Dating Sarah Palin

Advanced age has its privileges, one of them to fantasize publicly about asking out a married woman without fear of being beaten up for it. So with apologies to my loved ones (and Todd, of course), my dream date for New Year's Eve is bubbly Sarah Palin.

Imagine being greeted at the door, corsage in hand, with congratulations for dodging death panels and some snappy remark like "How's that hopey changey thing working out for you?"

We could start making the rounds of consolation parties, first for Joe Miller at one of those clubby Wasila saloons, where as Jason Jones of the Daily Show has said, "A stranger is just a friend you haven't thrown up on yet."

Then on to Christine O'Donnell's do where the canapes, contrary to nasty Joe Biden rumors, will not be on the taxpayers and, time permitting, hoisting a drink with those other Palin-backed losers who have enough millions of their own to pick up the tab.

All this gadding around would work up an appetite for one of those famous Palin desserts like "s’mores," made with marshmallows, Hershey bars and graham crackers, “in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert.”

But eating and drinking alone do not a great date make. The real treat would be Palin's linguistic gems, which could later turn up on Facebook. Modestly, she attributes her contribution of the year to the English language, "refudiate," to a typo, but those who have followed her verbal adventures know better. Half the fun of being with her is the surprise of not knowing what she will say next.

To those churls who prefer Barack Obama's way with words, imagine a 2012 campaign without Sarah Palin's sparkle. That would be as dreary as a date with one of your old professors.

I wouldn't dream of asking him out to see in the New Year.

Bloggers at Their Best

Generosity, a fading trait these days, comes back in the holiday season, with the revival of a tradition started by the late Al Weigel, who wrote brilliantly under the nom de plume of Jon Swift and was relentless in promoting the work of new bloggers across the political spectrum.

The reviver is Batocchio, who writes the Vagabond Scholar, where you can find what bloggers (including this one) consider their best posts of the year to comprise a fascinating mosaic of commentary on what we have been living through.

In this time of renewal, it also seems fitting to send best wishes for the new year to Joe Gandelman, who allows me to be part of his community of sanity on The Moderate Voice, a tireless band of resisters to online vitriol and viciousness.

To them all, may generosity make a real comeback in American life and give us less to blog about in the coming months.

Jon Stewart, Journalist?

Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Jon Stewart. In a 30-paragraph "news analysis," the New York Times puts the Daily Show host into the journalism pantheon, omitting only Woodward and Bernstein.

Well, yes but... As a comedian, satirist and, not incidentally, media critic, Stewart is a gifted figure, but lines are being blurred here in a way that tells much about our times and which, if he were not on holiday hiatus, Stewart himself might be the first to mock.

The Times and its professorial interviewees label as "advocacy journalism" the Daily Show's last program of the year, which Stewart devoted to outrage at Congress' failure to provide health care for 9/11 responders. Advocacy, certainly. Journalism, not so clear.

In a time when hatred of the media is rising, America's leading newspaper may be damning Stewart with the faint praise of drawing him into its profession. What Stewart more closely resembles, if it can be defined, is something more--the 21st century version of a figure that goes back to Will Rogers and, before he starting writing novels, Mark Twain--the comedic commentator who keeps Americans sane by deflating the political powers-that-be.

On a less exalted level, there was Abraham Lincoln's favorite, Artemus Ward, and in the 1960s, Mort Sahl, who inspired Woody Allen to take up comedy. Sahl would appear onstage or on camera will a rolled-up newspaper and verbally harpoon Presidents from JFK to Reagan.

Calling Stewart a pop social critic could be closer to the mark, but that might lump him with gasbags he so deftly deflates--the cable TV "commentators" who purportedly analyze the news but pour the ketchup of ideology over it and obscure rather than reveal its essence.

Stewart's enraged advocacy for 9/11 police and firemen certainly played a part in getting Congress to act, but it is no compliment to tag him with what Paddy Chayevsky satirized in "Network" by having the loony anchorman billed as "the mad prophet of the airwaves" before being brought down.

His predecessor Will Rogers may have summed up Stewart's social value best when he said, ""Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke."

