If a client wants it, and can afford it, I have no problem with travel. To get me live and in person, just about anywhere in the world, all one need do is pay my bills for travel and lodging, plus eight hours a day or fraction thereof while going to the specified place of work and back. When I’m there, wherever that is, of course, I charge for an entire eight hour day for each day, whether the client uses my service or not. That makes hanging out in the high-ceilinged waiting rooms of Oriental marble palaces and American skyscrapers at lot more fun. In Europe, of course, people are too polite to keep me waiting like that, even if they have as much, or even more money than my clients in places like Qatar and Dallas do. And Dallas it was, this time, as luck would have it, the destination of my sojourn yesterday, flying first class, naturally.
What with the price of oil these days, not to mention a host of other factors causing the airlines to scrimp on everything, I’ve completely forsaken the food in first class. Which in this case was a moot point anyway, since, given the timing of the non-stop flight from Dulles to Dallas-Forth Worth that I was on, the airline had a plausible excuse for serving first class customers nothing at all. Not that I cared. I had my lovely bento box, stuffed, as my predilections dictated yesterday morning, not with fugu sashimi and Kobe beef, but with some of my favorite Continental delights.
These caught the eye of the gentleman in the window seat, who did little to conceal his interest in them as I opened the box for an in-flight snack. “Is that genuine beluga caviar?” His eyes lit up with interest as he feigned what was apparently a quite unaccustomed air of friendliness.
“Why yes,” I confirmed, spooning a bit, with the customary mother of pearl utensil, onto a toast point, “it certainly is,” I smiled, crunching slowly, then continuing, “Almas, from Iran. I got two large tins of it as a gift from one of my clients. And it’s therefore exempt,” I pointed out, “from the current Fish and Wildlife ban on beluga caviar in the United States.”
“I see,” my hungry interlocutor murmured, eyeing my Caspian sturgeon roe with an air of reverence. What the hell, I thought to myself, preparing a toast point for him – it’s not every day you sit next to Phil Gramm, the person once called “the meanest man in America,” and in first class, no less.
“Thanks,” he graciously said as I handed him the toast point, a tiny pyramid of fish eggs piled on it like a miniature of Cheops’ tomb astride the plains of Giza, “it’s been a while.” A beatific expression spread across his face as he slowly savored the flavor of my generous helping.
“So,” I ventured, “what put you on this flight from Washington to Dallas, Senator?”
Calling somebody who used to be a senator, but isn’t one anymore, is a quaint southern American custom, akin to calling somebody who was never really a colonel anywhere, ever, at any time, “Colonel” anyhow. The recipients of this consideration, by the way, invariably eat it up like, well, mounds of the best caviar.
Gramm shook his head sadly. “My latest opportunity to serve my country fell on hard times.”
“Oh,” I responded, “you mean you had to resign from the McCain campaign.”
“I…” Gramm acknowledged grimly, “well, I suppose I fell into the most common trap inside the Beltway.”
“You mean…”
“Yes. I started believing my own bull-hockey.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Senator,” I consoled, “it’s happened to the best and the brightest people who…”
“Yep,” he interrupted, “you’re right – so why shouldn’t it happen to a good old boy who flunked third, fifth and seventh grade?”
“Nevertheless, you managed to eventually get a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Georgia, by nothing but plain old hard work, Senator; and, as everybody knows, being able to work hard is much more important than being intelligent, particularly in the field of supply-side economics.”
“It’s a great feeling,” he confided, “to sit in first class next to somebody who understands that. I remember the good old days;” he sighed wistfully, lying back in his wide, plush, seat and closing his eyes, wrapped in a cotton candy cloud of nostalgia, “Milton Friedman, David Stockman, Arthur Laffer…”
“Ah, yes,” I chimed in, ”Arthur Laffer. The supply-side economist who concluded that federal government revenue is a univariant function of the tax rate with a maximum somewhere between zero and one hundred percent. The end-points are just common sense, really – if the tax rate is zero, the government gets no money, and, likewise, if the government takes all your income, then, presumably, you won’t bother earning any. And the region in between, that was…”
“Brilliant. Right – simply brilliant,” Gramm replied, smacking his lips lightly, the taste of caviar no doubt still fresh on his tongue. “Absolutely inspired. He wrote it out for the first time on the back of a cocktail napkin, you know.”
“So the legend goes,” I acknowledged.
“And trickle-down,” Gramm continued blissfully, “what ever happened to that?”
“Too much complaining,” I speculated, “from those ungrateful bastards who got trickled down on.”
“Probably,” Gramm nodded sagely, his eyes still closed, looking years and years into the past. “Reagan and the boys, Casey, Weinberger, Baldridge, Kilpatrick, Meese, Regan, Baker, Brady and me… we were doing them a favor, really, trickling down all over them. Why couldn’t they just relax and enjoy the unending shower? A nation of whiners, I tell you. Nothing but a nation of whiners.”
