Larry Summers

All the talk about Larry Summers as possible candidate for Treasury Secretary reminds me of listening to a talk he gave 10 years ago to the New York State Bankers Association. The talk was so dense and opaque that many in the audience looked about, wondering whether they would be given a snap quiz on the subject matter.

The problem appears to me to be that Mrs. Summers' little boy Lawrence doesn't play well with other kids. Stanley Fish hits the nail on the head: Summers does not possess the virtues that a Treasury Secretary needs at this moment in history, when there are likely to be tense negotiations with Congress, foreign finance ministers and other stakeholders, before a way out of the current economic crisis is fashioned.

Death to Intellectuals

You may think from recent posts that I have an unhealthy obsession with Sarah Palin. The triumph of Barack Obama's election is the signal it sends, at least to me, that the intellect has not been totally discounted in this country, despite an alarming rise during the Bush reign of Know-Nothingism and scorn for rational thought. Sarah Palin represents to me the end-product of the Bush gestalt, and so I remain anxious for the future of thoughtful, rational, analytical government.

Dick Cavett on Sarah Palin

For those of you who might have missed it, Dick Cavett's blog entry today, The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla,  on the subject of Sarah Palin and the death of language is masterful. I commend it to all who love America's "native" tongue.

If you want to watch Matt Lauer's interview, have fun:

Part II:

The Republic has survived a lot, but this may be a sign of the end.

John Cleese on Sarah Palin

I thought this was too funny.

Terence Howard

Here is Terence Howard's interview on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday.

Voting

For God's sake, voting could be dangerous. Here's some indication:

Here's the SNL VP debate parody. Tina Fey continues to amaze. I think I'm voting for her for VP!

The Palin-Couric Interview (SNL version)

Here is Tina Fey's take on the Palin-Couric interview. Amazing....

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/couric-palin-open/704042/

George Packer

George Packer says it all. The hypocrisy has reached new heights in the wake of the failure of the so-called "bail-out bill." What an unfortunate label. Was it the MSM that gave it that moniker? Whoever did bears some of the blame for whatever follows Black Monday II.

I have never heard so much drivel from our nation's supposed leaders. It lends a new dimension to my friend Kit's observation that "politics is the least demanding of all the professions."

Embarrassing

Pretty bad, and another reason for shunning John McCain, is the incident involving his interview with Spanish language station Caracol. Embarrassing is the word.

Debating the Campaign (cont'd)

In case my readers haven't seen it, I commend David Brooks' column today, Why Experience Matters.

It really struck a chord with me, and I think actually goes some way toward explaining my support for Obama. He says,"Conservatism was once a frankly elitist movement. "Conservatives stood against radical egalitarianism and the destruction of rigorous standards. They stood up for classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience and prudence. Wisdom was acquired through immersion in the best that has been thought and said." Well, that's what I stood and stand for (or against), although I might be a little soft on "radical egalitarianism." I don't think I'm radical anything, unfortunately.

What we have had for the last eight years is a kind of neo-Know-Nothingism, at least in the Oval Office, which has brought us to a crisis in governance -- a totally consumer-driven economy that is finally near collapse, a foreign policy that has morphed us into a global pariah -- and I could go on.

Against this, Barack Obama presents a thoughtful leadership that demonstrates to me his "immersion in the best that has been thought and said." At the same time, he has had a life experience that few of us WASPs would trade for (is this just white guilt on my part?), and has the kind of experience that the Founders would have saluted -- from community organization to State legislature to the Senate. I you're interested in his resume, you can find it at Barack Obama's Résumé.

Brooks goes on to say, "The elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor simplicity. The elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor instinct." OK, I'm an elitist. We live in a complex world, and we need leaders who understand that complexity, and can articulate it to the nation.

Anyway, I suspect Brooks shares many of the doubts my readers do about Obama. God knows, I have my doubts too. It is, however, impossible to deny that he has performed an extraordinary feat merely to have gotten this far. At the moment, it appears he's bucking some headwinds. How he gets though this patch will say a lot about his fitness. Maybe I'm bedazzled by the historic watershed his candidacy represents, but I do believe he's the best we have at this moment. I could get negative about John McCain, for whom I always had great respect, until he picked Sarah Palin in a grossly cynical moment and embarked on a dirty, Rovian campaign that makes me long for November 5.

