Author: terencef

A Literary Larceny

A Literary Larceny

In the interests of law and order, and the historical record, I have to report a larceny.

It’s a literary larceny, perhaps not punishable in prison, but a theft, nonetheless.

In the course of Hemingway and Gelhorn, Philip Kaufman’s docu-melodrama that ran — and ran — for two-and-a-half hours Monday night, May 27, on HBO, the script writers crafted a scene in which Martha Gelhorn, with battlefield blood on her shirt, laments to Ernest Hemingway that she cannot write about the war. She doesn’t know enough about it, she says, to write about it. Writer’s block, you know.

The Great Man, standing in a t-shirt and pounding on his portable typewriter, looks up irritably and says: “There’s nothing to writing, Gelhorn, you just sit down at your typewriter and bleed.”

It is a memorable line, but Hemingway never said it. My father, Red Smith, the late sports columnist, did.

Not only is the line stolen without credit, it is misquoted. The correct quote, attributed in print to Red Smith by the columnist Walter Winchell in 1949, reads: “Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.” I heard my father repeat it many times.

Was it original with Red Smith? Not necessarily. The sportswriter, Paul Gallico, said something similar in 1946, and others are quoted before that.

But not Hemingway.

Harry C. McPherson Jr. R.I.P.

Harry McPherson, who served as counsel, speechwriter and confidant to Lyndon Johnson during the tumultuous days of the civil rights revolution and the agony of Vietnam, is dead at 82. After a battle with bone cancer, a wise and warm voice has been stilled, and Washington is a poorer place for it.

This would be terrible news at any time, but it is especially painful now. He was just about to screen a final version of a new documentary, “Time and Chance: The Political Education of Harry McPherson,” produced by Les Francis of The Washington Media Group. I did the narration for it and some of the interviews. In it, Harry does what he did best: he shares the stories and lessons he learned in his half-century in the top circles of Washington politics.

Sitting in his law office or in his book-lined study in Kensington, he talked to the camera in that soft, easy, bemused manner about driving north from Austin as a fresh and green law school graduate in the closing days of the Eisenhower Administration to take a job for LBJ, who was then the Senate Majority Leader. He came across the Memorial Bridge about 10 p.m. and saw the White House for the first time and realized that the President was in there.

“This was the fellow that I had mocked along with other students sitting around Shultz Beer Garden down in Austin, just thought he was just a big, grinning fellow without much depth at all, pretty much the Eisenhower of Herb Block’s cartoons,”
Harry recalled. “Well, when you’re driving an old Buick full of everything you own, Eisenhower didn’t seem like an amenable duck. He seemed like somebody who had been a five star general and he was running things, running this whole government.”

That was the first of many lessons that Harry learned about the realities of power and politics in Washington. He talked of how LBJ taught him the art of compromise as the way to get things done in the Senate — a lost art, it seems, these days — but the only way to work through the southern conservatives who chaired the major committees in those days. He recalled how LBJ worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the master politician and the master orator, two opposites from vastly different backgrounds, working together to get something important done.

Harry learned that in Washington, the worst moments can lead to the best accomplishments, how the rioting that followed Dr. King’s assassination prepared the ground for the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned discrimination in the sale and rental of housing; how Lyndon Johnson, a man from the deep south, would get the opportunity to appoint Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But for all the good that Harry and his mentor could accomplish on the domestic front, their crucible would be far away, in the jungles of Vietnam. In the interviews for the film, Harry recalls LBJ’s anguish over a war that he knew was deeply unpopular and unwinnable, not even necessary, and yet inescapable.

He recalls LBJ saying: ‘They’d kill us if we back down, they’d kill us.’ “And they would be the Republicans.” Harry said, without a trace of bitterness.

In 1967, Harry came back from a two-week visit to Vietnam convinced that the war would be the ruin of Johnson’s presidency. He shared his thoughts with Johnson, but did not break with him over the war, lest he lose his seat at the table. But by March 18, 1968, with then Senator Robert F. Kennedy mounting a challenge from the left and Richard M. Nixon campaigning from the right, Harry sat down and wrote LBJ a 10-page memo that minced no words. I have a copy of it on my desk.

