of Chuckles. It’s all in the Times article.

So that’s the “whore” part of the headline. What makes him a hypocrite and a liar is that he is now trying to recast himself as a populist defender of the little guy’s interests. “After eight years of deregulatory zeal by the Bush administration, an attitude of ‘the market can do no wrong’ has led it down a short path to economic recession,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor in September after carrying Wall Street’s water bucket for years.

He was not alone, of course. Lots of bad people in Washington, New York and elsewhere made their contribution to the financial meltdown. But Schumer played a pivotal role, and is another “elite” -- Harvard undergrad, Harvard Law – who might have served the country in gratitude for the blessings he received, but served himself instead.

Did you watch 60 Minutes last night. If you think the mortgage mess is nearly over, there is a second wave about to hit that is bigger than the first one. You can see the segment here.

Movies: Two I can highly recommend to you are Gran Torino, staring my man Clint. If you love him, you’ll love this movie, and if you are one of those people who have never liked the Dirty Harry side of life, this movie might surprise you.
Another that came to me out of left field, that I really enjoyed, was Slum Dog Millionaire. A sweet love story, but wrapped in a rowdy, 15-year flashback that takes place in the underbelly of India. Also – can’t wait to see Cadillac Records which gets a strong recommendation from AY, my personal movie critic.

Oh, I forgot to mention last week, O.J. wants you to know he is very sorry.

Misunderstood?

I plan to read little about Rod Blagojevic, and write even less. Mostly because this is one of those American news items where active attention isn’t required; I’ll get much more than I need or want via media osmosis. Plus, I don’t want to become sympathetic to this mope, which is a real possibility if the current circus stays in town much longer.

This is the kind of story we really like to just beat to death in this country. An egotistical, immoral, big-city bumpkin, with a bad haircut and a worse wife makes us all feel morally superior. We can just pound him to a pulp without remorse or need of even a morsel Christian charity. And it keeps us from having to consider the question, “what’s the big deal here?”

Certainly no one believes a politician trading actions for something in return is an uncommon occurrence? In addition to the update in the 12/7 post, Charlie Rangel is also being investigated for changing his vote on a federal tax provision in favor of a company that donated $1 million to a school building fund that plans to slap Charlie the Tuna’s name over the front door.

Or is it that it is a Senate seat being treated like a used i-Pod on eBay that is troubling everyone? Well, as Gail Collins points out in her NYT column today, Delaware’s Governor Minner appointed one of Sen. Biden’s long-time aides to finish his unexpired term; the aide promptly promised not to run for reelection, which will make it easy for Biden’s son to run when he comes back from active duty in Iraq. There’s one big favor on the books for the Gov. Will the new VP return it in the form of a taxpayer funded “something?” Isn’t that what politics is?

Alright, I get it. Blago was more brazen, lacks style, and is out of step with the times, but here’s a thought: Why don’t we put him on trial -- a real one with lawyers, witnesses, discovery, and a judge and jury, and see what comes of it? That used to be the American way, instead of running him up in front of the High Court of NBC, the Honorable Judge Matt presiding, where the only evidence is in the form of leaked government transcripts, rumors, and carefully selected video designed to make Blago look like a off-duty Elvis impersonator.

Is this really the way we want our judicial system to operate?

New Car Czar?

I love Congress. They berated the car execs for asking for half as much money as Congress thinks they will really need, and then they gave them half of what they asked for. But at least half of the Midwest won’t be unemployed for Christmas.

Now it’s time to find the new Car Czar to oversee the renaissance of Detroit. This post is seeking your nominations, and I’ll get the ball rolling with a few suggestions. Here are three in no particular order:

1. Billie Gibbons of ZZ Top, in part because we need someone in government who looks like this, but this is also a man who knows cars. One look at his custom Cadzilla is all you need to know the truth of it.

2. Michael Vick, former Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback (currently residing in Leavenworth, Kansas). Mike is another car lover. In fact, he bought a $99,500 Mercedes S550 on the day he left for Leavenworth. Used a debit card to pay for it. Mike has bought dozens of cars of all types in his young life. You can read about how he spent over $18 million in two years in a recent Atlanta Journal article. That kind of power-spending could be very useful when you consider how much new money Detroit will have to spend.

3. Jay Leno. Jay is one of the great car collectors of all times, and is particularly knowledgeable about Detroit iron. He has a great web site that shows off his collection with both still and video art. And of course, he is a funny guy, and I have a feeling we’re really going to need a sense of humor before we work ourselves out of this mess.

Can someone explain this?

Here were the headlines on http://www.cnnmoney.com/ at the end of the day on Friday:

* Most jobs lost in 34 years. 11 month decline of 1.9 million

* Unemployment rate soars to 6.7%

* Foreclosures soar 76% to record 1.35 million

* Dow rises 269.13

If this were an SAT test I think I could nail the line that doesn’t belong here. I will never understand the financial markets; but then again, the professionals don’t seem to either.

Charlie Rangel is back in the news. Seems he applied for and received a “homestead” tax rebate from NY state for a house he owns, but to legally qualify the house must be one’s principal residence. But Charlie lives in three rent controlled apartments in Harlem, also in conflict with the law. Then there is he failure to pay taxes on his condo in the Dominican. It’s good to be the king. It’s been a tough year for NY Dems. In addition to Charlie’s and Governor Spitzer’s little problems, new Governor Patterson had to fire his number one aide who had failed to pay US income taxes for several years. His lawyer claimed a form of mental illness that prevents a person from paying taxes. I wish it was contagious.

Two more reasons I love magazines: Read Esquire’s article in the December issue on Dean Kamen. Inventing the Segway may be among the least impressive (and least strange) of his many accomplishments. Turning sewage into drinking water? A perpetual motion machine? No problem for Dean. No blog is ever going to provide the world with this kind of journalism.

Is there any doubt that Clint Eastwood is the coolest guy on earth? Read this mini review in Time of his acting and directing career combined with more info on the upcoming Gran Torino, which he says will be his last acting job. His timing is also impeccable as it turns out he plays a recently retired Ford assembly line worker. Pretty topical.

Why is this man smiling?