Debating the Campaign

I've been having a very civil debate with my friend Charlie about the Presidential campaign. We are on opposite sides of the partisan and ideological fences, but I respect his opinions, and, most of all, his sense of fairness and his devotion to the truth.

Recently, Charlie sent me the following email. Actually, it was in response to my forwarding him a rather barbed YouTube compilation of John McCain's flip-flops:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c&eurl=http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/

Here's Charlie's reaction:

Ouch. It's interesting that the Kerry goof (I voted for before I voted against) seems to have become an established political ploy. I've seen plenty from both sides, and I think that most people have become fatigued by the same old same old.

I have to admit that I am not a big McCain fan, but as I told you, I don't see any attributes from Obama that indicate he would be a good president. All I know about hiim is that "he is a rock star", "he's beautifully educated", and "he's a great politician". So I decided to vote my pocketbook (lower taxes) and against having all three branches controlled by one party. But basically I didn't like any of the options.

In an earlier email I told you that I thought that McCain's VP pick was an act of genius (not to infer that his pick is the best qualified, only that she is a game breaker). There is an editorial by Peggy Noonan in todays Wall Street Journal that sums up the Palin impact pretty well. There is also an article in last weeks "The Economist" that sums up Obama's problems pretty clearly. But here is my perception as to why the pick was brilliant (unless, of course, Governor Palin turns out to be Jennifer Flowers, which she might). So, if you will forebear it, I will outline what I think has just happened.

What the Democratic leadership did not realize (as evidenced by their disdain and belittling of Ms. Palin) is that for the first time in 40 years, a significant number of good ol' boys, people who went to school at the University of Oklahoma, Boise State or Jefferson State Junior College now have someone on a ticket who is like them. In fact, this probably saved the GOP, because even the Good Ol Boys in the red states have become just as fed up with Republicans in congress as you have. I believe that they have continued to vote Republican only because they don't care much for the perceived snobbishness ("we know what is best for the flyover states because they are just stupid hicks") of the left.

In fact, before Governor Palin neither side liked McCain much. No one takes Biden seriously, with his hair plugs, face lift, diarrhea of the mouth and missteps as head of Defense. Obama comes across as a snob. And all of a sudden, here's this lady that hunts and fishes (professionially!), has 5 kids, loves the Lord and has occasionally kicked some ass. And she has a likable personality (unless her commonness scares the hell out of you). And then, when the bloggers, the media and even Sally Quinn (ultimate Washington insider) dismissed her, or insulted her, or implied that she was trailer trash - which made them look bad! In fact, she may be trailer trash, which will probably give the election to Obama, but the way the Dem machine went after her was so mean spirited that she probably has a pass whatever she has done. And it makes any type of mean spirited email or Soros attack ad just look like more of the same Democrat style. Mean.

to top it off, the Democratic candidate called this person, who 50% of America felt was just like them, "the most extreme candidate in 40 years", immediately branding himself extreme to that 50%.

I think that the extremely poor reaction to Sarah Palin, who is the most "common" (according to the dictionary this means that she is like most people) candidate we've seen in a long time branded the Democrat Party as elite (not common). The other impact from Governor Palin is that now the Republicans looks like the party of the common man, while the Dems look like the party of the professors and movie stars - not common at all. I never would have believed that it could be done. Sarah Palin has told the American population that the Democrats don't think they are smart enough to govern themselves, that only the illiterati knows what is best. The Republicans are sayings - we are you and respect you. That's going to be a tough way to win their votes.

I don't believe that Oprah, Baldwin and Streisand can save this one unless Governor Palin has some serious flaws.

And my response:

This is a very thoughtful analysis, and I can't say I disagree with some of the points you make. I do have to be on guard against my own elitism, and ask myself periodically whether I support Obama purely out of my own hyper-intellectual response to him (and a disdain for hoi polloi, who after all governed Athens in the Golden Age), or whether I truly believe he is what this poor beleaguered republic needs at this historical juncture. I waffle!

Nonetheless, while I will concede that Palin represents the Wal-Mart Nation, and affords a figure that many white Americans, men as well as women, can identify with, she represents to me a real outlier, from an outlier State, where "pork" is part of the political culture, and where the government is a big cash dispensing machine. I simply cannot bring myself to the cynical view that anyone, no matter how humble their experience in affairs of state, can be President. And to compare her with Harry Truman, as I have heard in some quarters, betrays an ignorance of history and of President #33. Unlike Harry, Sarah is totally unqualified.

