Tilting at Windmills

...If there is anyone who has pursued the sure thing more resolutely than the colonel did, it is Donald Kennedy, the president of Stanford University...

...This is the first of many similarities between the two articles...

...Richard Reeves once called us "the most unacknowledged source in Washington...

...Thus at this year's Derby, the winner, Strike the Gold, paid $5.40 on a $2 show bet...

...Barbara Boxer and Rep...

...A major problem here is that employees of the major media are now earning so much that they identify with the wealthy...

...This means that the show pool contains a large amount of silly money to reward more prudent wagerers...

...Enough tritium is available by reprocessing fuel from retired warheads...

...It is quickly brushed aside, not with any discussion of its merits but with Bush's ex cathedra pronouncement that it is not "politically" feasible...

...The other was Phillips Petroleum, which came to him through the late Senator Robert Kerr...

...So did the second horse, Best Pal...

...But when Rep...

...And since the nieces and nephews are new to the science of handicapping and have little confidence in their selections, they usually make the most cautious bet possible, which is show...

...Nowhere did the article mention that the greed of physicians— whose average annual income now exceeds $100,000—might have something to do with the problem...

...Kerr, whose priorities were accurately suggested by his credo, "I represent myself first, the state of Oklahoma second, and the people of the United States third," was a man who delighted in corrupting other men by obligating them to return the favors he did for them...

...For example, in his excellent new book on Kennedy and Khrushchev, Michael Beschloss tells the story of Kennedy's secret pledge to the Soviet leader— relayed by Bobby—to remove our missiles from Turkey...

...The Stanford article says, "The most commonly used adjective for Petersen is 'quiet.' For relaxation, he collects rocks—not exactly the profile of a revolutionary...

...He paid zero in state taxes...

...Why aren't some of these well-paid doctors willing to accept modest fees in order to care for the poor...

...Clark Clifford was the James Baker of the Truman era, the good source who was rewarded with favorable treatment by the reporters he cultivated...

...For most of human history, men's suits have included one pair of trousers...

...The reason is not taste but economics...

...John Kennedy, on the other hand, was a quick study, able to absorb the painful lessons of the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 in time to apply them to the Cuban missile crisis in the fall of '62...

...This is an old problem for the Monthly...

...The top tax rate may be 31 percent, but last year George Bush paid only 22 percent...

...It is unsettling to learn from Bob Woodward's new book, The Commanders, how little George Bush's extensive experience in Washington has taught him about decisionmaking in a crisis...

...But because the war ended in a military victory—although I'm sure history will view it as a human disaster—George Bush will not learn the error of his ways...

...Another investment opportunity I have recommended has once again proved rewarding...

...One of his first two clients was Howard Hughes—about whom need I say more...

...Eleven California police officers were caught cheating on a promotion examination last May, but no action was taken against them...

...The press must rebel against the Dick Cheneys who think they can silence potential whistleblowers...

...He also mentioned that no warden had visited his classroom for more than a decade...

...Bloomfield Hills is inhabited by all those overpaid executives who have presided over the decline of our automobile industry...

...To figure out why the university overbilled the government in the first place and to redo the charges properly...

...Over the years, our small circulation has meant that a good many writers thought they could get by without mentioning our name...

...The headline of the lead article in the April 2 New York Times read: "Low Medicaid Fees Seen as Depriving the Poor of Care...

...Yet the General Accounting Office says even that is not necessary...

...In the course of the interview, the employee, who was an instructor in an education program for prison inmates, talked about needing more chairs and volunteer help for his classroom...

...Chief among these lessons was not to rely on a narrow group of advisors but to expand the circle to include able people outside the chain of command—people who are likely to argue with the president and bring original points of view to the discussion...

...For the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy relied almost solely on the advice of the CIA's Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell, who had been the original sponsors of the idea of an invasion by exiles and had a stake in defending that concept even when reality made it seem increasingly unlikely to succeed...

...only the punctuation was different...

...Curiously, an article by Gregg Easterbrook in the October 1986 issue of The Washington Monthly had begun with the same words, except that it omitted "Detroit" and added "very" before dark...

...But before some Madame Defarge stirs up resentment among laid-off auto workers, she should know that at least a few residents of Bloomfield Hills are feeling the pinch—"showing a bit of pragmatism, according to one auto dealer, by buying a second Mercedes, a convertible, maybe, instead of a Lamborghini...

...But they must realize that in protesting against Cheneyism they are not just crying for themselves but for the public, which is being deprived of facts it has a right to know...

