Tuesday, November 16, 2010

The difference between The American President and the American President

I love how wonderfully simplistic The American President, a movie by Rob Reiner, is. Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) is a first term widowed president who is trying to get a crime bill that has been watered down by compromises with the loyal opposition through congress before his third state of the union address. His poll numbers are high and he and his staff are gearing up for his second term election in a little less than a year. They don't want to lay an egg by not getting the crime bill passed.

This is all complicated by Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Benning), an environmental lobbyist with whom President Shepherd falls in love. Presidential advisor Lewis Fairchild (Michael J. Fox) and press secretary McCall (Anna Deveare Smith) understand that this little romance could spell trouble with the electorate, especially when the press catches President Shepherd spending the night with Miss Wade in the White House just down the hall from Lucy Shepherd, the President's ten year old, trombone playing daughter. But the President stands his ground. He maintains that his love life is none of the voters' business and directs his staff to respond to the inevitable prying questions with a "no comment."

Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss), President Shepherd's political nemesis and the certain presidential nominee of the other party, latches onto this romantic development and starts questioning Shepherd's character at every opportunity. He can smell blood on the water. Sure enough, the President's poll numbers start dropping.

All of this comes to a head when Shepherd has to make an odious deal screwing Sydney Ellen Wade's environmental initiative in order to muster enough votes to get his crime bill passed. There is a big confrontation in the President's bedroom with Miss Wade (She apparently can come and go as she pleases in The White House.) and she storms out, leaving President Shepherd to walk the halls reevaluating his job performance of late.

The movie ends with the President popping into a televised White House press conference where he finally attacks Bob Rumson's characater, professes his love for Sydney, drops the compromised crime bill, and sends Miss Wade's ground breaking environmental legislation to the hill. Everyone loves Shepherd's new found gutsiness and his total legislative about face. If there was a chart nearby we could see Shepherd's poll numbers rise even as he walks out of the press room. His aides are happy. Miss Wade takes him back and he ends up walking triumphantly into the house chambers to deliver his state of the union. We don't have to be told that he will win the upcoming election by a landslide. Bob Rumson is no where to be found.

In real life the President's reversal would have been way too late. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin would have already fixed it in the American mind that Andrew Shepherd was an adulterous Nazi. Afer all, when Adolph Hitler was in power he thought about crime all the time and, just like Andrew Shepherd, had a mistress. Coincidence? I think not!

Shepherd's pronouncement that you can't stop crime without getting rid of assault weapons would automatically lose him all white, male voters who would be reminded hourly by Limbaugh and tearfully by Beck that their basic constitutional liberties were being threatened by Andrew Shepherd's socialist agenda.

Global Warming skeptics from Maine to Alaska would see the end of capitalism in Shepherd's call for a twenty percent reduction in emissions in the next ten years.

And of course, Lucy Shepherd's plaintive trombone playing in the White House residence would serve as a potent reminder of the President's failure as a devoted father.

Bob Rumson would win the next election in a walk.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

My Favorite Things - III

Last night after the final bows for White Christmas at the Town Hall Arts Center in Littleton, Katherine and I waited in the reception room for Christian to emerge from the dressing room. There was a table in the center of the room filled with platters from Whole Foods. I picked up one roundish thing with a toothpick sticking out of it that I took for a fancily peeled radish. It turned out to be a ball of inedible goat cheese that I discreetly disgorged into a napkin and placed in the trash. There was another table in the corner with a volunteer selling wine, beer, and the like. For those of us either too cheap or too impatient to wait in line for the drinks there was also a punch bowl filled with a rusty colored liquid. I filled a plastic cup and took a sip. Sure enough, it was a perfect pairing for the cheese ball I rid myself of a few minutes before.

The cast slowly filtered out to the hugs of friends and family waiting to congratulate them. We kept saying "good job" or "you were great" as certain recognizable players filed by and they kept answering "Thank you. Thank you very much." Have you ever noticed that performers almost always give you that "Thank you. Thank you very much" response when congratulated. They must teach that in beginning acting classes.

We congratulated the guy who played Bob Wallace and gave him a "great job", even though I would rather have heard Chris sing those songs. (That's the only thing that ever goes wrong when I watch Chris do a show. I always think the show would be better if he did every song. I'm sure the parents of the Bob Wallace portrayer felt the same way, but they probably aren't as objective as I am.)

Th female leads came out looking smaller in real life than they did on stage. I wanted to tell Ellie Schwartz, the little girl who played Susan Waverly, how impressed I was by her. She wasn't just cute; she was an actress.

