The Nellie Blog

Politics and Sports: In the Arena

2012-02-09T13:54:00.005-06:00

Reprinted with Permission of the Carteret County (N.C.) News-Times

Folks, I’m saturated with campaigns for the moment. Primary this, caucus that, nonbinding whatever. Three GOP Primary contests earlier this week and a thousand more to go. Being in the game for a quarter century as pretty much a bagman, I always marvel at the eternal lessons of politics.

Adversity, tenacity, victory -- and sometimes, alas, defeat. I grimace at them all and yet I've embraced them all for much of my young and adult life. They’re universal human experiences, but it seems they are particular American characteristics.

In addition to raw politics, there’s another arena of life where these tests hit close and that’s sports. While my days on a field and a court are long gone, I've tried to pass on resilience – but mericfully,not my meager talent -- to my three sons. They may be too young for politics, but the old man has placed them firmly in the crucible of athletics.

Of course, there are countless parents who push their kids towards sports of all kinds. Heck, I see them at evening practices, at weekend games, in the early mornings driving to a pool or an ice rink. For example, this past weekend I was at a 7th grade rec league basketball game for young Darby and there were nearly 70 people in the stands of an old middle-school gym at 9 a.m. on a grey Saturday -- parents, siblings, grandparents yelling and gesturing like it was an NBA game.

The night before no less, I was at a wrestling tournament for middle son Braden in a high school gym – stuffy and dusty and hung with faded banners of championships from the 1970s -- where there were 12 teams and more than 400 parents milling around.

This past fall I attended a high school football game in a Division I college football stadium that was three-quarters full. I recently went to a parents meeting for eldest son Devlin’s Varsity lacrosse team and in attendance were both parents for every single kid. Man, this is what we call “involvement.”

With three boys, there’s been a reflexive impulse to have them on teams, push them to compete hard, and most importantly, have them excel. Hey, here’s a fun stat: In 2011, my three sons were on a total of 23 teams (swimming, wrestling, lacrosse, football, and soccer) and totaled more than 283 total games and 840 practices. I know. I counted.

Yes, I plead guilty to riding my kids hard – and I know there are more than a few parents out there doing the same thing – to excel at the sports at which they have showed real promise. And yes, I have urged them to either drop, or spend minimum time on, those sports at which they have no chance for stand-out play.

I recall as clearly today as eight years ago physically manhandling a kid into a car to go to a lacrosse practice. I get a bit disturbed today by my behavior then, but at the time I was adamant. Unnamed son was in tears, I was frustrated. I knew that to give in – to let him not go to practice -- would start a slide that might possibly never end. He went to practice, banged a bunch of kids around, and today he’s a premier player.

I also recall when an unnamed kid got cut from a school basketball team. It was the first time ever a Nelligan had been cut from a team. Huge deal. But I knew then that even if he’d made the team, he would have ridden the bench (hey, just like Dad!), and that he never would have risen in talent – or in height – to be anything more than a third teamer. He’d be on suburban teams that would get crushed by inner city teams and what's the point or value in that? I've seen this movie over and over.

And yeah, he was good at soccer because he was and is very fast and very quick. But going far in that sport is a numbers game; again, there are certain teams made up of certain players for whom soccer is a national pastime and these teams beat the bejeebers out of suburban teams every time. Again, what's the value in that endgame?

Most importantly, both unnamed kids were very good at lacrosse, and thus we played and played – on weeknights and weekends, endlessly throwing the ball to one another.

I’d drive him all over to practices and games and tournaments in other states. There were games in which his teams – and he -- would get beat badly. There were weak teammates that blew it for everyone else.

There were also a lot of victories. And through it all, I knew this was the sport they both would master and both did. Now, we’re at the point where college coaches are recruiting one of the unamed kids, the eldest.

One last observation: I never told my sons to have “fun” out there on a field or a on a gym floor or in a pool. Sports are about fun, yes. But sports are really about satisfaction – doing your best, which is better than your best was a week ago.

Here’s the essence: It’s about gaining self-esteem through achievement. In politics, the cycles of preparation, practices, games, and victories and losses mirror that of the lowly 7th grade basketball game – or the Super Bowl.

Two bruising worlds, two arenas where you succeed or come up short, but where the eternal lessons about character are taught every moment

The Mechanics of a Campaign

2012-01-24T19:00:00.001-06:00

Washington, D.C. – Today and thru Saturday, all eyes focused on the neighbor to the South. Because no matter where you are, it’s impossible not to follow the Presidential primary saga. Iowa and New Hampshire, yes – but the big noise is all South Carolina. It’s all politics, all the time.

Having been involved in this crazy game for too many years, I understand that we all tend to focus on the big media picture – who’s up, who’s down, what ads are running, what someone said at debate, or in a Main Street diner. A stream of candidate events crammed into days and weeks and months.

However, there’s a story you rarely hear about – it’s what I’d call the mechanics of a campaign. That is, how does just one event – let’s say a speech in a community center – actually come together?

The “how” is one of the few things I really know -- only because once I was one of those guys on the ground, who came to set up an event for a Candidate, and left right after – to go set up another event.

It works like this:

Long ago and faraway just three years ago, I was part of a team setting up events for Governor Palin in Ohio and West Virginia and for Mrs. McCain in Pennsylvania.

Now, an event starts with five campaign operatives who come from the four points of the compass to a city which none of them have ever been in. The schedulers at Headquarters envision the Candidate in that city in 36 hours, speaking before 4,000 hysterical followers who are going to push him/her over the top in that city, in that region, in that state! The rally will build enthusiasm and show the state and national media that the Candidate is making it happen.

This takes place in Marietta, Ohio. The five guys meet in an airport lounge, jump in a rental car, and drive around looking at possible arenas – indoor or outdoor? Is the place too big, which would look bad to have empty space, or two small, which shows that the Candidate fears big crowds? A site is quickly chosen, local vendors are hired to build a stage with lighting and music affects. County political party chairman are rounded up so they can find enough volunteers to pack a 4,000-person college field house. , one of our guys heads to the local FedEx store to design and print up tickets, brochures, and placards for the rally; another guy drives different routes from the airport – which is across the Ohio River in West Virginia -- at which the candidate arrives; another is calling every reporter within 200 miles to say that this is an Event No One Can Miss.

Another is lining up volunteers, drivers, securing passenger vans for the campaign staff, the press, and hangers on who will all arrive in a chartered jet. That night, the five huddle over cigarettes and Red Bulls and think up every which way the whole event can fail – the Candidate stumbles, an attendee faints, a stage collapses -- and become a fiasco that ends up on a YouTube video getting a million hits.

Then suddenly it’s the day of the event – Game Day as it’s called. Governor Palin arrives with police lights and siren escort, enters the field house from the back along the prearranged corridors, and pops out on an elevated walkway we designed, right in front of the school’s cheerleaders, who’ve been hired to get the crowd going.

As I watch from the side behind curtains, my phone goes off. It’s the campaign manager. He’s a Big Guy and Nellie is a Small Guy. I’m told that headquarters wants a non-media stop for 20 minutes at a “nice location” to accommodate a New York Times photographer doing a profile.
The five guys huddle and for once, Nellie has a brainstorm.

Earlier that morning, in going over the route for the eighth time, I’d passed the Marietta College football stadium and noticed a youth league football game on the stadium field. I suggest that venue, a guy is quickly sent to check it out while Palin is speaking. The stadium is old brick and picturesque in its own way. We envision the Governor can stand on the sideline of the game or be speaking with parents in the bleachers for the photo shoot.

The speech ends, the ovation is large, and the police cars and vans head out to the stadium, about five minutes away. They pull up, she gets out with her staff and the New York Times photographer and they go through a tunnel into the stadium. I do too as the once-ever genius who thought this up.

It’s halftime and I quickly arrange with the team coaches to have the Governor say a few words to the assembled teams -- these little kids with football helmets in these too-big pads. She then speaks to the young cheerleaders, and a couple parents, to whom this is all a huge rush. The photographer is delighted with the dynamics of the photo; Palin is pleased to be around the kids. The campaign staff is pleased it took 15 minutes, not 20, and they can get back onto the plane for the next stop.

Now consider that this madcap kind of play is going on several times a day, for days on end. Each event, each staffer playing some role in convincing the public and the media that the Candidate is on fire.

That’s what is happening now as these five hopefuls surge through South Carolina, piling up event after event in a mad frenzy to get media and public traction. And like Ohio, which Senator McCain and Governor Palin lost, there are going to be losers come Saturday. But I can tell you as a Game Day vet, none will lose for lack of effort.

The Prophecy of Dave Walker

2010-12-27T12:03:00.019-06:00

Do you hear that defining roar in the distance? It's the Leviathan, the Biblical colossal from the sea, the accumulated voices warning about federal government finances. As with a lot of modern life, it's all about numbers. Here are merely four:

The annual deficit load in FY 2010 was $1.3 trillion.* As of today, the total debt is at $8.87 trillion, which is roughly 61 percent of U.S. GDP in 2010. Government spending for FY 2010 was at $3.72 trillion, while federal government revenues (your taxes and all fees) are coming in at approximately $2.165 trillion.

The figures are hard and in stark contrast to the opaque and incessant hand-wringing. It's fiscal Armageddon! How did we get into this massive bind? Why didn't someone warn us?!

Someone did: His name is Dave Walker, former Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). GAO is a Washington, D.C. institution that commands universal, if not sometimes grudging, respect for nonpartisan, non-ideological fairness and accuracy. Walker used a late-summer 2003 National Press Club speech to stick a flag in the capital's ramparts and calmly state: The nation's financial situation is unsustainable and without change, things will get catastrophically worse.

Below is a New York Times op-ed Walker penned with your's truly providing assistance (ok, ok folks -- I formatted the fonts and ran spell check).

This was written seven years ago. It highlights Walker's prophetic view of the U.S. government's financial bind. In here are allusions to the impending collapse of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Association (Freddie Mac); inexorable federal health care spending exemplified by Medicare and to a leser extent, Medicaid; and, corporate financial reporting, before Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup.

Walker was a leader in the early-warning federal budget alarm system called the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and has now started his own organization, the Comeback America Initiative.

Starting with the title, Walker foresaw in clear terms the intractable bind we are in today. And it's an astonishing piece to revisit amidst today's increasingly desperate fiscal tumult.

New York Times, February 4, 2004
The Debt No One Wants to Talk About
by David M. Walker

WASHINGTON -- "We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant's books," President Thomas Jefferson wrote to his secretary of the Treasury in 1802, "so that every member of Congress and every man of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them." Unfortunately, straightforward government financial information seems as elusive in 2004 as it did in Jefferson's day.

The truth is that the United States faces a long-term deficit that will only increase as the baby boomers retire. The resulting fiscal imbalance will test the nation's spending and tax policies.

Washington's recent difficulty in maintaining fiscal restraint has not helped matters.
The fiscal 2005 budget President Bush released on Monday includes a deficit of $364 billion. Although the administration and the Congressional Budget Office show declining deficits in the years ahead, and an improving economy will reduce deficits further, the long-term projected gap is now so large that we will not be able simply to grow our way out of the problem. Difficult choices are inevitable.

But the current system of federal financial reporting provides an unrealistic and even misleading picture of the government's overall performance and financial condition. Few agencies adequately show the results they are getting with the taxpayer dollars they spend, and too many significant government commitments and obligations are not fully disclosed.

Particularly troubling are the many big ticket items that taxpayers will eventually have to reckon with, including Social Security, Medicare, civilian and military retirement and health care benefits, and veterans' medical care. Despite their serious implications for future budgets, tax burdens and spending flexibility, these future obligations get short shrift in the government's financial statements and in budgetary deliberations.

The federal government's gross debt -- the accumulation of the annual deficits -- was about $7 billion last September, which works out to about $24,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. But that number excludes items like the gap between the government's Social Security and Medicare commitments, and the money put aside to pay for them. If these items are factored in, the burden for every American rises to well over $100,000.

They new Medicare prescription drug benefit will add thousands more to that tab. This benefit is unquestionably popular and will make it easier for some older American to afford expensive prescription drugs. But it also comes with a steep price that few want to talk about. The truth is that the drug benefit as signed into law is one of the largest commitments ever undertaken by the federal government. Preliminary estimates of the long-term cost in current dollars run up to $8 trillion through 2070.

To put that number into perspective, it is about four times the entire federal budget. Long- term simulations from the legislative agency I lead, the General Accounting Office, paint a chilling picture. Even before the new drug benefit was enacted, thsese simulations showed that by 2040, current policy would require a 50 percent reduction in Federal spending or a doubling of taxes, to balance the budget.

Either would be devastating. And keep in mind it is likely that efforts will be made to expand the drug beneift in the future.

A key lesson from Enron, World-com and other business failures is that our free-market system depends on public confidence in the accuracy of corporate financial information. Recent G.A.O. reports have highlighted the increasing frequency of corporate earning restatements. Who would knowingly buy stock in, lend to, or do business with a company that conceals its true financial conditions?

As Jefferson pointed out, truth and transparency are even more essential in the public sector. Government services -- mail delivery, food inspections, Social Security and defense to name a few -- directly affect the well-being of of every American. But sound decisions on federal programs and policies are nearly impossible without timely, accurate, and useful information.

Fortunately, we are starting to see efforts to address the strengthening of federal financial reporting. The latest annual report of the federal government focuses more on the the nation's long-range fiscal imbalance. The president's Management Agenda, which closely reflects G.A.O.'s list of high-risk government programs, is bringing additional attention to troubled areas and is trying to better assess the results that programs are getting, with the resources they are given.