“I think the course we seem to be taking now,” Harry wrote in the first sentence, “will lead either to Kennedy’s nomination or Nixon’s election, or both.” He urged Johnson not to sacrifice his presidency “to the bullish conduct of an unpopular war.”

That was vintage McPherson: loyal, but candid and direct.

In the end, of course, Johnson made his own decision and famously announced on March 31, just two weeks after receiving Harry’s memo, on national television that “I shall not seek and I will not accept” the Democratic party’s nomination for another term. Harry describes in the film how he labored over the body of that momentous speech, but that Johnson wrote the final lines announcing his decision and sent them directly to the operator to put them in the teleprompter script. Then he called Harry and asked him what he thought of what he had written and was about to read. “I’m very sorry, Mr. President,” was all Harry could get out, “very sorry.”

Johnson, Harry said, was “a man who wanted more than anything on earth to put every child through college and take care of every grandma and grandpa who is sick and old and poor,” but couldn’t escape “this awful war.”

The sadness today is that this film is to be shown at the LBJ presidential library in coming weeks and before an audience of his enormous circle of friends in Washington. The plan was that Harry would be there to receive the applause and answer questions.

Now he won’t.

*

The Palmetto Payoff

In the 19th century, sailing ships plying the lucrative China trade out of Baltimore had a harsh but economic way of dealing with crew at the end of a two-year voyage. With the homeport in sight, the captain would use the heavy boom to knock a crewman into the water, thereby banking his pay. It was known as The Baltimore Payoff.

Mitt Romney got the Palmetto Payoff Saturday night, a swift hit upside the head from South Carolina Republicans that shattered his image as the party’s inevitable nominee. His double-digit defeat at the hands of the resurgent Newt Gingrich changed the equation in the Republican race and assured that this already long primary season will continue into the spring. Romney may yet win the nomination, but not without a fight.

Florida is a different ball game, as should be apparent in tonight’s debate on NBC. The Massachusetts Moderate is likely to swing hard at Gingrich, depicting the former Speaker as a failed leader. Gingrich, if he is as smart as he thinks he is, will adopt a more Presidential posture to help wavering Republicans envision him in the Oval Office.

The debates are more than just Reality TV.

They have become the central focus of the campaign in which candidates define or destroy themselves. And for Gingrich, whose campaign is still under-financed, they are the ultimate in free TV. It was no surprise, then, when Gingrich promised on Saturday night to challenge President Obama to seven three-hour debates during the general election campaign. No sitting President would give his opponent such a gift of free exposure, of course, but the prospect enhanced Gingrich’s image as a scrappy fighter willing to confront Obama.

Since we have to wait two more weeks for the Superbowl, tonight’s debate will have to fill the void.

Forgive Me

I just watched the Republican Presidential debate from South Carolina. I just watched the remaining four candidates argue about everything from abortion to immigration to taxes to tax returns. It left me with one puzzling question:

WHERE DO THEY GET THESE PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE?

Who are these simpletons who cheer wildly at every cheap, transparent, pandering, intellectually empty applause line?
What are they thinking? Are they thinking? Are they so excited about being in the audience that they become robots?

WHERE DO THEY GET THESE PEOPLE?

Are they really going to choose the nominee of the Grand Old Party? Are they the Grand Old Party?

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

A Class Act

Jon Huntsman withdrew from the Republican Presidential sweepstakes today in the same classy fashion that he conducted it.

He acknowledged the reality of his single-digit standing the the polls in South Carolina, endorsed his fellow Mormon Mitt Romney as the candidate with the best chance of challenging Barak Obama, and preserved his option to run again in 2016, should he choose to. The only embarrassed player in the drama was The State, South Carolina’s largest newspaper, which endorsed Huntsman hours before he withdrew. Next time, the paper’s editorial board had better check its traps before publishing.

Huntsman’s “suspension” of his campaign (a la Herman Cain, no one simply quits a campaign these days,) is a huge boost for Romney. Even if Huntsman was only going to win five or six per cent of the vote in South Carolina, the vast majority of those ballots will go to Romney now, further cementing Mitt’s lock on the nomination.

It is Romney’s to lose now.

A Ticket to Ride?

Jon Huntsman’s third-place finish in New Hampshire, with 17 per cent of the vote, is being characterized by reporters this morning as “disappointing” and “unremarkable.”