By the way, we are only just beginning to look at her record on the job in Alaska, and the New Yawk Times just published a piece on their findings: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?ei=5070&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all

Now, I'm not sure I am a big fan of the Great Bloviator, but a former Morgan colleague of mine, now sadly deceased, was his roommate at U. of Delaware, and attested to his good character. And for me, character carries a lot of weight. I believe Barack Obama, rock star though he may be, is a man of exceptional character. And I am willing to pay somewhat higher personal taxes to get this country back on track.

Let's keep the debate rolling!

On the subject of Harry Truman, Frank Rich, that "cosmopolitan urbanite" from the New Yawk Times, drew attention to the fact that Palin's comments on Harry Truman's "rise" to the the Vice Presidency came from Westbrook Pegler, a right-wing McCarthyite Hearst columnist. Actually, Rich got his lowdown on this from Thomas Frank of the Wall Street Journal.

But I think in the final analysis this is all distraction. Obama has to keep his focus, and in the last few weeks he has been in real danger of losing it. Let's see what the next few days brings.

Ecuador and Chevron

I just gleaned some interesting insights into the attitude some Americans – at least those associated with Big Oil (and probably Big Extractive Industries generally) – have about the so-called Third World and environmental concerns. This from a recent report of the Episcopal Church New Jersey Diocese "Companion Diocese Committee." It is really quite outrageous, but it reflects the Administration's attitudes toward the rest of the world for the last eight sad years.

Here is what they report:

There is currently a very significant trial going on in the Ecuadorian Amazon against Chevron by groups who have been affected by petroleum contamination. Vanity Fair has a lengthy article about it with excellent information (though not all will appreciate the way that the writer expresses it): http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/texaco200705

 

Regardless of how the trial ends, the fact remains that environmental contamination (such as babies with cancer and cesspools of oil runoff) and societal disintegration (especially within indigenous people groups) are true costs of our petroleum use, much greater than the price-per-gallon.

 

………………..

 

Pablo Fajardo, lawyer representing Ecuadorian Amazonian settlers and indigenous groups: "One of the problems with modern society is that it places more importance on things that have a price than on things that have a value. Breathing clean air, for instance, or having clean water in the rivers, or having legal rights—these are things that don't have a price but have a huge value. Oil does have a price, but its value is much less. And sometimes we make the mistake."

 

Chevron lobbyist: "The ultimate issue here is Ecuador has mistreated a U.S. company. We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this - companies that have made big investments around the world." http://www.newsweek.com/id/149090

 

 

…………….....

 

David Brooks on Leadership

I thought David Brooks was particularly perceptive today. I have felt strongly in recent years the lack of leadership in this country. As Brooks points out, leadership often requires an acknowledgment of one's shortcomings.

The Art of Growing Up

By DAVID BROOKS

In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln seems to have at least vaguely thought of suicide. His friend Joshua Speed found him one day thrashing about in his room. “Lincoln went Crazy,” Speed wrote. “I had to remove razors from his room — take away all Knives and other such dangerous things — it was terrible.”

Lincoln was taking three mercury pills a day, the remedy in those days for people who either suffered from syphilis or feared contracting it. “Lincoln could not eat or sleep,” Daniel Mark Epstein writes in his new book, “The Lincolns.” “He appeared at the statehouse irregularly, hollow-eyed, unshaven, emaciated — an object of pity to his friends and of derision to others.”

Later, Lincoln wrote of that period with shame, saying that he had lost the “gem of my character.” He would withdraw morosely from the world into a sort of catatonic state. Early in his marriage, Epstein writes, “Lincoln had night terrors. He woke in the middle of the night trembling, talking gibberish.”

He would, of course, climb out of it. He would come to terms with his weaknesses, control his passions and achieve what we now call maturity.

The concept of maturity has undergone several mutations over the course of American history. In Lincoln’s day, to achieve maturity was to succeed in the conquest of the self. Human beings were born with sin, infected with dark passions and satanic temptations. The transition to adulthood consisted of achieving mastery over them.