There was a black guy in the ensemble who moved wonderfully. I saw him come out of the doors, but I didn't feel like breaking through the mobs of well wishers to give him a personal thumbs up.

Chris finally came out. Just a few minutes before he had been dressed as Santa Claus for the final rendition of "White Chritmas." Now he was his usual self in jeans, sweatshirt, and a turned around baseball cap. All the other cast members were still a little on stage--in character--when they emerged, with maybe traces of make-up here or there. Chris looked and acted like he had been there before, like a receiver who simply hands the ball to the referee whenever he gets into the endzone.

We hugged and gave him a quick review: "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing" and "I Love a Piano" were the two best numbers in the show; he was the best one in his row; the female voices were a little weak, but they were great on stage; etc., etc..

It was all so familiar.

We've been waiting for Chris to "come out from backstage" ever since he was in junior high. We've waited for him after a performance of Pirates of Penzance at Deer Creek. We waited for him after performances at the old Bonfils Theater (now the Tattered Cover) in the Lyric Opera Society's productions of Gilbert and Sullivan. We've waited for him at Disney and at Elitches

We have also waited for Nate after performances at Elitches, or The Comedy Sports, or the PIT in Manhattan, or MGM Studios at Disney.

We've waited for Franny after her starring role as Miss Mary in Green Mountain Elementary's end of the year pageant. We've waited for her after a drama camp in Grand Lake. And we've waited for her every night of her performance as Polly in Crazy for You.

I was reminded last night that waiting to congratulate my kids after a performance is one of my favorite things. I can't think of anything that has given me more pleasure than reveling in their performances. I mean, going out for a drink with Chris after his performance in I Love a Piano at DCTC remains one of the great moments of my life.

I especially loved the wait at Green Mountain before they remodeled the school. Family and friends would congregate in the cafeteria under the fish wall and wait for that evening's cast to come out the door by the old tech arts department. There was plenty of room to hang out in comfort and plenty of time to go through joyous post mortems with everyone involved. (That comfortable waiting ambiance came to a crashing halt after they remodeled the school. Now, everyone waits in the hall leading from the theater entrance past the administration offices. It is too crowded and hectic. We always beat a fast retreat after shows done in the new theater.)

I remember after opening night of South Pacific how Sybil took Nate by his lapels and pushed him up against the wall. "WHY DIDN'T YOU DO IT THAT WAY AT DRESS?" she yelled. That was Sybil's way of giving high praise.

I remember the pride I felt every night after You Can't Take It With You because both Chris and Nate were brilliant.

My most memorable waiting took place after seeing Christian in Wind in the Willows, his first show at Mesa. Franny and Kathie and I kept looking at each other throughout the entire show with the same things on our minds: "God, he is as good as we thought he was all along!" It was a great moment.

Last night in downtown Littleton brought all that back. White Christmas is a good show with some genuinely funny moments: the train ride rendition of "Snow" stopped the show. It runs through Christmas (the theater is dark Monday through Wednesday).

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Postmortem: The Midterms

I've been doing a lot of thinking since the so called referendum on Obama's performance a few weeks ago and I've made myself a few promises that I am planning to keep. First, it was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I was pretty convinced that Reid would lose in Nevada and with that loss I was reconciled to the republicans taking over both the house and the senate, but that didn't happen.

I ended up being proud of Colorado. I was worried Bennet would lose to Buck even though Bennet's voting record in the past two years has been exemplary. In my lowest moments I thought it possible that Tancredo could end up being our next governor, thereby ranking Colorado right up there with Minnesota and Illinois as states who need to duck their collective heads when gubernatorial discussions commence, but Colorado didn't fall prey to Tancredo's One Trick Pony campaign. I guess the state's electorate agreed that illegal immigration is not the only vital issue facing Colorado as Tancredo's ads proclaimed. And if Tancredo won that would have meant that ballot initiatives 60, 61, and 101 would have probably won as well. But my fellow Coloradans wisely voted down all of those issues by huge margins. Not only that, but more school bond issues passed than failed. So, even though the economy is everyone's main issue and distrust of government is on everyone's minds, we managed to vote reasonably in the midst of a nation wide electorate who, if television pundits were correct (have you noticed that they almost never are), cast its vote based on nothing more than a knee jerk reaction.

Second, I promised myself that I would not get angry about things. I remember a little dialogue I had two years ago with one of the conservative minions who haunt the Y during the morning hours.

"You're one of those liberals who believe everything Obama says, aren't you?" he asserted.

"No, but unlike my republican friends, I don't think that everything he says is a lie," I responded.


