Shots in the Dark

I’m not age-obsessed, truly….but who knew that Ann Coulter is 46!

My prediction: As she nears 50, Coulter will hit a mid-life personal/professional crisis, undergo a complete turnaround, and embrace liberalism, a la David Brock…..

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P.S. Also, can you bend your wrist at a perfect right angle to your forearm, as she can? I tried. It’s hard!

I like this piece by Phillip Carter in Slate, which points out that of all the military people interviewed by the Iraq Study Group, none were below the rank of lieutenant colonel.

For all of the time they spent learning about America’s war in Iraq, the Iraq Study Group failed to study the war at its most critical level: that of the grunts.

Carter then goes on to suggest why that matters.

Is this because the panel itself was composed of Washington wise men who, when they seek wisdom, reflexively turn to people they consider their sociological counterparts? The average age of the members of the Iraq Study Group is 74….

Here’s a suggestion for Slate: When asking your editors to pick their favorite books of their year, ban any choice that requires tacking on the phrase “by my friend.”

Working the list-of-30 story for every last drop of ink she can (and why shouldn’t she?), Marcella Bombardieri writes in the Globe that the list is top-heavy with scientists.

She continues to get more names on the record:

The latest group of contenders is dominated by scientists: Eric S. Lander , an MIT biology professor and director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a biomedical research center; Thomas R. Cech , president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Steven Chu , a 1997 Nobel laureate in physics, of Stanford University; Harold E. Varmus , a 1989 Nobel laureate for cancer research and the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center ; David W. Oxtoby , president of Pomona College and a chemist; and Mary Sue Coleman , president of the University of Michigan and a biochemist.

Also on the list are Richard H. Brodhead , president of Duke University and a former English professor at Yale; Steven Knapp , provost of Johns Hopkins University and a specialist in 18th- and 19th-century English literature; and Nancy Cantor , chancellor of Syracuse University and a professor of psychology and women’s studies.

All of which suggests to me two things.

One, that the real list is probably much shorter than 30, because so many of these names are easy to knock off. Dick Brodhead, after, what, two years as president of Duke? I don’t think so. (Plus, he’s got a little rape scandal to deal with…and like Harvard needs that publicity?) Harold Varmus? He’s pushing 70. Steven Chu? Almost 60. A brilliant man, but he’s never run anything other than a department of Bell Labs, 20 years ago. Thomas Cech? 60 in 2007. Eric Lander? Very impressive, but lacks administrative experience, and then, of course, the Broad Institute was Larry Summers’ baby, and appointing Lander would give Summers’ back-door entree to Mass Hall….

David Oxtoby? Hmmm…. That one’s kind of interesting. He’s about 54, very impressive…and graduated Harvard College summa cum laude. Plus, he watches The O.C.

So…really, this is the best the search committee can do after months of labor? The Corporation continues not to impress. (Heck, it looks like someone just googled a list of the Nobel Prize winners in the sciences for the past couple of decades and went through it circling names.)

Point two about this list: What’s striking about it, really, is how conventional it is. None of these names are particularly “out of the box” (argh, sorry); none are surprising.

This time around, Harvard is not going to gamble on a Washington-based celebrity.

On another note, where is the Crimson? It gets one scoop, then drops it like a dog losing interest in a game of catch. Instead, the paper publishes endless stories about the student council. Gripping stuff.

Compared to the Crimson of 2000-2001, which did impressive reporting on the Summers presidential search, this group is getting its butt kicked.

Perhaps I was wrong about the Iraq Study Group. Perhaps they’re even more befuddled and out of their league than I suggested.

I wrote that Lee Hamilton was one of the members who seemed on the ball. Now Mickey Kaus says, it ain’t so.

Kaus writes,

Of all the public figures I got to interview (usually as part of a group) when I was an actual MSM journalist, one of the two or three least impressive-and certainly the most disappointing, given his rep-was Lee Hamilton. Maybe he was having a bad day, but even on topics about which he was supposed to be a leading expert, the man was not mentally agile. …

Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan, has just denied any interest in the job of Harvard president.

Well…kind of.

Her denial comes through a spokeswoman, who says, President Coleman is not pursuing the Harvard position. She’s committed to staying here at the University of Michigan. The regents just recently renewed her contract.

There’s a bit of wiggle room in that, I’d say.

On another note, can someone please institute a ban on university presidents having spokespeople?

These people are supposed to be leaders, known for eloquence, candor, the ability to speak intelligently on a variety of topics. Does Harvard really want a president who issues non-denial denials through a spokesperson?

Especially considering that it just had one…..