The General Accounting Office and other experts continue to encourage reforms in the federal budget proces to better reflect the government's commitment and to signal emerging problems. Among other things, the G.A.O. has recommended the government issue an annual report on major fiscal exposures -- explicit and implicit promises for future government spending.

Much more must be done, however. A top-t0-bottom review of government activities to ensure their relvance for the 21st century is long overdue.

From a practical standpoint, our elected representative are not likely to get too far out in front of the American people when addressing complex and controversial issues. These fiscal risks however, are long-term problems whose impact will not be felt for some time. The understanding and support of the American people will be critical to providing a foundation for action.

A national education campaign to help the public understand the nature and magnitude of the long-term financial challenges facing the nation is essential. After all, an informed electorate is indispensable for a sound democracy. Young American especially need to become active in this discussion -- because they and their children will bear the heaviest burden if today's leaders fail to act.

Public officials will have more incentives to make difficult but necessary choices if the public has the facts and comes to support serious and sustained action to address our fiscal challenges. Without meaningful public debate, however, real and lasting change is unlikely. The sooner we act, the sooner it will be to turn things around.

* Guess what: Things just got worse. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its January document, "Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2011 to 2021." The deficit for FY 2011, if current laws remain unchanged, drives to $1.48 trillion.

The 104th and the 112th: A Renovation Revolution

2010-11-30T17:47:00.008-06:00

(Reprinted from the Baltimore Sun, Sunday, November 28, 2010)

Just sense the terror accompanying the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives: the huge political battles ahead, the hand-to-hand combat with President Obama, the legislative Armageddon. Yeah, agenda this, policy that. But I’ll tell you where the real turmoil begins. It’s in the mechanics: The transfer of real estate from the once majority to the now-ascendant minority, the shift in operations, the scramble for office space, the control of Committee rooms and the menu in the Longworth cafeteria.

I know. I was a shock trooper during the turnover from the 103rd to 104th Congresses, and a veteran of the 100th and 101st. When power shifts, there's a scramble. The leadership and the chairmanships of 24 standing House committees change, as do more than 105 subcommittee chairmanships. The former minority is emboldened with power to change the way business is done in Washington and that means one thing: renovation.

At the end of the 103rd Congress, I joined the Public Works Committee. Forget about that smarmy New Deal/Great Society moniker. The nameplate was ripped from history to be replaced by “Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.”

Our offices, like those throughout all three House Office Buildings,hadn’t been altered in decades. I vividly recall wandering through office space jammed with wooden filing cabinets holding memos from the 1970s, photos from the 1960s hung on walls, ornamental ashtrays were everywhere as were black rotary dial phones with straight cords, and every now and then a dull green IBM Selectric typewriter.

As the new spokesman for the new committee, I got a high-ceilinged office overlooking the fountain on the west side of Rayburn, a football heave from the Botanical Gardens. The former occupant, a friend, had been here for years. As it was being cleared out, she sighed that there was so much living history here. “You're not kidding, " I murmured, watching workers move a coat rack from which hung a styrofoam Humphrey-Muskie hat.

Forget the Contract With America, a new decorator had came to town. Walls that had stood since the Interstate system was built were torn down, carpet trod upon by House champions was ripped up, mildewed furniture was sacked. Elegant portraits of past committee leaders hung everywhere and had to be moved. "Where is Chairman Anderson going?" one senior Democrat staffer fretted. Congressman Glenn Anderson had been a legend from Long Beach, California. "No problem,” I said sincerely, “I’ll take him -- I was born in Santa Monica." Yes, it was chaos.

As the old ways departed, the new entered. There came down an edict from the Speaker to be: We will be the first Modern Legislature in history. In November 1994, the entire House and Senate had one website (Senator Edward M. Kennedy) and 43 members had email accounts, mostly AOL. Now, all House Committees were required to have sites; all staff and Members required to have email. Then came the most significant revolution in Congressional staff history: “attachments.” The old days of spending hours walking testimony and memos between three House office buildings had ended.

And this massive transformation didn’t stop with the pdf. 52 new GOP Members were seated, setting off one of the greatest office-switch daisy chains in Congressional history. Personal Member offices are assigned by seniority. With the seniority system shot by Democrat losses, here now came the complex orchestration of moving Congressman Joe -- and every single item in his office -- from cramped 4th floor Cannon House Office Building to 1st floor room-with-a-view Longworth.

From November 18, 1994 onwards, the House Clerk movers wheeled huge dollies carrying sofas, chairs, desks, filing cabinets, lamps, and endless boxes of "important" files. The rooms couldn’t be moved all at once given the sheer amount of stuff colliding in corridors. Hence, the moves were done after 8 p.m. and before 6. a.m. the haunting rumble of the House Clerk caissons symbolizing the end of an office-space dynasty.

The new offices, the décor, the nifty new equipment, the chiliburgers at last in the Longworth cafeteria -- it was all part of the magic of the 104th Congress this Hill rat recalls so well, the promise of which will be revealed to the 112th.One night I was on the phone with my defiantly socialist mother and caught up in the exuberance of the moment, I said, “We’re changing how this town operates.” "Give me one example, son," she said tersely.

I was sitting in the Committee hearing room after hours and was flummoxed for an answer. Then while gazing out at the panorama, it came to me: "We’ve got new microphones on the dais for all the Members."

The dawn, indeed, of a new day.

Diary of a Chart Guy: An inside-the-Beltway look at the ascendancy of charts and the men who make them happen

2010-08-09T11:16:00.011-06:00

(Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2010]

"Hey, where's my chart guy?" The words echoed down a marble corridor in the Treasury Department building, where there was a clamor of Medicare Trustees, two cabinet secretaries, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, eight high-ranking staff—and me. Conversation ceased and heads swiveled in my direction as I held the chart above my head. There was a clear sigh of relief.

It was late April, 2007, and we were about to hold a news conference on Medicare's disastrous financial outlook. We had all the right ammunition: big binders and accordion folders jammed with spread sheets, computer models, and talking points on complex economic terms. But the 3-by-2 chart I'd helped develop said it all: fiscal catastrophe.

The news conference had an overflow of reporters, but with all the high-powered leaders and documentation to explain the crisis, it was the chart that had the biggest impact in the next day's stories.

Let's face it, the chart is now a must-have political prop. Charts, on both sides of the aisle, dominate what we like to call political discourse. The Senate floor debate on health care featured more than a dozen.How did we get here? Washington used to feature elegantly crafted speeches by gray-haired, jowly statesmen in dark suits.

Until 1994, when the GOP's Contract With America was displayed on a chart: 10 bold bullet-point goals with red boxes next to each to be checked off as the legislation passed the House. The Contract sparked politicians and decision-makers everywhere to rely less on soaring rhetoric and more on colorful charts that would explain everything—from the reasoning behind cutting one-third of House staff to the need for a 34% increase in ICBMs. Who's going to argue with a chart?

Overnight, you saw legions of Hill rats like me hauling charts while trailing earnest politicians all over town.My boss on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, then-Chairman Bud Shuster, jumped into the fray. His committee became ground zero for charts—Members always had vibrant displays showing interstate lane dimensions, per-mile construction costs, transit ridership, bridge-span engineering ratios. Other committees soon followed suit.

One day on the House floor Rep. Shuster and I were approached by then-Congressman Joe Scarborough with an aide buckling under tubes of maps and folders. "Bud, I got this Army Corps project in the district . . . funding . . . levees . . . big-time hydraulics . . . really need your support." Bud listened, then simply pointed at me and said, "Give it all to Nelligan. He'll make a chart."

Later, working for David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States and the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, we developed charts (sometimes shrunk to PowerPoint slides) to be displayed at numerous congressional hearings and editorial-board meetings. The charts showed frightening measures of spending, future entitlement growth, rising marginal tax rates, nondefense discretionary outlays—impending doom. Those charts even made it into the 2008 documentary film, "I.O.U.S.A."

Charts are now a fixture of the landscape, and in a 23-year career spanning the executive and legislative branches, I humbly consider myself present at the creation.

In that ornate hallway three years ago at Treasury, I waited patiently with my chart underneath a huge portrait of Albert Gallatin, America's fourth Treasury secretary. The bio next to the painting noted that Gallatin was the son of a wealthy Swiss grain merchant and an influential senator before Thomas Jefferson picked him to lead Treasury. And it suddenly hit me: There I was standing beneath Old Washington carrying the baggage of New Washington.

And what baggage. Projected Medicare spending alone in 2010 was 1,010 times the entire United States GDP when Gallatin was Treasury secretary. How did I know? It was on the chart.

Mr. Nelligan is a veteran of Capitol Hill and the Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations.
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights

Lacrosse: A tough game to love...

2010-06-03T04:42:00.004-06:00

(Reprinted from The Baltimore Sun , May 27, 2010)

This weekend, Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium will host the second-largest crowd ever to watch an NCAA Final Four. The contests will feature 20 young men wearing sophisticated armor playing on a 110-yard field, an unlikely culmination for a sport invented in the 15th Century by Native Americans, using up to 1,000 athletes wearing next to nothing, playing on a field ranging over several miles.Lacrosse might have been a niche sport for the Huron and Iroquois tribes, and several centuries later confined to eastern prep schools and colleges. But today, it's the fastest growing youth sport, coast to coast, in America.

As a guy who has played and been around the sport for three decades and in just the past four years has had three sons on 28 different teams in the Baltimore-Washington region, I find the growth gratifying — and surprising.

Because the fact is, lacrosse is vastly different from typical youth sports.It relies on the most difficult elements of athletics. It requires the hand-eye coordination of baseball — catching and throwing an unforgivingly hard ball in a small pocket, often while running. Lacrosse has the brutal collisions and the acute need for field sense found in football. And it requires the endurance of basketball and ice hockey. "Lax," as it's sometimes called, is a very tough game to master, and with all due respect, it's not turning a dozen energetic kids loose on a soccer field chasing a ball, or the slow agony of kid-pitch baseball.

Nor is there the relativism in youth lacrosse seen in other youth sports. There's no political correctness about everyone-has-fun-and-everyone-plays and please-be-nice-to-Billy. I can count on one hand the number of times snacks were handed out after games. As one of my son's coaches, a former Gilman School and Division 1 standout, perhaps uncharitably said, "This sport doesn't tolerate the geeks or the parents who say, 'Oh, let's try this for fun.' After one season, they move on and you see their equipment at garage sales."

And then there are the coaches, many like my friend above. I've coached and been around kids' teams for a solid decade — but there's nothing like the lacrosse coach: rough-hewn, stern, demanding. Praise is spared and practices can be grim affairs. Players are called by their last names, and parents on the sidelines get used to their kids getting ripped unmercifully for mistakes during a game.

Nonetheless, there must be something appealing in the lax gestalt because the sport has exploded across the county. The 2008-2009 High School Athletes Participation Survey, put together by the National Federation of State High School Associations, tallies 153,525 high school male and female lacrosse players, double the number from 2000-2001. To compare that with well-established high school sports, that number is one-fifth of those who play soccer; it equals more than half of those on tennis, swim and diving teams; it's three times the number of high school ice hockey players, six times the number of gymnasts. And the growth is most extreme in the populous West: California has 215 high school teams, Texas more than 140, Colorado, 121.

The youth movement has led to an equivalent expansion on the college level. This spring, 264 colleges fielded men's college lacrosse teams, and there are more than twice as many players today — 9,200 — as 20 years ago. There are 348 women's teams — that's more than triple the number of women's college teams 20 years ago.

Equally important, there are 213 college club teams in the United States and Canada — again, a product of the popularity at the youth level — and many are lobbying their respective college administrations for NCAA Division I, II, or III status.

There's a pro organization — Major League Lacrosse — that despite fits and starts over the last dozen years has six teams and is looking to expand. Lacrosse has also been helped by the Internet; hundreds of high school games are on YouTube, which is agonizing when you can view your own son getting beat in the once obscure but now viral Loyola Blakefield-Severn School junior varsity game.

In 1921, a Baltimore Sun columnist enamored of the fabled Johns Hopkins team called lacrosse "the fastest sport on two feet." It's a long way from the Iroquois to the more than 100,000 spectators who will watch the NCAA lacrosse finals, proof that the fastest sport on two feet is now on two feet for good.

Jeff Nelligan is the parent of three lacrosse-playing sons who play better than their Dad. His email is Jeff.Nelligan@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2010, The Baltimore Sun

May in Martinique

2010-05-17T06:46:00.005-06:00

20 years ago this month, I was a relatively new soldier, and in Martinique at the French Army Brevet Commando School; an unlikely member of a platoon of hard-core infantrymen. Beyond the rather colorful experiences, the training provided a glimpse into the soldierly character, which today you can find on display in the far corners of the world. But alas, never truly appreciated here at home.

The French Army had trained hundreds of units from armies throughout the world at this course at Ft. Desaix. Jungle exercises were combined with water operations, both being the expertise of the island’s unit, the 33rd French Marine Infantry Regiment, responsible for security in the Antilles.

The course was based on passing a number of tests, for which you’d receive the Brevet Commando badge.To win a spot in the platoon, Army Reserve and Guard units sent selected soldiers to a stateside competition, half of which consisted of usual Army measures -- pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and running, all timed. The other half involved swimming -- a timed half-mile in a 50-meter pool, followed by the order to keep swimming in the pool for distance until you sank. Growing up in Los Angeles with ocean-centered parents, I had been swimming and surfing since a kid and was a fair waterman; I made the platoon.

When the unit mustered at an Air Force base for the C-130 trip to Fort du France, as a new guy, I was astonished at the accomplishments of my comrades: Special Forces tabs, Ranger tabs, Expert Infantrymen and Expert Medic badges, air assault and airborne patches, several containing the gold star signifying a combat jump, combat patches on the left shoulder, and explosives ordnance engineer markings. Only because I could swim was I on this plane.

