What Would Gerry Do?

Front Page: Today, I sat down and watched Katie Couric anchor the CBS Nightly News. She doesn't have a wonderful, bushy moustache like my good friend Walter Cronkite, but she did just fine. It was like watching my daughter read the news, even though she's a photographer.

All the networks, in fact, devoted their entire shows, basically, to the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001. Even though all the cable news programs are always carrying on about the war on terror, it really did feel like too much, flipping back and forth between stations and finding nothing but grief and memorials. I was president during some of our nation's previous darkest days (back when a president's resignation was about as dark as we could imagine), and I really don't feel like dwelling on them too much. I'm going to cringe a little when I watch President Bush speak about the lessons we've learned from 9/11/01 in a while; I wonder what lessons he's learned, exactly. I was also in the same position that he could potentially be in, as the president who pulled the last troops out of Vietnam. I don't think we can withdraw from Iraq right now - too messy - but dang if we didn't really have to be there in the first place. And can we please - pretty please - stop calling it the war on terror? Only call things wars when you can win them decisively. When you're battling things like terror or drugs or skunky beer, you can't win decisively unless you brainwash everyone who thinks terror and drugs and skunky beer are, if not good, then at least okay. Brainwashing isn't part of democracy, last time I checked. (And I check regularly, just to make sure of things.) It would also be nice if we would make an effort to help people without having to bomb them all first. People don't really like being freed, I've found, if it means having their homes and places of work destroyed by military might and the ensuing anarchy in the streets. I would also like a pony. Seriously, Betty and I spent the day quietly remembering and praying. I'm just venting. Sigh. Maybe this heart stuff and my old age are making me too soft.

Gerry's World: Maybe because I'm worried about becoming too soft, but I got on the erg today and rowed a 5k (or about 3.1 miles, if you're not European). I haven't done that...ever? Not sure what came over me. Perhaps it was the Coke Zero that I love so much. Or maybe it was the delightful sounds of the new Justin Timberlake album, FutureSex/LoveSounds. I know, I know: it doesn't come out until tomorrow. Well, friends, one of the perks of being an ex-president is that I get any album I want one day before it's released to the rest of you. Nyah, nyah. I'm especially enamored of track 8, "Damn Girl."

Today, I was talking with a few of my friends and close advisors, and we got into this whole discussion of what good public policy is, and whether politicians have an obligation to be honest, and then what 'honesty' even means. From there, we talked about whether public policy is about maximizing the number of winners and minimizing the number of losers, and then what 'winning' means, exactly. All this talk about semantics makes my head hurt. If you want to know what this stuff means, go look it up in a dictionary and accept the definition. You can question lots of things, but never the dictionary. As a former president, of course, I know all too well both the power of words and the sad power of meaningless rhetoric. To the latter, I say, "Blah blah blah." Maybe I'll watch 'Next' instead of Bush tonight - at least the words that come out of those mouths is supposed to be blather.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry