And then I wrote...

... that despite expectations, even retired people sometimes don’t have the time to do all the things they want to do and expected to be able to do in making retirement plans.

I have mentioned here before that I have several large moving company-sized boxes of books which were packed and sent home when I completed Navy service. They were in no order when I was in the Navy, and the moving van company’s employees just tossed books into a box until that box was full, even including the Gideon Bible, which was not mine!

As a result, even though I know I own a particular book, the odds of finding it when I want it are not good. Such was the case with Allen Drury’s 1959 novel “Advise and Consent”. Although it has been 45 years since I first read it, I did recall that it was about senate confirmation hearings on a candidate proposed by a sitting president to be his new secretary of state. I wanted to read it before, or at least during, those hearings this year on the confirmation of President Bush’s choice for that job, Condoleezza Rice. Just to see if there have been changes.

There are not many.

One thing I did notice was that there was a great deal more dependence on news from daily newspapers, as opposed to television. The amount of attention is probably just about reversed from then to now.

But not much else has changed.

A couple examples.

Very early, Drury writes that the senators who will be involved are not as much concerned about the fate of the nominee as they are about themselves: “Each senator is wondering what it will mean for him in terms of power, reputation, advantage, political fortune, national responsibility and integrity of soul.”

For those of you who listened to all or part of the Rice hearing, that should sound familiar.

And the real reasons for opposition to the candidate may not have been made any more clear then than this year, given the obvious, even then, leftist or liberal slant of the major media, as acknowledged when Drury writes: “The vast publicity machine that always goes into concerted action for any liberal cause had gone to work; an operation so honed and smoothed and refined that none of them even had to consult with one another. The instinct had been alerted, and. . . the salavations had come forth on schedule.” Do you see Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy and Iowa’s own Tom Harkin in there?

I have not finished my re-reading, and I don’t know remember how it came out. Did that president get his way? Presidents usually do. I intend to keep reading until I find out.

Meanwhile, Rice went to Europe, where our “friends” the French reportedly have referred to her as “the black tiger.” Would any American get away with that reference?

If Iowa Republicans had the guts, they could make things uncomfortable for Iowa’s governor and junior senator in hearings right here in Iowa. Gov. Vilsack has proposed Harkin’s wife Ruth for the state’s board of regents. The governor, in the wake of three resignations from the board, has proposed three staunch Democrats for membership, subject to confirmation. As senator, Harkin has had the knee-jerk response of opposing every important Bush nominee. Will Iowa Republicans remind him of that when his wife’s name comes up? I doubt it. She would probably be good. Better than the more liberal former editor of The Des Moines Register, Michael Gartner, who never met a taxpayer dollar he didn’t want and want to spend as rashly as possible.

I met Mrs. Harkin and their daughter at the newspaper office one year, when he was not along. What’s that famous movieland review line? Loved them; hated him?

Well, back to the novel.