In the Senate, the leading opponent of giving aid to the domestic auto firms is the man to the left. No, it’s not Rip Torn. It’s Alabama Senator Richard Shelby. And why is he so opposed? Could it be because, according to the Alabama Automotive Manufacturers Association, the number of automotive manufacturing jobs in Alabama has increased by 80% since 2001, and the state is home to nearly 300 plants? Close to 500,000 cars were manufactured in Alabama in 2005. Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Hyundai and Toyota all have a strong presence there.

And every one of those jobs is there for two reasons: First, because there are no unions in the south; and second, because Alabama gave enormous tax abatements and other financial inducements to the manufacturers in order to lure them to Alabama. Those inducements included things like building roads and railway lines to the plant locations at no cost to the manufacturer, but at great expense to the taxpayers. Hundreds of millions of dollars were given away.

It would be a major imprudence, in Sen. Shelby’s view, to use taxpayers’ money to help Detroit, but it was no doubt a highly prudent investment in the future of Alabama to set Toyota up with some free roads in order to get the jobs.

In fairness it must be said that if Alabama had not, then Tennessee, South Carolina and Michigan too would have happily done so. It’s a buyer’s market when you are looking for a location for a few hundred jobs.

Senator Shelby would be happy to see the Big 3 go under. He’s betting that will just mean more manufacturing jobs for his state, while the taxpayers of all 50 states will bear the cost of supporting hundreds of thousands of displaced workers, and their families, in the Midwest.

Where the hell is everybody?

Here’s my own little economic survey. I flew to St. Louis Tuesday from LaGuardia on the only non-stop flight in the late afternoon, and the plane was half full. I stayed at the Ritz (corporate dictate) and they upgraded me to a junior suite and gave me a free bottle of wine with dinner. I took a client to lunch the next day at Mike Shannon’s, a classic St. Louis steak joint that’s been around for years, and they could have shut down half the dinning room and played a half court game of 5-on-5. That afternoon at the airport I was early and got a shoe-shine. The shoe-man had been at the same stand for 30 years and said he’d never seen it so dead as it had been the past few months. My flight home (again the only direct option) was less than a third full; I got all three seats in the emergency exit row to myself.

These are not good signs. I can’t even remember the last flight I was on that wasn’t completely full, and I’m not one of those road warriors who belongs to all the travel rewards clubs and knows all the tricks; these were random perks.

Another troubling sign: the most direct path between my office and Grand Central takes me through Rockefeller Plaza every morning and evening, except for the period from roughly November 15 until January 15, when the crush of tourists visiting New York makes walking through the Plaza in the evenings impossible; I have to swing north and go cross-town on 51st Street over to Madison. But not this year. I’m still cutting through the Plaza because there are far fewer tourists – especially from abroad.

So it’s not just car sales and home prices that are down big. People are staying home in droves.

Post-turkey blues

I'm still awakening from my tryptophan-induced comma and basically have nothing to say, except that the market is down over 400 points now that it turns out we've been in a recession for over a year already. In lieu of originality, I shall reprint a joke recently sent to me by the Hankster, that perfectly captures the zeitgeist:

Young Chuck moved to Texas and bought a Donkey from a farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the Donkey the next day.
The next day he drove up and said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the donkey died."
Chuck replied, "Well, then just give me my money back."
The farmer said, "Can't do that. I went and spent it already."
Chuck said, "Ok, then, just bring me the dead donkey."
The farmer asked, "What ya gonna do with him?"
Chuck said, "I'm going to raffle him off."
The farmer said, "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!"
Chuck said, "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead."
A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?"
Chuck said, "'I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars a piece and made a profit of $998."
The farmer asked, "Didn't anyone complain?"
Chuck said, "Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back."
Chuck now works for Goldman Sachs.

The tide is turning

The tide seems to be turning a little as the media starts to realize just how badly we have all been abused by the robber barons of Wall Street. It takes a bit of a commitment to read Michael Lewis’ article (link at right) but just few minutes to read what Tom Friedman wrote today about it. These people need to be held accountable; these were not mistakes, these were premeditated acts of larceny that are now costing regular, taxpaying citizens billions.

I’ll probably take a few days off for Thanksgiving. I wish you all a happy holiday. We still have much to be thankful for. I’ll close with this quote from Lincoln’s second annual message to Congress, in December 1862:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Will the real stooge please stand up

Why are the auto company CEOs getting so much grief from the press, pundits and Congress, while the Wall Street and banking CEOs are getting so little? Because the critics are gutless and self-serving. Financial organizations give out far more PAC money than the auto companies, and, being primarily New York-based, have a much cozier relationship to the media, who tend to be star-struck by the power and fabulousness of the masters-of-the-universe-types at Goldman and Citi.

But who really deserves the scorn? Running a car company is one of the most complex tasks in business. You must market and sell a very expensive consumer product to a very fickle consumer. You have to design those products for where the market will be in five years. You have highly sophisticated competitors from at least six foreign countries. You have to deal with massive numbers of employees and several very powerful unions. The products you make require the very latest in sophisticated engineering and production techniques, combined with outstanding design. The fluctuations in two very volatile commodities (oil and credit) can make or break you. Oh, and just to keep it interesting, by law, you must sell your products through 10,000 independent businesses, each run by a hoople who is sure he knows more about the car business than you do.

To be a successful banker you have to lend money at a higher interest rate than your cost of capital, look good in a suit, and be able to show the yokels a good time when they visit New York. To be fair, you must do all three of these things well. Two out of three is not good enough, as we are learning in an oh-so-painful fashion now.

Two of the three men running the Detroit auto companies have been there short times and came from other industries, and all three are struggling to overcome the big mistakes that were made over decades by their predecessors.

And yet turn on CNBC or any other news program and you will surely see some pretty face explaining in 90 seconds what Detroit needs to do to fix itself. Like they know. And of course the politicians are all shocked to discover that the auto execs make millions and don’t fly coach.

What stunning, self-righteous, hypocrisy. I never dreamed I’d be writing a post defending auto CEOs, but if they are the Three Stooges, then Lehman, AIG, Goldman and Fannie Mae were led by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

And when the smoke cleared...

...the score was Ohio State 42, Michigan 7. God's in his heaven. All's right with the world.