I don’t agree.

I think he accomplished a lot in New Hampshire. He climbed into double digits, broadened his appeal, demonstrated surprising support (42 per cent) among those voters who identified themselves in exit polls as Tea Party supporters, improved his style on the stump and actually seemed to be enjoying himself. He even showed a sense of humor here and there.

Huntsman also managed to sharpen his image as a true conservative. He reminded voters that he instituted a flat tax as Governor of Utah, has a strong record as a fiscal conservative and was among the first to voice support for Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan. No liberal, he.

Most importantly, Huntsman remained true to his principles. “I am who I am,” he declared at a rally in Exeter. “I’ve done what I’ve done, and you can take a look at my record. I am not going to contort myself into a pretzel. And I am not going to sign any of these silly pledges.” Take that, Grover Norquist.

He made no apologies for his more moderate positions on climate change and illegal immigration, in contrast to his more wild-eyed competitors. And he defended his service as President Obama’s Ambassador to China, arguing that he was putting his country before party.

Is all this enough to win the Republican nomination? Probably not. He heads today to South Carolina, with its greater proportions of evangelical and deep-vein conservatives. That’s not Huntsman country. But watch closely, if he continues to make progress in the Palmetto state, Florida is next and significantly more hospitable to his brand.

Also, if Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum succeed in their joint efforts to erode Mitt Romney’s image and base, Huntsman will pick up some of the disaffected. He has repeatedly presented himself as the candidate most feared by the Obama campaign. That is true. The Chicago gang doesn’t waste much of its time or money on Huntsman because they don’t think he can gain enough momentum to win the nomination. Not yet.

Arguably, Ron Paul is Huntsman’s biggest obstacle to winning a larger portion of primary votes. Paul’s 23 per cent in New Hampshire was partially at Huntsman’s expense. We will have to see what impact the good doctor has in South Carolina.

A second-place finished in New Hampshire would have caused people to sit up and take notice. But 17 per cent is better than one per cent. Just ask Rick Perry.

Presidential primary campaigns have a way of either enhancing a candidate’s standing and reputation, or diminishing it. Ronald Reagan was taken more seriously as a national figure after 1976, for example, while Senator John McCain’s is less of a voice in his party and in the nation after running so badly (and choosing Sarah Palin) in 2008. A candidate goes up or down once he or she joins the fray, but rarely stays the same.

Jon Huntsman has already enhanced his stature. He was little known outside of Utah and Beijing a year ago. Now he and his beautiful family are widely recognized. Even his critics acknowledge his foreign policy expertise. As demonstrated in New Hampshire, Republicans are starting to give him a look. Is that “disappointing,” or “unremarkable.” Not at all.

Is it “a ticket to ride?” Yes. But how far, remains to be seen.

Letter from Louisiana

The following is a slice of Louisiana life from Ken Ringle, friend, boat partner and retired Style writer from The Washington Post. Consider it a New Year’s gift from me. TFS

Friends of Liberty:

In my never-ending effort to spread the gospel of Louisiana culture, I thought I should apprise you of my latest adventure which involved acquiring a modest .22 caliber pistol with which to deter, no, actually CANCEL the armadillos uprooting my yard and bamboo grove. Most of us believe, however grudgingly, that we need SOME sort of sensible gun control (at least at Virginia Tech) to keep the more extreme firearms (bazookas, RPGs, howitzers, etc.) out of the hands of the more paranoid and hallucinatory members of the general public, and/or those who believe that, while game animals are sometimes out of season, one’s fellow man never is. On the other hand, a major entertainment for some of us is documenting the Kafkaesque channels down which causists and legislators gallop while allegedly in pursuit of that goal. Makes you wanna vote for Ron Paul.

My favorite example of the above was the DC gun law, in force for some 30 years until it was finally overturned recently by the Supremes, which stated that you COULD (after elaborate and redundant, application, registration etc.) keep a firearm in your house for self defense, provided you kept it unloaded and disassembled at all times. You needed a separate license to move it into another room. Each time.

