Political Detachment

I've been reading, "Fiasco," a book about the country's failure to plan Phase IV - the aftermath of the war. The there was no planning or analysis but that would make for a very short book. Thomas Ricks, its author, exhaustively explains the many ways that it did not take place or failed when attempted.

The administration ignored the people who knew something about Iraq and what would happen if the center - Saddam and his Baathist regime - did not hold. Plenty of people predicted just the disaster that occurred and is worsening daily.

Finally, many different constituencies are trying to articulate plans. The center is saying that the troops should be withdrawn, with or without a timetable. The President is edging toward the pack. Senator John McCain is the lone hawk, demanding more troops. Charles Rangel, the black Congressman from New York, says, if there are going to be more troops, let's reinstitute the draft to level the playing field. Neither the McCain nor Rangel view will prevail, and we will end up pulling out along one fault line or other.

If you ask the Iraqis, they would probably say, "Get out as quickly as possible." And in support of that view, the New York Times published accounts of three Iraqi-English translators, whose lives and families were at risk because they were cooperating with the Americans. One commented, sounding like someone from the James Baker Study Group, that the Americans should have taken out Saddam but left some other, benevolent autocrat in place. The Iraqi army should not have been disbanded. With those two institutions in place, the warring sects in Iraq would have been held in check. Hopefully, some day, he suggested, democracy might take hold. But it is useless to foist it on the Iraq nation, when the factions do not see themselves as a nation.

Isn't this more or less what our government has done in many countries? Destabilize and overturn the regime and replace it with a puppet. When one Pinnocchio becomes a real boy who we don't like, we knock him off and build another. 41 would have done just that if in his presidency he took out Saddam. 43 threw out his father's playbook and opted for the naive, optimistic no-plan that has failed.

I don't often agree with James Baker or 41, but perhaps I have been naive. If the negotiations of foreign relations ranges from non-recognition to war, then coersion in its many forms is a realpolitik post-war option. If we will topple a regime, why then hesitate to install one we want. I'll reserve judgment on whether and it what circumstances regime-toppling is a valid objective. But it is clear that you cannot topple a regime without some idea about its replacement and its viability.

Blues Rider

I am not Blues Rider. Blues Rider is the putative name of my sailboat. Putative because the name is not actually anywhere on the hull. It is in my head mostly.

This was my fourth season owning a 1985 Pearson 28' sloop. Every year I learn new things, mostly because I am fairly ignorant about the workings of a cruising boat. As a kid growing up on Long Island Sound, I sailed every day, every summer, for years. I learned to sail - steering, setting the spinnaker, trimming the sails, fixing snags, sighting marks and bailing out the bilge. There are relatively simple problems on the 13 foot, wooden boat I sailed as a boy. I did a lot of my own winter maintenance, painting and varnishing the small hull and accessories. It was great fun.

Blues Rider is a different order of magnitude. It is made of fiberglass, layers of polyresin built around a wood core. It incorporates systems with which I was completely unfamiliar. She sleeps six and therefore is equipped with a galley (kitchen), a head (toilet) and a power supply. A marine kitchen requires organization. It's small, there is no stove per se, just a one or two burner set-up fueled by butane in my case. My father used to demonstrate proudly our ability to make coffee on his boat. I thought it was pretty silly at the time. Now I regard it as a miracle.

There is an insulated ice box that preserves the cold for two days. That's fine for sailing in local waters, which is all I really do. But if you wanted to get away from the coast and into blue water, you would need a refrigerator. The ice box is sufficient, provided you suspend food high over the melting berg in the bottom of the box.

The marine head has become quite user-friendly. The latest models have pictographs showing how to empty the bowl and how to fill the bowl. At sea, these are two separate actions. Knowing how to operate a marine head is different from knowing how a marine head (and holding tank) operates. A holding tank is just what it sounds like. One essential truth about a holding tank is that, no matter how good the tank or how distant it is from the crew, it must, must, must be chemically treated to break down and eliminate the odor. The bad news is that head manufacturers don't like to admit that, despite their brilliance in building the toilet and tank, they have not conquered all aspects of this sort of nautical passage. The good news is that the chemicals work.