It may hurt when we laugh, but it helps.

What We Lost in the Aughts

At the turn of a millennium, the odometer of our lives clicked into years with more than one zero in them, setting off a decade of losses:

Economy, in a meltdown with budget surpluses becoming record deficits. National security, two wars--one pointless, the other unending. Political life, in the dumpster. Social well-being, off the charts with fear, distrust, animus and anxiety for the future.

All this can't be entirely blamed on Presidents and politicians. We picked them, so they must represent our collective wisdom--or lack of it. (Was Pogo right?)

A high-schooler I know is writing an essay on the most significant event of the decade. My choice is 9/11, which changed our perception of getting up every morning and feeling safe in the world, bringing political and social transformations, all for the worse.

Without 9/11, Bush's Neo-Cons could not have taken us into a war that did nothing for our security, drained blood and treasure, and damaged our standing in the world.

Along with foreign-policy hubris were eight years of bipartisan domestic neglect, weakening regulation of a financial system gone wild with greed that drew over-entitled but unqualified individuals into home ownership, resold their inevitable failure and brought the economy to its knees.

To deal with all this, two years ago we elected a President of intelligence and good will (while congratulating ourselves for ending centuries of racial inequality) and tasked him with cleaning up a monstrous mess in face of a disloyal opposition bent only on his failure at the nation's expense.

Under the circumstances, Barack Obama may be better than we deserved to get, his political tribulations of the past two years notwithstanding. Fault him for unrealistic hopes of GOP cooperation and for stubborn persistence with health care reform, leading to iffy distant benefits but sparking Tea Party rage at what could be sold as a "government takeover."

For someone even his detractors saw as a shrewd young politician, Obama's failures have been more the result of tactical mistakes rather than policy judgments.

In this season of renewal, the President is getting an unexpected gift of reviving political approval for lame duck achievements, but an American minus decade is ending with questions about whether the next will be much better.

We can only hope and try.

"Take Heaven, Take Peace, Take Joy"

Christmas always recalls Eric Sevareid, one of the 20th century's best journalists and a writer with gifts far beyond reporting the news. I published an essay of his twice in different decades in different magazines.

Herewith, excerpts:

"Christmas offers us peace in one hand but in the other it carries a sword. The peace it offers is the love we felt in childhood and may still feel again if we have lived our lives as we were instructed in our early days. The sword is our conscience, glittering as sharply as the icicles on the Christmas tree.

"Christmas is an anticipation for the children; it is memory for most adults. It fastens the grip of truth upon us and will not let us go. Implacably it demands of us that we regard our work and what we have made of our lives, our country and our world.

"By the glow of the soft lights, by the sound of child voices in song, piercing us with an almost unendurable purity, we are obliged to remember that our first and only commandment was to love, and we have not truly obeyed; that men were so commanded not to improve them, but to save them from themselves, and we have not truly understood.

"Of course, we say as the moment of truth approaches, 'Christmas is really for the children.' Suffer the little children to take this burden from us.

"Perhaps, were we to know the realities of our own deepest motivations, we would conclude that this is why we have made of the Christmas occasion an immensely complicated business. It is the sheer busyness of Christmas, not so much its commercialization, that has changed its forms and rituals. Perhaps we have lost not only the art of simplicity but the desire for it as well. But not, I think, in our deepest beings. And as long as we know in our hearts what Christmas ought to be, then Christmas is.

"The sophisticated may belittle the almost assembly-line transaction of the printed Christmas cards that swamp our parlors in piles and windows. It is impersonal, yes, as compared with the old-fashioned family trek down the street for greetings at the door. But each little square or rectangular printed card is a signal of human recognition, a reassurance that we live in part, at least, of their consciousness, however small a part, and so are not alone...

"We cannot live, in our families, in our nations or in the world, if we cannot open our hearts. I do not know how this compressed, elbowing and suspicious world is to go on in peace if this cannot be done. I see no ultimate security in any 'balance of power' or 'balance of terror' peace. We know instinctively that in the end only a peace through a balance of kindness will preserve us...