French officers met us when we landed. They loaded us into trucks, and in the nature of the foreign military anywhere, wanted immediately to jack up the Americans. We drove to the base and were unloaded at the obstacle course.

Now, obstacle courses are the pride of every military base in the world. And for the uninitiated, we're not talking a course in the sense of plastic cones set up on an asphalt parking lot, or a 10-foot rope bridge where you bond with your sales pals. We're talking miles of huge, gut-wrenching physical demands.

I recall from memory a few highlights from the Regimental course at Fort Desaix: A timed run through a flooded marshland, repeated repels off 100-foot plus cliffs, low-crawling through a football field of mud and leeches and island snakes, clambering up and down 50-foot cargo nets (with no safety nets below), and a particularly eye-opening 150-foot crawl across a one-inch cable suspended 200 feet above a boulder-strewn field. This was accomplished by lying on the cable, securing your pack and rifle, and dragging yourself hand-over hand to the other side, your trailing leg and boot curled around the cable for stability.

If you slipped off the cable, you hung, spinning crazily, by a rope attached to your midsection and to the cable with an O-ring. Then, a fellow soldier had to crawl out and push the O-ring along the cable, practically inch by inch, across to the other side, compensating for the soldier’s weight while balancing his own weight.All of the above describes only about one-third of the course, which we would do every day we were there, sometimes at night with only covered flashlights and the moon.

That first day, Staff Sergeant Josh Freeman (Landon School, 1983) a former soldier of the year with the 5th Special Forces Group, broke the course record, an astonishing feat. Consider: tens of thousands of men, including the French cadre, had been over the course for years, and our guy breaks the record coming off an eight-hour flight. The French had grudging respect, and redoubled their efforts to burn us up.

Other daily tests followed. Some were as old as the days of the Roman Centurions: hand-to-hand fighting, tying a series of complicated knots in ropes that could support a truck lifted ten feet off the ground (disaster befell the knots that slipped), and 36-hour forced marches through impassable terrain. On night patrols, we’d steal silently through Martinique towns, tested on whether we aroused an outcry from police or residents. During the day, we’d cut through jungle and sharp stands of sugar cane, all done with compass, hours upon hours, trying to outflank the French cadre lying in wait for us. Sweaty, bleeding, and ascending some forsaken volcanic hill with full pack and rifle, I remember going past a fresh, ever-smiling French training officer and thinking, with the hilarity that sometimes accompanies extreme fatigue, “Man, this guy is getting his kicks dragging my rear end all over this damn island.”

We stayed in the field night and day and no matter what, guys were always in good cheer, no matter how awful the circumstances. One evening we were navigating a massive swamp, trying to find footing, our heads going under again and again. Suddenly, truck lights went on all around us, we were hauled out with ropes, driven to a barracks and inexplicably given 3 a.m. training on the French FAMAS assault rifle.

Two days later, we were ordered to the top of the fort walls and lowered by ropes deep into old ammunition bunkers. Each soldier was accompanied by a French non-com. The aperture closed, and in utter and complete darkness, we were handed an FAMAS and told to disassemble and then assemble the rifle in two minutes. Enlisted man Nellie never had a mechanical bent, but I’d recalled the late-night class and thinking optimistically at the time that the FAMAS had fewer parts than an M-16, which I could strip. I patiently outlined the rifle with my hands and used a fair memory to recall the steps taught two nights before.

We were given cursory training in tides, currents and wind and then paddled inflatable Zodiacs for miles on the open ocean, with only one compass for four boats, meaning even the slightest error on an azimuth meant hours of wasted effort. Another test involved being pushed out of a ship and with nothing but three empty canteens for flotation, you were required to make it to shore.

The final test was the water obstacle course. After swimming a long distance in a bay in full uniform, you lunged out of the water to grab ropes and climb a scaffold, dove to the sea floor to retrieve objects, swung hand-over-hand across a 30-foot jungle gym, crawled over and around rusty pylons, then headed into a submerged pipe on the floor of a lagoon, fighting off a claustrophobic, drowning panic while traveling 40 feet through the conduit and coming up in deep water before making your way to a beach.

Don’t get me wrong, U.S. Ranger and Special Forces training makes this course look like a picnic. The guys in the platoon were used to the pounding and this was just a two-week stopover for them. Nevertheless, the thing was, no-one whined, no-one complained. They all went from one challenge to the next. It was remarkable, and the general bonhomie got under the skin of some of the French cadre.

Even after two decades, I recall some of the men -- diminutive Tim Urban, the SF engineer, the HALO-jump artist and clever Robert Parsons, and John Roberts, SF medic, a Jumpmaster qualified paratrooper, multilingual State Department diplomat, and one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met. Ironically, 20 years ago, only a seer could have predicted that some of these soldiers would be launching out of Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and Iraq six months later, and eleven years later, lunging into Afghanistan and then again, Iraq.

One scene encapsulates for me the creed of the American soldier. On the first day those wily Frenchmen put us on the obstacle course at twilight, one man did slip off the cable and dangled helplessly 100 feet above the ground. While those of us who had crossed watched, on the other side of the canyon, there was an instant rush of guys to the starting point, scrambling to get to the cable. A senior non-com issued a quick order and then he immediately crawled out and slowly pushed the man, using the O-ring, to the other side.

In that instant, I saw the reflexive selflessness of the American soldier -- a guy was in trouble and needed help. Everyone stepped up.

At the end of the course, every single man who got off the plane was awarded the Brevet Commando badge, one of the few platoons in the 33rd Regiment’s training history to accomplish this because units always lost a couple men to injury. The French Army officers were stunned even as they made the announcement. For me, while I was proud to have the award, I felt more privileged to be associated with these men.

Two decades, I feel the same way. Now leading an easy, conventional life, I am fully aware there are hundreds of thousands of American servicemen across the globe engaged in everything from the tedium of garrison duty to the terror of combat. All of them, in some fashion, have in them that unique soldier’s character which I saw so vividly in Martinque. A type of character which all aspire to, but seems only a soldier fulfills.

The Hard Work of Freedom

2009-02-27T13:49:00.004-06:00

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just returned from Asia and it was with genuine interest that I scanned photographs of her entourage for a glimpse of that Indispensable Man. Every U.S. envoy has one. I know. Because I once was one.

Yes, in a foreign policy galaxy a long time ago – I was personal assistant to the Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development. His official cabinet rank was as one of four Deputy Secretaries of State. AID was and remains the chief dispenser of foreign assistance and these trips were to show the flag and check on U.S- funded projects.

As the Administrator’s aide-de-camp, I didn’t have the non-stop grimace while whispering in his ear about “strategic modalities” and “contiguous dialogues.” Nope, I was in charge of the really heavy lifting – reserving hotel rooms and procuring tickets, arranging country schedules and carrying briefing papers. I got the guy where he had to go, through the tedious meetings of foreign ministers asking for yet even more dough, and doing everything I could to build good will among -- you got it – the peoples of the world.

An indispensable part of my work was dispensing trinkets. Because folks, let’s understand one thing: An important American emissary can’t go visit a country, meet with its leaders, tour its cities and countryside, and not leave a little something behind. Sure, we were spending billions of dollars on building democratic and economic institutions, but what’s it all mean if the guys and gals at the top are left empty-handed? Hence, before I left on some marathon globetrotting session, I packed my special suitcase with items featuring the State Department seal, in ascending order of value: ball caps, t-shirts, enamel coasters, coffee cups, leather notebooks, silver pens, and the top of the line: crystal cubes with etchings of the White House and the Capitol. For the hoi polloi, I threw in the universal coin of the realm: cigarettes and shaving razors.

I dragged this bag of tricks to more than 40 nations and my routine at every stop rarely changed, beginning with an early morning meeting with my boss: “Ok Sir, here’s the schedule for today – ceremonial harvest festival and potato dance, a stop at a veal farm, grand opening of a rattan factory, and reception with the Minister of Lug Wrenches.” I’d glance up from my open suitcase and say matter-of-factly, “I figure we’re looking at eight shirts, four pens, a dozen mugs, a carton of Marlboros for the drivers and a Capitol cube for Mr. Wrench. We roll in thirty minutes.”

In addition to the trinkets, I also was responsible for the smoothing out the rougher edges of conducting high-stakes American foreign policy.

Like at a meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, where the Education Minister kept admiring my necktie. Of course, nothing would do but that I participate in a gracious hands-across-the-water exchange – my dark blue Brooks Brothers tie embossed with American flags for a his ill-cut wedge of salami-colored burlap.

In Jogjakarta, which is east of the Jakarta, one late afternoon I was suddenly given the job of organizing a poker game for senior Indonesian and U.S. officials – necessitating a madcap dash around town on the back of a motorbike, procuring two-dozen sealed packages of playing cards, a roulette wheel, a case of expensive cigars, bottles of some crazy rare single-malt Scotch, and a private room.

In Budapest, Hungary, a general, noting my Army lapel ribbon, struck up a conversation about the military and said, improbably, that he hoped someday the Hungarian armed forces would be outfitted with M-16s and “that Bradley machine.” He got a mug and a leather notebook

It was at a stop in Geneva on this same trip that an earnest and sincere Embassy staffer, taking me for a serious person, cornered me in a hotel lobby and started telling about “bilateral” this and “multilateral” that. I was sitting on a couch, distractedly rooting through my suitcase and all I could do was snort and reply, “It’s all about unilateral baksheesh, Hampden. Now, do you want a couple of pens or a pack of Camels?”

In Rabat, Morocco, the King sent “signals” via a high-level emissary to me, the bagman, that he would meet with the Administrator only if the U.S. could fork over $22 million that day for a health clinic. A proud man, the Administrator told me, “I’m sympathetic, but I won’t be extorted.” “Gotcha,” I said, and two hours later I’d moved heaven and earth to rebook all our flights, meetings, and hotel reservations for an early departure to Greece via Rome. The King got two T-shirts and four coasters.

In Romania, I was wired money via the Embassy by a senior U.S. official back at State and instructed to buy some Red Army militaria. Because I was paying in cold hard U.S. cash and because of my bargaining savvy (I’d been doing this kind of thing all over the world), I spent every dime, purchasing and sending back enough uniforms and medals for a small museum.

On one of my last trips, I was in Albania and the Administrator and I and several State department folks out of Tirana are on a farm tour. Amidst a luncheon in a vast commodities barn built with U.S. funds, there’s a great clamor for some way to symbolize this grand agricultural achievement.

The next thing you know, a proud farmer is behind a 19th century ox and plough and has cut a 50-yard furrow in a nearby field. He insists one of the Americans lay down a matching lane. You know where this is going. The State department guys fade into the barn shadows and so 10 minutes later, there’s Nellie in his suit and dress shoes, gamely trudging behind the ox and plough, slicing an uneven cut into the soil -- yeah, part of the new U.S.-Albanian “modality.”

“Man, you wanna talk about the hard work of freedom,” I say once back in the barn. The Americans laugh uneasily but hey, there’s no time for jokes – it’s back in the car and on to the next stop and farmer Ahkmed gets a White House cube and some razors.

Ah yes, back in the day this was statecraft -- hard work of freedom, indeed. And yet even in a world gone haywire, there’ll always be a need for trinkets, and there’ll always be the need for the Indispensable Man.

The Five Keys for Obama's Communicators

2009-01-23T07:58:00.006-06:00

Commiserating darkly with an acquaintance from an administration now long gone by, the fellow asked me about the lessons I’d learned during the past several years as a spokesman for a government agency. By nature cheerful but by temperament dim, I stared blankly into the phone. Because the thing is, the guy asking me is an authentic Thinker, a bonafide intellectual. He was a senior White House advisor to two presidents, appears on political talk shows, writes a syndicated column. Insightful, with big ideas that have been put into small legislative print and become law. “You should collect your thoughts on this,” he said.

You see the dilemma immediately. While I have seen a lot during my time in Washington (see “The Fixer," May 21, 2008), I tend to look at the experience and lessons in a rather mechanistic fashion. Why, some might call it primitive. So I thought about my pal’s suggestion and realized that although I couldn’t hit the high notes he contemplated, I could outline several elaborately unadorned ideas that the new press and media people in the new Administration might do well to follow. Hence, Nellie's Five Keys for Obama's Communicators:

1. Always carry three pens. No matter where you are in Washington, someone -- customarily a senior official who should know better -- has forgotten their pen when they need it most. Hand them one – everlasting goodwill results. Bonus: Let them have it for keeps.

2. Have a fallback comment for every situation. A press person is often in a number of meetings, or walking down hallways with nervous, chattering staffers and everyone is going on and on with all this policy and regulatory jargon, which is always confusing and dull. I find I often lapse into a stupor and then wham, suddenly someone turns to me and says, “What do you think?” I snap out of my reverie and reply like a robot, “There’s a lot in what’s been said here, folks.” If that line is taken, my backup: “Well, I imagine we’ll need to examine all of this further down the road.”

3. Don’t join an office Coffee Club. Yeah, it all sounds good, the promise of the Bottomless Cup, club members who are energetic and well-meaning, a decaf détente, but the despair and disappointments are huge. The fact is, when you really need some joe on a dragging afternoon, it comes down to the rash symbolism of an empty pot on a lonely counter in a far-away break-room.