I don't know

Should Hillary be Secretary of State? I don’t know. Is bailing out GM the right thing to do, or just what I’d like to see happen? I don’t know. Is Hank Paulson doing yeoman’s work in an impossible situation, or just greasing all his Wall Street pals? I don’t know the answer to that question either. What I do know is that in order for there to be harmony in the universe for the next twelve months, Ohio State must beat Michigan tomorrow. And that is a fact, Jack.

Miscellaneous

A New Yorker cover is often worth the price of the magazine all by itself. This one qualifies easily. Thanks to Wilton for the nomination.

Hankster offers the following quote from Saul Bellows as a prescription for your times: "We are here, in this fallen state, riven by contradictions, given to understand some things but never others, faltering in our wills, flawed in our abilities, uncertain in our actions. But that is where we must begin and there is no excuse for not taking the task seriously."

Most of the talk about an Obama economic stimulus plan centers on creating jobs for people to work on infrastructure projects. If you will pardon a brief moment of self-satisfaction I wish to refer you to my January 23, 2008 post offering the "d’blank Economic Stimulation Plan," which did exactly that, but never made it out of committee. I always knew I’d have been a better President than W. here is the proof.

Finally, this from UPI: “Unhappy people watch significantly more television compared with happy people who are more socially active, according to a University of Maryland analysis of U.S. adults. Happy people attended more religious services, voted more and read more newspapers."

Give GM the money

I know, I know. It’s bad economic policy and probably un-American too, but we can’t let General Motors go under; at least not right now.

I know all the reasons why not, and if we weren’t already in the middle of an economic shit-storm unlike anything else in our lifetimes, I’d be arguing to let them go through Chapter 11 and emerge in a trimmed-down form more befitting the 21st Century. But we are in a terrible economic crisis, and it makes no sense to allow another 200,000 people to be added to the jobless – not to mention tens of thousands more from GM’s supplier companies, who employ as many as three million.

Whatever we lend them now we won’t be spending on unemployment checks, food stamps, job retraining, the support of a bankrupt city of Detroit, etc. I am also persuaded that a viable automotive industry is vital to the national defense.

This money should not be lent without significant strings attached that include management and labor give-backs. But it must be given lest we dig this hole even deeper. Now is not the time to worry about the deficit – we need to keep bailing this boat hard.

Happy Birthday Chuck

I don't care what anyone says, I've always liked Prince Charles, and today is his 60th birthday. He is an accomplished pilot, polo player and organic farmer. He is largely considered to be eccentric because of his long-held beliefs in green topics, which have now become mainstream. He raises tens of millions of pounds every year for the Prince's Trust which serves disadvantaged youth, and he makes over 600 appearances per year on behalf of the crown.

Just imagine being born and raised for only one purpose in life and getting to be 60 without having a chance to do that one thing. It must be hard. I won't go into the whole Dianna/Camilla thing as it is too emotional an issue.

Finally, check out that coat. Not everyone could look good in something like that. I wish I had one.

Pigs at the trough

The market is down big again today, and I’m sitting here waiting to hear how many of my friends will be among the 600 people losing their jobs at Time this week. I know a few of the names already; they are young family men with a couple of kids who will now be out of work, cast-off from an industry that is contracting, sitting at home in a house they can’t afford and can’t sell, with depleted savings and little chance of finding a decent job in the near term.

Their fate is due primarily to the failures of the company’s management to adjust to changes in the market that have taken place over nearly a decade. Senior management has rewarded themselves with new, more powerful jobs and contracts.

Meanwhile, the government is pumping tens of billions more into AIG and the other weak sisters of Wall Street like they were force feeding ducks to make a cash pâté. In gratitude, the recipients sit on the dough rather than taking the risk of making loans to either businesses or consumers. That was some deal Paulson and Congress cut.

Fannie Mae reported a $29 billion loss today, wiping out all of their previously reported profits for the decade.

American Express is turning itself into a bank holding company so that it can find a place at the Federal feeding trough, because, God knows, they deserve some of that money, too, after lowering their decades-long conservative standards the past few years to grab some of the easy money in substandard credit.

The GM, Ford and Chrysler managements are threatening the loss of tens of thousands more jobs if they don’t get their share of the pork – billions more. They ended free health care for their white collar retirees this week and would do the same in a heartbeat for the union retirees if there weren’t contracts in place to prevent them. We spent most of the last 25-30 years blaming the unions for the auto industry’s problems, but every time there was a choice to be made management made the wrong one: wrong vehicles, wrong styling, too many brands, bad union contracts, and on and on.

The leaders of these companies made millions in undeserved bonuses, wrote books, became statesmen and retired to Arizona to play some golf. The people they led lost their jobs and their homes.

No plutocrat actually exploded like the Python man above, but they were all just so many pigs at the trough. Shame on them.

Barack the conservative

Barack Obama is going to surprise a lot of people by being more conservative than expected. And by “conservative” I mean both in the sense of cautious as well as ideologically. As David Brook’s quoted Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center in his column this morning, “This was an election where the middle asserted itself. There was “no sign” of a “movement to the left.” Brook’s expect Obama to govern that way and makes a persuasive case.

The Rahm Emanuel pick is a good first sign. I remembered and reread a Fortune article from September 2006 in which Democratic strategist Paul Begala, who described Emanuel's aggressive style as a "cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache." But the point of the article was more that Emanuel is both smart and pragmatic and he knows how things work at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A funny quote is attributed to Bill Clinton just after the ’92 election, in which after being asked how he felt, he was reported to have said, “like a dog that finally caught the pickup truck he’d been chasing.” That may have contributed to his waiting until just a week or so before taking office to pick his WH staff, which turned out to be the wrong people. Obama did this first and picked pros.

Did you know Obama is considered to be a pretty good poker player? If you did it was despite his campaign staff’s strenuous efforts to keep it under wraps until after the election. It’s not a bad skill for a President to have.

How much interest is there in the election? By noon on Wednesday you couldn’t find a copy of the New York Times anywhere for love nor money. Copies are for sale on eBay starting at $40 and going up from there. Time magazine is out today. They normally put out office copies for employees first thing in the morning, but there were none today and they have gone back to press to print an additional 200,000 copies. I think a lot of people are starting their own family time capsules.

Here’s a quote I heard the other day, apropos of nothing special: “Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.” Oscar Wilde.