"There are a few words I read every time the Christmas season comes around...[perhaps] written by Fra Giovanni in the year 1513...which sometimes I think of as the most perfect passage in our language...

"'There is nothing I can give you which you have not; but there is much that, while I cannot give you, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven. No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant. Take peace. The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within reach, is joy. Take joy. And so, at this Christmastime, I greet you with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.'"

From Sevareid, long gone now, and myself, wishes to all for a day of heaven, peace and joy.

The Right Before Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas all through a House

Not a Speaker was stirring, not even the souse;

The Census was hung by the chimney with care,

In the hopes that 2012 would soon be there;

The Repubs were nestled all smug in their beds.

Visions of Tea Party plums danced in their heads;

And DeMint in his 'kerchief and Coburn in his cap


Tried to settle down for a long winter's nap,

When on the White House lawn rose such a clatter

Obama sprang from bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window he flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the bodies of new-fallen Dems

Gave the lustre of mid-day to Pelosi's hems,

When, what to his wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and weird,

He knew in a moment it must be Harry Reid.

More rapid than earmarks his coursers they came,

And he whistled, shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, Schumer! now, Boxer! now, Burris and Bennett!

On, Specter! on Dodd! comers, goers of the Senate!


To the top with START! to the top with Don't Tell!

Now vote away! vote away! vote away like Hell!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the Capitol the Senators they flew,

With a sleigh full of votes, some Republicans too.

And then, in a twinkling, Barack heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As he drew in his head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney Santa Reid came with a bound.

He was dressed in GOP skins, from head to foot,

Clothes all tarnished with tradeoffs and soot;

A bundle of scalps he had flung on his back,

And looked like a lobbyist opening his pack.

His eyes they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

Cheeks like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

Beard of his chin as white as Olympia Snowe;

The stump of a pipe held tight in his teeth,

Smoke of McConnell circled up like a wreath;

No broad face or little round belly,

To shake when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

He wasn't chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

But Barack laughed to see him, in spite of himself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave him to know no filibusters to dread;

Santa spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

Filled the roll calls, then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

Sprang to his sleigh, gave his team a high-five,

Away they all flew to see constituents live.

Barack heard a shout, ere he drove out of sight,

"Happy Christmas to all, Aloha for a good-night."

(Apologies to Clement Clarke Moore.)

Middle-of-the-Road GOP Revolt

Sanity has thrown a Hail-Mary pass to close out the year with a surprise upset in the lame-duck Congress, and the heroes are moderate Republicans who sat on the Washington bench all year during the Tea Party rout of all reason.

From DADT repeal to the START treaty and a food-safety bill to medical care for 9/11 responders, barriers come down as traditional GOP lawmakers break through a year of gridlock to send a message to their party and its incoming zealots.

Moderation has not been in the air, but the November election apparently unnerved long-serving Republicans who saw their colleagues thrown out in primaries and began to have visions of a DeMint-Paul-Rubio rampage that would threaten their own job security next time around.

"Harry Reid has eaten our lunch," says Sen. Lindsey Graham, but it's not the hapless Democratic Majority Leader but incoming grinches about to devour everything in sight who drove Scott Brown, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski (after her own near-death experience) to break ranks on DADT and 13 Republican to join in approving the START treaty.

Washington will shut down for the holidays after this outbreak of sanity, with the President showing a sudden surge in approval ratings and likely leaving Mitch McConnell and John Boehner to wonder what went wrong with their just-say-no strategy.

With the end of one-party rule, which turned out to be no-party rule, both Democrats and Republicans will have to make New Year's resolution to start remembering what it was like to have a two-party system.

Any bets on how long that will last?

Total Recall? Forget It

What would it be like to remember everything that happened to you in detail over the years? This science-fiction premise comes to life on 60 Minutes with people who have been laboratory-tested and diagnosed with "superior autobiographical memory."

This is no parlor trick, watching men and women instantly reach back 20, 30 years or more for a randomly chosen date and bring it back it in verifiable detail--day of the week, weather, news events, their own experiences and the feelings that came with them.

