Shots in the Dark

What is it with Democratic presidential candidates and real-estate deals that don’t pass the smell test?

First Barack Obama gets a sweetheart deal from a Chicago political fixer. Now John Edwards is found to have sold his Georgetown mansion to a front company for two wealthy businessmen currently being investigated by the SEC. In a soft real estate market, Edwards sold the house for $5.2 million just four years after he paid $3.8 million for it. Edwards closed the deal the day before he announced his presidential candidacy; the shell corporation, used to hide the buyers’ identities, was created just a few days before.

John Edwards is running as a populist outsider. This sleazy deal is one strike against that image. The second is his gig with the massive and secretive New York hedge fund, the Fortress Group.

I’m not saying that Democrats have to take a vow of poverty…but when will they realize that working with hedge funds compromises their ability to speak out on issues of economic justice?

According to the Daily Princetonian, Larry Summers is in hot water again….

The contention revolves around a speech Summers gave this week to the Organization for Surgery, Health, Infection and Treatment, in which he suggested that women may be “intrinsically better” than men at giving birth.

It’s part of the newspaper’s annual joke issue.

I am constantly amazed at how deep the memory of Summers’ women-in-science gaffe runs. Almost invariably, when I tell new acquaintances that I wrote a book about Harvard and its former president, they say something like, “Oh, the one who thinks that women are stupid?”. Or: “The one who thinks that women should stay home?”.

Summers’ remark on women-in-science has over time morphed into a much broader indictment of his views on women generally. It’s now an avatar for general condemnations of sexism. Just listen to Martha Schwartz, the design school prof at Harvard who alleges discrimination in her department.

“The sexism is entrenched,” Schwartz said. “What conclusions can you draw? The Larry Summers one would be that maybe women are not predispositioned to be landscape architects.”

Fairly or not, Summers’ women-in-science moment has become one of the defining episodes—maybe the defining episode—of his career.

Here’s this from the Duke Chronicle:

When asked if he would ever consider leaving Duke to assume Harvard University’s presidency, President Richard Brodhead had a simple response.

“What a foolish question,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I already have a great job.“

“What a foolish question.” I know Brodhead has made some serious mistakes regarding the rape scandal—frankly, who could have handled it perfectly?—but I do like the guy. He’s an eloquent man.

Meanwhile, the Crimson continues its series on presidential prospects with this piece by Stephanie Garlow on Thomas Cech, the president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

(Incidentally, the Crimson calls him Thomas R. Cech, but it’s impossible to tell whether that’s because he uses his middle initial or whether it’s because the Crimson includes everyone’s middle initial—another reason why the paper should change that anachronistic and pompous policy. Does “Hanna H. Gray” use the H, or is that just the Crimson? What about “David R. Liu ’94″? A newspaper’s style policy should clarify rather than confuse; this one does the latter. Middle initials should be included when the subjects use them, or when there is another, well-known person with the same first name and surname. Otherwise, it’s not only pointless, it’s introducing an error, actually changing the person’s name. Sorry—it’s a pet peeve.)

There seems no doubt that Cech can run a science complex. But can he overcome his complete lack of Harvard connections? And the fact that he apparently owns only two suits?

Reading between the lines, Garlow’s piece suggests that the Nobel Prize-winner is a bit of a science geek. (Which I use as a descriptive, but not judgmental, term.) Not a huge shock there, given his work.

Still…not to put too fine a point on it, but Harvard just had a geek as president, and there were some serious downsides to that. (Moreover, Derek Bok is showing that not being a geek—i.e., having social skills, being a good listener, being charming, and so on, can really boost one’s leadership ability.)

But then, there are geeks who are socially inept and off-putting, and there are geeks who are kind of sweet and inspiring. Which kind is Cech? Is either really suitable? And will the university really experiment with a lab rat bred in the laboratories of Iowa’s Grinnell College, U-Cal Berkeley, and MIT?