4. Handle charts with grace. Big, stiff cardboard charts covered with colored grids and symbols are the defining totem of my generation, whether they diagram 2008 Oil Imports From South Asian Non-Aligned States or are graphs showing Rich People Making Too Damn Much. As the Capital’s reigning chart boy (see “Chart Boy”, April 27, 2007), I have hauled these monstrosities all over town for presentations and speeches, trailing resignedly in the wake of my various data-driven bosses. Not even my service in the Army prepared me for the stoicism and courage required to enter a hotel ballroom, place a chart on an easel, and stand next to it in front of 300 people.

5. Memorize a lot of scores. No matter what the season, knowing the scores to ballgames gives you a distinct edge over your peers. Washington is full of lulls in Important Business and invariably sports comes up. An Assistant Secretary will say, “See that Cowboys game?” You reply: “Wow, a real cliffhanger – 17 -13.” Or, it can be the obscure: “How about Toledo?!” Your answer: “35-7 over Akron. Jeez, who saw that coming?” Sure, it’s transparent. But hey, here’s where you can take credit for actual research.

Now, as you can see, I’ve dispensed with the inconsequential stuff – you know, ‘tell the truth’, ‘respect others,’ ‘remember you’re serving the President and the American people.’ Everybody knows about those sorts of things. Instead, believe me: it’s the five biggies above that will get you through. After all, look how valuable they proved for me.

All About....

2008-12-09T11:28:00.014-06:00

(Above: In keeping with his sense of fair play, Nellie takes it to the goal on barefoot 12-year old kid at Bordley Field, Landon School, in Bethesda, Maryland.)

“The thing is, Betty, I’m not into this for me. No way. Sports is all about what the boys want – it’s what they feel comfortable with.” The woman with whom I’m speaking on the sideline clucks appreciatively at my magnanimity and balanced outlook on kids’ athletics.

Of course, its Nellie talking so you know there’s a catch. In fact, it is All About Me. Every league, every practice, every game, every piece of equipment, every day. Why look -- I’m chatting up this mother at the famed Fairfax FallBrawl Lacrosse Tournament. It’s 22 degrees outside at 8 a.m., and I’ve got two sons in two different divisions playing all day. “I don’t care how cold it is! I want to see you jack up some people!” I tell them with fatherly calm during the dawn ride to the fields.

Harsh, eh? The boys know that maybe I’m kidding. But they certainly know that I have a relentless belief in kid’s athletics and team sports. I’ve seen what both have done for the men and women I most admire and respect.

Lacrosse, as it happens, provides a perfect example of the lifetime edge that sports confer. First, a kid builds true confidence in gaining athleticism, catching and throwing a small ball while on the run and getting pounded. There’s the instant decision-making, the physical endurance, all translating into a mental toughness. There is the extraordinary camaraderie: You have to get along with the good guys – and the knuckleheads. You have to strain to keep up, obey a coach. And the coaches are, for the most part, rough-hewn, stern and demanding. There is no relativism in lacrosse (or in most serious sports); no political correctness about “Everyone has fun! And everyone plays!,” no "be nice to Billie" smarminess, and no darn "snacks." Each kid endures 30 to 40 collisions in a raw, hard, fast game and it builds, like many sports, a self-confident attitude and paradoxically, selflessness.

And, like an astonishing number of parents, I practice what I preach. In 2008, the three Nelligan boys played in 28 different leagues spanning five sports – football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and lacrosse. We’re talking more than 230 games and meets, and that’s a lowball figure because all three are very good at lax and thus went into post-season and post-tournament play at least half a dozen times. Not that I’m counting or anything.

Or that I boast or anything – like about Darby, in his flag football league playing quarterback and calling plays, facing off every game, unbelievably, against some parent who insists on playing permanent QB for the other team. Hey, suit yourself, Suburban Joe Farve.

And if lacrosse is emblematic of the priceless lessons of sports, the FallBrawl is emblematic of the lax world. More than 90 teams come from all over the Mid-Atlantic. Braden’s team grabs first in its division, Devlin’s team gets third place. Braden is a tough guy, plays defense and puts more than several kids on the ground. Once he gets his stick under a player's arms and rips upward, sending the kid’s stick spinning end over end into the sky. “That’s what I mean, Brady boy!” I shriek. Dev is a finesse guy, gets assists and scores a couple goals, one shot bouncing into the bottom corner of the goal as Dev dives past a defenseman. “Princeton here you come, buddy” I whisper under my breath. Ah yes, the endless fantasies of a father.

Yeah, all these teams and sports require driving and games and practices. And, most important: Time. But what else are the three sons going to do with their Time? Listen to Nickleback while playing X-Box and text messaging on their cell phones? Since all three have none of that gear per Nellie edict, we’ll just leave that scene to the kids who are growing up to be IT professionals and will make tons of dough. My kids are going to focus on sports to the detriment of everything else and matriculate to an obscure Division III school, sit on the bench, and major in Sociology. Like dad.

When the championship series ends at dusk and we jump in the car to ride home, the sons are wiped out but exuberant -- 14 solid games between them, fired up by being with their closest friends, all that adrenaline and movement, sweaty, bruised, cuts on their legs, and two trophies.

We’re pulling out of the parking lot with a phalanx of other cars and the windshield wipers have frost on them and my breath is condensing in white clouds on the inside of the car window. Suddenly, Dev says with near alarm, “Dad, weren’t you cold watching the games all day?” “Are you kidding me?” I reply with disbelief. “I was watching you and Braden light it up out there. I didn’t notice anything else, pal.” Yeah, all about me, indeed.

The Fixer

2008-05-22T16:04:00.007-06:00

The request was simple, tersely delivered. “We need him back in the building at 1.”

“Will do,” was my terse response.

It was a meeting my boss was giving to a group of non-profit folks – each individual imbued with some ideals, genuine smarts, political skills, and whole lot of gabbiness. My mission: keep him on time, away from the gabbmeisters, and steer him through the labyrinth hotel hallways to the front door and into the car and back to the bureaucratic mother ship.

Hence, in bright lights, the one skill I’ve developed in my long political lifetime – aide-de-camp, special assistant, bagman, guy in a dark suit, white shirt, and rep tie. The Fixer.

Even since I came to Washington, I’ve been lucky to work for powerful and prominent people. You've seen me -- I’m the guy that is always with Him or Her wherever He or She might be, ensuring that they have the correct speech, the special award to be presented, the phonetic spelling of “Adznanyvir Schlappaduchesski” on a note card, checking to ensure the principal doesn’t get lost or stolen and gets what they want, no matter how outrageous. Today, it’s called “staffing” someone. Well, to me a “staffer” is some brainiac geek who carries around bulging binders and knows the details of Section IV, subparagraph 2 of the Hopelessly Complex Legislative Act of 2005.

No genius, I, my friends. Instead, I’m the Fixer. In fact, I tried to explain it my parents once, as they saw no relationship between the Fixer and a high-priced education. “You mean you carry notebooks and coffee cups and what not?!” my mother said incredulously. “That’s what the Fixer does,” I said robotically. “He fixes things.” “Coffee cups?” she repeated in a daze.

Tallinn, Estonia: It’s near midnight in a bleak, barely functioning ex-Soviet state. “Hmmmm,” says my boss, a regal Deputy Secretary of State in charge of foreign aid, “I think it would be grand and gracious to honor Prime Minister Grmylbk’s wife with a bouquet of 100 splendid flowers to symbolize the next 100 years of harmony between Estonia and America." I don’t even blink. “Check.”

Next thing you know, I’m hustling off into the shadows of a deserted street after whispered conversations with a greasy concierge and a cop, brand new US dollars are flashed, there’s a cab ride halfway to Latvia, a greenhouse run by a World War II German generator, a screaming ride back to town, and I’m in the hotel lobby with two huge bunches of fresh flowers at 7:30 a.m.. “Here you go, sir.” “I thank you for your prodigious efforts.”

This skill was honed at an early age. I distinctly recall an incident when I was 7-years-old; my father, a gracious guy, was being given the hard sell by some earnest furniture salesman. The guy was talking bonus this, half-price that. My father looked pained as he listened to the shtick. I instinctively knew what to do: I grabbed my dad’s hand and urgently said, “Dad, can you take me to the bathroom? I really gotta go bad.” The salesman shot me a dirty look, my dad smiled with relief, and I realized a career was born.

House Floor, U.S. Capitol: The Member stands there clutching colored graph paper and rolled up survey maps, talking to my boss. “Chairman, I really need this project …local mayor’s banging on me…only 13 million bucks….improve a lot of lives…economic development…reelection..” “Sure, Joe. Give the info to Jeff here and he can follow up with your people.” The Fixer swings into action. “I’ll take that,” I say matter-of-factly, grabbing the paraphernalia out of the startled Member’s hands. “Now let me get with the Army Corps hydro team and run the numbers on the levee option.” The two happy men drift away and I’m left standing alone, with two of the maps slowly slipping out of my grasp and falling to the carpet.

It’s not that these men and women can’t fend for themselves – they can. It’s just that the demands on them are such that it’s better to save the important stuff for guys like me. I call it the Hierarchy of Needs: these folks are high on the hierarchy and the Fixer takes care of their needs, or something like that.

Downtown Washington, prestigious think tank: A speech given by my boss on the weighty subject of health care, the dire situation facing the country, the financial sacrifice, generations fighting one another for resources, poor people, sick kids, the whole ball of wax. Afterwards, my boss strides out, serious reporters from major national publications gather round for additional Wisdom and the air hangs heavy with Meaning. Before anyone can get a word out, some elderly guy in shorts, t-shirt and a ball cap darts in and says, “Hey there, fella. I hear you run that big agency. See, I’m having trouble getting someone there to pay for this chiropractor for my back pain and I bet you could call your boys in billing and—“

I know how to handle this guy. See, the Fixer has to come through in any situation, no matter if it’s Estonia or K Street. There are countless challenging circumstances and one must adapt with instinct and poise.

I step up to the senior and say, “Sir, let me help you with that” and try to outflank him from the reporters and my boss. He protests, “What do you know about it, son? You’re not on Medicare.” “But I will be someday,” says the Fixer cheerfully, taking the man’s shoulder and arm and gently steering him away from the crowd.

Day Without End

2008-04-18T15:37:00.011-06:00

The announcement arrived in an email, fitting communication to a soulless drone glued to a screen in an office cube farm that stretched from Corridor G to Destiny. “Please join us in Take Our Daughters And Sons to Work Day!” Goodness. Finally the chance for my three sons to get a load of what the old man does every day of his moribund, monotonous life. In fact, I dimly recall this exercise in parental futility from last year. Back then, faceless human resource bureaucrats even gave us a check list to follow while emphasizing our career failings to our kids. Here’s what happened…

“On this day, children between the ages of 8 and 12 will visit the agency with their parent to learn about our work.”

“Boys,” I said in dramatic fashion as we sat in my workspace after lurching through an endless traffic jam of public servants, “My work is about changing the world. It’s all about thinking outside and inside the box, playing in the sandbox, expanding parameters, breaking templates, modeling models, framing frameworks, having dialogues with folks above my pay grade, singing off the same sheet of music, bringing my A game, taking it to the next level with my elevator speech, cross walking when I’m not partnering, and leveraging the metrics of everything I see. Now, hand me those rubber bands and paperclips – that’s right, next to the tape dispenser -- and I’ll show you how to make a catapult.”

“Explore with them the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for the future workforce.”

“Hey guys, here’s a skill.” I log onto my computer, whisper to them the secret Caddyshack password I use, and then when presented with a prompt screen, take a short cut to get to my Outlook email box, where there are no new messages for the day as of about 10:00 a.m. “Onwards, gents.” I take a bunch of papers that I haphazardly printed out, staple them together, and place in a wooden Out Box. ”What does that box mean, Dad?” says young Darby. “That means I’m done with that little project.” “What did it do?” he presses me. “Hell if I know,” I say distractedly, checking my empty email account once more.

"Expose the participants to an environment that values the balance of work and family life."

I expose the three to my workspace – they're crowded around my dingy desk in a cube with 6-foot high partitions. “Wow, Dad, you get to have carpet on your walls.” Yep, I tell them, one of the perks of being a key employee. The eldest, Dev, squeezes into a chair, Darby sits on the floor, and Braden crouches on the desk and peers over the low walls at my coworkers. I clear my throat and brush the glazed donut flakes off my tie. “Your dad is quite aware of the balance between work and family life and how the two intersect. For example, we play basketball all the time and I help coach your teams, right? So watch this,” and I wad up a piece of paper and shoot it at the waste can down the aisle outside my work area. It goes in. “See, just like at the gym or in the driveway, I can hit the 3-pointer here at work as well. Get it?”

"Showcase the abilities needed for the future workforce. "

I point to a stapler on my desk. “Dev!” I shout suddenly, “What do you do if that runs out of staples?!” He’s frozen in shock. “C’mon pal, you don’t have an hour to chew on this!” I shriek. “Call the stapler person?” he says hurriedly. ” Exactly, man! Good job.”

“The children will be able to shadow their parent and participate in other hands on and interactive activities."

When I hear the word interactive, I think one thing. So I take them to the copier room. “10 years ago, gents, this room was the nerve center of the modern office. If you had five copies of anything, you were a hero in a meeting. I know, because I often brought seven,” I say matter-of-factly. The boys stare uncertainly at the whirring machinery. “Now listen up, you rascals, because this is important. In the old days, you didn’t have machines that could collate. Can you say that word?” They repeat it with a vapidity that bolds well for following in Dad’s footsteps. I continue: “However, today, you can program the machine to actually staple individual copies together. It remains one of the major technological breakthroughs of our time.”

"The activities will reinforce the importance of education and preparation."