They are being studied at the University of California Irvine by scientists who find bigger temporal lobes (for storing memory) and, perhaps more suggestive, differences in a region deep in the brain involved in skill learning--and obsessive compulsive disorder.

This special state of mind could be useful for salespeople, headwaiters, "Jeopardy" contestants, and in the case of one of them, actress Marilu Henner, for remembering lines in scripts, but may otherwise be a mixed blessing.

“Most have called it a gift," one woman has said, "but I call it a burden. I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!"

For most of us, selective memory may be the true gift that, until or unless Alzheimer's strikes, helps sort out the meaningful from the mental trash that fills our days. I can recall a loving aunt who would greet me at eight with kisses and butter cookies, letting me reach into a cake tin for a fistful of swirled circles that turned to sweet vapor on my tongue. But most days as a foot soldier in World War II are best forgotten.

Free associating right along, this new take on how the brain works also brings back Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 thriller, "The 39 Steps," in which a musical hall performer named "Mr. Memory" is used by spies to store secret plans in his head and eventually shot dead for his pains. Seeing it at 13, I fell hopelessly in love with a British beauty named Madeleine Carroll, whom I was lucky enough to encounter later in life.

All this makes for happy remembering but sets me wondering how endless memory would work out for politicians. It would be fine for campaigning, recalling constituents' names and such, but how would it be for someone like John McCain? As he now plays his role as the Angry Old Man in Washington, wouldn't he keep tripping over those days when he was running the Straight Talk Express?

Total recall? Forget about it.

Changing Not Hearts or Minds But Habits

As Congress inches toward allowing gay men and women to die openly for their country, the history of American bigotry comes back to an octogenarian who has lived through so much of it:

*A father-in-law who went to medical school in Scotland because American universities had filled their Hebrew quotas.

*My own experience in the 1950s as the first Jew to be hired by George W. Bush's grandfather for his publishing empire.

*The injuries and indignities heaped on "Negroes" until Martin Luther King put his body where his mind and heart were.

*The ridicule endured by Feminists for protesting the status of women as "second-class citizens."

In all this, the victims did not ask to be loved or admired but simply to be treated with the fairness and respect accorded to all Americans.

For the simple truth about fighting bigotry is not to change people's minds and hearts but their habits. Anti-Semitism, racism and misogyny still exist, but between then and now, we have had an African-American in the White House, a Jew running for Vice-President, women on the Supreme Court and in major Cabinet posts.

"There is no rational basis to keep qualified and dedicated gays from serving in the military," Andrew Sullivan now says. "It was confidence in this truth--not assertion of any special identity or special rights--that carried us forward. And the revelation of the actual lives and records of gay service members--all of whom came out of the closet and risked their livelihoods to testify to the truth--has sunk in widely and deeply."

Sadly, like Dixiecrats who walked out of the Democratic Party in 1948 to protest desegregation, their counterpart now is John McCain, the former maverick who is acting out that kind of last-ditch resistance to repealing DADT.

But that barrier will come down, and some visionaries like Maureen Dowd and Jimmy Carter are already blathering about the coming of the first Gay President.

One step at a time, friends, one step at a time.

Year's Biggest Lie

If truth is the first casualty of war, the GOP assault on Obama has produced what a Pulitzer-Prize-winning fact check site calls "The Lie of the Year"--that the President's reform law is "a government takeover" of health care.

The Oscar goes to Frank Luntz, who deserves permanent possession of the truth-twisting trophy. Whenever John Boehner or Mitch McConnell says "job-killing" about any Democratic proposal, you can be sure that Luntz is the ventriloquist behind them providing lethal language, just as he persuaded Republicans earlier to keep calling the estate tax a "death tax."

We are in the era of government-by-slogans, as an academic study finds that, during the election campaign this year, voters received "substantial levels of misinformation" from TV, with Fox in the lead and MSNBC not far behind, most of it from reporting what politicians say. And more and more of what they say is intended to push emotional buttons rather than clarify issues. (Sarah Palin "death panels," anyone?)