I hope that someone writes a piece about the composition of the Iraq Study Group. Because even though I like that it has rebuked the president, its membership does not inspire confidence. True, some members of the committee belong on such a panel. But I’d say about half the group is political hackery, chosen for their gender, their race, or the party to which they belong.

Let’s start with who has the chops to be on this panel.

Given their careers in diplomacy and the military, James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Lawrence Eagleburger, and William Perry seem like sound choices.

But what about Chuck Robb? Sure, he served in the Senate and oversaw various intelligence matters. But Robb was never reputed to be particularly intelligent himself, and you wouldn’t say he was exactly a towering figure in the Senate. (Although he may have done some towering when he got naked massages from Miss Virginia Tai Collins.)

And what about Vernon Jordan? Where, exactly, does his Iraq-related expertise come from? The guy is a lawyer and senior managing director of Lazard Frères & Co. Could it be a coincidence that he was the only member of a minority group on the panel?

Then there’s Ed Meese, surely one of the most incompetent attorneys general of the 20th century.

Sandra Day O’Connor is a very impressive woman, to be sure. But what exactly is her foreign policy expertise? Or did her gender matter more in her choice? She was, after all, the only woman in the group. (I would have preferred Anne-Marie Slaughter.)

Leon Panetta was a California congressman who became a chief of staff in the Clinton White House and did a credible job in both instances. But I wouldn’t exactly call him a foreign policy expert. His areas of interest were the budget and agricultural issues.

Finally, Alan Simpson was a senator ten years ago who retired and since has hung his shingle at the Kennedy School, a PR firm, a law firm, and various corporate boards. In the Senate, he did not specialize in foreign affairs. Although he did make an ass of himself in the Anita Hill matter, when he threatened her with “real harassment, different from the sexual kind, just plain old Washington variety harassment, which is pretty unique in itself.”

What’s interesting as well is who isn’t on this committee, which is to say, a single person who’s not a Washington insider, “wise man” (or woman), widely respected within the Beltway for basically hanging around a long time within the Beltway.

It’s interesting to consider the group’s report with that in mind.

Perhaps as much as the mid-term elections, yesterday marked a symbolic end to the Bush presidency. The reason? Two otherwise unrelated events: the release of the Iraq Study Group report and the announcement that Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter, is pregnant.

Along with new defense secretary Robert Gates, the Iraq panel confirms that U.S. policy in Iraq “is not working,” as if we needed a group of Washington wise men (and one woman) to confirm that.

Reviews of the panel’s work vary, as might be expected. In the Times, David Sanger writes…

In unusually sweeping and blunt language, the panel of five Republicans and five Democrats issued 79 specific recommendations.

But in Slate, Fred Kaplan calls those recommendations “an amorphous, equivocal grab bag.”

Doesn’t matter. The pundits can fight out the details. In terms of public perception, we now have an esteemed group of the sage saying that Bush’s Iraq war is a failure. The White House is now perhaps the only holdout in this conclusion. It has become borderline irrelevant in the debate on what to do in Iraq.

As for Mary Cheney’s pregnancy…well, isn’t it delicious? The daughter of a vice-president in an administration which wants to ban gay marriage is a lesbian, has been with her partner for 15 years, and is pregnant.

“This,” the Washington Post writes with what must be a chuckle, “is the first child for both.”

The Times reports that Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, said that Mr. Cheney had recently told the president about the pregnancy and that “the president said he was happy for him.”

Wouldn’t you love to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation?

“Mr. President, remember that daughter I have…?”

The point is that Bush is not only losing the military war in Iraq—by the way, 10 American soldiers were killed in Iraq yesterday—he is losing the culture war here at home.

The anti-gay policies of the Bush administration have always been driven more by politics than by sincerity. (I don’t know if this makes them more or less repellent.)

Now there are no more elections in which Karl Rove can use homophobia to whip up fear/support for President Bush. Mary Cheney’s pregnancy could have a profound cultural impact; the culture war won’t end, but its politics have just become considerably more complicated. And, in any case, we can expect that the Bush administration’s attempts to build support by exploiting homophobia just ended once and for all.

Incidentally, do you think that Mary Cheney waited to announce her pregnancy—waited, indeed, to get pregnant—until this last election was over, or close enough?

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit…. She too knows that GWB is nearing his expiration date.

The Crimson’s scoop (see below) on the progress of the presidential search has prompted follow-up in a number of media outlets: the New York Sun (via Bloomberg), the Daily Californian, and the Boston Globe.

The Sun piece suggests that the leak is bad for Harvard.

