Almost Perfect

Michael Phelps didn't break the world record in winning his 100m butterfly race -- not in speed, that is. He may have broken the record for incredible and dramatic finishes, winning by the length of his fingernails as he out-touched his opponent by 1/100 of a second.

But what I want to discuss today is the rendition of our National Anthem chosen for these games, which Phelps and his relay teammates have brought us 7 times now. It sounds easy to choose a recording of a song that's only 90 seconds, but really, rendering the anthem is a minefield of stylistic choices. I don't know who produced the recording that's being used for Beijing, but they did a fine job, with just one questionable choice.

The brassy opening, with the strings added at "whose broad stripes," is just what is wanted for this kind of event -- majestic, imposing, powerful, but not arrogant. It bespeaks confidence and satisfaction in victory, without getting in the face of the international crowd. Slow, rolling, with minimal ornamentation, the music says that we are great and proud and respectful all at once.

Things go somewhat wrong, in my view, as the rendition switches to stringy sentimentality in the "rockets red glare" section. Suddenly, we're all supposed to have tears in our eyes, and a little xylophone trill or some similar ornament added behind the word "air" is particularly sappy, like something out of a Disney movie.

Fortunately, this only lasts 20 seconds or so, less than a quarter of the recording, and then it's a return to majestic full orchestra for a clear run into the ending, at which point there's a surprise -- a three-note highlight on the last word, "brave." Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't like this kind of thing -- I can't abide the octave jump that's become common on the word "free" -- but somehow it works in this setting. It tells everyone that we are Americans, after all, and we have a little showmanship in everything we do.

With cheesiness on one side and excessive jingoism on the other, it isn't easy to play the anthem for the Olypmics. Nice job.

Thank Goodness

Often we bloggers adopt a sarcastic, acerbic, even snarky tone. But sometimes a story is so heartwarming, so charming, so life-affirming, that even the most cyncial blogger can't bear to make fun of it just for the sake of a cheap laugh.

Such a story appears today. It was a sign of the times -- an indication that the mortgage crisis had really hit home -- when we learned a couple of months ago that Ed McMahon, longtime sidekick of Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, was in danger of losing his house to foreclosure. The eternally charming McMahon explained his problem in a way that made it real for the struggling families of America: “I made a lot of money, but you also can spend a lot of money,” he said. He had defaulted on his $4.8 million mortgage and listed his six-bedroom, five-bathroom home for $6.5 million, but couldn't find a buyer. He was in real danger of losing his house.

Well, now The Donald has stepped in to save him. Yes, Donald Trump will buy McMahon's house (now listed at a mere $4.6 million) and lease it to him.

Just imagine. I mean, really, what is America coming to when celebrities are in danger of losing their $6.5 million homes. Seriously, is America so debased that Ed McMahon -- Ed McMahon! -- could have been forced to move out of his $6.5 million dollar home and go rough it in, who knows, maybe a $3 million home, or even have to go slumming in some $2.5 million condo somewhere.

It warms the blogger heart to know that there's a brotherhood in celebrity, a fraternity, a network, with bonds that tie celebrities together when times are tough. America has some problems, but Ed McMahon living in a four-bedroom condo is not one of them.

Well, thank goodness. If you're in danger of losing your home to the subprime mortgage crisis, you can, at least, rest easier tonight knowing that Ed McMahon still has his. I know I will. Thank you, Donald Trump.

Hidden War Costs

Condi Rice is really putting the screws to Russia over its invasion of Georgia. She said yesterday that "This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbour, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed."

Yes, things have changed. Look at what we're doing now that Russia has invaded Georgia. We're talking sternly about it. And we're scowling at them. See us scowl?

I'm sorry, but this is another hidden cost of the war in Iraq. I think that part of the Russian calculation in deciding to invade Georgia was its knowledge that we're not really in a position to respond militarily. We're distracted and overcommitted as it is. We can talk tough, but what are we actually going to do? We can hardly send troops in -- our troops are all busy where they are.

I know that Rice and the administration are going to try to put diplomatic pressure on Russia, threatening them with isolation, being booted out of the G8, and not admitted to the WTO. And good luck, I hope it works. But we'd be in a much stronger position if we had a realistic military option.

Olympic Footnote

And by the way, was anyone else depressed to learn on last night's Olympic broadcast that China has maglev trains that go nearly 300 mph? We have Amtrak.

The whole segment was about tech stuff in China that's cooler than what we have here. We're losing out to China in technological advancement. Tom Friedman is right -- we've lost our edge.

Olympics -- Why Do We Care?

I couldn't help myself this weekend -- I watched some of the Olympics. And it was great.

Why do we care? Do you watch swimming, or cycling, or running, or gymnastics, in non-Olympic years? I didn't think so. There are world championships in these events every year, or every other year, or something like that, but when was the last time you saw the non-Olympic competitions? Do you know who won the gold medal in men's pole vault in Osaka in 2007? (It was Brad Walker of the U.S.). Can you name the winner of any of the events? Do you remotely care? I certainly don't.