“Education and Preparation are important,” I tell the guys at about 3:30 p.m., reading from the Human Resources prepared statement. By now, all three sons are in daze from the office environment. As we review the day and the numerous coffee breaks, Braden notes, “Dad, you don’t even drink much coffee. You just sit around and chat with people.” “That’s right. It’s called workforce cohesion – everyone you see is in this long, tedious haul together.” “Maybe that’s why no one is smiling around here,” he says as he periodically peers over the partition walls. “Bingo, pal,” I answer.

The theme for this Day without End is “Making Choices for a Better World.” So as the wise father, I break it down for the boys. “My three loyal, optimistic, talented sons. Please look at your old man in his element here and then review all the choices you have before you. Make the right ones and you won’t have to bring my grandsons to this kind of world.”

Remembering WFB

2008-02-29T17:50:00.004-06:00

There’s been a tidal wave of eloquent retrospectives on the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr. Bill McGurn, Peggy Noonan, George Will, Rick Brookhiser, Rich Lowry – folks who knew WFB as a person and as a gargantuan ideological force. Most of what's written about Buckley mentions his massive intellect, his reach, his transformative ideological power. Everything written about him notes the sheer number of lives and people he touched. Count me in as one.

I’d read “God and Man at Yale” while a freshman at UC Berkeley, a highly incongruous spot to read such a book. In fact, Cal could easily have been viewed as the cultural endgame of what WFB glimpsed at his alma mater in the late 1940s. No precocious intellectual I, I didn't get all of the book. But planted on the parade ground of liberalism extremis, I sure as heck understood enough.

I transferred to Williams College as a junior, figuring on a different milieu in traditional, staid New England. I was soon a bit surprised to see around campus and inculcated in many kids nearly the same Berkeley ethos I’d just left – the apartheid “shanty towns,” the rants about multinational corporations and and baby grey whale seals and pesticides and greed and pollution and "workers" and yes, a militant vegetarianism -- the whole liberal shopping cart. Compleing the farce was a political science department chairman who was a proud Communist, an Austrian who wore leggings and a mustache like Hindenburg's. It was All Too Much and the logical refuge was National Review and WFB.

Spring 1983 -- I was living at home with my affectionate but dangerously liberal parents. I was interviewing with the CIA, freelancing for Surfing and Surfer magazines, and playing in a band. On a whim, I wrote him WFB a letter, enclosing my clippings, including some articles I'd written for National Review, and noted that while I wasn't a supercharged intellect, I was a muscular Christian, a true believer, and oh yeah, I got things done. One May day, the phone rang and Pink Lady mother answered. It was WFB. He told me he had a small project that needed sheparding along and he asked if I'd like to take the post. Fully aware of the reigning ethos at my alma mater, WFB said, in that unique lilt, "Of course, you can ascertain I'm taking a chance on a Williams man."

He took the chance, I did the project, which later became a book -- "Right Minds: A Sourcebook of American Conservative Thought," polished and completed by a much abler mind than mine belonging to Gregory Wolfe. In one of the WFB reflections, Bill McGurn, presidential speechwriter, chief editorial writer of the Wall Street Journal, noted that he had been edited by both WFB and George Bush. That got me thinking – hey, your’s truly, a political lifer, many miles removed from a talent like McGurn, can say that I was one of the lucky ones to have my work edited by WFB. The fact is, I’ve saved every piece of copy of mine he commented upon in the margins.

Following the project, WFB's ensuing letter of recommendation was solid gold in my gaining two newspaper jobs as an editorial writer at daily newspapers (at the young age of 26, no less), and later when I sought work on Capitol Hill. In fact, the imprimatur of NR and of WFB has never left my career -- it is the post of which I am most proud, and which entertains the most interest from my fellow drones.

As then as now: I didn't have the guns to succeed in the literary arena, unlike the battalions of superb conservative writers that emerged from National Review. Instead of being a thought leader in the conservative movement, I became a sort of shop foreman: A journeyman journalist at two conservative papers and NR, a political appointee in two Republican administrations, and aide to two senior, conservative Republicans in Congress. Hey, the mountaintop thought leaders like the Buckleys and George Wills and Peggy Noonans and Bill McGurns of the world need mechanics like me to run the machinery.

Many people have recounted their memories of the man -- I was lucky to see him a lot the year I worked at the magazine -- I even dined along with him once as he discussed ideas about the Young Americans for Freedom.

And everyone talks about his kindness. As a junior magazine staffer, I was invited and went to his very tony Christmas party. A man brought his mentally disabled son to the event, a son who was mad about Bill. Standing close by in a living room (and I recall this all vividly), I saw the son come to the side of WFB, touch his sleeve, and interrupt a conversation WFB was having with a collection of men and women. WFB turned, instantly recognized the boy’s condition, smiled, said “Ah, hello, my friend,” and proceeded to talk to the boy for about 10 minutes, a very difficult conversation given the boys earnest, stumbling speech. I gazed at this in utter awe. I was only 24 at the time and kind of a rough-and-tumble guy, but the scene was so touching that then as now, I start to choke up.

The soaring testimonials are rolling in from people of huge stature and deal with WFB's monumental mind, deeds, power, and impact. Beyond those, I like to think that WFB’s life was all those and something a lot simpler -- a testament to a graciousness and kindness granted to everyone he met – which is, as McGurn wrote, “all in all, not a bad ticket to carry into eternity.”

Nellie takes it to the goal on 12-year-old kid

2008-02-22T11:54:00.002-06:00

Going, Going....Arrived

2008-02-05T17:34:00.000-06:00

“A week is a year in politics.” It’s a trite catch phrase often uttered condescendingly by smarmy, insincere political types to anyone who’ll listen. I know. I say it all the time.

Well, 24 years is a couple lifetimes then, and the time in which I’ve known David Carmen, once a young, cheery organizer, now Washington uber-lobbyist. And, one of my oldest political friends.

I met Carmen in New York in the fall of ’83 – I was a young staff assistant at National Review Magazine, he was younger guy already in politics as an organizer. We had mutual friends at the magazine and he bought me breakfast in a New York deli on a quiet Sunday morning, at which we talked politics and journalism and Where We Were Going. To this day, as perhaps goofy as it sounds, it remains one of the key conversations I have had about the career I set out on.

Flash forward more than two decades and you have a dang good sense of where I was going and where I ended up – the cubicle farm in the Office of Whatever, Department of Redundancy. David? Well, I saw him recently at a monster blowout in downtown DC. This mega-bash was held in a former public library turned party mansion, the building awash in ghostly green lights on all sides, valet parking, a Beatles cover band, lavish trinkets, imported food served by fashion models, and 600 beautiful people.

It was David’s party – for his lobbying firm.

Carmen's rise is emblematic of how fortunes occur in politics. Now, ours is not a friendship where we’re slapping backs or chatting on about this and that seeing each other every two weeks. Rather, it’s two guys who’ve stayed in touch over a long, long time, never losing sight of one another.

Carmen’s made it in town the old-fashioned way -- on dint of personality, connections, good fortune, and oh yeah, innate talent. Navigating and hustling, sure. But what's most important? Producing. Getting clients what they want. It's as simple as that.

In New York, Carmen was an aide-de-camp for a guy named Lew Lehrman, who never won a political office, but who got attention galore, mainly because of Carmen. Lehrman ran against Mario Cuomo for governor of New York and lost, but he managed to stay in the GOP limelight and ran a grassroots group, Citizens for America, that continued to get him ink long after he should have.

Carmen left Lehrman and came to DC, armed with a self-described “nuclear rolodex” to build a government affairs business. At least that’s what he told the Washington Post Magazine, which put him on the cover as a as a guy who, yes, “came to town with a nuclear rolodex to build a government affairs business.”

Conversely, I leave New York, go to work on the Hill, go to Bush 41, go back to the Hill, come back to Bush 43 – I’m just marking time. Carmen, however, with this crazy ‘dex, is building a behemoth. Today, his firm has dozens and dozens of large clients in every field imaginable.

We meet for lunch occasionally – just to check in – and goodness knows we’ve changed since the deli in New York. It’s light conversation – sometimes I ask advice on stuff, sometimes he does the same. We could be Rotarians in Toledo, given our banter.

Then in the mail one day comes this invite from ole Carmen – whom I might add, has included me every year, in every party he’s had, even when I’ve been unemployed, or have not caught up with him in a while.

But life reaches these neat culminations in this town of towns, and so there I am on a Thursday night, outside this old marble library, the massive “Carmen Group” logo in eerie green searchlights, reflecting off the entire surrounding neighborhood.

Like all folks here, I’ve known hundreds of people in politics in Washington at various stages of ascent, stasis, and descent -- a week is a year is a life, remember? Rarely, however, do you get to see one individual go from the starting line and then break out of the pack. Carmen’s not at the finish line, either. But as to our conversation 24 years ago on where we were going, it’s obvious he knew where he was going – and has arrived.

It's Only A Game...

2008-01-22T17:00:00.000-06:00

Yes, we all know it’s a momentous time in sports – Super Bowl in less than two weeks, college hoops are five weeks out from March Madness, and pitchers and catchers report in 26 days. But let’s pause a moment, glance toward the hallowed gym at Potomac Community Center and focus on what’s really important. The time has come for Nellie to strap on his canvas high tops, hitch up his sequined trunks, grip his trusted whistle and become: Assistant 3rd grade Basketball Coach of the Bethesda Knicks.

“Gentlemen, I don’t want you to get tired and play like geeks. I want you to make those other little devils get tired and play like geeks.”

Thus begins my first pep talk to ten earnest 8-year olds, one of whom is son Darby. He and the other nine are excited to endure the harsh yet firm tutelage of the hardwood legend who scored two points in the last second of the California - San Francisco State game on December 8th, 1977, in Hearst Gym, Berkeley, CA. And if you don’t believe me, look it up.

I’ve managed to assemble a lot of hoop wisdom during my many years of mastering the ole peach and thus now I find a subtle perfection in my role as Assistant Coach. The Head Coach, also named Jeff, is a neighbor, a great guy, a student of the game, and the kind of adult all the kids like. We’ll call him “Good Jeff.” But enough about him.

There are certain themes I live by in life, and in hoops. Famed UCLA coach John Wooden had his multifaceted “Pyramid of Success.” I call my 8-point method the “Cycle of Fear.”

1. “When all else fails, make ‘em cry.”

My personal belief, honed from years of coaching 2nd and 3rd graders at the highest levels, is that that the keys to basketball are dribbling, shooting, passing, and frightening your opponents. And while I don’t have specific drills to deal with that last category, I do tell my boys that if you get under the skin of your opponents and upset them, their defense will fall apart and you can score easily

2. “Boys, let me emphasize: There is no `I` in Team. But there is a `Me.' So if you’re like me, just shoot the dang ball and everyone else just do what you have to do to get the rebound.”

As a famed ball handler, I’m a believer in individualism. It’s not who you are, it’s how much you score.

3. “Practice dribbling the ball 500 times in increments of twenty-five, rotating usage of your left hand and right hand, running in place for 75 steps leading with your right foot then switching on concurrent sequences.”

Folks, you have to break it down and keep it simple for 8-year olds, many of whom are so dazed by their overuse of video games and other foul modern appliances, that they can’t focus on what’s really important to me.

4. “Boys, since I was your age, I’ve been a leading proponent of the West Coast Flex Offense, emphasizing ball control, perimeter shooting, and double-post, pick n’ roll bounce-backs. It’s a hoop stratagem that will serve you well long after you enter 4th grade.”

You play today, you dream of tomorrow. Who knows? I could be nurturing a future star 5th grader.

5. “Rebounding. Is. Essential. That’s because none of you shoots very well and thus there will be a lot of missed shots and loose balls.”

If we can’t be honest with ourselves, who can we be honest with? I could give these children some sugarcoated fairy tale about the Game of Giants, but that wouldn’t be fair to them.

6. “It didn’t happen if the ref wasn’t looking.”

In preparing these young idealists not just for hoops, but for Life itself, the imparting of wisdom takes many forms and occurs at the most opportune times. Like getting in some cheap shots when you’re down four points in a game and you need a turnover.

7. “Pay close attention to what Darby does on the court because he understands the game. I know. I’m his dad.”

There are ten dads and ten moms supporting each team but it’s only Good Jeff and yours truly out there shaping these kids. Is it any wonder our kids never get it wrong?

8. “If you lose this game, I’ll come to your house tonight and steal all your toys.”

Discipline will be the signature of this season. We’ve already won our first game, and thank goodness Darby scored eight points to validate his Dad. Nine more slugfests to go on our way to an undefeated season and the 3nd grade Championship and probably -- jeez, I don’t know -- a profile piece on your’s truly in the Bethesda Gazette.

As I tell the boys at the end of every practice before making them run a dozen full-court sprints, “Gentlemen, in the end, it’s only a game. As far as you know.”

Nellie and Steve Case: "The piano man, man!"

2008-01-09T08:36:00.000-06:00

You probably remember that classic scene in “Wayne’s World” where Wayne and Garth get back stage passes to the Alice Cooper concert and when confronted with the legend himself, a nervous Wayne, utterly overwhelmed squeaks out, “You big, me small.”

Yeah, a scene in the American cinematic grain right up there with Rhett Butler giving Scarlet the what-for in “Gone With the Wind.” But as contemporary sociologist, Wayne had it right. The world is divided into two parts – those who are big and those who are not so big, i.e. small.

I was reminded of this when I saw Steve Case peering out at me from the Wall Street Journal recently. Case is now pushing some phenomenally successful, money-printing venture called Revolution Health. You probably recall him as the head of AOL, as in this from a business admirer: “Few people have had the kind of impact on business and culture that Steve Case has. As co-founder of AOL, Steve Case led the charge to make the Internet an essential part of everyday life.” Frankly, that’s not too far off the mark. Sure, there was some bad juju with the monster Time Warner AOL merger in 2000. But the fact is, he’s a major entrepreneurial figure in modern times.

