"Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked", by Chris Matthews

This book provides an in-depth account of the period of 1981-1987, when Tip O'Neill was the Houde Speaker during the first six years of the Reagan administration. Mathews, who has since become one of the most insightful poitical commentators we have, presents an informative first-hand account as he was O'Neill's Chief of Staff during this six-year peiod.

The narrative starts with Ronald Reagan's landslide win over the hapless Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. Reagan campaigned as a Washington outsider, just as Carter had four years earlier. But the difference between the two was that, unlike Carter, Reagan recognized that he would have to get along with the Washington powers that be in order to function effectively as president.

Consequently, he and Nancy moved to Washington after the election, and accepted dinner party invitations. After he took office, his first White House guests were Tip O'Neill and his wife. He coninued building his close relatonship with O'Neill throughout his presidency. The result is that he was far closer to O'Neill than Carter ever was, even though Reagan and O'Neill were far apart politically. As they used to tell each other, "politics stops at 6:00".

The rift between Carter and O'Neill is illustarted by snubs Carter was guilty of on his way in and on his way out. On the way in, he denied O'Neill and his wife seats at the inaugural ball, an inexplicable snub. And on his way out, he turned a deaf ear to o'Neill when O'Neill begged him not to concede to Reagan before the polls in California closed. Carter ignored him, and at least two incumbent Democratic congressmen lost their seats as a result.

The first crisis of the new Reagan administraton was the March 30, 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan's life. When O'Neill visited Reagan in the hospital, he got down on his knees and prayed for the president.

The scond crisis began on August 3rd, when the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) went on strike. Reagan acted decisively, issuing a statement that anyone not returning to work in 48 hours would be fired. Matthews says that "by breaking PATCO, he showed in a single executive judgment call how different he was from his recent predecessors." Dwayne Andreas, a prominent American businessman with close ties to Moscow, came back from a visit to the Soviet Union and told Tip that the Soviet top brass "credited Reagan, io contrast to his predecessors, with the strength of will to qualify him as a true leader."

Reagan's decisiveness stands in sharp contrast to that of our most recent president, the feckless Joe Biden. Two wars arose during Biden's presidency, and Biden's rsponse to each was characterized by a lack of the requisite decisiveness. With regard to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, Biden continued to provide military support to the Israelis, when he should have been firm with them and denied them any aid so long as they continued the genocide against innocent Gaza residents. How he could stand by and watch little kids starving to death because of lack of nutrition is unforgiveable. And with regard to Russia's war against Ukraine, Biden refused to provide the military support to Ukraine that would have allowed them to attack inside Russia.

The key issue for Reagan in his first year was the passage of of his 25% tax cut, which passed the House 238-195. O'Neill opposed this but decieded not to fight it when he realized that many in his caucus were going to support the bill. He figured that it was best to let Reagan have his cut, and then bear the responsibility for the consequences. Despite the adverse consequences (the deficit ballooned), Republicans since 1981 have pursued this bad policy ever since, pushing through similar tax cuts under George W. Bush and under Donald Trump. The theory of "trickle down" economics has proven to be bogus time and time again, but the American people are too ignorant to understand this. During the 1980 primary campaign, George H. W. Bush had aptly called Reagan's trickle down theory "voodoo economics".

On a more positive note, O'Neill and Reagan worked together to pass two major bills--comprehensive immigration reform and comprehensive social security reform. Reagan's approach to the latter was sheer genius. He formed a 15-member bi-partisan commission to address the fiscal crisis social security was facing. The result was a bi-partisan bill passed in 1983. Similarly, in 1986 comprehensive immigration reform was passed, giving undocumented people a path to legalized status if they'd been here since before 1982. Both of these accomplishments were possible because of the mature cooperation of Reagan and the House Speaker, cooperation we have rarely seen since in Washington. These two reforms remain to this day the last time either of these key issues has been addressed in any sort of comprehensive way. Indeed, cooperation betwen the two parties seems out of the question in the highly partisan environment we live in today.

One of the most important services Matthews provided to O'Neill was to get him to be more available to the TV cameras. Tip would hold 15-minute press conferences every day before the House opened for the day's business, but cameras were prohibited. O'Neill thought he didn't come across well on camera, unlike the photogenic Reagan. And O'Neill never went on the Sunday shows, as is so popular today, preferring instead to spend his weekends at home in Massachusetts with his wife. Matthews and the other staff members convinced O'Neill to open up to the cameras, and the results were quite positive. O'Neill had always seen himself as a "wholesale" politican, meaning he was an expert at one-on-one interactions. Reagan, by contrast, was a great "retail" poitician, reaching out to millions at a time by playing expertly to the cameras. Credit goes to O'Neill for being wise enough to change with the times.

Democrats have perhaps not internalized this lesson fully, as Joe Biden had fewer press conferences during his term than any of the prior six presidents. And when he declined the opportunity for twenty minutes of free air time on the Super Bowl pregame show when he was running for re-election, his campaign was doomed. Had Biden interacted more with the press, he might have been better prepared for the infamous debate that ruined his campaign.

Kamala Harris made the same blunder when she declined a chance to go on Joe Rogan's top-rated podcast. This would have given her a chance for people to get to know her as a person. When she declined, her campaign was toast.

"The Beast in Us"

In this psychological drama from Netflix, Claire Danes brings the same sort of manic intensity to her role as the writer Maggie Wiggs as she displayed playing the bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison in "Homeland". Also memorable is Jonathan Banks, who played the same sort of ruthless, tough-minded character as he played in "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul". I single these two out because they are both favorites of mine, but really the whole cast is simply awesome.

When Aggie reads from her new book in the last scene, the audience at the book-signing is mesmerized, as we are listening to her summarize the themes of this powerful story--guilt and inocence, grief and loss, good and evil, retribution, justice, vengeance, rage, and karma.

i binge-watched the eight episodes of this limited series in one day. Probably better would have been to stretch it out more, so as to better digest this intricate psychological story as it unfolds.

"107 Days", by Kamala Harris

This book was a huge disappointment to me. Harris has a short chapter on each of the 107 days of her 2024 campaign, resulting in an account that is filled with lots of mundane details on the day-to-day activities of the campaign, and with not enough philosophical reflection on the meaning of that campaign.

The part that was of most interest to me is her account of her infamous bungling of the question on "The View" of what she would have done differently than Joe Biden. She says she was ready for the question, but forgot how she had planned to answer it. Her planned answer was this: "I'm not Joe Biden and I'm certainly not Donald Trump...But to specifically answer your question, throughout my caereer I have worked with Democrats, independents, and Republicans, and I know that great ideas come from all places. If I'm president I would appoint a Republican to my cabinet."

Instead her response was, "There is not a thing that comes to mind". This was the kiss of death for her campaign. Harris explains her woeful response: "The way I heard Sunny's question was that it was asking me to be critical of Joe. I've never believed you need to elevate yourself by pushing someone else down. To do so would have been to embrace the cruelty of my opponent. In the moment, I didn't see a way to answer the question without doing that."

Do you see the problem with this explanation? If not, go back and read it again. Do you see it now? What Harris is saying is that it is "cruel" to disagree with someone. This kind of thinking is at the heart of what is so wrong these days with our political culture. We are unable to disagree with each other without being disagreeable, without demonizing the other person. There would have been nothing wrong with Harris pointing out some areas in which she would have doen things differently. But she was unwilling to articulate any of them.

After this debacle, her campaign strategist David Plouffe did an intervention with her, telling her bluntly that "People hate Joe Biden".

Harris worked very hard every day of the campaign, and did not deserve to lose the election because of one weak moment. But politics is an unforgiving endeeavor.

The real villlain in this story is not Kamala Harris, but Joe Biden, who refused to get out of the race early enough to give Harris time to build up her stature with the voters. Biden's legacy has been forever tarnished as a result.

Findlay Bridge, 12/12/25

After three weeks off, Ron and I returned to Findlay on the 12th for another aftenoon of duplicate. It seemed like a bad day for us, but the results show we scored 46.5% of the possible points. Here is the hand-by-hand analysis.

Board 1. We went down one at 1NT. Despite the negative result, we scored two points out of the possible three.

Board 2. Our opponents bid 3D, making 4. We tied with two others for top board, as one opponent pair, John & Jo, bid and made 3NT.

Board 3. They bid 2C, making 5.

Our two points gave us six for the round vs. Ann & Nancy.

Board 4. They bid 2S, making 4. Our -170 tied for top board, as two of the other N-S pairs got the bid and went down for -200.