Although Republicans specialize in the practice, the trend is bipartisan. A Wikileaks dump shows the Cuban government upset over Michael Moore's "Sicko" for "blatant misrepresentation" of their health care system as wonderful, about as truthful as the accusations of "Obamacare" as a government takeover.

Luntz, who tests panels to discover which words and phrases evoke emotional reactions, is an admirer of Orwell, without seeming to understand that prophet's disgust with the perversion of language.

Lying for a living must eventually addle the brain.

Update: Hypocrisy, the offspring of lies, is thriving in this atmosphere, as Paul Krugman grades a prime performance of obfuscation in the debate over tax cuts and deficits.

A Greatest Generation Icon Gone

With the death of Bob Feller at 92, another reminder of America's glory days fades away.

Not only was he one of the best pitchers in baseball history, Feller might just as well have been from another species compared to today's multi-million-dollar, steroid-taking superstars who bounce from one team to another in search of ever more money and fame.

Feller spent his entire career in Cleveland (pace LeBron), interrupted only by World War II, and lived in a suburb there for the rest of his life.

Are there any major league ball players in Iraq or Afghanistan? Two days after Pearl Harbor, Feller enlisted in the Navy, eventually serving as a gunnery officer on an aircraft carrier in both the Atlantic and Pacific.

Four years away from baseball in his prime cost him an estimated 100 victories, but only last year he said, "I'm not a hero. Heroes seldom return from wars. Survivors return from wars. But I'm very proud of my military career. And I don't miss those 100 wins whatsoever."

As a Bronx kid, I admired Feller grudgingly for what he did to our New York Yankees, but his passing recalls one of our own All-Star pitchers, Vernon "Lefty" Gomez. Feller's obits quote Gomez about batting against him (no DH then) and telling an umpire about a third strike, "That last one sounded a little low."

Nobody matched Feller, but Lefty should be remembered not only for his pitching but his offbeat humor. On a foggy day, he struck a match before coming to bat against him. "What's the idea?" asked the umpire. "Do you think it will help you see Feller's fast one?" "No," Gomez answered. "I just want to make sure he can see me!"

In Yankee Stadium's Monument Park, Gomez's plaque reads: "Noted for his wit and his fastball, as he was fast with a quip and a pitch."

If Feller's passing brings back memories of Gomez, there's no doubt that he wouldn't have minded sharing a little of the spotlight with him. Modesty was an admirable trait for the Greatest Generation.

9/11 Comedy Crisis

If anger is the source of all humor, in his last Daily Show of the year, Jon Stewart pulled back the curtain, skipped the jokes and showed us pure rage about Congress' failure to enact medical care for 9/11 responders in the lame-duck session.

Instead of the usual lineup of fake bloviators, Stewart hosted a panel of police and firemen suffering from toxic effects of working at Ground Zero, who offered living testimony as commentary on Jon Kyl's complaint about having to work so close to Christmas and Mitch McConnell's tears at his colleague Judd Gregg's departure from the Senate.

No jokes about hypocrisy could match Stewart's rage over the treatment of those who work--and expose themselves to danger--365 days a year compared to the posturing of politicians who normally ooze sympathy for them but refuse to give their health care priority over extending tax cuts for millionaires.

Stewart's anger persisted into an interview with Mike Huckabee, who was there to promote a children's Christmas book but found himself defending Republicans and Fox News for insensitivity.

The former Arkansas governor and minister, now a Fox employee with hopes for the 2012 GOP nomination, who once wrote a book of diet advice after losing 100 pounds, looked like a beached whale being harpooned.

If Huckabee had any bipartisan jokes ready for the encounter, they will have to wait for next year.

America's Most Unwanted War

As another equivocating report on Afghanistan emerges, a new poll shows the conflict has reached depths of public disapproval seen only in the last days of Vietnam:

"Public dissatisfaction with the war, now the nation's longest, has spiked by 7 points just since July. Given its costs vs. its benefits, only 34 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say the war's been worth fighting, down by 9 points to a new low, by a sizable margin."

Yet the best a White House review can offer a year after sending 30,000 more troops into harm's way is "fragile" but "reversible" gains in an effort that has cost 500 American lives, and counting, since then.

This is accompanied by the repeated promise of a "responsible reduction" in forces next July, but the review tapdances around the elephant in the room--Pakistan:

“(D)enial of extremist safe havens will require greater cooperation with Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan. Furthermore, the denial of extremist safe havens cannot be achieved with military means alone, but must continue to be advanced by effective development strategies.”

Translation: We can keep killing insurgents in Afghanistan, but they will be quickly replaced, unless we can buy off Pakistan to stop the flow, something we have been unable to do for almost a decade now.

Meanwhile, an anonymous White House official says, "The real debate will occur when we have to determine how big the July '11 drawdown will be," as an unnamed military source acknowledges "some very significant differences of opinion."

In the days before 24/7 cable and the Internet, 60 percent of Americans finally decided that Vietnam was "a mistake," as they feel about Afghanistan now.

Twenty years later, that opinion was held by seven out of ten. When Americans look back on Afghanistan from that distance, how will they feel?

As for now, polls, casualty lists and "reviews" will keep giving us numbers and, amid domestic economic upheaval, all that bleeding and dying will seem very far away.

A Present--and Future--for Obama

During this worst year in memory, Americans failed Barack Obama as much as he disappointed us and, for the nation's future, the best present we can give ourselves is a gift of good will for an embattled President.

As he prepares to revamp his White House, Obama is still bedeviled by indignities no Leader of the Free World should bear. In a Maryland courtroom, there is a delivery of those Yuletide monstrosities nobody wants, nutty and hard to swallow, as fruitcake Birthers gather to support an Army officer's refusal to report to Afghanistan because he hasn't seen the President's birth certificate.

In Washington, there is similar reality as the lowest-rated Congress in history turns the tax deal for the superrich into a grab bag of pork, a reflection of how seriously lawmakers are devoted to cutting the deficit and stimulating the economy.

In foreign affairs, Tea Party clown Jim DeMint is holding up a vote on the START treaty to make the world safer by eating up lame-duck time with a forced reading of the bill.

To govern in partnership with buffoons like these, a President would have to be supernaturally wise, patient and manipulative to get anything done, and Obama has often conceded his own imperfections.

But compared to Congress, he is a political paragon and Democrats who disparage him now for failing to be a magician do so at their own risk--and the nation's.

It all brings back that old typing exercise, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party." And women and children as well, or what will be coming out of our keyboards for the new year will be gibberish of the worst kind.

Happy holidays to all, including Obama haters, and an open invitation to pour out your worst.

Update: The President gets one gift as the Senate votes to go ahead and debate the START treaty. Good to learn that trying to avoid blowing up the planet takes priority over Tea Party obstructionism.

Ike's Call for Sanity

Jon Stewart and President Eisenhower make an odd couple, but they have a similar message for today's politicians.

As the Daily Show host does an enraged rant about Congressional hypocrisy in caring more about tax cuts for the rich than the health of 9/11 responders, Ike's voice comes from the past, warning about falling "into bitter, unreconcilable factions which in other nations have paralyzed the democratic process."

Fifty years after his farewell address, newly discovered papers reveal that, in addition to a legendary warning about growing power of the "military-industrial complex," Eisenhower considered an admonition against Congressional paralysis by political divisions, followed by the lesson he learned from leading a divided government:

"Despite our differences, we worked together, and the business of the nation went forward, and the fact that it did so is in large measure a credit to the wisdom, forbearance, and sense of duty displayed by the Congress."

John Boehner and Mitch McConnell may want to consider such advice from the Republican president who brought egomaniacal commanders together for a World War II victory and, as President, left office respected by Americans across the political spectrum.

Half a century ago, it was possible for a lifelong Democrat to fall in love with Eisenhower for his palpable decency, honor and adherence to true American values.

If he were still with us, Ike would get a rousing reception from Jon Stewart's audience as he offered a bit of advice to the Tea Party, "Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels--men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."