The suspense builds…..

Yesterday’s discussion on the morality of finance sparked some interesting posts—thanks to all of you who contributed. Here’s one new and provocative offshoot.

I’ve lived in NY my whole life and I love the place, but the fact is, New York no longer matters. It is no longer the culture capital (that would be Los Angeles), the entrepreneurial capital (that’s Silicon Valley), or even the food capital (San Francisco). Why, it’s not even the city immigrants come to to make a start. But it is still the financial capital. Which is why it has been overrun with Wall Street types.

Los Angeles the capital of culture? The mind reels…but not necessarily because the proposition is wrong. Silicon Valley as center of entepreneurial capital? Sounds about right. San Francisco the capital of food? I’d argue with that. New York not the city immigrants come to? I’d argue with that too.

Out of all those statements, the one that seems most interesting to me is that New York is no longer the capital of culture. If so, it’s because of the Web’s impact on journalism and television and film’s impact on literature. It’s no coincidence that yesterday Time Inc. announced yet another round of layoffs at its magazines, even as it announced investments in its websites.

A national survey of college freshmen shows that young people seem to be increasingly engaged with their times. The American Freshman—National Norms for 2006, a survey of 270,000 entering freshmen conducted by UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program, found that…

1) today’s freshmen are increasingly politically engaged, and, as might be expected, increasingly take sides on issues. The percentage of freshmen identifying as “liberal” is the highest since 1975; the percentage identifying as conservative is the highest in the survey’s 40-year history.

2) Students are increasingly supportive of gay rights, with 61 percent saying that “same sex couples should have the right to legal marital status,” whatever that means. (Why not say “the right to get married”?) Broken down by political self-definition, 84% of liberals agree with that statement, but only 30% of conservatives.

3) Whether liberal or conservative, many students have deep ambivalence about affirmative action and believe it should be abolished—about 45% of liberals and 57% of conservatives.

4) A large and growing majority of students list “helping others who are in difficulty” as “essential” or “very important objectives.” About 67% of all students say that; at all-black colleges, the percentage is even higher, about 77% of students.

The rest say they want to work on Wall Street. (Just kidding!)

5) The number of students who say they want to “influence social values”—i.e., change the world—is at its highest level in 12 years.

I don’t find any of this particularly surprising—what with the war in Iraq, global warming, and the incompetence of the Bush presidency, it’s to be expected that young people would get more engaged with the world. The survey doesn’t break this down by socioeconomic status, but I’d be fascinated to know how political engagement varied with affluence….

Back when I was a young cub reporter type, I shared a group home in Washington with a number of other journalists, all of whom happened to have gone to Harvard: Ari Posner, who has gone on to great things as a screenwriter in LA; Andrew Sullivan, blogger, etc.; Carl Rosenblatt (son of Roger), whom I’ve lost track of; and David Hilzenrath, Harvard class of ’86, on the Crimson board, who worked for the Washington Post.

It was a bit of a crazy house. We threw lots of parties; the refrigerator looked like a war zone; I don’t think we cooked a single meal. Our furniture was…scarce. The bathrooms were entered at your own risk.

But the parties were great.

Ari, sadly, left to move to Los Angeles, where he would thrive, wed, and breed. Andrew would eventually buy a condo in a section of Adams Morgan which, he swore, was on the verge of becoming a hot neighborhood. It still is. Truth to tell, it was just as well; one grew tired of being woken up by the Pet Shop Boys every morning. (Although I do still have the cd that Andrew got them to autograph for me when he interviewed them. The funny part is, he wanted one for himself as well, but he was so embarrassed about it that he actually got them to autograph two for me….)

David, meanwhile, loved writing for the Post and was a dogged reporter; he broke the story that, while in prison, Marion Barry, former mayor and on-and-off crackhead, had hired a prostitute to fellate him during visiting hours. In Washington, publishing that story took some guts. But David loved his work. Every morning, he would put on a suit—we used to tease him slightly about this—grab his briefcase—we would tease him about that too—and go off to work. He was a company man in the best sense of the word, passionate about reporting and the daily work of a newspaper.

Looking at the Washington Post website today, I see that David has written a novel, Jezebel’s Tomb, which the Post is serializing on its website. Fantastic. It’s wonderful to see an old friend continuing to grow and challenge himself professionally. The book sounds like a good read—check it out.

I was too harsh on investment bankers yesterday, as some of you pointed out, in declaring that the profession has no social value whatsoever. That was glib and unfair. It’s correct, of course, that investment banking can provide access to capital that is essential for building businesses and creating jobs. And the financial tools—my 401k, for example— created by investment banking can certainly benefit individuals, as well as being of a broad economic good. On an individual level, plenty of investment bankers, hedge funders, and so on are extremely generous with their money. They give to charities, to museums, to schools, to hospitals, to many worthy causes.

That said….

I would wager that the percentage of their money which people worth over, say, $10,000,000 give away is significantly smaller than the percentage contributed by people making, say, under $100,000. Let’s be real, here: While some of these folks are generous, they’re not usually digging deep into their pockets.

I know a lot of investment bankers, and they all will tell you that they chose the profession for the money. (Some—not many—have an intellectual interest in it.) I have never met anyone who went into investment banking because he wanted to help other people.

So the social benefits of investment banking are entirely incidental to most of the people who practice it. As opposed to, say, doctors, teachers, social workers, members of the clergy, some lawyers, etc.

(In fairness, I must say this is increasingly true in the world of journalism; the inspiration of Woodward and Bernstein has waned, while the hope to work for US magazine and get on VH1 now seems journalism’s great motivator.)

As a result, many investment bankers are as likely to do social ill as social good—as likely, say, to shut down a business as to build one. Because personal wealth is the prime motivator.

Moreover, there’s no question that the culture of wealth they have created, particularly here in New York, is shallow, tedious, and self-absorbed. It’s absolutely true that New York City benefits from the taxes paid by investment banks and their employees. At the same time, this has become a less interesting, less diverse city because of the legions of twenty- and thirty-somethings who make millions and spend it on penthouse apartments, $1,000 bottles of vodka at silly clubs in the Meatpacking District, Ferrarris, and lap dances. (Investment bankers have ruined the Meatpacking District.)

I also think that the lure of these millions is having a profound and unfortunate effect upon younger people. It is the case that many professions are losing talented young people—even well-paying professions such as business and medicine—because they simply can’t pay what investment banks pay.

A friend of mine, a lawyer who is in her mid-30s and makes over a million dollars a year, said to me the other day, “I can’t believe I work so hard and make so little money. I don’t know why I didn’t just go into investment banking.”

This is a woman who could probably retire now, if she had to. But hers is not an uncommon sentiment. The rich are getting richer in this country—there’s plenty of evidence to show the growing inequity of wealth in the United States. And instead of trying to do something about that, more and more young people just want to hop on board the gravy train.

So it was unfair to say that finance has no social value—of course it does. But the downsides are significant.

Everyone’s talking about Barack Obama, now that he’s formed a presidential exploratory committee and all but said that he’s running for president. Could he beat Hillary? Does he have enough experience? It’s a little weird that he smokes, isn’t it?

Of course, now that the media has built him up, it will now proceed to nibble away at him. E.g.: In the Boston Globe, Joan Vennocchi points out that, though often compared to JFK, Barack Obama is no JFK.

I’m not ready to climb aboard the Obama bandwagon. New is nice, but in perilous times, new is not enough. Neither is hope, the other underpinning of Obama’s nascent presidential campaign.While Obama has a good model to follow, he has a way to go before he deserves billing as the next JFK.

And thus is conventional wisdom made.