You see, I knew Steve Case when. When? I'll get to that. Let's set the scene for the last time King Webmeister saw your’s truly.

It's a hot, spring Saturday in spring at the Washington Freedom women's soccer game at RFK stadium The pre-game warm-up is going on and my sons and I are lounging back in our mid-field seats. Suddenly, I notice a tall thin guy, dressed expensively, who is making himself conspicuous because he’s standing on a chair in a nearby section, taking photos of the team warm-ups with a zoom lens that's about 3 feet long.

Why, look at ... I say to myself. It’s Steve Case, my old college buddy!

I'm in a jolly mood, but alas, looking a bit rough. This is just a crazy soccer game so I'm in a white, Art Carney-style undershirt and an old pair of my Army camouflage fatigues with paint specks on them. My three sons and myself wear newspapers on our heads, folded like a pirate hats to keep the sun off our faces.

I spring to my feet when I see Case lower the camera and shout out, "Yo, Steve!"

But let's talk about the past.

1978. Williams College. Nellie is in a big dorm called Mission Park and Case is on the same floor

Our paths cross during the next two years on a causal basis in the dining hall and also because we each are in campus bands.

Mine is a jazz combo called Hangin' 4 in which I play mediocre piano. Case is a singer in a rock band called "The The." Figure that one out. He’s a pleasant enough guy and he's savvy about music so we talk about that and our bands. He was also from Hawaii and so sometimes we shoot the breeze about surfing and beaches.

We eventually graduate and go our ways. I hear through the grapevine that Case is a salesman for a big corporation, hawking pizza sauce or ketchup or something like that. I, in turn, am hop-scotching around the nation, unemployed half the time, the other half working various low-paying, meaningless jobs.

Next thing I know, it's the late 1980s and Case has started some firm called America On Line, which deals in the "world wide web" and "e-mail." Since I am still randomly affixing stamps to envelopes and mailing out my resume to disinterested suitors, I cannot even comprehend what Case's business is all about.

I am told by a fellow dorm mate that Case had the email idea come to him because while selling the taco flavoring, or whatever, he traveled a lot and got bored sitting in hotel rooms. After a night in Toledo spent staring at the phone, he wondered that if you could send voices through that little wire, why couldn't you get text through there?

Suddenly, it's the late 1990s and AOL and Case are everywhere kicking tail and taking names. He's got some hot blond wife and an estate in Virginia that's bigger than the old dorm we lived in. Meanwhile, bouncing from hack job to hack job, I have, no kidding, a 922-square foot house.

2000 comes along and Case takes a dive with the AOL Time Warner merger, the then largest media deal in the history of mankind.

Then, several years later, on a hot spring day, suddenly here's some homeless-looking whacko in the stands, wearing a folded newspaper on his head, a half eaten hot dog in one hand, yelling out: "Yo, Steve! How's it going, guy?"

Well, Case looked over at me and immediately smiled uneasily. I'm of course expecting him to recognize me so as he continues to stare with this kind of worried, anxious look, I shout out, "Nelligan from Mission Park! The piano man, man!"

He looks almost frightened by now. He gives a faint wave of his hand and lowers his head and scuttles in the opposite direction from where I’m sitting, leaving me there standing as the folks seated around fall silent and just stare at me, almost sympathetically.

A smile is frozen on my face as the newspaper hat slowly slides off my head onto my seat. I sit down and mumble abstractedly to no one and everyone, "Heh, heh ... used to know Case in college ... same dorm and all ... probably a busy guy ... meets a lot of folks ... Jeez, is this game ever gonna start?" I take a disconsolate chomp out of my hot dog.

Of course, the whole game I silently ruminated on how things had worked out in this world without end, amen. Designer clothes Case, multimillionaire master of the Internet; Nellie and 3 urchins in pirate hats. Yep, me small. Hell, me tiny.

After the game, the sons and I are walking toward the parking lot and the eldest, Devlin, says, "Dad, who was that man you were yelling at?"

"Oh, just an old pal from college who was part of the Internet revolution and is worth about 250 million bucks."

"But he didn't say hi to you," Dev persisted.

"Well, young man," I said matter-of-factly, "he didn’t recognize me in this t-shirt."

How About a Fresca?

2007-12-31T14:43:00.000-06:00

As we all know, it was Judge Smales who said, “Danny, there’s a lot of baaaadness in this world. I see it in my courtroom every day.”

It’s hard to disagree with my philosopher king and avatar, but I must. Being a good-natured soul, however naïve, I happen to think day-to-day life for most people is pretty good, despite the media and social focus on the inexorable crush of Everything. And that's why I'll follow lockstep the federal law requiring on the last day of the year that shallow, self-absorbed blawg-meisters address the hard realities of 2007 and look ahead with hope and promise to the phantasms of 2008.

2007: Oh, this is easy: It’s all about the prism of politics. And the kaleidoscope of 2007 was a mirror of 1995 with a refraction of light from 2000. Like the 104th Congress, in which I was a foot soldier, the 110th Congress was going change the world, doncha know. Man, 11 bruising months later, we get a dollar increase in the minimum wage, more loan money for sullen, underachieving college kids, a couple congressional ethics laws, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys gets a Kennedy Center honor. So that takes care of that.

But whoa, wait a minute. On the actual serious side, 2007 was a year framed by Nellie's Real People Tour. In my capacity as an apparatchik Chart Boy for various Power Brokers, Movers and Shakers, and Major Players (see April 27th post), I traveled to one-fourth of the states in the Union, visited dozens and dozens of cities and communities of various means, and spoke, no kidding, with hundreds of people. It was a nice break from my life sentence in a windowless office in a monolithic office building serving as a faceless, soulless bureaucrat pushing paper and sending meaningless email. From my American odyssey, several observations, however unscientific:

1. Guess what -- your typical person outside a 30 mile radius of the Capitol follows in only a desultory fashion what goes on in Washington. They don't watch C-SPAN, they don't paw through the Federal Register, they don't follow hearings in the Subcommittee on Paperclips and Office Furniture, all of which is probably why to a person they......

2.Think Washington is a town generally inhabited by full of people who are rather callow and self-important (c'mon, no way!). Americans don't have an intense dislike of politicians and legions of serfs (like Nellie) who run the gears of this tow; rather, it's more a disappointment people feel, fed by the endless stories of the perceived chicanery here, the superficiality, the grasping, the tantrums, and rigidity that politics so easily slides into. By and large, Americans get things done, whether it’s a week's work or a home project or raising kids. Outside Washington, the perception is that Congress does not get things done. And when they do get done, it's last minute, half-hearted, and filled with acrimony. Perhaps that's democracy with a small d, but it certainly is discouraging.

3. All that noise you hear about immigrant nation? Well, it's true. This won't strike Washingtonians as unusual, where you can be anywhere in the city and hear people yammering away in some clipity foreign tongue, but from the heartland, the coast, the remote reaches of small towns and extant suburbs, this nation is packed with immigrants from improbable lands. An entire Eritrean cadre runs the cab services in Kansas City; there are Russians and Nigerians running corner stores in Lancaster, CA; Guatemalans cleaning streets in Naperville, IL; Pakistanis in strip malls in Henderson, NV; Vietnamese and Thai running gas stations in Houston; Afghans in Harrisburg; Iranians in St. Louis. I've lived in cities like Los Angeles, Washington, New York, and San Francisco, where you expect enclaves of ethnics. But this spread of immigrants across the land is as steady as it is vaguely disquieting.

4. Out There, you run into people who actually do things – they run a restaurant, they are a building contractor, they work in a dental office, they teach schoolchildren, they buy and sell real estate, they manage a store, they make payrolls, buy commodities in bulk, work spreadsheets, and lead people, 3 or 53. In DC, and goodness knows I’m as guilty of this as any drone, it’s paper and phone calls and computer screens, and meetings and seminars and speeches and more paper. Within the District of Columbia boundary lies the softest economy in the land; out in the real world, people actually have to produce and sell and buy goods and services with their hands and savvy.

5. Despite the horror and doom you hear from the MSM, most people are doing pretty darn well. You move through communities-- in all regions of the nation -- and you can tell that the vast majority of Americans work hard, have a demonstrated sense of selflessness, are committed to their families and involved in their communities. The word here is decency -- it's palpable wherever you go.

Hence, the lessons of 2007, learned on the road with eyes peeled, a Chart Boy with peripheral vision and no free hands, thank you.

So 2008? Easy. The tidal wave of a presidential campaign engulfs us already, there will be no respite, we will all suffer mightily and beg for mercy, and all five observations above will have new meaning. How to handle it all? Easy. To once again quote from my intellectual North Star, Judge Smales, how about a Fresca?

Another Nellie White House Christmas

2007-12-10T13:58:00.001-06:00

"I saw Smales cheating on the 12th hole."
"Nobody likes a tattle tale, Danny. Except me."
-- Danny Noonan and Ty Webb, Bushwood Country Club

Washington, D.C. – Because I assume that modern society is informed and shaped by the ethos of "Caddyshack," I'll come clean, unlike Judge Smales, and admit this post was written exactly a year ago. Nothing changed this time around, except the envoleope wasn't in my chair. It was laying on my desk.

The envelope sat on my chair at work one morning. Inside was the invaluable payoff that only a shallow, self-obsessed functionary like me could appreciate: an invitation to the White House Holiday Open House! Sure, maybe I am a washed up Santa Monica surfer, a bane of my liberal parents’ existence, a nothing burger in a town full of Big Macs. But, forget that all, man – Nellie was getting on the Beautiful People train and the first and last stop was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Always one to stay grounded, I immediately began imagining the event – the twins, Jenna and Barbara twins would be there, winking at me. Karl Rove would want to know what I thought about Social Security privatization, I could swap Harley stories with that St. Albans Angel, Josh Bolton. Maybe even Laura Bush would be open to my irrepressible rap. Sure I’m middle-aged, plain, devious, and overbearing. But I sparkle inside. Or at least that’s what people have told me. People, I note haughtily, who were distinctly not going to the White House for some good old fashioned holiday open housing.
So on a balmy late afternoon earlier this week, I hustled on over to yes, “The White House!” as I said loudly to the taxi driver as I climbed in, so that all my equally faceless peers on the street corner could hear me. I was driven to the special entrance on 15th street that is open to the public, and soon was in front of a Secret Service guy with a transistor stuck in his ear. “You’re on the list,” he said causally. You got that right, brother, I thought, rubbing my palms together with glee. “I am indeed on the list,” I smirkingly said to myself, audible to anyone within earshot of twenty feet.
I passed through security easily with about 150 of the Prez’s best pals and soon was walking through the ground floor corridor in the East Wing. A stickler for details, the first thing I notice gazing out the windows to the south toward the Washington monument is couple of weeds growing through a nearby brick path. Well. There are no brick walkways at Nellie Manor but if there were, you can be dang sure there’d be no weeds in them. No wonder the country’s going to hell.
Then, some beaming elderly woman handed me a booklet, “Deck the Halls, Welcome All” – my first takeaway from the White House! Just in time too, folks, because now I didn’t have to accidentally “borrow” a pen or some other piece of bric-a-brac lying around to take home as a souvenir. I soon learned there would be no worry about that -- I wouldn’t get close enough to anything smaller than a chair or looser than a door.
Down an ornate corridor I saunter in a packed herd of well-wishers, flanked by huge red plants with red Christmas tree balls glued to them. Then it’s another corridor, then another -- I’m beginning to think this is just like the monotonous office building in which I toil, except for the inlaid marble floors, mahogany wainscoting, crystal chandeliers, tasteful throw rugs, and 20-foot ceilings.
At intervals, we are allowed to look in on several rooms. One was the “Library” so named because the sign out in front said it had 20,000 books in it, all about American life. Standing on my toes, peering through this narrow doorway, I could see about ten of them. There was also a fireplace and a few chairs. Hmm, I thought, this is where I’d probably hang out if I was the Commander-in-Chief.
Across from it was the “Vermeil Room”, where I saw a wood floor, a couple more chairs, and another fireplace. Before I had a chance to see what a “Vermeil” actually was -- a person or a certain kind of floor polish they used in there -- I was gently pushed out of the way by some nondescript guy and his matronly wife. I mumbled to myself like a crazy person -- “Well, I never….in the White House no less….there were no buttinskis during the Reagan administration…” Soon the sea of humanity ebbed on and flowed down another corridor.
Here was the East Room which they actually allowed us into. 35-foot ceilings and dimensions of oh, about 67 feet by 224 feet. Again, a fireplace, a couple stuffed chairs, and a long table. The Deck the Halls program told me that this is where the nieces of President Jackson went haywire one Christmas eve and “waged a tremendous cotton snow ball fight inside this room.” Well, good to know that kids didn’t have manners then, either.
Nice room, yes, but while all these crowds of obvious nobodies were milling around taking pictures, I still held onto my dreams. I gripped my program tightly and fingered the pen in my breast pocket, knowing that it would be only a matter of time before I’d have to whip it out fast when if I wanted to get an autograph from the twins or someone else important.
Then yet another hallway, ornate as the dozens of hallways I'd already been in -- red balls plastered, pine needle garlands, and some portraits. There’s Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, all with the men standing against backdrops of books and fireplaces and drapes. Off in a corner is an odd one, a painting of a brooding JFK, his has head down, his hands in his pockets, the colors light brown and grey and black, with a background representing a kind of mist.
Hey, what’s this?! A portrait of Hillary Rodham! She’s standing next to a table and what is here right hand gently grazing? Why it’s a drawing of a book – “It Takes Village”! You old rascal, Hil, I chuckle to myself. Subtly flacking a book in the East Wing about those marvelous towns in Africa that function like clockwork, except when people aren’t dying of malaria, starvation, thirst, or marauding Muslims. C’mon HRC, it takes a Special Prosecutor in that village.
Stopped before a huge portrait of either Dolly Madison or Eartha Kitt, I continue to note the crowds of ordinary looking folks milling. Jeez, the riff raff they let in the People's House.
Oh, here’s the “Green Room” – emerald city. Jefferson used to play his violin here I’m told by the booklet. How neat. I can’t seem to hear the echoes even now. Next the “Blue Room.” So named because you know why. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in this room with a “shaky hand” we’re told. Well, that settles that.
Next, the “Red Room.” My eyes are reeling. Something famous happened in here but I was too distracted by the trying to find somebody, anybody, to sign my dang program. And I was getting hungry. Good, because the next stop was the State Dining Room. Aha, I thought, this is where I can put on the nosebag, get a few of those delicious little wieners on toothpicks with the tangy mustard dip, and wash it down with some punch and maybe sneak the plastic glass into my pocket.
Well, folks, I want to tell you there is no chow line in the State Dining Room. Just another long table and a couple of secret service agents staring at me, making me paranoid, like I'm going to steal something. Which is true – I’d tried to twist off some pine needles from a garland and only got sticky fingers. I kept moving and presto, I was suddenly in the Grand Foyer and being hustled down a cascade of steps that lead down to the driveway and out to Pennsylvania Avenue.
I pause for moment on the ordinary asphalt driveway and wonder if this has all been a dream. The booklet tells me I’ve “now become part of the White House holiday history.” What? No twins, no First Lady, no souvenir pen or coffee mug, no tiny hot dogs, no Rove sighting, and now I’m standing on a plain asphalt driveway like the one I have at home. Still, I do have my booklet, and it sticks to my pine-tarred fingers as I walk proudly out the White House gates.