In his lifetime, Eisenhower was wooed by both Republicans and Democrats to run as their candidate for the White House. Would he be today?

Obama (1), Biden (2), Boehner (3)

Presidential succession changes next month and Washington, obsessed as always with power, is trying to get a handle on who's waiting in the wings, ready to do what to whom.

The New York Times does a takeout on "Biden's Bigger Role," noting that the Vice-President's "role in the back-channel compromise with Republicans on tax cuts has engendered some resentment, along with questions about whether he will encourage further accommodation with Republicans or serve as a liberal counterweight to those in the White House who are advocating a move to the center."

At the same time, 60 Minutes spotlights House Speaker-to-be John Boehner, who will replace Nancy Pelosi as third in line, and will be nobody's liberal counterweight to anything.

Questioned by Leslie Stahl, Boehner treats "compromise" as a dirty word and refuses to say it, preferring "working together" and "finding common ground."

Even with the election over, Boehner is looking over his shoulder, as if the Tea Party had a gun to his head. "When you say the word 'compromise'" he says, "a lot of Americans look up and go, 'Uh-oh, they're gonna sell me out.'"

Asked if the tax deal was "worth the $900 billion added to the deficit," Boehner's answer is to parrot the campaign talking point that "it will create jobs and help our economy," advocating with no explanation a tax cut for the richest Americans over Obama's stimulus bill, which he violently opposed, and which, GOP attacks to the contrary, actually pumped money into the economy.

His only emotional moment in the interview is to complain that the President showed him "disrespect" by calling him a hostage-taker on the tax bill.

With Boehner in the Congressional saddle, the Vice President's enhanced role in working across the aisle will be the neatest trick of the year, even though as one legislator notes, “Biden brings everything that Rahm Emanuel brings, but the major difference is everyone likes Joe Biden.”

But likeability is a light counterweight to intransigence and, judging from Boehner's stance, less likely to lead to common ground than super-stalement in the Congressional sausage factory.

Yet Biden is sure to bring one trait to the table--loyalty to the President. At a Democrats' raucous gripe session last week, Biden reportedly erupted, “There’s no goddamned way I’m going to stand here and talk about the president like that.”

As long as he is around, nobody will.

Ghosts of Wikileaks Past

Casting for a 21st century take on "A Christmas Carol" is coming along nicely. Julian Assange, the Scrooge who doesn't hoard but gives away everybody else's stuff, is in chains. And right on schedule, enter Richard Nixon, the ghost of Christmas Past, to rattle on with "Bah, Humbugs" about everyone in sight.

Unlike the contents of Assange's Santa bag, the Nixon stuff is being spilled by his own Presidential Library in the latest dump of self-recorded maundering by the only Unindicted Coconspirator ever to occupy the Oval Office.

Lest Nixon and Assange seem an unlikely Scrooge and Marley, they share a basic quality over the decades--paranoia, a simmering distrust and hatred of a world of "they," those others who secretly rule the universe and make life impossible for right-thinking heroic figures such as themselves.

During the Nixon years, I lived on the other side of a Connecticut hillside from Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, a crackpot psychiatrist who was later revealed to be the President's secret shrink. When military helicopters came swooping in, neighbors would shrug and say, "Nixon must be flipping out again."

The slow leak of his tapes confirms that jokey surmise--in spades--as Nixon rants in private, the only American president of Quaker (Friends) parentage who ended up compiling a secret Enemies List.

Now we have his wisdom on racial and ethnic traits. After John F. Kennedy had cleaned his clock in 1960, Nixon reveals that "the Irish can't drink...they get mean. Virtually every Irish I've known gets mean when he drinks. It's sort of a natural trait."

Decades after Martin Luther King had inspired a Civil Rights Act by his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon confides that it will take 500 years for African-Americans to achieve equality because, even though "they are strong physically and some of them are smart...they have to be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that's the only thing that's going to do it."

As for Jews and Italian-Americans, don't ask.