Anyway, we in Louisiana take a somewhat less stringent approach. You might expect that from a state that has drive-through daiquiri bars. We don’t care how many guns you have or, in general, where you get them or what kind they are. Up at Lafayette Shooters in Lafayette they stock enough ordnance to replay Vietnam, if not WWII. You can walk right out with a bolt-action bipod-equipped 50-caliber rifle, and if you like instant ground venison, that’s the weapon for you. Firearmswise, Louisiana makes Florida look like a Quaker state.

Thus, when I set out to buy my pistol, I didn’t expect a lot of trouble. The Brady law says that if you have a legitimate residence in two separate states, you are subject to the gun laws of whichever of those states you’re in when you purchase your peacemaker. I have a house in Louisiana, and I’m here so no problem. Thus my friend Mo and I set out one Saturday for one of the periodic gun shows held at the performing arts center in Lafayette. That will give you an idea of our priorities down here. When we arrived 30 minutes after the show opened, the parking lot was already filled with gun-racked pickup trucks. There were well over 1,000 Bubbas inside and a dazzling array of firepower dispersed over a couple of acres of floor space. And while there were a disturbing number of black assault rifles, extended clips, etc. (you could pick up a Bushmaster like that used by the DC sniper for under $300) most of those present appeared just cheerful hunters and other lock-and-load toy collectors. There was a distinct absense of the shifty-eyed militia types you see at such events in Montana or even Virginia. Almost no swastikas and Nazi regalia. And while there WAS one small table back in the corner peddling “The Truth About the War on the South”, “Memoires of a Pure Plantation Lady” and DVDs of– not “Birth of a Nation” but “Song of the South”!!– they got little business. Our first attempted sales contact was a tallish octogenerian lady of quiet dignity and silver hair. She looked like one of those women your Mother introduced you to at church.

“Have you tried the handle on this new version of the Red Terror”, she asked Mo with a smile, handing him a monster chrome .44 caliber revolver that would have shamed Dirty Harry. “I believe it’s going to be the real new thing.” She might have been passing the plate at Sunday service. Other vendors included pregnant moms trailing toddlers among the ammo clips and Czech bayonets and bored teenagers helping Dad unload the over-and-under 12-gauge.

Mo, who once did covert ops in Vietnam, moved among the booths and tables with the practiced aplomb of a chef gauging truffles. He had his heart set on a lever action frontier model Henry Rifle. It fires a 22-caliber bullet about twice as long as normal, a flat-trajectory critter slapper just made for the feral hogs that, freed by some past hurricane, quickly grow monster tusks and tear up the marsh like overweight porcine biker gangs. He didn’t expect to find the exact model he wanted but did, forked over the cash and started looking pleased. Meanwhile I had found my baby, a Walther P-22, plinker model of the James Bond gun, which comes complete with a laser sight. Just paint an armadillo between the eyes with that little red dot, and that sucker can kiss his scaley behind goodbye.

Actually, armadillos are kissing goodbye all the time. They hitched over here from Texas aboard the oil pipe trucks years ago and have been breeding and dying at a prodigious rate ever since. They give birth to four cloned offspring of the same sex and apparently identical pattern each time. I’m not certain how they do that, because armadillo sex is something of a mystery. A couple of purportedly authentic YouTube videos show the male mounting the female but not so much humping her as driving her around like a fork-lift. They would not seem to be made for love, but they certainly are made for death. They are incredibly stupid, nearsighted and hard of hearing and, when startled, leap straight up about three feet off the ground. This may be all right in the woods, but on the Interstate it serves them right up into the sweet spot of your average 18-wheeler front bumper, which is why so many defunct dillos are glimpsed 24/7 toes up on the highways of Louisiana. How their birth rate stays ahead of their death rate is another mystery, but it does, and they root up everything making burrows, which they will happily share with snakes, lizards, rats and other vermin, but only with another armadillo of the same sex. Hmmmmmm……

Anyway, that’s why I need my Walther. I found two, and quickly went for the one $75 cheaper. When we came to the paperwork to register the sale, I explained that I only had a DC driver’s license, but showed them my checkbook listing my Avery Island address. The 300 pound Momma from Big Al’s Gunshop in Pineville said that was fine but I needed a state issued ID attesting to my Pelican State bona fides. I asked how to get one. I was told at the DMV that I would need a birth certificate, my Social Security card and my passport or DC driver’s license. “All those say I live in DC,” I said. “How will that prove I’m also a Louisiana resident.” “We just want to know you’re who you say you are,” I was told. “You can put any Louisiana address on it you want.”