You can read commencement addresses from the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the speakers would talk about the beast within and the need for iron character to subdue it. Schoolhouse readers emphasized self-discipline. The whole character-building model was sin-centric. So the young Lincoln had been encouraged by the culture around him to identify his own flaws — and, in any case, he had no trouble finding them. He knew he was ferociously ambitious and blessed with superior talents — the sort of person who could easily turn into a dictator or monster.

Over the course of his young adulthood, Lincoln built structures around his inner nature. He joined a traditional bourgeois marriage. He called his wife “mother” and lived in a genteel middle-class home. He engaged in feverish bouts of self-improvement, studying Euclid and grammar at all hours. He distrusted passionate politics. In the Lyceum speech that he delivered as a young man, he attacked emotionalism in politics and talked about the need for law, order and cool reason.

This concept of maturity as self-conquest didn’t survive long into the 20th century. Progressive educators emphasized students’ inner goodness and curiosity, not inner depravity. More emphasis was put on individual freedom, authenticity and values clarification. Self-discovery replaced self-mastery as the primary path to maturity, and we got a thousand novels and memoirs about young peoples’ search for identity.

In the last few years, we may be shifting toward another vision of maturity, one that is impatient with boomer narcissism. Young people today put service at the center of young adulthood. A child is served, but maturity means serving others.

And yet, though we’re never going back to the 19th-century, sin-centric character-building model, for breeding leaders, it has its uses. Over the past decades, we’ve seen president after president confident of his own talents but then undone by underappreciated flaws. It’s as if they get elected for their virtues and then get defined in office by the vices — Clinton’s narcissism, Bush’s intellectual insecurity — they’ve never really faced.

It would be nice to have a president who had gone to school on his own failings. It would be comforting to see a president who’d looked into the abyss, or suffered some sort of ordeal that put him on a first-name basis with his own gravest weaknesses, and who had found ways to combat them.

Obviously, it’s not fair to compare anybody to Lincoln, but he does illustrate the repertoire of skills we look for in a leader. The central illusion of modern politics is that if only people as virtuous as “us” had power, then things would be better. Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies.

Somehow a leader conversant with his own failings wouldn’t be as affected by the moral self-approval that afflicts most political movements. He’d be detached from his most fervid followers and merciful and understanding toward foes. He’d have a sense of his own smallness in the sweep of events. He or she would contravene Lord Acton’s dictum and grow sadder and wiser with more power.

All this suggests a maxim for us voters: Don’t only look to see which candidate has the most talent. Look for the one most emotionally gripped by his own failings.

Eric Hoffer

George Packer, in The Fall of Conservatism, reminds us of the great wisdom of ex-longshoreman Eric Hoffer, who said:

"Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation."

Ice Cream Cones

Leon Kass was chairman of George W's Council on Bioethics from 2002-2005. Recently an NPR broadcast made reference to a report of Dr. Kass in which he took issue with the civility of eating ice cream cones. Somehow, I found this shockingly trivial in the face of the uncivilized behavior we have had to endure under the Bush Regime, and it set me off to find the quote. I was surprised to learn that it appeared in a publication of Dr. Kass dating from 1999, and had been originally picked up on Classicalvalues.com in July 2003.

Dr. Kass is described in Wikipedia as vigorously opposed to progress in the fields of therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell research, and finds wisdom in the Book of Genesis. Kass makes the claim that reason or science cannot provide "moral and political standards sufficient for governing civic life and of guiding the proper use of power and technique." Kass expresses a strong belief that the potential of biological science is limited and will never provide answers to certain questions. 

This has apparently not stood in the way of Dr. Kass expressing his strongly held views on the ingestion of ice cream, so I thought it was worth repeating his cone pronouncement. 

"Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone --a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive.
I fear I may by this remark lose the sympathy of many reader, people who will condescendingly regard as quaint or even priggish the view that eating in the street is for dogs. Modern America's rising tide of informality has already washed out many long-standing traditions -- their reasons long before forgotten -- that served well to regulate the boundary between public and private; and in many quarters complete shamelessness is treated as proof of genuine liberation from the allegedly arbitrary constraints of manners. To cite one small example: yawning with uncovered mouth. Not just the uneducated rustic but children of the cultural elite are now regularly seen yawning openly in public (not so much brazenly or forgetfully as indifferently and "naturally"), unaware that it is an embarrassment to human self-command to be caught in the grip of involuntary bodily movements (like sneezing, belching, and hiccuping and even the involuntary bodily display of embarrassment itself, blushing). But eating on the street -- even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat -- displays in fact precisely such lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. Hunger must be sated now; it cannot wait. Though the walking street eater still moves in the direction of his vision, he shows himself as a being led by his appetites. Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. Eating on the run does not even allow the human way of enjoying one's food, for it is more like simple fueling; it is hard to savor or even to know what one is eating when the main point is to hurriedly fill the belly, now running on empty. This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior." – Kass, Leon: The Hungry Soul at 148-149. (University of Chicago Press, 1994, 1999)