“It is going to make the process so much more difficult for Harvard,” the vice president of the Center for Effective Leadership at the American Council on Education in Washington and a specialist in collegiate presidential selection, Claire Van Ummersen, 70, said. “It is very embarrassing. I think a lot of them will decide to simply not accept the nomination and withdraw at this point.”

In my humble opinion, this is a load of crap. I’m not sure exactly how it can be so bad for academic administrators to have it known that they’re being considered for the presidency of Harvard. It adds to their prestige on their current campuses, and gives them leverage in salary negotiations. This idea that everyone would be shocked, shocked, by the notion that they might quit, oh, Tufts, to become the president of Harvard is just silly. (I admired Lee Bollinger the last time around for making no particular effort to hide the fact that he was interested in the job.)

Moreover, let us have some perspective on the Crimson’s scoop. The paper reported that a list of 30 names has been given to the Board of Overseers, but could only confirm eleven of those names—and frankly, they’re eleven people that any reasonably informed search-watcher would have guessed anyway. (Drew Faust, Elena Kagan, Amy Gutman, etc.)

So how important is the scoop, really, until the Crimson finds out the other 19 people who made the cut?

The people on the list, particularly sitting college presidents, will now have a trust problem on their home campuses, Ms. Van Ummersen said. Many or all of those named will be forced to put out public statements saying they weren’t actively seeking the Harvard job, held by interim President Derek Bok since July, when Mr. Summers resigned the post after five years.

Cry me a river. For every candidate who doesn’t get chosen and thinks that his/her reputation is damaged as a result, there will be three who enjoy the attention.

The Globe’s piece, however, advances the ball.

…the university is considering a smaller group than the 30 names that the presidential search committee presented to Harvard’s Board of Overseers on Sunday.

Harvard is focusing on an elite group of academics, many of them with deep ties to Harvard.

And the Globe digs up two more names, neither of which are obvious: Kim Clark, the former dean of the business school—perhaps too old?—and Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Slaughter is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former Harvard prof; she is an intriguing possibility. But does she have enough administrative experience? And could she really address the challenges to the sciences?

On the other hand, she is a blogger, so she has that going for her….

She is also, frankly, something of a hottie.

Anne-Marie Slaughter with Jim Balsillie at a meeting of the International Advisory Board of Governors

While I was gone, the Crimson landed a scoop, snagging news of a list of 30 names of potential candidates for the Harvard presidency, compiled by the presidential search committee.

The leak came after the search committee distributed the list to the Board of Overseers, which suggests that the Corporation is trying to work more closely with the Board of Overseers and that there are risks to trying to work more closely with the Board of Overseers.

Unfortunately, the Crimson didn’t get the list itself, just the revelation that it existed, so it could confirm only 11 of the 30 names it contained.

At least three Harvard leaders made the list—Radcliffe Institute Dean Drew Gilpin Faust, Provost Steven E. Hyman, and Law School Dean Elena Kagan.

Tufts University President Lawrence S. Bacow, Stanford Provost John W. Etchemendy, University of Cambridge head Alison F. Richard, Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons, and Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman were among the prominent figures in higher education nominated for Harvard’s top post.

The list also mentions three leaders who made the final rounds of Harvard’s last presidential search, which resulted in Lawrence H. Summers’ selection in 2001—Lee C. Bollinger, now Columbia University’s president; former Harvard Provost Harvey V. Fineberg ’67, who now heads the Institute of Medicine; and Amy Gutmann ’71, currently president of the University of Pennsylvania.

It would be nice to know how the Crimson got eleven names, but not the other 19, when it didn’t have the actual document. My guess? Their source wouldn’t show the list to Crimson reporters, but would confirm or deny names that were put to him/her.

A few thoughts on these names. Some, it seems to me, are obvious but unlikely candidates. That group includes Steve Hyman, Lee Bollinger, Harvey Fineberg, and Shirley Tilghman. A couple have already proclaimed their lack of interest: Ruth Simmons and John Etchemendy.

The rest all seem plausible enough.

What’s striking about this list is the narrowness of its parameters (influenced to some extent, I’m sure, by the fact that if the Crimson was guessing these names, its guesses would be fairly predictable possibilities). But every one of these names is from academia, and most are current university presidents; the two farthest removed would have to be Elena Kagan and Harvey Fineberg, and they’re not very far removed.

Which suggests that the search committee really wants someone familiar with the lay of university land. No taking a chance on a Washington outsider this time; no gambling on a socio-political celebrity, as Larry Summers was.

None of these names would attract the outside interest that Summers did. If the Corporation cares about this, then it could make up for the lack of broader star power by picking a woman, the novelty of which would generate headlines.

If I had to bet right now, I’d put my money on Drew Faust…..