Nonetheless this surreal ID process could not be completed until Monday, so I couldn’t buy the Walther. Theoretically Mo could have bought it for me, but it’s against the law for anyone to purchase a weapon for someone else, so we couldn’t do that. But you know what? Darned if Mo didn’t decide as he was walking out the door that HE had to have a Walther just like the one I wanted. Surprising, huh? And son of a gun, on the way home he decided he didn’t want it any more and asked if I would like to buy it. Since private gun sales are perfectly legal, we transacted the deal, then went promptly to his personal target range at the edge of his sugar field and put a couple hundred rounds through that sucker. The laser is just too cool.

###
–Ken Ringle

The Fire Next Time

For the record books, the U.S. military involvement in Iraq is over.

The last units withdrew from Iraq into Kuwait just before Christmas. The only uniformed American military personnel still in Iraq are the roughly 200 members of an Office of Security Cooperation lodged in the American Embassy that is supposed to coordinate arms sales and supplies to the Iraqi military.

Substantial numbers of ostensibly civilian contractors remain to train Iraqi forces, and the C.I.A. has a significant counter-terrorism presence in-country. The State Department is operating one of the largest U.S. embassies in the world in Baghdad, but the number of American combat forces in Iraq is zero.

How long will it stay that way?

The Iraq that the US. has left behind is unraveling faster than even the skeptics in Washington and European capitals feared. The administration of Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki is adopting heavy-handed policies that seem designed to strengthen his position by dividing the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities.

The Sunni Vice President, Tariq al-Hashimi, is essentially on the run, accused by al-Maliki of enlisting personal bodyguards to run a death squad. The capital is on fire from suicide bombs and explosions that have killed scores. And on Monday, a group of Iraqi lawmakers associated with the militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for the dissolution of parliament and new elections within six months.

The violence and political infighting that have followed the U.S. withdrawal may have may have predictable, but it is not a pretty picture. And it has already led a chorus of conservative critics in the U.S., led by Senator John McCain of Arizona, to renew their attacks on President Obama for failing to leave a residual force on the ground on Iraq.

The Administration’s response has been to point out that Iraq suffered similar and even worse violence and political chaos while large-scale American forces were there, so it is not logical to expect that a smaller residual force could prevent it now.

The challenge for Iraq is to work its way through this mess, using more political means than military, and to avoid outright civil war.

The challenge for the United States, now that it is out militarily, is to stay out. There are still some 40,000 U. S. military personnel in the Persian Gulf region, including the ground combat unit just across the border in Kuwait that was the last to leave Iraq. If the chaos in Iraq continues or grows, there are going to be calls to go back in to restore order.

President Obama is said to be adamantly against any re-introduction of U.S. forces. Politically, it would seem to be madness for him to even consider it. He got elected on a promise to end the war in Iraq. He could hardly run for re-election reversing that stance. Famously, he argued during the 2008 campaign that it had been “dumb” to go into Iraq in the first place. Surely it would be “dumber” to go back.

The chances that President Obama would re-insert any American troops in the foreseeable future seem slim to none. But the chance that several of the Republican Presidential candidates might call upon him to do so is much greater. They are a bellicose bunch, with the exception of Ron Paul, as evidenced by their calls to attack Iran to prevent it from achieving nuclear weapons. Should a suicide bomber attack the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, or the U.S. civilian personnel still posted there, the chorus could well arise.  That would be the “dumbest.”

The Other Nine Per Cent

Recent public opinion polls — I am sure you’ve seen them — suggest that nine per cent of the American public actually approves of Congress and the way it is doing its job. Of course, that was before this weekend’s bi-partisan wrangling over the payroll tax cut extension.

Who exactly are these nine per cent?

I am curious, since they are such a distinctive group. After all, nine per cent approval is an historic low, even for Congress, exceeded by the approval ratings for polygamy (11 per cent,) BP’s handling of the oil spill (16 per cent,) banks (23 per cent,) and pornography (30 per cent.)

So, I went looking for the nine per cent. I called my neighbor, Representative Pete Stark, D. CA, assuming that he, after 38 years in Congress, surely approved of what he and his 434 colleagues were doing. Are you one of the nine per cent, Pete?

