Entry 15:

Hi Hanna,

Did you hear/read Bill Bradley's farewell address? He says he created a "new politics," one directed toward "the good of the American people" (as opposed to Al Gore, who hopes to enslave the American people to a race of alien insects). Bradley says that what he and his supporters had in common was "not a lot of self-interest." What sanctimony! 

I have a new theory about why Bradley's candidacy flopped, or maybe it's a more elaborate version of an old theory. You once pointed out that your European friends talk about their families, vacations, friends, books--but never about their jobs. Americans, on the other hand, always talk about their jobs. We are Marxists in this way: We are what we do. One of the very few duties of the American citizen is: Love your work. We are blessed to live in a country of mobility and opportunity, so if you don't like what you do, do something else. Start a band. Join a cult. Rob banks. Just don't whine about it.

Bill Bradley whined. He kept telling us how broken politics was. His body language and rhetoric insisted that he hated campaigning. He fundamentally didn't like his job as presidential candidate. He should have been robbing banks. (McCain, though he had plenty of unkind words to say about politics, clearly loved the campaign tussle.) Job dissatisfaction always kills the reluctant candidates: Bob Dole and George Bush (père) were spanked by Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter folded to Ronald Reagan.

My gut feeling of the day: George W. Bush is about to turn into Dan Quayle. The recent intensity of the primary campaign and the tight focus on McCain has distracted voters from Bush's stupidity for the past few months. But I sense that the press is about to swarm on this. For no reason I can discern, all my officemates are talking about Bush's dimness today. This morning's Michael Kelly column coined a phrase that is going to torture George W.: "The Pinhead Factor." Just one more Bush malapropism, and reporters are going to start asking him to spell "potato."

Just noticed a great story  inside the Washington Post. The insurance giant Aetna just admitted that it sold "policies that reimbursed slave owners for financial losses when their human chattel perished." Aetna, which like most old companies has closely guarded its 19^th-century records, was prodded to release the records by a New York activist who wants the company to pay reparations. What strikes me about the story: Slave insurance must have seemed utterly mundane to Aetna agents, yet appears monstrous in retrospect. Don't you wonder what standard business practice of today will seem inhuman in a century? I can't even guess.

A final sad note to end my "Breakfast Table" week: MSNBC's gossip column is reporting that Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee have split. Promise me, dear wife, that even if a pornographic video of us on a speedboat is released on the Internet (not that such a video exists, Sweetie), even if you get breast-reduction surgery, and even if I get my whole body tattooed, we won't separate.

See you at the dinner table,

Love
D