Board 5. We set 3NT by two. I led from my 6-card heart suit, with Ron taking his Ace. He led back a heart, knocking out Ed's only stopper. This left me with four good hearts, but only the Queen of diamonds available to get back in, which I did on the 9th trick. I then took the last four tricks with my good hearts. This hand was noteworthy in that both sides bid and made a game! Kudos to Arlene & Mike for bidding and making a game as N-S, and to James & Clarence for doing so as E-W.

Board 6. This was a memorable hand. Ron opened 1D and I had six diamonds headed by the Ace, plus a powerful hand. Slam was definitely worth exploring, and I couldn't think of anything to do but go right to 4NT. When Ron bid 2H telling me we had all the Aces, I wanted to bid 5NT asking for Kings, but then I realized to my chagrin that his response probably would take us past 6D, preventing us from stopping at the small slam. So, I went right to 6D. When we took all the tricks, I feared that we had bottom board. However, the results show that nobody bid the grand slam, so we tied with two others for top board. The 4th pair made 7NT but did not bid a slam! It seems there should have been some way to get to the garnd slam, but nobody has come up with how it could have been accomplished.

We had a good round vs. Ed & Linda, scoring 6.5 pts.

Board 10. We played 2H and made 5, tying for bottom board. Only one pair, Jo & John, bid the game.

Board 11. They played 2NT and made 3. This gave us top board, as everyone else but Dennis & Brent bid and made the game.

Board 12. We set 5C by one. One N-S pair stopped at 4 for top board. Two N-S pairs competed and scored a part score in a major suit.

We scored 4.5 points for the round vs. Dennis & Brent.

Board 13. They played 3Nt and made 6 against our poor defense. (Or, it coud have been Jim & Kathleen's brilliant play, who knows?) Ed & Linda, who were having a horrible day, failed to bid the game and so were bottom board among the N-S players, while we were bottom board of the E-W pairs.

Board 14. We went down at our overly-ambitious 3NT contract for bottom board. The other boards stopped short of game.

Board 15. They played 3NT and made 4. Same with two other boards.

We totalled one point for the round vs. Jim & Kathleen.

Board 16. We played 2H and made 3. Same with one other board, while two pairs bid and made the game.

Board 17. We went down one at 3C. One pair bid and made a major suit game, while another went down 2, so we were right in the middle.

Board 18. THey set our 3H by one, giving us bottom top board.

We socred a paltry 2 points. vs. Bob & Karen.

Boatrd 19. They bid and made 5H. One pair made 6, and one only 4, so were right right in the middle.

Board 20. We played and made 2S, the only E-W pair to get the contract. Two points for us.

Board 21. They played 4H, making 5.

We scored 3.5 for the round vs. Jo & John, the top team.

Board 22. Arlene & Mike got overly ambitious with a 3NT bid. I doubled and we set them by 3, for 800 pts. Even without the double we would have had top board.

Board 23. They bid and made 3NT, but we got top board as the others made either 4 or 5!

Board 24. We bid and made 2NT, for one point.

Total vs. Mike & Arlene was 7 pts.

Board 25. They played and made 4S, while the contract was set at two other tables.

Board 26. They played and made 2H. Two pairs went down, while one made 2.

Board 27. They played 2NT, making 3. We were right in the middle.

We scored 3 pts. vs. James & Clarence.

Donald's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Has any U.S. president ever had a worse week than our current president has just had? I think not.

All week news kept on dribbling out about the"second strike" on the Venezuelan suspected drug boat in the Caribbean, a strike which intentionally killed two defenseless survivors. And each day it just got worse and worse for Trump and his idiot Defense Secretary. Congressional leaders were finally shown the video on Thursday, and all six Democrats came out of the showing and gave statements about how deeply disturbed they were. Significantly, only one of the six Republicans gave a statement. This was Senator Tom Cotton, who disgraced himself with some absurd pronouncements about how the two men were trying to turn the boat back over and continue their voyage, and how one guy took off his shirt and seemed to be sunbathing. But the kicker came on Friday, when it came out that the boat wasn't even going to the United States! Rather, it was headed to the South American country of Suriname, from where the cargo would be on its way to Europe.

The laws of war expressly prohibit attacking defenseless people. To the contrary, there is a duty to rescue them and render aid. And the whole idea that we are in a "war" with drug runners is bogus. Only Congress can declare war, and it has not done so. This whole metaphorical use of the word "war" has led us to an extreme position of "anything goes". In the 60s we had the "war on poverty", in the 80s we had the "war on drugs", and in later decades we had the "war on terrorism". It is high time to discard this careless use of the word "war".