With these reminders that we once had a Nutsy Fagan in the Oval Office for five years, the Assange movement of "hacktivism" that will make him Time's "Person of the Year" seems more benign.

So let's enjoy the season of sharing. Ho, ho, ho.

The Bill and Bernie Reruns

Americans' remote controls morph into time machines as they change channels to find Bill Clinton at the White House podium holding forth on Bush tax cuts (among other topics) and Bernie Sanders on C-Span filibustering against them like Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" on TCM.

Washington is a farce like "The Office" these days or a giant reality show with participants contorting themselves every which way to stay on camera.

Whatever is going on is show business, not government. In the season finale of HBO's "Boardwalk Empire," the corrupt political boss muses about "how much sin you can live with." Click, and here is Harry Reid, just after the Senate votes down health aid for 9/11 workers, pushing to allow his Nevada constituents to bilk computer users with legalized online poker.

Meanwhile, the President is retreating into holiday cheer after doing his Lewis Black rant on politicians Left and Right. The reviews were not scintillating.

House Democrats are reduced to profanity, while Peggy Noonan observes, "We have not in our lifetimes seen a president in this position. He spent his first year losing the center, which elected him, and his second losing his base, which is supposed to provide his troops. There isn't much left to lose! Which may explain Tuesday's press conference."

But, as with all TV shows, it's best not to underestimate the ingenuity of script writers. On the season ender of another HBO original, "In Treatment," the protagonist who has been struggling with psychiatric problems of his patients for three seasons, walks away, totally disillusioned with what we have been watching him do all that time.

No matter, the odds are that he will be back to wrestle with futility again, as will the stars of the biggest TV show of them all in Washington.

The Gore Presidency--Again

Four years and 2700 posts ago, this blog imagined that the 2000 election had turned out differently and offered a tongue-in-cheek critique of "President Gore, Lame Duck."

Now, on the tenth anniversary of the national disaster that gave us George W. Bush, New York Magazine enlists five fantasists, including Glenn Beck, who with the benefit of hindsight posit such lurid developments as the 9/11 destruction of the White House, Saddam Hussein dying of a heart attack, a disappointed W. drinking again, Bill Clinton, divorced by Hillary, marrying Carla Bruni and Mitt Romney, elected in 2008, solving "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" with separate gay brigades and gay squadrons.

Such developments are fascinating to contemplate, but I still prefer my vision of Al Gore bumbling through two relatively uneventful terms.

You can read it here.

Obama Finds Reagan's Pony

The tax deal is virtually done but the piquant side effect is how quickly an abject surrender has been converted into a "second stimulus."

One of Barack Obama's underrated gifts is to act out Ronald Reagan's favorite joke about the optimistic boy who, faced with a pile of dung, jumps in and roots around, while enthusing, "There must be a pony in here somewhere!"

He did it with the health care debacle and is now repeating the performance in the lame-duck disaster.

This time, the President has sidetracked economists into an argument over just how much the economy will benefit from the face-saving concessions wrested from a GOP victory that will add $4 trillion to the deficit in the next decade.

Now Mark Zandi of Moody's is predicting that the deal "will add a lot to growth in the first half of next year, when the recovery will be at its most vulnerable. It really seals the deal for the recovery evolving into a self-sustaining economic expansion" as Paul Krugman quibbles over the size and duration of the "jump-start."

Meanwhile, the President is warning Congressional allies that they will be plunging the country into "a double-dip recession" if they fail to mount the pony he found and ratify his deal with the Republicans. Somewhere in Oval Office heaven, Reagan must be laughing his head off at seeing his joke come to such hilarious life.

But what may be funnier still is the sight of the oddest couple in America, Sarah Palin and Ralph Nader, joining in criticism of Obama just as America prepares for its annual Christmas showing of "It's a Wonderful Life."

So it is, if you don't weaken and work hard to keep your sense of humor.

Update: The ghost of Reagan won't help much in the President's current situation, but he is getting a visit from another former president who can give him advice about getting out of hot water. In facing a fractious Congress, Bill Clinton knows all about explaining what the meaning of "is" is and moving on to the next year of a turbulent term.