Service Lessons

2007-11-23T06:33:00.000-06:00

About a week ago a friend I know from the Hill nonchalantly said that he'd wished he'd joined the service when he was younger because, as he said, "These military guys seem to have their act together." I thought, yeah, don't they?

I spent the summer of 1989 at Ft. Benning, Georgia, Home of the Infantry, in BCT, or Basic Combat Training. I was one of 40 in a platoon of guys in fatigues -- 4th Platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 37th Infantry Regiment. BCT was followed by 14 years in the Army Reserve and the Army Guard as an enlisted man, where I performed routine duty interrupted by occasional bursts of brilliance doing KP, driving Humvees to pick up stranded seniors in snowstorms, and pulling guard duty at midnight on vast, remote bases all over the United States.

The amazing thing about the Army – the military in general -- that most who have never served don't ever realize, is the ability to take raw young men, utterly diverse in backgrounds and skills and behaviors, and teach them to become proficient at complex, detailed endeavors under extreme circumstances. I once heard a general say that a 19-year-old on patrol makes more far reaching national security decisions in 10 minutes than an academic egghead desk jockey in Washington makes in a lifetime.

Just imagine taking 120 people off the street: Here’s an M-16 rifle. In several days, you will be required to learn it as well as the people who built it, break it down into pieces as small as a pin, meticulously clean every part, assemble it back together and fire and hit targets 300 meters away – at dusk as the wind is blowing up dust from the firing range.

It starts with the M-16 – and it never ends. M-60 machine guns, M-240 grenade launchers, 60 mm mortars, TOWs – and that’s just some the equipment the grunt masters. Think about what it takes to drive a tank, fire an artillery piece, fly a helicopter.

Then there are the other endless realms of the infantryman -- read grid coordinates on a map and mark positions within feet; operate a radio on endlessly shifting frequencies; walk miles of terrain with a compass; treat wounds; recognize a minefield or an IED; handle explosives. The expectations are always high because the drill sergeants will ride you until you get it.

One day, 4th platoon was randomly chosen to be a test unit for the-then prototype AT-4 antitank weapon. All 40 of us were marched to a huge gunnery area, instructed in the use of the tube’s aiming and firing mechanisms, watched over by a cadre of clipboard-holding civilians, and told to fire away at targets hundreds of meters down range, where every round was tracked and noted. We'd been in Basic for four weeks.

As hackneyed as it sounds, every platoon is out of Hollywood central casting. The suburban white guy, the brother from the 'hood, the earnest geek, a quiet, methodical Hispanic, the country boy, the joker. You are all thrown together in true man’s environment. The conditions are simple and harsh. Yeah, there's some groaning, but it's not sustained. Remember, these guys are volunteers – these are guys who follow directions, like the rough and tumble, yearn for the camaraderie. Throughout it all are the indomitable drill sergeants, yelling and screaming at us all.

Looking back nearly 20 years, I recall the countless lessons, realized and unrealized then – mastering tough tasks, being in put in charge of your fellows, making mistakes, the physical punishment --- at the root of military training. Here’s a harmless example: An entire battalion worth of two-man tents spread across a field with the starting point being a 2-foot post hammered into the Georgia clay by an NCO. From this post, in precise form, all the tents were laid out exactly three feet apart on all sides, in a huge grid. After two hours of everyone staking out their tents, rope lines, digging small drainage trenches around the tents, every tent was in a perfect line from the starting point of that one stake.

The drill sergeant then called us into formation in view of the stake, yanked it out of the ground, moved it one foot over, pounded it into the ground, and said he’d made a mistake and that all the tents would have to correspond to the new marking. It was in indescribable shock that we all looked at that stake. Every tent, the ropes and ditches had to be moved a foot over, which meant the whole field of 400 tents had to be taken down and put up in perfect lines again. My mind reeled at the thought of the whole process -- it was already night, we had to eat, break down weapons, set guards, and get up at 4 a.m. the next day, and it was already raining. Only later did I realize there were a lot of lessons to be drawn from this -- perseverance, adaptation, teamwork.

I recall dozens of these kinds of unyielding exercises in the training I received: the air assault course where the rock hard NCOs got us to the top of a 120-foot repelling structure and drawled, "If you don't wanna go off my tower, go back down the ladder and there's a truck there that'll take you home to mama." There was the two week "school" with Special Forces and Rangers in Martinique (I was deadweight for the SF and Rangers but the training was centered around water courses and I made the cut because I was a good swimmer) where we scoured the island at night, lived in the field, and blew off enough smoke grenades to obscure Miami.

Throughout all this, and as large as an institution as the military is, I was always impressed with my fellow soldiers, virtually every one of them. And this was just the reserves; my respect for active duty guys was and is boundless.

Now, as I talked with my Hill friend about the service, I told him to go read the Washington Post obituary of a soldier killed in Iraq, Army 2nd Lieutenant Christopher Loudon of Brockport, PA, of the 4th Infantry Division. To paraphrase the words of someone who knew him, Loudon was always able to confront a miserable situation with calm and find a way to lead everyone out of it.

It was a keen observation of what the service produces and instills. A mixture of courage and savvy, talent and foresight, leadership and decisiveness. It would be inaccurate to say it's in every soldier -- I'm not sure those qualities are in me. But it's the ideal, and along with military service, few other institutions in American life -- law enforcement, fire and rescue, medicine -- prepare an individual to confront an awful, seemingly hopeless scene and immediately gather the resolve to drive on and inspire those around him.

Most important, it's that ethos we have going on every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kosovo and Korea and every other place where you find a platoon of guys in fatigues.

Taking The Hit

2007-10-26T09:20:00.000-06:00

Saturday afternoon and I’m sitting around with a bunch of guys watching college games. We’re Football Nation folks, and the channels are filled with Florida vs. Oklahoma, Akron vs. Toledo, Big Bad State vs. Awful Tech. Who knows whose playing --- it’s one big blur of painted kids dancing in the stands, cheerleaders hopping around, and a ball with white stripes on either end.

I’m always astonished by the ferocity of the college game. Big, strong guys with speed hitting their counterparts. And I’ve always had admiration for these athletes, able to condition themselves to take that kind of punishment. Because I couldn’t and didn’t.

I'd never played organized football before my junior year in college. My mom and dad wouldn’t sign the release forms in high school, explaining to me that I'd get irretrievably hurt. So I did other sports -- basketball, track, surfing and swimming. None of these were exactly like being president of the Astronomy Club in terms of the geek factor. But they weren’t football.

While at UC Berkeley, at that time a weak Division I school, I was a good enough athlete to play on the junior varsity basketball team where we’d scrimmage the varsity all the time. But true to my life before and after, I rode the bench like the pine-master I am. It's when I transferred to a small Division III school that I figured it was time to realize my gridiron dreams. “Time to show you what it's all about, mom and dad,” I said to myself, “You dang dream wreckers.”

When I showed up for the first practice at Williams, one of the assistant coaches who met me in the locker-room said, you want to try quarterback or receiver. I kid you not. The whole athletic scene was just less sophisticated back then. From playing other sports, I knew I had just enough agility and size to play some position other than Left Out. And I wouldn’t have even minded being fourth-string quarterback. But I honestly didn’t think I had the brain power to learn all that went into reading a defense and running an offense. So receiver it was.

To its credit, Williams is a Division III school where kids can participate in virtually anything they wanted if they were willing to show up to practice and tough it out. Plus, I have to say there weren't a lot of geeks at Williams, and there aren't today; nearly 70 percent of the student body, male and female, play some NCAA sport.

The whole football scene was like something out of an artsy, F. Scott Fitzgerald take on coming of age in the melancholy New England autumn. The locker-room was in an old, high-ceilinged brick field house, from which you walked down to massive fields surrounded by trees turning fall colors, with mountains ringing the whole valley. The girl’s field hockey teams practiced nearby and the teams mingled – guys in muddy pads, girls in tartan skirts -- after practice walking to the field house in the gathering dusk. Cut and print, baby.

The first game I ever played in was a scrimmage against Dartmouth and I got pounded on all three series in which I played. But it was against Colby that I really learned the lessons of the parents.

Third quarter, a play action pass. Fake to the half back and there I am in a simple post route turning into the middle about 12 yards out from the line of scrimmage. Our QB saw me, threw and I caught it. Simultaneously I got hit high in the chest and head by the safety and low in the thighs by a linebacker. Two terrific hits -- and I was knocked out.

As the pileup cleared away, I came to, still holding the ball with the ref reaching down to take it and mark the first down. I got up slowly and trotted back to the huddle with my head down, like nothing happened because I was completely and utterly bewildered. There was no pain, but my head was throbbing. I wasn’t sure what had happened but I dimly recall straining to remember the plays as they were called for the next couple series. There were no outward signs that I was different so no players or coaches were clustered around asking me if I was ok. Just a hard hit to be shaken off. Later, I realized it was a concussion.

It got worse. By the end of the game, I was breaking from the huddle knowing only from vague instinct where to line up and what patterns to run. We won the game and afterwards in the locker-room, I was moving slowly, my thoughts were disorganized, and I could hardly remember how to tie my tie. But amid the clamor of a win, nothing seemed unusual to anyone else. I knew something was not right with the already dim Nellie brain center. Some things were clear, like making small talk, other common details I couldn’t remember, i.e. I could barely remember my dorm and how to find it.

I went out to dinner that evening with a girl and her parents, who were from my home state of California and when I found her dorm, I had to concentrate hard to remember her name. Her parents had been at the game and her dad said, “You got socked!” “What a game,” I replied through the small aperture in the cement block that seemed to be my head.

Now I knew where the phrase "game face" came from. I wasn't talking gibberish and could hold a conversation, but I wasn't fast on my feet adn I couldn't remember vast areas of knowledge, like what classes I was taking and the names of professors.

Then there was the obligatory Saturday night call to my parents. I couldn’t recall my home number and had to read it out of my address book. I got them on the line with the usual rap. ‘Yeah, it was a good game…we won…nope, didn’t get hurt…had dinner with Laura and her parents from San Fran…yes, she’s nice girl…please send money…’ “Are you ok?” asked my father. “Oh sure, dad,” I said, sitting there like a zombie. At this point, even the game was a dim memory.

But the body heals, and when I woke up Sunday, things got a little more focused. All that day, the fog started to clear and by evening, I was recalling pretty much what had happened.

Today, I watch these college players – Division I behemoths, not Division II walk on scrubs -- take a beating on every play and I am always puzzled there are not more serious injuries. I took my hit, survived and my season continued and ended happily. The best thing is, mom and dad were never told – and not hearing the smug “I told you so” was worth much more than a day in a fog.

Yes You Can

2007-10-12T14:23:00.000-06:00

Los Angeles, California -- I actually know who said, "You can't go home again" because I looked it up after hearing people knowlingly toss off the phrase dozens of times. However, I never read the book beccause that would have required mental heavy lifting of which I'm not capable nor inclined. But I knew that someday the phrase would come in handy.

I'm in Los Angeles to sit with yes, my famed good ole mom, while she recovers from a mild illness. Not only do I get to come home again, but I get to listen to her biting liberal observations spliced with lamentations of her ideologically lost son. It's a real tightrope -- showering genuine affection on a woman who lambasts your world view at every turn (please see "Good Ole Mom" post).

In addition to criticizing my entire professional career, she has never been comfortable with my upbringing, coincidentally which she oversaw. That's because I grew up in standard fashion: pretty happy-go-lucky, mildly excelling at school and sports, with many friends and no irretrievable mistakes.