Counting the days

It has felt to me for some time like the White House had been taken over by a band of corrupt, stupid, frat boys bent on sacking the Treasury and rubbing everyone’s nose in it for fun. Well, we can count the days now until they are gone. They could do a lot more damage in the two and a half months they have left, but frat-boy-cheerleader-in-chief seems inclined to keep a low profile and just slink out of town. Good riddance.

If nothing else, it will be great to have a President who can stand up and make a speech like the one President-elect Obama made last night in Chicago. It was genuinely inspiring, and I think we’re going to need lots of inspiration in the coming years. At least we won’t have to cringe with embarrassment every time our nation’s leader opens his mouth to speak. No one will “misunderestimate” Obama.

At the risk of being schmaltzy, this really only could happen in America and I feel a lot of pride in my country this morning for showing the world we have not forgotten our ideals.

**********************************************************************************
Kaz wins the “prize of marginal value” with the closest guess to Obama’s Electoral College total of 338. Kaz had the highest guess in the pack at 344. rsb was second at 319. jb was last, guessing McCain with 275. I’ll report later this week on the prize once I figure out what it is.

It feels like...

...the whole world is holding its collective breath today.

The worst person in the world

I should have called this post “Ben Aflac is actually a really good actor.” His Keith Olbermann take off last night on SNL was brilliant – revealing him as the pompous, self-righteous, tool that he is. I saw Olbermann walking down 49th Street, near the GE Building, recently, and had to restrain myself from greeting him with a hearty “hello douche bag” as we passed, which was my strong inclination.

I’m happy to report that he looks much worse in person than on TV. He’s kind of short, at least compared to what I had expected, and really soft looking. He has one of those gushy, wide rear ends. In fact he looked really soft all over -- what my high school football coaches used to call “a real cake-eater.” Plus, he was wearing his studio makeup – lipstick, rouge, the whole schmegeggie. (Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit – maybe it was his everyday street makeup.) In any event it made the whole package truly frightening.

Speaking of SNL, I thought John McCain was funny and personable; everything he hasn’t been on the campaign trail. But did anyone else detect a hint of surrender in the opening bit? I was surprised McCain went along with the part where Tina Fey did her little aside, pitching the “Palin 2012” tee-shirts. It seemed a little too close to the reality of the situation to me. I would have thought he have balked at including it.

[Happy Birthday Charly!]

The Obamamercial

I watched the Obama infomercial last night and kind of enjoyed it. (It's up on the Obama site.) I doubt it changed any minds, but Ad Age didn’t name him "Marketer of the Year" for nothing. As any marketer knows, it’s nearly impossible to tell which thing you do is the one thing that really matters. You have to do lots of things and let the totality of your efforts carry the day.

The things he has done (or that have been done by others in support of him) online in the form of viral marketing and YouTube videos have been especially effective, but even those things take a back seat to his personal ability to communicate. These skills are going to be sorely needed, and tested, in the coming months.

But the main thing I thought as I watched last night was that the infomercial format is much more effective than the faux debates we suffered through. My proposal for 2012 is a series of dueling infomercials. Over a five week period each candidate would submit a series of weekly thirty-minute videos to various networks. Each video would deal with a different broad theme, e.g., health care, energy, foreign policy, etc. No other rules. The candidate can sit and speak to the camera, but would be free to include visual aids, charts, guests – whatever. If the candidate wanted to use part of the time to slam the competition it would be his call, but the more time doing that, the less time available for making that week’s case.

This time could be paid for through public financing. I think most networks would actually be happy to donate the time if they were permitted some flexibility on when the videos were broadcast.

The photo? Ron Popeil -- father of the infomercial. Here’s a link to the Ronco web site in case you are struck with a sudden urge to own a five-tray food dehydrator.

Time Inc. Seeks Government Money

Time Inc. Seeks Government Money
Publishing Giant Too Big to Fail?
AP – New York, October 28, 2008

Time Incorporated, the world’s largest magazine publisher announced today that it is seeking $3 billion in Federal aid as it suffers from the recent upheavals in the economy.

Time CEO Ann Moore stressed that the money was not a hand-out, but instead would be used to buy ad pages in struggling magazines such as Time, People and Fortune. “This money will be invested in ad pages promoting various government initiatives, which will result in a positive ROI for the people of the United States. We expect participation in important government programs such as food stamps, aid to dependant children, and Medicaid to rise significantly – not to mention enrollment in the armed forces by people with reduced job prospects,” continued Moore, “but these programs will only work if people know about them, and that’s where Time Inc. comes in to play.”

Time is believed to need the money in order to stay in business until it can develop an effective internet strategy. The growth of online media has taken a big bite out of Time’s advertising and subscription revenues and they have yet to find an effective means of fighting back. “It’s only been 12-13 years since the internet came at us out of nowhere,” said Ms. Moore, “and we can hardly be expected to have adapted to such a radical shift in consumer behavior -- from people reading stuff on paper to reading stuff on a computer --in so little time.”

Some industry analysts note that Time Inc. is still quite profitable, throwing off in excess of $1 billion in cash each year, but Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner (Time’s parent) protests that the parent company needs that money to fund other TW projects such as the movie remake of Get Smart, HBO’s The Life and Times of Tim, and of course CNN’s The Situation Room, with Wolf Blitzer. Bewkes claims these products, “are necessary to preserve the American way of life. Take them away and the terrorists will have won.”

Bye bye big boy

Lost to me in all the election and economic news was the announcement by GM last week that they will cease development of the next generation of their big SUV platform, the one that underpins Escalades, Suburbans and Yukons. The reason is the $2 billion developmental costs. These monsters, plus smaller SUVs and trucks, provided all of GM’s profits for the last 20 years, but no one wants them now. Just a year ago the Janesville, Wisconsin plant that made the big ones produced 20,000 a month. Last month it made 3,000. They are closing the plant before Christmas.

I was at the dealer yesterday having my car serviced, and while I waited I sat in an ’08 Escalade and fantasized. I felt like I was behind the wheel of the Starship Enterprise. This baby had everything, including power, retractable running boards, and an $80,000 price tag. However, a few minutes later I watched a salesman walking a prospect around the beast and overheard him say that they’d get it down around $65k – and that was his opening offer.
I know these things are bad for the environment and a danger to all the rest of us on the road in lesser vehicles, but I felt like Tony Soprano while I was sitting in it, and I think I’ll miss them when they’re gone.