...By contrast, when the missile crisis began to unfold, Kennedy sought the advice of a dozen or so people outside the chain of command, including his brother Bobby, Dean Acheson, and Ted Sorensen...

...This technique is scorned as wimpish by most male bettors, but it was said to have been the secret to the fortune amassed by the late Colonel E. R. Bradley, a legendary figure in the history of the sport of kings...

...The Depression was the one time this unhappy fact was faced, so that when your cuffs became frayed you could switch to your second pair of trousers and not have to try to match the blue plaid jacket with the brown striped pants...

...Only Powell dared challenge Bush in the way that Acheson did Kennedy—in a group meeting that everyone knew history would record...

...Charles Peters...

...Last month the editors of The New Republic cut one sentence from a short piece of mine...

...An increasingly obligatory scene in the movies of the last decade has involved a couple at home eating Chinese food from carryout cartons...

...A times, as we noted last month in a discussion of a possible Petersstan, it seems the worldwide celebration of ethnicity has gotten a bit out of hand...

...Instead of encouraging argument, he conducts the meetings in a way that does not encourage systematic deliberation...

...But I do not for one second believe his current self-portrait as a duped innocent, the unfortunate victim of a scandal in the twilight of a life of snowwhite virtue...

...The committee, which believes that "[an] Indian's wisdom comes from his heart, and an Indian's heart is always in touch with the Sacred Circle," has forbidden menstruating women to touch grave material...

...Sometimes the lack of acknowledgment is unintentional, but it can still be maddening...

...you would have had a $28,000 profit on the day...

...If you had bet $2 each on them and on the two other favorites to show, you would have ended up with a profit of $2.80...

...It may be too late to corner the market on soybean futures, but I would certainly regard La Choy and Kikkoman stock as solid investments...

...This helps explain why you often see men, especially in less prosperous neighborhoods, wearing ill-matched coats and pants...

...Want to avail yourself of the free travel the Air Force provides to our leaders...

...I'm a multimillionaire and I like to dress in women's clothes," he told a reporter as he stepped into his Rolls Royce to depart...

...Then, after 23 years of service, he was fired...

...I tremble to think how he would handle an equivalent of the missile crisis...

...So what does Bush do as the crisis in the Gulf unfolds...

...A mutual friend once told him why: "Since you came into her father's White House, you have gotten all the good publicity...

...One reason the bureaucrat doesn't want the public to find out about his omissions is that he will then be forced to do what he hates the most, which is to take action...

...John Conyers threatened to hold public hearings that would have exposed the OMB's failure, lo and behold, just six days later the proposed regulation was announced...

...Indeed, the process is already under way in New Jersey, where the Essex County Department of Public Safety has suspended an employee because he gave an interview to a reporter for The New York Times...

...These people tend to bet on horses whose only merit is that their names remind the bettors of Aunt Betsy or Uncle George...

...The cost of repair to the three reactors has now reached $2.6 billion and, according to The New York Times, is still climbing...

...I find that the recession is stirring my hopes for the return of one of the few good things about the Great Depression: the twopants suit...

...The Monthly printed that story in 1972, repeated it many times thereafter, and was the first to see the significance of the story: that Kennedy, instead of out-machoing Khrushchev, had in fact made a sensible deal—which meant the lesson of the crisis was that reasonable compromise had saved the day, not Ramboism, as Americans were led to believe at the time...

...Could it be that, given the television income and the speaking fees some of those editors are earning, $60,000 seemed like the minimum wage...

...Just go to the nearest air base and tell the guard, "I'm a tech rep...

...It has also banned the press from the excavation site—which makes one wonder: Is Dick Cheney in the Sacred Circle...

...People are building their 12bedroom mansions, buying their Ferraris and $4,600 crocodile totebags, racing to the fashion shows to order $2,800 pantsuits, and flying first-class to Aspen for the weekend," reports the Times...

...It is betting good horses to show—meaning run third or better—on Derby day or on the days of other major races that attract large numbers of the unsophisticated to the track...

...Easterbrook had written the identical words...

...The result was a wise decision that avoided war but attained our objectives...

...Why not...

...This has never made sense, because the cuffs of the trousers are always the first part of the suit to wear out...

...One has to wonder just how many days Bush spent in Texas in the past 20 years compared to those he spent in Washington, or for that matter at Camp David, Maryland, or his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine...

...That, we have learned from Paul Rodriguez of The Washington Times, is the description given a female friend of Rep...

...I admire Clifford for having given mostly wise advice to our leaders over the years, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading his absorbing biography...