Of course, Barama has never compared himself to JFK—not that I know of, anyway—and seems too modest a person ever to do that. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could drop the JFK paradigm—come on, Boomers, let it go—and consider the man on his own terms?

Another wedding in the Times Style section caught my eye, that of Andree Finkle and Carter Worth.

That’s Carter Braxton Worth, to you.

The short write-up included a paragraph unlike any I’ve seen before in one of these marital notices.

The bridegroom is a descendant of William Brewster, a religious leader of Plymouth Colony; of Carter Braxton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence; and of Chief Justice John Marshall.

Holy cow! This guy’s got more bloodlines than Count Dracula!

So what does this descendant of greats, named after a signer of the Declaration—who takes his lineage so seriously that he includes it on the form you send to the Times in the hopes they will pick you for inclusion—do with himself?

Mr. Worth, 40, is the chief market technician at Oppenheimer & Company, the investment bank in New York….

Sigh.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the mentality that says, “I’m a noteworthy person because of what my ancestors did,” but at the same time, chooses a career without any social value whatsoever…..

Did any of you happen to read the Wedding of the Week in the Times Style section on Sunday? It highlighted the vows of two Harvard grads, Rebecca Whitney and David Mandel, class of ’92, I think.

They started dating at Harvard….but only after Whitney dated Mandel’s roommate first.

“I was sad and shy and not exactly sure what one is supposed to do,” Mr. Mandel, also 36, said. Over their first summer break he sent her newsletters and mix tapes. But she didn’t get the message.

During winter break in their sophomore year he invited her to a New Year’s Eve party at his parents’ apartment in New York, which he gave solely to see her. As she left the party, he handed her a puzzling gift. “It was the screenplay of ‘The War of the Roses,’ inscribed ‘To my own Barbara Rose, who can hit me without hurting me and hurt me without hitting me,’ ” she recalled.

Smooth move, David!

Eventually, Mandel confessed his love.

As Dr. Whitney remembered it, “Dave said we either had to marry each other or never speak again.” She panicked, telling him she preferred to take things slow and stay friends.

Ah…the impulsive, all-or-nothing ultimatum, followed by the inevitable panic…a classic story.

He gave her the silent treatment, for the next four years.

Well, of course. What else would one do?

In New York after graduation, they bumped into each other at Gray’s Papaya on 72nd and Broadway, which recently raised its prices. Pretty soon, they had a fight over what had happened in college. Mandel finally did the smart thing: he kissed her.

It was their first kiss, and, Dr. Whitney said, “it meant everything.”

The next day he left for California.

Oh, ambition! Mandel had been hired to write for Seinfeld.

They began a long-distance relationship, but soon he was working around the clock. Within a year they had broken it off.

So Mandel did what all somewhat immature ex-boyfriends do: He humiliated Whitney by writing an episode of Seinfeld about her. A very funny episode of Seinfeld, you will recall, in which Jerry starts dating a woman with “man-hands.”

Whitney…winces when he mentions it…..

(It’s not online, but the print edition of the paper—sneaky!—runs a close-up of Whitney’s left hand. It lives up to advance billing. On the other hand, that’s a big rock!)

Nonetheless, while at med school at Tulane, Whitney found that she missed Mandel, despite the fact that he had some issues.

He lives in a dark Los Angeles apartment with blackout shades covering all of the windows to protect his collection of comic books, toy robots and “Star Wars” stormtrooper helmets.

The course of true love—it’s not smooth!

“If I could have found any way to live happily without him, I would have done it,” she said.

In some ways, one thinks that she should have tried just a bit harder.

When Whitney moved to LA to do her residency, they got back together (again!) and, after a series of fights—love not smooth, etc.—they got married. To their credit, the band played the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” which is an excellent choice. (The greatest pop song ever written? I leave that to you to decide.)

These two are either going to divorce in a year or have one of the great marriages in the history of the Sunday Styles section. I hope it’s the latter. Congratulations, Rebecca and David!