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Well, once I decided to vote for Obama I supposed it was just a matter of time before I started admiring French social policies. I was watching CBS Sunday Morning today (median age of viewers: deceased) and they had a segment on the French health care system. They spend half as much per person, everyone has health care, most services are either free or very low cost, and they have lower infantile mortality rates and beat us in most measures of wellness. I’m sure there are negatives that went unreported, but you have to wonder when we are going to actually do something about our own system. Will Obama & Co. come through?

The calm before the storm

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like they’ve finished nailing the plywood over the doors and windows, stocked the basement with canned goods and bottled water, and now there is nothing to do but sit and wait until the hurricane reaches shore?

The Dow opened down almost 500 points this morning. Yesterday Alan Greenspan repudiated 40 years of economic beliefs and all but predicted Depression II. “It ain’t over ‘til isn’t over,” but it seems likely Obama will win, which for him could end up being the ultimate example of being careful what you wish for because you just might get it. I’m already feeling sorry for the guy.

Where is all the money going to come from to fix everything? Health care, social security, Medicare, infrastructure, the wars, the existing national debt – the list is endless. And one thing I know is that raising the capital gains tax and getting rid of the Bush tax cuts for the better off among us isn’t even going to put a dent in this list. And all the above is before the promised Obama middle class tax cuts and relief for mortgage defaulters.

I could sure use some good news. At the moment I’d settle for a Buckeye win over Penn State tomorrow night – that’ll get me out of bed and back in the office Monday, al least.

The d’blank poll and more miscellany

With just two weeks to go I am curious to know how everyone is handicapping the race. Cowboy-up and give us your predictions. The most accurate prediction of the final Electoral College vote, stated in a comment to this post, will win something of marginal value, as yet to be determined. As a reminder, there are a total of 538 votes with 270 required to win. Your predictions must be made no later than Tuesday October 21 at 11:59 PM EST. If you don’t feel like going public, just vote in the poll above my photo to the right.

Many of you wouldn’t be caught dead reading William Kristol, but his NY-Times column this morning is a very interesting look at the American psyche and well worth reading.

The picture above is called "Study in B&W." It hangs in my office and was painted by my bro Gaga, who has more for sale if you like this one. You can see them on his site. I just put it up ‘cause it looks purty.

I’m going out of town for a couple of days. Talk to you later this week.

Lucinda et al

Joe Nocera’s column in the Times today described a really innovative idea for giving homeowners some relief from the credit collapse. In short, owners of homes that are worth less than the mortgage would give them back to the bank, but the bank would have to rent the home at market rates to the former owners for five years. At that point the former owners could repurchase the home at the value at that time. It costs the government nothing, people aren’t kicked out into the street, and both buyer and seller suffer a little, which is probably as it should be. Nocera’s explanation is more complete and compelling. Read it here.

The most irritating and pathetic recent example of how celebrity trumps substance was Senator McCain’s embarrassing appearance on David Letterman to apologize for pulling out of a scheduled appearance a couple of weeks ago in order to go to Washington during the Congressional credit debates. Letterman has skewered McCain nightly since then, in the most unflattering terms possible, until McCain was forced into his mea culpa. So a self-important, goofball acting like a 3-year-old throwing a temper tantrum can force a major party Presidential candidate to drop everything to come on his juvenile show, where he then ambushes (and I think this is the appropriate term in the case) him with question about his relationship with G. Gordon Liddy. Candidates used to make pilgrimages to visit Harry Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower. Now it’s Oprah, Ellen, Dave and Jay.

If you think the financial crisis is under control, read this recent Fortune article on the $55 Trillion (yes – with a T), totally unregulated market in credit default swaps. The casino-like nature and size of this “financial weapon of mass destruction,” as Warren Buffett calls all derivatives, makes the sub-prime mess look staid and petite.

I’m loving the new Lucinda Williams album, “Little Honey.” Don’t buy it unless you love great country/rock/blues, kick-ass guitar-playing and a voice like a angel from down below.

I change my mind

I plan to vote for Barack Obama. Nothing I heard last night on the Joe the Plumber Show makes me think either candidate is likely to interject anything new into the conversation, so this seems like the time to make it official.

I believed everything I wrote in support of John McCain at the time I wrote it, and I still believe our country would be much better off today if he had beaten Bush in the 2000 primaries and gone on to win the Presidency -- but I think his time has passed.

I’ve been very disappointed that he did not move to the political middle and fight for the independent vote, which I thought he had a very good chance to win. Selecting Governor Palin was, for me, a complete deal breaker, and according to the polls, the same was true for millions of other Americans, which has to bring his judgment into question. I’ve also been put off by the anger that seems to eat at him.

But mine will not be an anti-McCain vote. I have reasons for selecting Obama, some of which are policy and logic-based, and some are just my personal instincts. (This might be a good time to say that I don’t consider myself anything other than an ordinary voter who happens to write a blog.) Here are my “fact based” reasons:

I am less fearful of Obama’s health care plan than of Senator McCain’s, which I think will take health care away from more people than it will help.

Obama is more likely to make a serious effort to develop alternative energy options, which is a crucial political act to free us from the tyranny of dependence on imported oil and the despots who control it.

Obama has shown a cool and steady demeanor through-out the primaries and the general election campaign that makes me feel he would not panic in difficult times. While I find him aloof and cold, perhaps it’s time to elect the candidate with whom it would be less fun to have a beer.

Obama is a greatly superior communicator, who writes and speaks in simple, declarative sentences; and he seems to understand the power of communicating well. We’re in for some challenging times over the next few years and the ability to communicate well in order to persuade and lead the public is going to be more important than ever.

It is also time to give the other half of America a chance at the helm. Millions of Americans feel they were cheated out of a victory in 2000 by the Electoral College, an antiquated and anti-democratic system that negated the popular vote. Nearly 80% of Americans are dissatisfied with Bush’s leadership, and the people who voted against him should have a chance to test their own man and his policies against the country’s challenges; otherwise, we risk making the wedge that divides us too great to ever bridge.