Moreover, I actually liked the many hackneyed features of adolescence and reveled in all the mundaneity that it brought. No tortured childhood here, folks. No brooding intellectual, simmering with rage at subtle or perceived insults, no lifelong grudges against The Man and the vacuity of modern society. No ravings of how plastic everything was and how I was "misunderstood" and my sublime thoughts were not appreciated. I loved the beaches of Santa Monica, where I was born, and the pleasant suburb and schools that were my lucky lot. My teachers and coaches, almost to person, were admirable and my friends from 40 years ago are still today.

Indeed, if you're most crushing adolescent blow is having to go to the prom with your childhood friend, then you're simply not fit to be some dark, tormented neo-Goth nor conversely, some shrill, righteous crusader avenging wrongs and all that stuff.

In addition to boring All-American stability, growing up in LA gave you brushes with future fame mesiters that put life in perspective. One of Peter Lawford's daughters was in my high school class; former UCLA and Denver Nugget great Kiki Vanderweghe once blocked one of my numerous ill considered shots in a basketball tournament. On my track team and in my French class was Christopher Knight, aka the world famous Peter Brady of the Brady Bunch. Our rival high school was quarterbacked by John Elway and one of my best pals intercepted him. John Coltrane's family lived a few blocks away; Joan Jett a little farther. The nifty brushes with color and style added a swirl to the plain vanilla childhood I had, all of it against the express wishes of my flinty, sharper, penetrating mother. Despite this letdown, she wasn't despondent throughout and even today is grudgingly aware of having raised a son whom you can introduce to friends.

For example, when her friends visit and ask what I'm doing, I reply robotically, "I'm a loyal shock trooper in the Bush Administration." "That's nice," they say politely and ask about all those "wonderful programs you people want to cut."

But the old ghosts of three decades don't die. Mom and I are lounging on the patio one afternoon, trading casual invective at each other when the phone rings. It's an old pal along with whom I'm meeting that evening with a bunch of guys from the team who still live in the area. "We're all gonna meet at the Sagebrush Cantaina and talk b-ball and girls," I cackle mercilessly to a world-weary mother. She sighs at this preposterous continuance of the juvenile, cornball son I've been and remain. "Jeffrey," she says sadly, "As the man says, you can't go home again."

For one of the few times in my whole life, I am actually prepared for good ole mom. I clear my throat and reply, "Thomas Wolfe was a disillusioned, embittered old Southern cracker" and then I deliver the crushing finale, adding, "Besides, he never played against Kiki Vanderweghe."

Fourth and inches

2007-10-03T14:42:00.000-06:00

It’s a weekday midafternoon and I’m sitting on on wooden bleachers at a local high school. Its early autumn, breezy with a few wispy leaves. And middle son Braden is playing in the first organized football game of his life – the big Landon-St. Albans clash of the 6th grade titans.

Kids’ sports are a crazed part of the national pysche. I know. I’ve got three sons currently on 8 separate teams. I coach my youngest son in 3rd grade basketball with my winning “Cycle of Fear” motivational tool and have a car full of sweaty athletic gear all year long. And since I sat on the bench in high school and college in three sports, I bring a good-natured resilience to All Things Sports.

First, I naturally have a little pep talk before the big game, full of a homespun Nellie advice: “Son, pretend the running back is a Democrat after Dad’s job. Don’t let him get by you!” Just kidding. Actually, I say, “Take if from your old man, when it's fourth and inches, go long."

Second, I’m past getting nervous or uptight about games. I once figured out that since all three of my three sons started playing organized sports, I’ve watched more than 680 games, matches, and meets, no kidding. I tell myself it's making me a better person -- as far as I know.

Third, I’m also past the point of putting some phony smile on my face and saying to my kids after some atrocious mistake, “Ohhhh, that’s ok! So long as you have fun!” To hell with fun. A lot of the sports scene is a grind and the takeaways for the kids willing to stick it out, even on the bench, are teamwork, perseverance, discipline, selflessness. If it was always “fun,” everyone would score a ton of points, even the geeks.

Fourth, I don't get crazy anymore about playing time, no matter what coaching conspiracy is going on. Braden plays nose guard and doesn’t start. Big deal -- it’s his first season. He'll either learn or become president of the Stamp Club. But he’s a solid athlete. Last weekend during a lacrosse game, Braden was playing defense, scooped up a missed shot near his own goal, got out of traffic cradling the ball, went over midfield, got body checked hard by four different guys, kept on his feet and then shot and scored from 10 feet out. Coast to Coast, baby. Now that’s athleticism. He's just got to learn it on a different field.

Fifth, I admire initiative in a kid. Braden is parked on the sidelines, in full game viewing mode, when the team runs out of water. Suddenly, I see him go go speak with the coach, leave the field headed toward the team bus, and then come back holding a plastic crate of full Gatorade bottles. I laughed out loud at the subtle perfection of it all. Yes, truly his father's son.

Last, I always look for best in a less-than-desirable situation. Braden got on the team bus right after the game and I went back to work in the city. Later that night at home, I told him, “Well, well. Your first football game. Man, I really liked the way you manhandled that Gatorade crate.” He grinned, and familiar with my shtick because it’s rapidly becoming his, replied, “It wasn’t going to get by me.”

20 Years, 7 Maxims

2007-09-17T17:43:00.000-06:00

It's a measure of my dim mind that it took Peggy Noonan two sentences to explain what I couldn't articulate during 20 years. In a recent coluum, she quotedWilliam F. Buckley Jr. observing that "Politics is not an ennobling profession." To which Noonan added, " Which means you better be good going in because you're not going to get any better."

It was as nifty a sentiment as it was keen. Of course Noonan deals regularly with grand thoughts and big ideas and velvet prose. Not that case with this ole primitive, so pass the ketchup and Ding Dongs, please.

But Noonan's reflections were on on my mind as I noted my 20-year anniversary in Washington and tried to frame something thoughtful about my tenure here. I arrived in 1987 in a Volvo station wagon containing two suits, a blue blazer, and how quaint: a couple of books from college courses in which I derived a C and a distaste for anything Arthur Schlesinger. Contrary to the popular mythology of the birkenstock clad, crunchy, peace-nic Volvo owner, my bumper sticker said, "I brake for fascists."

I'd come here because after seven years in journalism as a young, dogmatic, narrow-minded writer for magazines from Surfing to Naitonaol Review, and newspapers from the weekly Cambrian to the San Diego Union, I'd reached my creativite limits as a writer, i.e. duller and getting duller. So I got a room in a boarding house on Capitol Hill and three weeks later was working for a Member. The rest is political hack history.

20 year later, my cruurent office is 200 yards from my first office in Rayburn House Office Building, symbolic of how far I've progressed as a person and as a professional.

Naturally, one would think that after living and working in the epicenter of democracy all this time, during periods of peace and war, prosperity and doubt, the huge transition from the fax machine to email, that Nellie might have some sweeping proclamations and insight about what he's seen. Sorry to disappoint folks, but I came here armed with a bunch of never-miss lines from"Caddyshack" and "Animcal House" and that's where I am today. Oh, I could give you the usual boilerplate: politics is a tough business, democracy works, people are essentially decent, Americans are a fortunate people. And as Otter says, don't start a land war in Asia. The fact is, the big thoughts and truly profound things have all been captured by the Noonans and Buckleys of the world, leaving scant gems for us drones.

So if I don't have any shouts from Mt Olympus, a I do have a few murmurs from the cubicle.

1. Carry three pens and a clipboard with pad at all times. No matter what meeting or corridor conference you are in, someone important will say, "I don't have anything to write with," or your boss will say, "Make sure you write that down." Guess what, pal -- got it covered.

2. Always have a spare Oxford button down shirt and rep tie in your ofifce. (Because one of the pens in your pocket might explode, oh yuk yuk.) Actually, it may be your boss who needs it.

3. Nod sharply with a set jaw and determined look on your face whenever your boss opens his or her mouth.

4. Listen to everyone, from the folks in the cafeteria to the security guards, to the insufferable staff, all of whom know more than you. The corollary to that is: Don't speak unless 1. you're asked for your opinion, and 2. You have thought long and hard about what you're going to say. This sounds both elementary and rigid. It is.

5. Don't panic. My basketball guru, John Wooden of UCLA, was fond of saying in his basketball camps for us junior high geeks,"Be quick, but don't hurry." Think things out. Don't react immediately to any situation, particularly if you are bent out of shape by someone or something. When Senator Orrin Hatch gets steamed up, he writes letters to the editor on whatever topic is outraging him and then puts them in his desk drawer. Forever. Even though part of my family is Mormon, I don't have that LDS steadfastness. I simly steam for a while like some funky machine in Starkbucks. But I don't act.

6. Raise your hand. When I was in the Army, it was an article of faith that you never volunteered for anything. I never bought into that because I figured I could learn from anything and that somehow, someway, it might come in handy down the line.

7. The Mom factor, or, tell the truth. This sounds so damn hanckneyed it makes even me sick. But when you're backed into a corner, or when you see an opening to elaborate, stick to the facts, no matter what sounds good, no matter what you're trying to ward off. One small truth-streching turns into an avalanche.

I learned the first three before I came here. I knew if I followed the last four, I'd at least survive here. That's why I thought Noonan's observation so keen. I was a good-natured, decent guy when I got into politics. 20 years later, I may not be better but I'm not worse. Which, as Carl says so eloquently in the 'Shack, "is nice."

Leading With McCain

2007-07-17T07:00:00.000-06:00

It was a sublime Tuesday back in ‘95 and I was working for the House Transportation Committee (yeah, sounding like the forevermore Hill drone that is my destiny). Suddenly, the committee chairman, Bud Shuster, came to my office to ask me if we’d received any press calls about an obscure Arizona courthouse naming bill, moving through an equally obscure panel, the Public Buildings and Grounds subcommittee, from whence all names for federal buildings came. These are the tedious legislative vehicles where some dusty administrative building next to a strip mall is named for Mitch Blankenship, or Dobie Gillis, or whomever. Sounds innocuous, but building naming bills are a huge deal to constituents and their communities.

More than pleased to chew the fat with True Power on something I actually knew about, I told the Chairman that as a matter of fact, we had received a couple calls, which had surprised me, given that we were dealing with a $218 billion highway bill at the time, and the courthouse was something like twenty bucks to change a ceramic plaque in a dingy hallway. Well, as it turned out, on the Senate side, Arizona Senator John McCain had recently launched into one of his routine floor speech tirades about “pork barrel spending” and had singled out provisions in the highway bill. It was payback time – Politics 101. To paraphrase Danny Noonan in the classic “Caddyshack” scene with D’Nunnzio, “You go after my highway behemoth, you ain’t gettin’ no courthouse.”

An infinitesimal ripple in the great sea of politics, but instructive in looking at McCain. He was deliberately taking a huge public thwack at a House Member and Committee and only when his staff called over about the continuing delays to the Arizona courthouse naming bill did it become clear that everything had its price. When called by an ever-observant media about this clash, I said something like, “Well, fellas, as you know, these naming bills can be heavy lifting, like the ag bill or health care.” Eventually, the courthouse was named, but the subtle point was made by Chairman Shuster.

And like a lot of folks in politics, I’m not untouched by McCain. I recall, with a sting, the disdain McCain had for the work my committee did. I thought and think campaign finance “reform” is a mistake: I come from the slow-witted wing that think there’s not enough money in politics [see my last column--The price of Democracy] So 19 candidates, combined, spend not even a billion dollars in a contest run over a wealthy, geographically vast continent containing 300 million people, where the stakes are leadership of a $13.7 trillion dollar economy and the most powerful nation in the history of mankind?!

Neither am I a big advocate of cutting Member-requested projects or programs. After all, Members are responsible for raising tax dollars; they administer the federal tax system and take plenty of heat for it. So when it comes time to spend some of the money, they should have no say? Instead, we should have faceless, soulless federal and state officials – like your’s truly – direct every cent of your tax dollars?

I’m not smart enough to understand the immigration deal but I know it went against the grain of a substantial number of GOP voters. McCain, as a torture victim, highlighted Abu Ghraib and fought the administration on military tribunals and the prisoner treatment techniques. Since I’ve never been tortured (except for 8 long years in the 1990s), I have no qualms about killers of American soldiers feeling some pain, if it would save Americans.

And so today, McCain stands on the bridge of a once invinvible aircraft carrier, like his beloved Oriskanny, with a few senior campaign aides wandering around below in the smoke on the flight deck. He’s lost his alter ego, Mark Salters – who has as close a relationship with McCain as any staffer has with any Member in town. The campaign has a reported two million in the bank – perhaps none if rumors about debts are true. Just today he lost five campaign press folks. Things look as bad as he was checking in to the Hanoi Hilton.

But.

On the book shelf in the Nellie Den is the book “Faith of My Fathers,” personally signed by the author to my three sons, Devlin, Braden, and Darby, with the note “Anchors Aweigh”. You read that book closely and you’ll never complain about anything in your workaday life ever again. As well, adorning the den are photos of my kids with McCain at a fundraiser.

Call me pretentious, but I consider myself a guy’s guy. And I like leaders, even those that bang me around the head from time to time. Goodness knows I’ve not always hit it off with people who were leading me, whether my parents or on college athletic teams or in the military or in politics. But I know what it takes to be a leader and McCain, if anything, is that.

He may be lose the nomination, and how odd and sad it would be to see this guy, who has been through fire for so long, to drop out and continue his Senate duty, as other guys, against whom I have no ill will, surge ahead to the nomination.

Imagine a September of 2008 when McCain is out on the stump, talking up the GOP candidate, whomever it is, and he’s thinking back: Christ, 40 years ago today I was in Hanoi, hanging from a rope in a dark room, my shoulders pulled out of their sockets, my left arm paralyzed, my right knee crushed, and some commie improbably asking me for the names of the guys in my flight squadron.

What’s worse?