It is only a matter of time before we will all see the video, and the Trump/Hegseth policy of blowing up Venezuelan boats will be revealed for the inhumane disaster it is. Hegseth's blaming the "fog of war" for the cold-blooded killing of two survivors will be revealed for the lie that it is. In fact, what the video will show is that for 41 minutes the two survivors desperately clung to life on a piece of the wreckage, and they were clearly visible. There was no "fog" obsuring them. And, after 41 minutes, a deliberate decision to kill was made. This was no "double-tap" attack, as has been alleged; rather, it was a second strike after a 41-minmute wait.

It seems inconceivable, but Trump actually chose this week to pardon a convicted drug trafficker who trafficked 400 tons of cocaine to the United States! This shows the hypocrisy of the man and his policies.

As if all this wasn't enough grief for Hegseth, this week the Inspector General's report came out about Signalgate. The conclusion was what we all knew already, that Hegseth had engangered our service men and women by sending out battle plans on an insecure public message platform. But this report puts it back in the public eye, and one wonders how long Hegseth can stay in his job, a job he is totally unqualified for. Already there are cracks in support for Hegseth among Congressional Republicans. But Trump llikes Hegseth, so it would be hard for Trump to fire him. Insiders say that nobody else at the White House or in Copngress likes Hegseth, but only Trump's opinion matters at this point.

Hegseth's reaction to the IG's report was that it was a "total exoneraton". This is complete balderdash. The truth is just the opposite; the report found that he had endangered U.S. service people with hs reckless actions.

To make matters worse for Trump, he had a disastrous Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. The rolling cameras caught him repeatedly falling asleep during the meeting. And the presentations of his Cabinet secretaries were as embarrassingly sycophantic as ever, with each heaping praise upon their great leader.

But the most embarrassing part occurred when it came time for Trump to speak. He repeated a litany of lies as is his custom. But his problem here is that the average voter knows first-hand that Trump's statement that he "stopped inflation in its tracks" is dead wrong. And that voter knows that the affordability issue is not a Democratic "con job" as Trump stated. The fact is that grocery prices have gone up since Trump took office in January, Trump's lies to the contrary notwithstanding. Trump has not even lowered the rate of inflation, let alone stopped it.

Why Trump would again claim that he has brought down drug prices "700%" is beyond me. He has been called out in the past for this ridiculous claim (you can't reduce prices by more than 100%!), but he refuses to learn from past mistakes, and insists on making a fool of himself.

Trump ludicrously claimed that his tariffs have brought in trillions of dollars, andd could result in no income tax. The fact is tariff revenue is running at $165 billion this year, up $88 billion from last year. The idea that we could eliminate the income tax is pure fantasy.

Trump repeated his false claim that “Biden gave away $350 billion” in aid to Ukraine, when the actual disbursements have totalled only $94 billion, much of which was spent in the U.S.

Trump made the false claim that Washington D.C. now has "no murders", echoing the claim he made the week before that the capital hadn’t had a single murder “in six months.” Totally false.

Referring to the strikes on Venezuelan ships, Trump made the absurd claim that "every boat we knock out saves 25,000 American lives. This claim is ludicrous. There have been 22 strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats. Under Trump's figues, this would translate to 550,000 U.S. deaths saved in a two-month period! But the total of all U.S. overdose deaths in 2024 was only about 82,000. Plus, we know that only a miniscule part of the drug trade comes from Venezuela. Almost all of the cocaine comes from Colombia, and almost all of the fentanyl and other synthetic drugs come from Mexico. Anyone with a third-grade knowlege of arithmetic can see that Trump's claim is absurd.

Perhaps the most despicable claim Trump made during his cabinet meetings was when he called Somali immigrants "garbage", and said they "contribute nothing" to the country.

This past week Trump's inhumane ICE raids have continued full speed ahead. Almost daily there are revolting accounts of the outrages perpetrated by these ICE thugs. Trump promised to deport "the worst of the worst", but 75,000 of those deported have no crminal record whatsoever.