“Heavens, no!” said Congressman Stark.”

And who did he think were the nine per cent?

“Our staff, and our relatives,” he said with a laugh, “and probably not all of them.” I might add that Pete said this on Sunday, as he headed in to the Capitol to cast a rare weekend vote that failed to break the deadlock.

So, who are these nine per cent who think Congress is on top of its work these days?

Add up the Congressional staff, who number around 20,000, lobbyists whose clients have come out on top, the famous special interests, the capitol police, the cafeteria staff, even the bloated office of the architect of the capitol and you still don’t come anywhere near the nine percent, which would amount to some 27 million Americans.

I went to a couple of holiday parties over the weekend and asked everyone I met whether they approved of the way Congress was doing its job. Nope. No nine-percenters there.

If anyone reading this blog is part of the nine per cent, please comment and let me know. And tell me exactly what it is that you approve, please. Is it the fun way Congress takes everything down to the wire? Is it the tendency, demonstrated again over the weekend and into this week to kick the can down the road?

How about the way Congress dealt with the President’s much-advertised jobs bill, which was pronounced D.O.A. when it arrived on the Hill? Did you approve of the way they handled that? Or deficit reduction? Or judicial appointments? Or ambassadorial nominees? Or the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency? Do you love the way they advise and consent on these things? Did you approve of the way they flirted with default a few months ago over the debt ceiling, sending the markets into a tailspin and dropping the nation’s credit rating? If you like delay, gridlock, logjams and half-a-loaf legislation, I suppose you love Congress.

Just guessing here, but I suspect Barak Obama’s greatest shock upon assuming the presidency was how incredibly hard it is to get anything through a divided Congress.
That is, a Senate where 60 votes are required to agree on the time of day. And the House of Representatives, controlled by a majority that, as we saw this weekend, can’t control its own majority. The President, and all of us, are learning that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell meant precisely what he said after the 2008 elections when he announced that his major goal was to assure that Barak Obama was a one-term President. That, and nothing more, apparently.

None of this Congressional inaction comes cheap, incidentally. This year, the American taxpayer will shell out $5.4 billion to fund Congress, its staff and perks. That includes the members, staff, gold-plated health care, generous pensions, the House gym and chaplains for each chamber. Evidently, the nine per cent feels they are getting their money’s worth, since they approve.

So, while the current focus is on presidential race, perhaps more attention should be paid to who leads and controls Congress, that co-equal and disputatious branch of government. How about a few televised debates among the leaders about how they intend to handle things in the next Congress? That could be entertaining.

Meanwhile, will the other nine per cent please stand up?

The Voice of Reason: Ron Paul?

I know Ron Paul can be zany, especially when it comes to abolishing the Fed, returning to the gold standard and reducing the federal government to a mom-and-pop-sized enterprise.

He certainly has his eccentricities, such as refusing to wear a seat belt in a car, or a helmet when bicycling, both of which he apparently regards as nanny-state interferences in his constitutionally-protected right to kill himself.

But in last night’s Republican debate, when his fellow candidates were falling over themselves in declaring their willingness to bomb Iran back to the stone age, he was the grown-up, the one voice that warned that what they were talking about would be “another Iraq,” or worse. He also repeated his call to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and generally to avoid meddling in other nations’ affairs.

Later, when Newt Gingrich was rolling out his idea for Congress to subpoena federal judges who make controversial rulings, and Michelle Bachmann was cheering him on, it was Ron Paul who spoke up and reminded the former Speaker that the constitution has this thing about separation of powers.

Watching at home, I suddenly found myself agreeing with Ron Paul. Ron Paul! He was making sense while the others on the stage were coming unhinged one-by-one. And I was nodding in agreement! Fortunately, no one saw me. My wife was wrapping Christmas presents and the dogs were sleeping. I switched off the set and watched a re-run of The League on my iPad and felt better right away.

The Republican debates can do that to you. I find myself talking back to the television set, laughing and shaking my head. Imagine how Republican contributors feel watching this gong show. Last night’s, the 16th in this series of reality shows, apparently was the last before the Iowa caucuses, now that Donald Trump has withdrawn. Finally, we’ll get to hear from some voters.