After Brussels, Washington is easy
The new British ambassador David Manning has intrigued Colin Powell and Condy Rice after being overheard saying that he was delighted to be posted to Washington, where "I am mercifully spared from the dark arts of diplomacy." Whatever did he mean? Condy Rice, who was on the phone to Manning almost daily when he was Blair's special adviser before and during the Iraq war, says she assumed he meant he was glad to be out of the Hutton inquiry mess. When Powell asked his European desk if they could shed light on the remark, they were told by one helpful colleague: "David means he's very relieved not to have been sent back to Brussels to get stabbed in the back three times a day by Britain's European partners."
The fiction of the ambassador's wife
Inside the embassy, it's not the ambassador that worries the staff, it's his wife Catherine, known to a wider and appreciative public as the novelist Elizabeth Ironside. Embassy workers have ac-cordingly checked the Ironside oeuvre, and were a touch alarmed to discover that the Mannings' stint at the high commission in India produced a novel (A Very Private Enterprise) about the murder of a British diplomat. Their time in Moscow (during the failed coup and the Gorbachev-Yeltsin transition) led to The Art of Deception, which marries the international art market to the Russian mafia. So there is some nervousness about what Catherine will write on the basis of her time in Washington. This is particularly acute among those planning the next embassy garden party since Ms Ironside likes to set her murders in gardens (The Accomplice), and prospective weekend guests from the House of Commons should be warned that Death in the Garden sees a British MP meeting a dreadful end.
The Kerry-Bush poetry slam
Regular readers of Tumbler will recall the affectionate poem that President Bush penned for his wife Laura on her return from a European trip last year. Here's another ditty, this time from Bush's now almost certain opponent in the November election, John Kerry. It is altogether a more political offering, with a nod to the conservationist lobby while also demonstrating the Vietnam war hero's fondness for hunting. English teachers may rue the scansion, but it might win the gun-lovers' vote.
I had a talk with a deer today.
We met upon the road some way
...between his frequent snorts,
He asked me if I sought his pelt,
Cos' if I did he said he felt
Quite out of sorts!
The Boston Globe slams Kerry too
The shoe waiting to drop on Kerry is the publication of what promises to be a hostile and well informed biography in April by a team from the Boston Globe, a paper that has waged a running feud with its local senator for years. Back in 1989, the Globe accused Kerry of being the "Senate's Romeo"; and claimed he was two-timing his then escort, actress Morgan Fairchild. Last year they claimed he was trying to win Boston votes by falsely claiming to be Irish, and caught him out inventing political endorsements he never had. Back in Kerry's hard-fought 1996 Senate re-election campaign, the Globe (wrongly) claimed that he had won his Silver Star in Vietnam by "finishing off" a wounded Vietnamese fighter. Once Kerry won Iowa, the Globe endorsed their local boy. The Globe biography is nevertheless planning a long section on the Kerry campaign's various dirty tricks, and has a quote from Howard Dean's former campaign manager Joe Trippi on the way Dean supporters in Iowa were "bombarded with computer-generated phone calls telling them to make sure to caucus for Dean and then giving them the wrong address." It was the Kerry team, Trippi claims: "They're the only asshole snake campaign that would do it."
But he gets the folk singers' vote
If Kerry wins, his inaugural ball promises to be the political version of The Big Chill. His campaign has secured endorsements from half the golden oldies still breathing, including James Taylor, Carole King, Bette Midler and Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary). That's the nostalgia vote tied up. Those of us who follow these matters guessed that Dick Gephardt's campaign was doomed when he proudly announced that he was being endorsed by Barry Manilow and Tony Bennett.
Wes Clark's financial tips
Wes Clark may have fought a dismal campaign, but he could have made political history by breaking the financial grip campaign consultants have traditionally exerted on the process. They have hitherto made their fat fees by acting as the agents who buy the television time for the campaign commercials, usually at 15 per cent of the total fee paid. Clark and his campaign chief Eli Segal (who helped run Clinton's 1992 campaign) have changed all that, instead offering Clark's ad maker Joe Slade White a flat fee of $75,000 a month on a take it or leave it basis. Leslie Kerman, the lawyer who negotiated the fine print of the deal, reckons it saved the campaign over $1m. But Segal's confident prediction that this would become the model for future campaigns is being rubbished by the veteran campaign-meister James Carville, who says he would have no trouble beating off any such attempt to pin him down to a flat fee. "I'll just tell 'em that the Clark campaign shows you get what you pay for."