And now, as I write this on Monday following the week that was, Trump made another one of his hateful attacks on a female reporter. When a reporter prefaced her question with noting that he had said he'd release the video of the second strike "no problem", Trump rudely interrupted her and said "I didn't say that". Actually, the videotape shows he said exactly that in his Cabinet meeting. He proceeded to berate her as "an obnoxious, terrible reporter". During one of his many tirades against women, he used the term "insubordinate"; this to me is a telling statement because it shows that he thinks reporters (and especially women) should be subservient and deferential to him.

Finally, on Monday it came out that Trump has done the same thing that he has accused four prominent Democrats of doing, which he says is "mortgage fraud". The four are accused of claiming in their mortgage applications that the proprty being mortgaged will be their primary residence. A diligent reporter discovered that Trump has bought two houses near Mar-a-lago in the exact same way, and has never lived in either of them!

I could go on and on, but I have to stop somewhere. Certainly this president ended the week in very bad shape indeed.

Two Unusual Autobiographies -- Cheever and Ellroy

I have recently read two unusual biographies, unusual because of a specific theme which runs throughout each one. The first one is "Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker", by Susan Cheever. Susan writes so beautifully about her personal life that I found myself wishing I had known her in her prime. I'm quite certain I would have fallen deeply in love with her.

She quit drinking in the early 1990s as she was nearing 50. This happens near the end of the book, and she doesn't say much about her new life as a sober person. She says "I live a quiet life now", and she writes of how she finds meaning in life through her two children and her relationship with God. Her book is very moving, and an easy read at only 190 pages.

The second book is "The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women", by James Ellroy. Ellroy acquired an obsession with women at the early age of seven, after seeing his mother naked, and his whole life after that is consumed with that obsession. By the time the book was published, in 2010, he had finally acquired some peace and stability in a third relationshp, after two failed marriages, but a brief check reveals that he and Erika separated in 2012. Ellroy has not written of the breakup, but in her memoir, "The Big Hurt", Erika Schickel says that Ellroy was "someone whose intensity eventually became unsustainable".

Besides the addiction to women, Ellroy writes of his other personal quirks, like a dislike of travel and a preference for dark, enclosed places. Since reading this book I have checked out some of his novels, and I have noticed that many of his characters share the same traits as he described for himself in his memoir.

"The Last Manager", by John W. Miller

This is an excellent biography of Earl Weaver (1930-2013), the legendary manager of the Baltimore Orioles, published just this year. Weaver grew up in the 1930s in a working class St. Louis niehgborhood located less than a mile from Sportsman's Park, home at that time to both the NL Cardinals and the AL Browns. His father, a dry cleaner, had the contracts to clean the uniforms of both the Cardinals and the Browns, so Earl was in and out of major league clubhouses at an early age.

Earl avidly followed the "Gashouse Gang", consisting of Dizzy and Paul Dean, Joe Medwick, Pepper Martin, and Leo Durocher. This was a time when the Cardinals were known as "America's Team"; it was both the southernmost and westernmost MLB team, so it was the closest MLB city for the whole western half of the country.

Even as a boy Earl learnd to think through strategy decisions the managers had to make. His uncle was a bookmaker, so Earl learned to apply probability theory to basic decisisons like the sacrifice bunt, the hit-and-run, and the stolen base. It took many decades for the rest of the baseball world to catch up, as by the 2010s the new science of sabemetrics, developed during the 1980s, had finally become widely accepted in the baeball world.

Earl was a standout player in high school, and upon graduation his father contacted the Browns about signing his son, but was told he was a "class-A player, tops", because he "couldn't throw or run". The Cardinals were more positive, offerng Earl $175 a month plus a $1,500 bonus. Earl signed, making him a pro at age seventeen.

Earl spent thirteen years in the minors, never cracking the show. His best chance was in 1952, when he seemed set to make the Cardinals as a back-up second baseman. But 35-year-old Eddie Stanky had been hired as the player-manager, and Stanky chose himself over Earl as the back-up second baseman.

Earl started managing in 1956 while still a player. He managed eleven and a half seasons in the minors. He major legue managerial career began in 1968 mid-season when he took over as the Orioles manager. He retired after the 1982 season, but came back two years later for two final lackluster seasons. Despite the last two disappointing years, his lifetime major league winning perentage was .583.

Weaver was a managerial genius, prioritizing on-base average, strike throwing, and elite defense before these things were fashionable. He got the most out of his entire roster with masterful platooning, always working to get the right people in the right positions to excel. Miller's biograophy superbly captures the essence of Weaver's remrkable life.