I’ve voted in nine Presidential elections and I’m 5-4 so far. But I regretted three of the five “winners” before his term was over, so I have some trepidation about making any pick. What if Obama turns out to be an old-fashion entitlement liberal who turns over the money-printing presses to Nancy Pilosi? I don’t think he will, but that would be a disaster from which we might never recover. On the other hand, the same could be true if a President McCain actually did “bomb, bomb Iran.” Who knows? In the end it is all a crap shoot. At some point you just have to roll the bones and hope you don’t crap out.

But finally, a part of me wants Obama to win just because I like the way it renews and confirms the essence of the American story. We elect a man of mixed race who rises from welfare, to Harvard, to the White House. He unites a divided country, puts people ahead of politics, ends the war, restores prosperity and discovers the secret to wringing unlimited energy from ragweed.

Only in America, my friends.

Interesting discovery

As you probably know, many wealthy people who enter politics place their financial assets into blind trusts that are managed by a third party who has the authority to buy and sell assets on behalf on the trust owner, but without informing the owner of these transactions. The theory is that if politician A, let's say the Secretary of the Treasury, doesn't know that he owns shares of General Motors that he will be free to make decisions that might affect GM either for the good or for ill, without having to consider what is in his best interest ahead of what is in the country's best interest.

I just learned that to compensate the trust holder for relinquishing control over his finances, he is exempt from paying capital gains taxes on sales made from the trust. Some are estimating that this exemption might provide a tax savings of up to $200 million for Hank Paulson during his tenure as Treasury Secretary. Nice perk, and it certainly makes "public service" more attractive.

Can't forget the motor city...

When I was growing up in Warren, Ohio in the '60s, it had about 65,000 inhabitants and General Motors employed nearly 30,000 people there, building cars, truck engines, and assembling wiring harnesses. Those jobs paid high union wages and offered excellent health and retirement benefits (hence the local nickname, Generous Motors). Today the population is about 45,000 and the GM payroll is down to under 5,000 – and many of those jobs have been downgraded in pay and benefits.

We all drove GM cars back in the day; partly out of loyalty but also as part of an endless feedback loop in which you could not sell a used car unless it was a GM model, and no one would buy something they couldn’t sell later.

My grandfather gave me my first car -- a big, black 1948 Cadillac, so decrepit my parents wouldn’t let me drive it. Next came a 1952 Chevy followed by a chocolate brown 1972 Buick Electra 225 with a chocolate brown interior and vinyl roof. Then a ’71 Olds 442 succeeded by a ’71 Chevy Impala Super Sport – fire engine red, chrome reverse wheels and a sreamin’ small block V8 engine that got about 8 miles to the gallon if I babied it. Someday I’d like to have the car in the photo above, ('59 Caddy Eldorado) or maybe a new ‘Vette.

When I moved away from Ohio I lost my automotive way and owned a succession of European sedans. And while they were nice cars, driving them always made me feel vaguely pretentious and disloyal to my heritage. So a few years ago I went back to my GM roots and now have three pieces of “Detroit Iron” in the driveway. They are all nice cars. They’ve been trouble-free and each was much less expensive than their Japanese or European counterparts. So don’t hesitate to drive American. It won’t hurt and it might make you feel good.

This is all on my mind today because I had a drink last night with an old friend from Detroit, and we were talking about how S&P had just downgraded GM, and raised the possibility of bankruptcy, which would just be unimaginable to me. (In the last year the stock has gone from $40 per share to $5.) We talked about how many of our old friends from home depend on GM or Ford for either their job or their pension. And these are just about the last blue collar jobs in America that can support a truly middle-class life. It would be unbearably sad to see that disappear.

Global financial crisis spreads

You may have already heard about the troubles in Japan: Yesterday the Origami Bank folded. Sumo Bank has gone belly up. Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches. Yesterday, it was announced that Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song, while trading in Kamikaze Bank shares was suspended after they nose-dived. Samurai Bank is soldiering on following sharp cutbacks. Ninja Bank is reported to have taken a hit, but they remain in the black. Furthermore, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop, and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank, where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal. And finally, there has been a tidal wave of foreclosures at Tsunami Bank.

The Blitzkrieg Bank, after expanding rapidly through a series of hostile takeovers in Poland and Czechoslovakia, found its expansion plans stalled when its credit and cash supply lines were stretched to breaking as it entered the highly competitive Russian market. The Gasuntheit Bank has found the recent economic climate very chilly. The Shadenfrued Bank avoided making loans in the risky subprime mortgage markets, and is now very sorry to hear about the troubles plaguing its competitors. The Löwenbräu Bank was drunk with profits from marketing CDOs but now finds itself suffering from a serious default hangover.

Have any of you heard of similar problems in the global economy?

I deserve a major tax cut

I deserve a major tax cut for watching another one of those faux debates last night; another infomercial masquerading as a “town hall” meeting. The rules were set by the candidates, designed to protect them from themselves, and then they couldn’t stick with them.

What they should do is put the two of them on a stage with two chairs hooked up to electric wires (nothing lethal) leading to hand controls operated by a live studio audience of uncommitted voters who would crank up the amps when they hear an answer they don’t like. Booing, catcalls, and loud laughing would be encouraged.

In all seriousness I found both candidate’s understanding and sense of urgency about economic issues very much wanting. I hope they are just too timid to speak up and not actually that shallow.

That said, Senator Obama looks increasingly Presidential, while Senator McCain looks increasingly desperate. At least he didn’t go rhetorically postal last night, which might have ended the whole party.
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The Sarah Palin poll closed last night (look to the right). The turn out was modest but the results were pretty conclusive.

Why they love Sarah

Forgive me from the outset as I am going to lump all of you reading this into the “you” that doesn’t love Sarah, and tell you why I think “they” do. What is interesting about the topic is you are both focusing on the same things, but like the blind men describing an elephant, you see very different creatures.

You see a person you consider to be undistinguished. She doesn’t talk like you. She didn’t go to the right schools. She runs a bumpkin state and before that a mini-bumpkin town. She’s got a pregnant teenage daughter, and a husband who seems more interested in racing snowmobiles and hunting, than having an actual job.

You say, “This is a big country,” and then ask, “Can’t we do better? What’s wrong with electing the elite?”

“They” see someone like them. Someone who understands their lives, and say, “Elect the elite? Those are the people who got us into this mess in the first place. Maybe it’s time for one of our own.”

They think that way because the major financial institutions are run by the best and brightest with advanced degrees from the best business schools. They hired the top mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists money could buy to create ultra-sophisticated algorithms “guaranteed” to keep credit swaps in balance. We all know where that led.