...Another example comes from West Virginia, where the state's Division of Culture and History has negotiated an agreement with the Committee on Native American Archaeological and Burial Policies governing the excavation of a burial mound...

...The words they chose not to print were: "It's better to make $60,000 working for the Environmental Protection Agency than $260,000 working for Davis Polk...

...For what...

...This got him suspended...

...James Baker also seems to have favored allowing more of a chance for sanctions, but there is no evidence that he argued the case with the president in any of those meetings...

...Was this a conscientious choice of the best man or an installment payment for the Phillips account...

...The reason is that he claims Texas, which has no income tax, as his state of residence...

...And if you still, after realizing that hundreds of thousands died during and immediately after it, think that our war against Iraq was another good idea, ponder this headline from the April 20 Post: "Saddam's Power Seen Increasing...

...If you promise to renew your subscription this very moment, I'll tell you the secret passwords...

...When the Gridiron Club, a group of prominent Washington journalists, put on a skit at its 1947 dinner that depicted Clifford as a ventriloquist and Truman as his dummy, Clifford said he was indignant at the insult to the president...

...He relies on a small group that sometimes seems to include just himself and Brent Scowcroft and that, even when expanded, includes at most Cheney, Baker, and Powell...

...Margaret Truman did not like him...

...Another point that we made in 1982 and that Beschloss credits someone else with originating five years later was that it was indefensible for John Kennedy to leak a story to The Saturday Evening Post condemning Adlai Stevenson for even suggesting such a cowardly course as removing the missiles from Turkey, when that was in fact what Kennedy secretly had done...

...To give you a feeling for the scene at Au Bar—the Palm Beach nightclub where a certain 30-yearold man met a certain 29-year-old woman (you won't catch me plunging into hot water along with The New York Times)—a recent male guest was dressed in a sportcoat, necktie, black miniskirt, black stockings, and black high heels...

...Consider Richard Darman, whose OMB had done nothing but sit on a proposed regulation requiring easier passenger access to aircraft exits, which would have saved lives in the recent Detroit and Los Angeles crashes...

...He was so indignant that he proceeded to attend each Gridiron Dinner for the next 44 years...

...Clifford got off on the wrong foot at the beginning of his law career...

...If the accounts of life in Palm Beach are not enough to convince you that the rich are insulated from the recession, consider this recent bulletin from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, an oasis of wealth outside Detroit...

...Only now the DOE engineers tell us that just one of the nuclear reactors is needed and that even it will have to operate at only 40 percent of capacity...

...There is a reluctance on the part of some members of the press to speak up about this situation because they don't want to appear to be crybabies...

...Because they had not been told not to cheat...

...Having been caught cheating the government by possibly as much as $200 million in overhead charges on research contracts, Kennedy is now asking the government for $3 million more...

...In 1952, Clifford supported Kerr for the Democratic presidential nomination over such candidates as Averell Harriman and Adlai Stevenson...

...Les Aspin's on the manifest of a C-20 jet that was used to fly the congressman and Sharon P. Sarton from Denver to Andrews Air Force Base...

...Only once is an argument, by Powell, heard in favor of sanctions instead of war...

...The roots of this new ritual must be the two-job family in which no one has time to cook...

...The flight, by the way, cost the taxpayers $28,000 because it first had to fly from Andrews to Denver to pick the couple up...

...You may recall that when three reactors that were our sole source of tritium had to be shut down in 1988, the Pentagon and the Department of Energy told Congress that all three would have to be restarted to ensure an adequate supply of tritium, which is an ingredient used in nuclear weapons that decays and must be replaced periodically...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS If you think George Bush's invasion of Panama was a good idea, consider the headline from the April 18 Washington Post: "Panama Said to Revert to PreInvasion Drug, Money Activity...

...He succeeded Lyndon Johnson as the patron of that notorious fixer, Bobby Baker, and was described in these pages as "one of the few modern politicians who matched the Duke of Newcastle, the renowned purchaser of governments in 18th-century England...

...Or say you put up $80,000...

...The Pentagon's policy of manipulating and/or stonewalling the press during the war in the Gulf proved so successful that it seemed likely to be imitated by other public officials who don't want unpleasant news to get out...

...On a dark day in 1980, Donald Petersen, the newly chosen president of Ford Motor Company, visited the company's Detroit design studios," began an article in the September 1990 issue of the Stanford Business School Magazine...

...After reading Woodward's revelations, Newsweek's Washington editor, Evan Thomas, concluded: "If the war had ended badly, The Commanders would seem like . . . the story of a president plunging toward disaster, heedlessly dragging his armies over the cliff...