During the past two years that gentleman, who is actually quite likable if you can manage to confine the discussion to the weather and good places to go for green chili, and all of his like minded friends took delight in any failure that team Obama suffered. The fact that those failures, few though they were, also meant that the country as a whole suffered was and continues to be lost on those folks.

So, I promised myself that in addition to not getting angry I would also be happy about any successes the republican controlled house might achieve. I think it would be great if somehow all of our economic problems got solved through the bi-partisan action of the newly empowered republicans in the house and the new chastened administration.

I even promised myself to look at the next two years with interest to see how everything was going to work itself out. In order to fulfill that promise I have to do a few things. I have to NEVER look at cable news, whether that be Fox or MSNBC. I have to NEVER listen to talk radio. If I read a newspaper, I must NEVER turn to the op-ed pages. No more Frank Rich. No more Tom Friedman. No more Paul Krugman. I must confine myself to those articles in The New Yorker about ballet and movies and developments in third world countries. No more economic analyses. No more inside scoops on Washington infighting. I have to confine myself to reading fiction. No more political treatises. If I go to a party I have to be careful to stick to small talk. You know, gossip about people who are not in attendance. Clever quips about obscure news items. Concern over how drug violence in Mexico might interrupt my travel plans. Stuff like that. It is going to be a dreary two years, but at least I will remain sane.

I mean if I really dwelled on Mitch McConnel's professed goal of the republican party, to make sure Obama was a one-termer, I might get a little upset. It seems to me that a good republican goal would be to make the country a better place, but then I realize that if any of the country's problems were solved while Obama was still in the White House the republican plan to unseat him would be compromised. It is clear that the worst thing that could happen in the next two years to the republican party would be if Health Care actually made people's lives better, or if the economy sprang back to life and people were getting hired right and left. That is a continuing republican nightmare.

I've promised myself to stop being a smart-ass if I somehow get involved in a political discussion, but instead just ask polite questions. For instance, I would like to know how my republican friends can reconcile their repeated calls for a balanced budget with their refusal to even consider letting the Bush tax cuts expire on those making more than $250,000 a year. I would have a bunch of questions for them:

1. Since you refuse to extend unemployment benefits without demanding that the administration and the democrats account for every penny of the cost with a corresponding budget cut, would you be willing to do the same accounting with the $700,000,000,000 it would cost to keep the tax cuts?

2. Since Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending account for more than 85% of the federal budget, exactly what are you willing to cut to make up for the $700,000,000,000 the tax cuts would cost?

3. If your response is to simply pare back Medicaid and Medicare, what do you plan to do with the proliferation of homeless sick people that would result? I mean wouldn't it cost big bucks to build a nation wide system of poor houses and debtor prisons? Or are we just going to let these people get sick and die on the streets? I mean homeless people already constitute a blight on the urban landscape. Wouldn't the 2% of the population with their tax cuts firmly in place be even more upset by sickly homeless people. If we are going to have the poor with us always, shouldn't we at least do something to make them look good as they congregate around super highway underpasses? Otherwise, it could get downright depressing. I mean look what happened to Sandra Bullock when she was confronted by only one pretty healthy homeless kid in The Blind Side. She had to stop going to lunch at swanky places with her tax sheltered friends. Wouldn't that just about devastate the economy?


Shift gears.

If I were a democratic strategist (god, there is a horrible thought), I would shamelessly borrow the following idea from Gary Hart. A couple of weeks ago in his blog (A Matter of Principle)he cited the Esquire Commission to Balance the Federal Budget. A group of former legislators got together and devised a plan to balance the budget by 2020. Mr. Hart suggested that it would be pretty cool, not to mention telling, if the recommendations of the commission were put before congress with an up or down vote just to see how serious everyone really was about balancing the budget. I would actually be willing to watch CSPAN for such an occasion.

In order to help myself remember the commission's proposals I will briefly enumerate them here.

Social Security

-Gradually raise the retirement age to 70 with allowances made for those people with the kind of manual labor jobs that would constitute a disability if they worked that long.
-Use a different, more realistic method, to figure cost of living (COLA) adjustments.
-Increase the number of years used to figure the monthly benefit.
Projected Savings: $86 billion

Defense

-Enact the administration's proposed weapons systems cuts.
-Reverse the "Grow the Army" initiative.
-Restructure the military so as to more accurately reflect the changing reality of conflicts.
-Assume the cost of Afghanistan and Iraq will decline.
Projected Savings: $309 billion

Health Care

-Institue medical malpractice reforme through the establishment of medical courts.
-Assume the recent Health Care Reform will stay pretty much in tact because when it gets right down to it most of the provisions when they are explained sans spin make sense.
-Change from a fee-for-service system to a pay-for-performance system (this is where Obama's health care initiative started before being watered down by special interests).
Projected Savings: $10 billion