All of this was overseen by the political elite. Again, there’s no real need to replay how well that worked out.

Our pharmaceutical and health insurance industries are run by the same business elites, with the help of certain doctors (still the ultimate elite title to many Americans) who sell their opinions and support for drugs and procedures of questionable value and safety.

Lawyers are the fight promoters of the America economic system. They pit one group against another and make the rules so complicated they are often the only winners.

Middle class Americans want their children to have better lives, and understand that education is the key. But the education system is run by another group of elites, and in their system the cost of higher education has risen by more than double the cost of living for more than 20 years, until the cost of a year at an elite college exceeds the annual income of the average American household.

So they ask, “Could someone who is one of us possibly make things worse?”

I can almost hear your shouts of “ABSOLUTELY!” And I agree, they could, so allow me to suggest you refrain from the strategy of belittling and demeaning the Governor. Aside from being uncharitable and unattractive, it is hugely counter-productive; because when you belittle her, you belittle those who are supporting her – and more importantly, those who are on the fence. When you say she isn’t good enough or smart enough you are saying the same about her supporters, and not surprisingly, it angers them and reinforces their sense of having been disenfranchised and marginalized by the country’s elites.

Sarah Palin has given you all the ammunition you need in the form of the policies she supports and the political goals she proposes. Argue against them with vigor and passion if you want to win. Make fun of her accent and her family if you want to spend another eight years on the sidelines.

No train wreck

Well, I admit it, like most NASCAR fans, I tuned in last night in hopes of seeing a 10 car crash but got another snore-fest instead. I don't know if I can take two more of these "debates." Whatever these things are, they certainly aren't debates; they're more like really long infomercials with no video footage or third-party endorsements. I didn't learn anything new, neither candidate revealed any new character flaws of significance -- what was gained here? And this is the format the networks gave us. The debates were a lot more interesting when the League of Women Voters ran them, which gives you some insight into why no one watches network TV anymore.

My questions for tonight’s debate

Senator Biden, given the current difficult economic times, I’m sure many Americans would like your advice on how to stretch a household budget. Perhaps you could tell us how, on a combined $250,000 income, and despite your annual, after-tax Amtrak commutation expense of over $13,000, you and your wife managed to build a 6800 square foot lakefront home on four acres? Aside from cutting back on the double-mocha lattes, how do you swing those payments? (see today’s New York Times for the full story.)

Governor Palin, have you ever read a newspaper?

What are your questions?

Note: A special note of congratulations is due to Congress, whose approval rating among the American people has fallen to 15% in the most recent Times/CBS News Poll. It took a special effort to come in under George Bush’s record-tying 22%, but you did it!

The house is on fire

I’ve become convinced that the bail-out is necessary, although as you may have heard, according to Congress, it is no longer a Wall Street bail-out; it is now a “middle class tax cut, Main Street economic stabilization plan,” or some such nonsense. If these guys were as creative at problem-solving as they are at Orwellian language distortion we’d be in good shape.

The simplest and best analogy I’ve heard was Obama’s, who said if you lived next door to an odious person who smoked in bed and left candles burning all night long, and his house caught on fire, you wouldn’t stand around saying, “serves him right.” You’d call the fire department and grab a garden hose, because no matter how big a jerk he was, and no matter how badly he deserved it, it would be in your best interest to act. First of all, the fire could spread to your house, and even if it didn’t, a burned-out hulk sitting next door would depress values for everyone on the block.

I had time to read the papers cover-to-cover this morning, and there were at least a dozen examples, at every level of the economic ladder, where the credit crisis is starting to hurt everyone – not to mention the trillion-dollar meltdown in the Dow this week. It seems clear that action in necessary. Unfortunately, the power to act is in the hands of the Detroit City Council – er, I mean Congress. God knows what sort of monstrosity they will ultimately inflict on us.

Charlie Rose is interviewing Warren Buffett live at 9:00 pm EST tonight on PBS. Maybe he can make some sense out of all this.

Follow the money

The market closed down 770 points today, on the news that the House rejected the bail-out plan -- although it was down 300 even before the vote. I’m guessing investors fear two things: 1] that this problem dwarfs even a $700 billion slush-fund’s capacity to solve it and 2] our political leaders are too inept to act in time to stop significant damage occurring to the economy from a credit freeze.

The complexity of the situation is overwhelming. No one knows how big the problem is. No one knows if this plan will fix it. No one knows what shoe will drop next – or on whom.
One thing we know for sure, however, is that the problem was known to be on its way and growing for a long time. (One observer has called it the world’s slowest moving train wreck.)

Another thing we know for sure is that members of Congress in both parties are scrambling to be the most outraged at the “corporate greed” that caused this mess. They’re working on CEO salary caps and can’t wait to hold hearings so they can wag their fingers and scold a few fat-cats for the cameras. It’ll look great on the local news back home.

But not only did Congress and the Executive branch do nothing to stop it, they were like the sweepers in a curling match, sweeping their brooms along the ice to make a nice smooth path for the stones being tossed by their Wall Street contributors.

Barry Ritholtz, who publishes a blog read by in-the-know financial-types, published an opinion piece in this week's Barron’s that lays out the path of destruction in simple, clear language in his essay "Uncle Sam the Enabler."

(Before any of your knees jerk, or fingers point to one party, you might be interested to know that Goldman Sachs, the biggest political contributor among financial institutions, has given more to Democrats than Republicans in each of the last ten national campaigns, and by increasingly large margins. See: http://www.opensecrets.org/) There is plenty of blame to go around here.

Oh, the photo. Benjamin Disraeli: “What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.”

RIP Paul Newman

“Cool Hand Luke” came out the year I graduated from high school and forever defined what it meant to be cool for me. And he was cool at every stage in life, from “Hud” and “The Hustler,” through “Absence of Malice” (one of my all-time favorite movies) and “Nobody’s Fool.” In between he was Butch and the brains of “The Sting.” He may have been ever cooler in real life; a long marriage to a very cool woman, the inventor of a successful line of consumer products that benefited disadvantaged children, a beer drinker, and a for-real race car driver – not some celebrity poser. And of course, he was a Buckeye, and an American original. I’ll miss him.