“Beats me,” I opined. “I should think the guys, at least, would learn to enjoy getting trickled down all over on by a fox like Jean Kilpatrick.”
“Yeah,” Gramm agreed, “you’d think so, but what can you do? You try to help them out by getting rid of all those stupid banking laws FDR came up with…”
“Oh,” I interjected, “you mean your work on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the one that got rid of all those silly fire walls between commercial and investment banks…”
“Yeah,” Gramm nodded proudly.
“And made it easier for financial institutions of all kinds to consolidate their businesses and employ new and more exotic financial instruments, like derivatives…”
“Right,” Gramm smiled.
“And write new paper, like sub-prime mortgages…”
“Oh, yeah, now you’re talking,” Gramm murmured with satisfaction, “as if what I did during the Reagan Administration for the savings and loan industry wasn’t enough, there was that, too.”
“And people complain about a measly million dollars Wall Street contributed to your political war chest,” I pointed out. “What a bunch of ingrates!”
“And whiners!” Gramm sat up, defiant. “Whiners with mental problems, seeing recessions that aren’t there! Here I completely modernized commodities trading back in 2000, and everybody complains because a couple of little loopholes, stuff anybody could have left in a law by mistake, just little, tiny loopholes, you know, that Enron used to make a few extra billion dollars…”
“As if it were a crime or something,” I offered.
“Yeah, right, exactly,” Gramm concurred. “As if what Enron did was some kind of crime! And now, here’s everybody leaning on poor old John to dump me, just because I made some beer money lobbying for UBS Investment Bank while working for the McCain campaign at the same time. And that [expletive] Robert Novak! You tell, me, ah, Mister…”
“Collins,” I told him, “Tom Collins.”
“Yes; Mr. Collins,” he said, waking from his daydream and addressing me with vigor, “you seem like a pretty smart, objective fellow. Do you think Novak and that [expletive] Carly Fiorina could have jumped any faster at a chance to knife me in the back?”
“Not much,” I told him.
“And could that snake in the grass, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, have run any quicker to get between me and John?
“If he did,” I suggested, “the man should be on our Olympic track team.”
“And how about Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes? Yonder they come, like blue tick hound dogs chasing a rabbit. They’re just jealous,” Gramm pouted, “that’s all – jealous. Just look what John’s doing now that they’ve tossed me out – running around promising financial bail-outs and big federal subsidies, that’s what!”
“Does it rankle,” I inquired, “that Senator McCain used to say that you were the strongest person he knew on economic issues, and now, he’s saying that you were just ‘one of a number of advisers’ on his campaign staff?”
“A bit,” he admitted. “Could you see your way to part with a mite more of that there caviar?”
“No problem, Senator,” I assured him, quickly piling glistening globes of exquisite flavor on another toast point. That second taste surely seemed to have a calming effect on him.
“The important thing,” he philosophized after swallowing the last of it, “is not to lose your sense of perspective. They’ll call be back when they realize they can’t get along without me.”
“You think so?”
“They’ll have to,” he confidently proclaimed. “Why, none of those clowns on his policy team now can tell Monetarism from Rational Expectations Theory, much less present one, single believable line of smoke and mirrors that even sounds like a decent reason for returning to a pre-Keynesian economy. And what does McCain do? He goes around telling everybody he’s a complete economic ignoramus – like that’s something to be proud of!”
“Well,” I observed, “Reagan and George W. Bush both came on like complete morons, and the voters lapped it up like the free food at happy hour.”
“True,” Gramm conceded, “but I don’t think that strategy will work this time.”
“Really? Why?”
“Ah,” he sighed, “I can’t say for sure. It’s just a gut feeling I have.”
“But, despite all that’s happened,” I asked, “do you still think McCain is going to win?”
Suddenly, a dark shadow fell over the plane as Gramm and I looked out, then up, to witness the solemn majesty that is a flock of pigs flying by, in magnificent numbers so large, they nearly blocked out the sun.
“Yes,” Gramm said, gazing out the window as a warm, comforting smile spread across his face, “in my heart, I believe so. I believe in the common sense and goodness of the American people, I believe in free markets, I believe in supply side economics, I believe in God Almighty and, yes, in spite of all that’s happened, I believe John McCain will be the next President of the United States.”
“Think he’ll make you ambassador to Belarus, then?”
“Nah,” Gramm snickered, “that’s just John’s weird-[expletive] sense of humor. He’s got bigger plans for me, you can be sure of that.”
“Any idea what?”
“Sure do,” Gramm whispered with a wink. “He’s already let me in on it. He’s going to create an entirely new, cabinet-level Department and put me in charge of it.”
“Do tell?”
“Can you believe it,” Gramm went on with a discreetly lowered voice. “I’m going to be Secretary of Bankrupt Real Estate!”