And yet, whenever the Olympics come round, I am strangely drawn to them. I don't know if it's the pagentry, or the politics, the nationalistic competition, or the judging scandals, or what, but somehow I suddenly care who can swim faster, jump higher, or dive more beautifully. I am awed by Michael Phelps, entranced by Kirsty Coventry. Bring it on, NBC, I love it.

Return of the Rovians

Last week, as Barack Obama addressed a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Berlin, John McCain talked two people in a supermarket. What can McCain do about Obama's ability to outdraw him by many times?

Attack, that's what. McCain is running a new ad that tries to turn Obama's advantage into a liability by painting him as an out-of-touch "celebrity" rather than a heavyweight politician.

What's interesting to me about the ad campaign is the strategy of it. It's obviously a return to Karl Rove's tactic of attacking the opposition's strength head-on. And where did Rove get this tactic? I have an idea.

Al Ries and Jack Trout, advertising gurus and authors of Positioning and Marketing Warfare make this suggestion in the latter book: if you're not the market leader, find a weakness in the leader's strength and use that as your point of attack. Don't find a weakness in the leader's general position. Find a weakness in their strength.

For example, they point to a rental car ad once used (by Avis, I believe) to attack Hertz. Hertz is the number one rental car company and had most of the customers. So the rival lured customers with this slogan: "The line at our counter is shorter." The weakness in Hertz's strength was that it inevitably had longer lines.

Rove was obviously trying this same strategy. One of Obama's biggest strengths is his magnetism. He draws enormous crowds. So count on Rove's disciples to suggest that there's something wrong with drawing big crowds.

I don't think it will work. Hilary Clinton tried the same strategy of suggesting that Obama was a crowd-pleasing empty suit. Obama proved too smart for that. His campaign, including his recent foreign trip, has shown that his talent is genuine.

But meantime, how about turning the strategy around? Obama's team should find the weakness in McCain's strengths as use them to attack.

I'm not clever enough to do it for them, but here are a couple of thoughts. What are McCain's strengths? Experience, of two kinds: Washington experience and military experience.

Well, the Washington experience should be easy to attack. Yes, McCain's served as a Senator for a long time and really knows Washington politics. But politicians have always attacked that as a bad thing, and it should be particularly easy to do that now. With 74% of people thinking that the country is going in the wrong direction, it should be easy to attack Washington experience as a liability -- Washington is what got us on the wrong track. So say that yes, McCain is highly experienced -- at the same old politics that got us in the mess we're in now. We need to turn the page and start fresh, so McCain's experience is bad, not good.

The military experience is perhaps a little trickier -- Obama doesn't want to look weak and doesn't want to make it easier for Republicans to push the line that Democrats don't understand that the war on terror is a military matter. But some appropriate attack could be made here too. We've lived for nearly 8 years under an administration that was overly adventurous and trigger-happy and that didn't understand that starting a war is serious business and shouldn't be done lightly. Do we want four more years of that? Do we want someone who's already beating the drum about going to war on Iran? With the country already war-weary, McCain's military experience could be suitably painted as a liability, not an advantage.

Home to Roost

Who can resist the late-summer sound of Republican scandals finally becoming official? Yes, we've actually known for months or years that Monica Goodling and others politicized career hiring at the Justice Department and that something was fishy about Senator Ted Stevens's relationship with an oil service company, but we didn't know all the juicy details, like the exact search string Goodling's predecessor used to screen out liberal job candidates, or just what renovations got made to Stevens's home.

The Goodling and Stevens scandals are philosophically linked. They show that when a party gets too much power, its people start to run amok. They start to accept power as their due. After a while they think they can do anything -- as though there's no accountability, no tomorrow. Would the Democrats be better? We can at least hope so.

Politicizing career hiring at the Justice Department is a true disgrace. I'm sure there's always some slight bias in favor of the incumbent party, but I know from my own days there that there was nothing like the systematic, heavy-handed litmus testing that went on under the current President. It's outrageous, and unnecessary too -- the career staff takes direction from the political leadership of the Department and defends the official line, regardless of their own political leanings. I sure hope the next Attorney General sends round a very public memo to everyone in the Department that states clearly and simply that career hiring is to be apolitical and meritocratic, period.

As to Senator Stevens, he has proclaimed his innocence, and of course we presume it until the contrary is proven. But the really sad thing is how small the bribes are said to be. The news reports say they are "more than $250,000," which I suppose is technically an unlimited amount, but which suggests that we're not talking about millions. Can you really buy a U.S. Senator with some drywall and a Land rover? Of course I'd most like to think that Senators aren't for sale, but if they are I'd hope they'd at least be more expensive than that.