McCain and Obama talk to a tie

It’s late, so I’ll just make a couple of very broad observations to get the conversation started. I thought the debate was very close. I suspect that who you liked going in is the guy you liked 90 minutes later. That was probably good news for Obama since foreign policy is McCain’s strength.
Neither man seems to really know much about economics, and that portion of the debate was superficial, with both candidates playing it safe.

Once it moved to foreign policy they both gained confidence, and my overwhelming impression was that both men displayed sophisticated knowledge and had nuanced positions on all the major issues. Again, who you liked going in was probably the winner in your mind on these topics, but perhaps I’m wrong. Tell us what you think.

Would you lend this man $2300?

This would be your share of the $700 B he wants to use to buy back the bad investments his life-long pals on Wall Street made in mortgage backed securities and other investments they really didn’t understand, beyond recognizing an opportunity for making a easy buck. By-the-way, your spouse and each of your children owe $2300 also. Actually, scratch that; you and I won’t pay anything; we don’t have the $700B so we’re borrowing it. Only your kids, and their kids, will get stuck with the tab. Nice legacy.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for days but who knows what to say? It’s changing minute-by-minute, and the whole thing is unbelievable. Not only is no one taking the blame, the people responsible – financial executives, Congress, and the regulatory agencies – are basically saying, “who could have foreseen such a situation?” Well, I did, for one. Not that I have any expertise or a crystal ball, but the major business books and economic pundits have been warning about something like this happening for years. There were even funny emails in broad distribution about the housing bubble; my favorite was the roller coaster view of housing prices.

So now the guys who got us into this mess want to help us out. It’s not so much a loan as extortion: “Lend us the money – now, without oversight, debate, or controls, no promise of success or payback (but with immunity from future liabilities) – or we’ll have our friends bring down such a financial shit storm on your heads you’ll wish you had.”

Fortunately, it looks like Congress has actually grown a pair since they were last asked to consider anything of importance, and may demand a different approach in which we the people at least get some equity in the firms we’re bailing out. I’m guessing some variation of the plan Senator Dodd put forth will be the final word.

Unfortunately, first we’ll have to listen to a week or two of Congressional hearings in which, Captain Renault-like, they express, “shock!” at the discovery that there was gambling going on below Canal Street.

Call me Hamlet

Well I guess I’m just Hamlet, unsure and uncomfortable with my choices. I’ve already changed my mind a couple of times (in my mind if not in print), and I may switch a couple more times before November. This condition puts me in awe of the total confidence and certainty so many of you have for your man Obama.

At best, I’m at about the 60% level for McCain – down from higher levels, after the Palin pick and as the tone of his campaign degenerated, although I understand the political conditions that made him think they were necessary.

But you! You are impressively certain. No point conceded and no doubt shown. I sincerely hope that if I’m still writing this blog a year or two from now that you’ll all be saying, “I told you so,” as President Obama delivers on the vision you’re buying.

That said, I’m a little surprised at the amount of grief I’ve taken for daring to even raise the question of who is the better man for these times. (It came more in private emails than in blog comments, but they were stinging none-the-less.)

I ask these questions because Presidents tend to surprise us. It was the conservative, Texan, military man Eisenhower who sent the Army to Little Rock to integrate the schools. It was the liberal icon Kennedy who first sent troops to Viet Nam and who invaded Cuba. LBJ voted with the worst southern racists in the Senate for decades before pushing the most comprehensive civil rights laws ever through Congress. The communist-baiter Nixon opened relations with China. The liberal, master politician Clinton blew health care reform through political ham-handedness, and then made welfare reform the most notable achievement of his eight years in office. And anyone knowledgeable on the topics will tell you that the hated George W. Bush has done more than any other world leader to solve the crisis in Darfur and of AIDS in Africa.

So just eight years after we first elected a man with a political career too short to have generated a record that revealed much about him, it seems to me a worthwhile exercise to ask these questions about a man who walks but leaves few footprints.

OK but…

I asked and you answered. Thank you for your responses to the question of “why Barack?” which I read several times. They ranged over many issues, but especially leadership. We can continue to debate the candidates for another 45 days or so, but I’m bothered by a nagging question I just can’t resolve. Perhaps you can help me with it.

Right or wrong, when it comes to the world of work (and the Presidency is a job after all) I divide the leaders I’ve worked for into two groups: those who get things done and those who talk a good game. And I suspect we could all agree that there are a lot more of the latter than the former.

I just can’t shake this impression that Obama is a talker, not a doer. I don’t denigrate his role as a community organizer, but he himself has said he left the field for law school because he could not get anything important done. I don’t dismiss the value of being a law professor, or a published author either, but those are essentially solitary pursuits in which one talks (or writes) but bears no direct responsibility for results.

I start really questioning his record when he enters politics; the 130 “present” votes in the Illinois Senate trouble me, but more troubling is his role as a US Senator. Not one hearing of the Afghanistan subcommittee that he chairs? A country where we have 30,000 troops? I find that hard to understand. There are a bunch of emails floating around that list his legislative achievements, but I think we all know these lists are not meaningful. The Senate leadership in both parties dole out “co-sponsorship” credits to all so everyone can say they did something.

A man with Obama’s ambitions should have dared something bigger – an alternative energy bill, a healthcare reform act – something that demonstrates vision and daring. But he seems very undaring to me. Careful to a fault. More afraid to fail or disappoint than to challenge the powers that be.

I don’t want to run the guy down; I may vote for him in the end – it really depends on the debates. But this nagging feeling that the man is an articulate, ambitious, poser just will not leave me. What say the rest of you?

Your turn

I’ve offered all the reasons I have in support of Senator McCain, and Lord knows we’ve heard plenty of objections to his candidacy in response. Now it’s time to hear the rationale for Senator Obama, and you, fellow bloggers, should be the ones to supply it. It’s not that I can’t think of any myself, it just that propaganda is best brewed by true believers, as many of you seem to be.

I went back and reviewed many old posts and found plenty of arguments against John McCain, but nearly nothing supporting the Obama agenda. What is it about Barack Obama that makes you think he should be the next President of the United States?

I plan to make this the only post this week, so take your time and formulate an answer you really like, and use all the space you want. (Although I can tell you for a fact that your fellow bloggers’ interest level drops sharply after about 300 words.)