To have – and have not:Wall Street in Trumpland

December 7, 2016

Among President-elect Donald J. Trump’s new best friends is Wall Street. Trump has chosen Goldman Sachsers Steven Mnuchin for secretary of Treasury and Wilbur Ross for Commerce. Remember when Trump was the flip side of Bernie Sanders’ “Wall Street bad” mantra. Uh-huh.

Now some libs are gleeful at what they see as Trumpet’s betrayal of the Rust Belters. But having shared the desperation of the jobless, I find schadenfreude to be a useless emotion.

Besides, are we really surprised? The rich gravitate to the rich the way the beautiful marry the handsome, PhDs congregate and healthy people avoid the sick. (Because they might be contagious, don’t you know.)

Anyhoo, I’m not among those who are too excised – that means you, Sen. Elizabeth Warren – about Wall Streeters in the cabinet. Presidents always appoint people from the Street, because, let’s face it, very few commanders in chiefknow anything about money. That’s why George Washington tapped Alexander Hamilton for first secretary of the Treasury. You need the guy – or gal – who knows, as Hamilton did, that “Power without revenue is a mere bauble.” ...

Welcome, Pope Francis

September 22, 2015

Time to take a break from the sports world to say a proper hello to Pope Francis, who arrived yesterday in Washington D.C. There the jovial pontiff was greeted by a smiling, laughing President Barack Obama – a graceful man meeting a man of grace.

It was immediately apparent that Pope Francis intends to keep it real during his American sojourn (black Fiat, black shoes, eyeglasses he bought himself in a Roman shop). ...

The war that never ends, again

August 20, 2014

When I was younger, I called Vietnam – the conflict of my youth and my generation – “the war that never ends.”

Now Iraq is threatening to become that war as we are drawn back into its political and humanitarian crises. It was, of course, the wrong war, which President Barack Obama pointed out when he was a senator, the war for al-Qaeda being the province of Afghanistan. But we went anyway, little understanding the culture (echoes of Vietnam) or the lesson of Alexander the Great – that to conquer you must immerse yourself in a place and be prepared to risk being seduced, being conquered, by the place itself.

Alexander – the Greco-Macedonian conqueror of the Persian Empire – never left Iraq, dying in Babylon a month short of his 33rd birthday. We left, but in leaving, stayed.

Iraq figures into one of the four story arcs that make up my new novel, “Water Music,” about the tennis prodigy Alí Iskandar – a favorite character of my readers...