The electrical system is a fascinating wrinkle on the conventional power supply. Like a car, the power is generated primarily by running the engine. However, you are running what amounts to an RV off the battery. You have to be careful what you add to the system and how you do it. Everything must be tailored to the relatively primitive 12 volt system. You don't want to deplete the juice faster than you can replenish it.

That's what I've learned in the first four seasons. Fortunately, I do remember how to sail.

The Price of Admission

Michael Richards, Kramer, went off on a racist rant, and then denied that he is a racist. Obviously, he does not get it. If he was "riffing," as a comic on stage, then his humor compass was busted. It was magnetically distorted by rage and frustration. What replaced his comic instinct, however, was old fashioned racial slurs and race-baiting.

Commentators have said that it likely will cost him his career. No new shows, no endorsements. He forever will be linked with two minutes of racist bile. And he should. That's what happens to people who transgress our society's compact. An important part of it is that people who act out bias or racial hatred become pariahs.

Except of course for Trent Lott, but then again he's been reinstated by his society. It's fascinating that Nancy Pelosi got skewered for promoting John Murtha, because of ethical challenges, while the Republicans reinstated Lott despite some of the most racist statements to be uttered by a United States Senator in my memory. I chalk that up to Pelosi trying to appoint someone tied to corrupt practices after an election that dispatched a ridiculously corrupt Republican majority and to the failure of the press to go after Lott the way they did Kramer.
I don't think Kramer should get a pass, but I don't think Lott should have either. George
Allen nearly got re-elected as a Senator from Virginia despite his using a racial epithet to describe a person of East Indian descent who had been following his campaign on behalf of Webb, his opponent. It may have cost him the election but just barely.

As an experiment I watched Seinfeld last night. Kramer, tics and legs akimbo, is still funny. His performance was a riot. But I couldn't think about him without thinking of what he had just done.

Last week, my friend and I saw the trailer of the latest Mel Gibson movie. My friend said that he would never pay to see Mel Gibson every again.

"But if you could see it for free?"

"Yeah, I would, " he answered, knowing immediately the hypocrisy of his position. And I will continue to watch Seinfeld. Jerry, George and Elaine have not betrayed the layer of hate under the funny surface. Yet.

Faking the Pledge

"The Prestige" is the about the worst big-budget production, studio film I've ever seen. Considering "Heaven's Gate" and "Ishtar," what a remarkable achievement! A film about two magicians, illusionists really, the story opens with one of them causing the death by drowning of the wife of the other. It goes downhill from there.

Even before getting to that first elevating moment, the film lost me. In the prologue Michael Caine, a magician's engineer, explains the three stages of an illusion. A magician states the Pledge - what he is about to do - to make a bird disappear. It is followed by the Turn, the disappearance itself. The payoff is the Prestige, when the bird reappears unmolested. As Michael Caine demonstrates this, I wonder whether he needs the money and if there was any film too embarrassing for him to take on. I felt an immediate, visceral distaste for the film. I did not buy into its pledge.

This overly long film of vengeance ran amok stalled out before it began. The cast and acting were good. The cinematography and settings were beautifully rendered. I found myself thinking about how they created the sets and the lighting, anything to avoid paying attention to the story. Nothing relieved the nausea that settled upon me in the opening moment. It is ironic that a picture about illusions fails to evoke the suspension of disbelief. You can hear the gears clanking and see the wheels turning. I wouldn't call this Movie Magic.

We have met Borat, and he is us

I'm going to recommend that you go see Borat. It's vulgar, filthy and crude, but it's also shrewd, subtle and subversive. It's anarchic in the Marx Brothers tradition. Sacha Baron Cohen is a very funny guy and completely outrageous.