Other Spending

-Enact the president's proposed spending program terminations as detailed in his 2011 budget.
-Cut the federal work force by 5%.
-Delay future NASA missions to the moon and Mars.
-Reform (read: get rid of) farm subsidies.
-Eliminate all earmarks.
-As with Social Security, use a more realistic and accurate method to figure COLA for military pensions and veterans' retirement benefits.
Projected Savings: $71 billion

Total Projected Savings from all areas: $476 billion
Total Debt Service Projected Savings (servicing the debt will obviously decrease given all of the projected savings): $142 billion
Grand Total of Projected Savings: $618 billion

New Revenue Proposals

-Repeal health-care tax exclusion; offer a refundable health-care tax credit.
Projected Revenue: $63 billion

-Increase gasoline tax by $1 per gallon.
Projected Revenue: $130 billion

-Limit itemized deductions for high earners (this is different from letting the Bush tax cuts expire).
Projected Revenue: $57 billion

-Keep tax rates low for the next decade for everyone.
Projected Revenue: -$273 billion

-Curtail state and local sales-tax deduction that tax payers are allowed on their federal taxes.
Projected Revenue: $12 billion

-Eliminate subsidies for biofuels.
Projected Revenue: $16 billion

-Include all new state and local government workers in Social Security (goodbye PERA)
Projected Revenue: $21 billion

Total Projected Revenue Increase $26 billion

Final Numbers

Total Projected Revenues in 2020: $4.693 trillion (20.8% of GDP)
Total Projected Spending in 2020: $4.681 trillion (20.8% of GDP)
Total Projected Surplus in 2020: $12 billion
Projected Debt-to-GDP ratio in 2020: 52% (currently that ratio is significantly higher than 60%)


Let us have an up or down vote on that and see where everyone stands. You have to agree that there are things for everyone to like about this report and things for everyone to hate. It is kind of like life.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Father Steele

Tom Steele S.J. died of natural causes last week. He was seventy-six. I saw the obituary notice Friday morning before I went off to meet Bud for some serious handy-manning. Over coffee and oatmeal I cried.

I first encountered Father Steele in an American lit class the second semester of my sophomore year at Regis College. He introduced me to Spiller's The Cycle of American Literature, a book that fueled many a lesson plan in my career as a public high school teacher. I loved the symmetry of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis as explained in that work and ended up applying that thinking to almost everything I ever taught whether there was a connection or not.

He was only in his mid thirties and freshly armed with a doctorate from the University of New Mexico and I was immediately taken by his quiet integrity. I actually went to the library sometime during that semester and read his dissertation. Sure enough, it was a scholarly exploration of the Frontier Thesis and its manifestation in the works of James Fennimore Cooper. Natty Bumpo would have been surprised at how erudite his living at the edge of the wilderness was.

I think Father Steele was the first professor who actually saw through my horrible studenting to the smart but lazy little boy I was. Always in search of a father figure, I sought him out after class with sophomoric questions and comments, all of which he patiently listened to and then politely answered or explained how they missed the mark by just a tad. He liked my voice on paper even as he was dismissive of my lack of scholarship and kindly gave me a string of B's on my last minute essays written in my messy room the morning they were due.

We became friends through chance encounters in the snack bar where we would sit until the wee hours of the morning smoking Lucky Strikes and drinking pots of coffee while we talked about everything from Viet Nam to Jacobean poetry. I loved John Donne and Father Steele kindly helped me figure out Donne's increasingly elaborate conceits. As I took more classes from him my junior and senior years our after hours encounters moved to Ernie's, a funky little bar on the corner of 44th and Federal. Father Steele drank beer with scotch chasers, just like my grandmother, and I used my masterfully doctored fake i.d. to drink right along with him. Jesuits don't spend too much time fretting over minor sins involving good liquor.

I was a frequent guest in his tiny room at Carrol Hall where he would show me his impressive collection of Santos from New Mexico that he collected while working on his highly regarded book, Santos and Saints. I think he had one of the largest personal collection of Santos in the world. He ended up donating his entire collection to Regis so as not to violate his vow of poverty. The collection now held by Regis University is as impressive as any museum collection in the country.

Father Steele baptized my son Christian. He was a frequent visitor to my home and livened up many a party with his wry sense of humor. He, as much as anyone in my life, can be held accountable for the way I think, value, argue, and love. Even though I had lost track of him over the years, his death has reminded me of so much that I treasure. I miss him more than I can say.