All this being said, he could have spent a little more time considering the ethics of enhanced interrogation techniques or invasions of privacy in the name of the so-called "War on Terror," which has had the perverse effect of terrorizing this observer.

Bert and Ernie

Has this thing gone to far?

Hillary Deathwatch

Just to give Slate some more web time.

One Month to Live

glumbert - Last advice with one month to live

Outrageous Fortune

I have become simply addicted of late to a little Canadian TV series dating from 2003 named "Slings and Arrows." As the title suggests, it revolves around a struggling Shakespearean theater company in the imaginary little Canadian town of New Burbage Recall that Richard Burbage was the star of the Lord Chamberlain's Men -- later the King's Men -- the Bard's company. It is simply delightful. The series appeared on American cable -- Bravo I think -- a few years ago, and several of my classically minded friends caught it at that time.

While hilariously funny, it also contains more than a few splendid insights into the art of the stage and acting and directing technique. I commend it to all who enjoy Shakespeare, or brainy comedy.

A taste from the lyrics of one of its ditties:

Cheer up, Hamlet; chin up, Hamlet;
Buck up, you melancholy Dane!
So your uncle is a cad who murdered Dad and married Mum.
That's really no excuse to be as glum as you've become!
So wise up, Hamlet; rise up, Hamlet; perk up and sing a new refrain.
Your incessant monologizing fills the castle with ennui.
Your antic disposition is embarrassing to see.
And by the way, you sulky brat, the answer is to be!
You're driving poor Ophelia insane.
So shut up, you rogue and peasant;
Grow up, it's most unpleasant;
Cheer up, you melancholy Dane!

McCainomics II

My friend George M responded to my thoughts as follows:

Primo. Deutschebank is two words, Deutsche Bank. [Fixed! Quelle idiot!]

Secundo. McCain is a total economic illiterate. He simply does not know what he is talking about. What he said has nothing to do with the current crisis and is beneath inanity.

Terzio. Banks can operate with the illusion of capital, as you well know from your own experiences. Citibank has been technically bust at least two times in my lifetime. Trump went bust but was kept alive by the banks and eventually got out of it.

What a bank needs, or an institution that funds itself in the money market, is credit. Remember, it comes from credere, to believe. If the market doesn’t believe you are trustworthy, you aren’t.

As I was saying....

Frankly, the only reason I wrote this at all was because I have been attempting all week to decipher McCain's remarks, not a total waste of time on the off-chance that he could be our next President (Aieee!). Despite my best efforts, and a certain element of charity, they remain hermetically sealed.

McCain's Solution to the Credit Crisis

I have spent the last several days puzzling over what John McCain meant when he babbled:

"Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital."

It doesn't take much of a genius to realize that most of the financial industry would operate with zero capital if they could legally get away with it. I am of course ignoring the modest discipline imposed on the world's banks by the market. Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan can't operate without any capital; nevertheless, it has been apparent since the early 90's, witjh the emergence and expolosive growth of the deriviatives markets, that the capital a bank shows on its balance sheet may bear little relationship to the actual risks embedded in the institution's assets, including quasi-assets such as swap and other derivative contracts.

Thus in the 1990's the West's central bankers, meeting though the Bank for International Settlements, began formulating risk capital rules that had the admirable, if unattainable, objective of reflecting all the risks that impinged on the institution. These rules were, and continue to be, the focus of struggle and controversy in the industry not because bankers wish to be exposed to risk for its own sake, but because capital costs money, the more capitalized the less profitable, all other things being equal.