The setup for Borat, the film, is relatively simple. Borat, a Kazakh TV journalist, is funded marginally to travel to the United States, to bring back footage of America, through which Kazakhstan will enrich its own culture. Targeting mostly red state culture, Borat shows Americans to be as misogynist, racist, immoral and perverse as his countrymen. There is great physical comedy. There is some very good writing. There are scenes that stunned me: Borat's rebirth in a fundamentalist church; partying with some South Carolina frat boys in an RV; interviewing a group of first generation feminists; taking a driving lesson. I felt embarrassed for the people in the setups, but they were just being themselves after all.

Now that Borat is box-office gold, people are crawling out of the woodwork and lawyering up. The frat boys are claiming to have been duped. Some guy from Turkey is claiming that Borat is based on him; he wants to sue and, yes, make his own movie. Kazakhstan itself is none too pleased.

I'm sure that the nastiest and most tasteless moments will be the ones that get the most attention. It's the rest of the movie, though, that is the most provocative, and it holds the key to what Cohen is saying.

Bare-Knuckled Bipartisans

With the Congressional sweep only a day old, with conciliatory words issuing from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, ladies and germs – we are about to get a view about what 21^st Century Bipartisanship looks like. First, the Chief Executive speaks of finding common ground. He served sandwiches for the new Speaker and eggs and grits for Harry Reid, the presumptive Senate Majority Leader, with a reputation as an infighter with sharp elbows and a powerful jab. At the same time, he announced that the lame-duck Senate must put its blessing on the appointment of John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador, thus throwing the first punch.

You may recall that Mr. Bolton was a controversial nominee, a bully who uses a bazooka where a stiletto will suffice. His appointment was stalled in committee, but when Congress was in recess, the President made a “temporary recess appointment,” which has lasted more than a year. The Democrat minority cried foul, but had no choice but to swallow it.

You would think that the President would view Mr. Bolton’s permanent appointment unlikely by a Senate about to switch seats. Ok, not unlikely – impossible. When the Senate fails to push through the Bolton mandate, the President will decry the end of bipartisanship, so that we can get to lack of business as usual. Mr. Reid and the Decider will then lock horns for the next 24 months, with the President aggrieved that he offered his hand in friendship, only to be spurned by the new majority.

“Bipartisanship,” said Mr. Bush, “is a two-way street.” But the President has begun veering out of his lane, hoping to force Congress into oncoming traffic.

Mission Accomplished

Picture the Decider in Chief landing on the deck of that carrier, beaming with satisfaction. His armed forces had conquered Iraq, and all that remained was the small task of putting the country back together. Bush didn't know that Iraqis and insurgents studied Muhammad Ali's rope-a-dope. Now think about the Democrats winning back the Congress. Their job won't be any easier.

For all the self-congratulatory gloating of the past two days, the Dems have an immense, if not impossible, job ahead of them. Holding power in Congress doesn't guarantee them anything. They cannot override a veto. In the Senate, they cannot cut off a filibuster. The predictions of gridlock are sound.

And the expectations run high. The new Speaker announced a 100-hour plan. It will take that long just to rearrange the chairs. If the Democrats screw this thing up, they'll be vulnerable in 2008.

The real net gain is that the political culture is moving back toward a theoretical center and away from the extremism of the right. I still yearn for some of the extremism of the left, but that's why I live in Gotham. Far left is center here.

Clearly the Dems ran smart for a change, choosing good candidates and targeting winnable races. They received a huge helping hand from a Republican machine that had broken apart. The GOP candidates backed away from the White House, and the White House, like Dick Cheney, turned the old shot gun on them and "Bam!" hit their good buddies in the face.

It was a clever strategy to fire Rumsfeld the day after, diverting attention from the electoral fiasco. But it was very dumb for Bush to have lied about it last week, stating that Rumsfeld's job was safe. He didn't want to distract voters. What a statesman!

For those who consider themselves Democrats or old-style Republicans, like a few of the good apples that got tossed out with the bad ones, Election Night was like waking up from a long and terrible nightmare. But really nothing has been accomplished yet. The problems are enormous, and it's now time for candidates to show that they know how to do something other than win elections.