Now I suppose McCain may be suggesting a number of things here:

1. He could be promoting a roll-back of seventy-five years of securities regulation. I don't think so.
2. He could be promoting a reduction or elimination of capital gains taxes and taxes on dividends. A possibility, but this goes way beyond our immediate crisis -- a lock-up of the credit markets as a result of a crisis of confidence over the adequacy of firms' ability to withstand losses, i.e., capital.
3. The most likely -- what he means by "accounting impediments" is a return to the bad old days when so-called "off-balance sheet" risk was just that: not a consideration in setting the levels of regulatory capital, and not spelled out in excruciating detail in a firm's financial statements.

I have to say I find any of these suggestions naive and extremely dangerous. We are in the midst of a credit crisis, meaning that market participants don't believe that their counter-parties can honor their obligations. McCain's suggested approaches are at best wide of the mark and ineffectual, and at worst will exacerbate the present crisis.

For the time being, it looks as if the best approach will be old-fashioned New Deal pump-priming. The system, will recover; it always has. The best thing we can do is not make any jerky moves that would put the cart in the ditch.

Virtual Pilot

I bet GWB wouldn't stand a chance at this game!

http://www.lufthansa-usa.com/useugame2007/html/play.html

Dave Barry on the New Hampshire Primary

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- The voters of New Hampshire have made their decision, and the big winner is: Change. Here's the final vote tally:

Change -- 43 percent

Hope -- 28 percent

Hope For Change -- 17 percent

Hair -- 9 percent

Experience -- 2 percent

Dennis Kucinich -- 1 percent:

Now it's time for the politicians and the press to drop New Hampshire like an ant-covered corn dog and sprint for the airport, leaving the residents of The Granite State to spend the rest of the winter plucking 239 billion candidate signs out of their snowbanks, all the while wondering if there ever really was a candidate named ''Mike Gravel,'' or if that was just teenagers playing a sign-planting prank.

Meanwhile the eyeballs of the nation will turn toward the Next Crucial Phase of the presidential race, South (or North) Carolina, which at the moment is the epicenter of the political world, not to mention Dick Harpootlian. I have not, personally, conducted any journalism research in North (or South) Carolina, but based on sitting in my hotel room eating Cheez-Its and thinking about it, I would say that the issue most on the minds of voters there, at the moment, is: Change. Although of course that could change.

Meanwhile there are many unanswered questions about the races in both parties. On the Democratic side: Is Barack Obama for real? Or is he, as sources inside the Hillary Clinton campaign have suggested, a hologram formed by laser beams? Is the nation truly ready for a hologram president? And speaking of Hillary Clinton: When her eyes appeared to well up with tears during a campaign appearance at a New Hampshire diner, was thatreal welling? Or did she fake the welling? If she did, in fact, well, do we know for certain that those were her own personal tears? Why was no sample made available to the media for testing?

Among the unanswered questions on the Republican side are: Is John McCain, at 117, too old and cranky to be president? Like, during the White House Easter Egg Roll, would he come outside in his bathrobe and yell, ''You kids get off my lawn!'' Does Mitt Romney contain any human DNA whatsoever? Does he, for example, burp? Can he emit bodily aromas? And is there any TV show that Mike Huckabee will NOT appear on? Are we going to see him one of these nights on Deal or No Deal? Why does anybody, aside from Howie Mandel's immediate family, watch that show?

These are only some of the questions that we, as a nation, will be trying to answer in the critical days ahead. But before we do, let's take a moment to look back on both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, and ask ourselves if these two non-representative states -- which have, between them, roughly the same total minority population as Gladys Knight and the Pips -- should play such a huge role in selecting our presidential nominees. This is a very complex issue, with many strong arguments on both sides.

No, sorry, correction: It's actually a simple issue. The Iowa/New Hampshire system is insane. It's like a 50-table restaurant with a big, varied menu, except that only two tables are allowed to order. If these two tables order clams, for example, or Michael Dukakis, that's what gets served to all the other tables. But at this point I don't think there's anything the rest of the states can do about it. Iowa and New Hampshire will do anything to be first. You populous states can't beat them, because they want it more than you do. They're like the people who camp out for two weeks so they can be in front of the line to buy tickets for a hot concert, except that instead of a hot concert, it's a chance to shake hands with Duncan Hunter six different times. Tough luck, residents of populous states! At least you don't have to deal with the snowbank signs.

Anyway, this concludes my New Hampshire coverage. I will write further campaign reports as events warrant, meaning after I do my laundry. Until then, America: Don't go changing.