[Mb-civic] On the Road With JK and the V.P. By DAVID BROOKS

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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April 2, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
On the Road With JK and the V.P.
By DAVID BROOKS

I'm afraid I've been unable to complete my foolproof plan for North Korean
nuclear disarmament because I've been unable to rip my eyes away from the
celebrity hotel and backstage requirement lists that have lately been posted
on the Internet.

First came the leaked document from the vice president's office letting us
know that when Dick Cheney has some downtime at a hotel, he likes nothing
better than to crack open a diet caffeine-free Sprite in a well-lit
68-degree room and watch a television preset to "Hannity & Colmes." Then I
saw the documents, also posted on thesmokinggun.com, revealing that my idol
Bruce Springsteen requires raw oats, whey powder and nonfat soy milk in his
backstage dressing room, and that Mary J. Blige demands "No Dairy or Pork of
Any Kind!!" for her preconcert meal, even though she doesn't look neocon.

Now there's a leaked memo from the John Kerry campaign to hotel managers,
informing them that "JK hates celery" (too spicy, perhaps); that,
ungratefully, he does not eat tomato-based products; and that his Cobb
salads must have both balsamic vinaigrette and ranch dressing on the side
(flip-flopper).

I've long argued that the first time you see the Kerrys you think he's
normal and she's weird, but after you observe them for a while you realize
that inwardly he's the weird one and she's normal. This is confirmed by
Teresa Heinz Kerry's entirely sensible hotel requirements list: good air
circulation, flax bread and chicken Caesar salad with lots of garlic. When I
saw that Mrs. Heinz Kerry prefers Starwood Hotels' Heavenly Bed, I felt that
surge of solidarity we all feel toward those whose hotel mattress tastes are
identical to our own.

You may call this new passion of mine voyeuristic snooping, but I call it
piercing sociological research, and I discern in these leaked memos highly
significant historical trends, which of course is my job.

In the first place it's interesting to watch politicians and their staffs
try to come up with lists of items intended to produce sensual pleasure.
People who go into politics tend to be the sort of hyperambitious
workaholics who have repressed the Dionysian side of their natures in order
to become high school tools, college applicant all-stars and
twenty-something mentor magnets, in pursuit of their dreams of someday
becoming deputy under secretary of commerce. Then they flock to Washington,
a city with an erogenous zone the size of a pea. These are not people with
highly developed hedonism skills.

What they come up with, as they contemplate pleasure, is a sort of dweeb
decadence. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll are beyond them. Their fantasies run
in the direction of really well-selected energy bars. Their memos call for
an orgy of decaf, a Mardi Gras of bottled water, a Caligulan binge of
chamomile tea. It's like watching the Taliban production of "Entourage."

The other thing these memos illustrate is the psychotic nature of the
staff-boss relationship. Remember, it's overeager staffers who write the
memos ‹ supercompetent types who magnify their importance and
indispensability by making arduous demands on behalf of their superiors.

The relationship between staffer and boss is marred by the Jeeves Principle,
which holds that in most large organizations the really intelligent people
end up as subordinates while the blandly charismatic, effortlessly slender,
excessively well-groomed ones end up as top dogs.

Political and corporate aides have all the requisites for success except the
most important one: a complete absence of self-irony. Intellectually
superior but personally thwarted, the staffers respond to this disharmony in
the cosmic order, first by mixing their affection for their bosses with rich
veins of ridicule. (What else are we to make of the Kerry aide's assertion
that hotel in-suite movies "make JK very happy"?)

Second, they exact psychic revenge on their bosses by reducing them to
infantile dependence. Through flattery and by assuming responsibility for
all the normal details of life, these master puppeteers turn their bosses
into helpless Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, who require squads of
eager, efficient young people to pull them along.

If we allowed the bosses to write their own hotel requirement memos, they
wouldn't be filled with picayune bottled water specifications. They'd be
more honest: "Please praise me from the moment I walk in the lobby to the
moment I'm out your door. Please lose my schedule and misplace my ambition.
Please supply me with comfy bathrobes and give me back my youth."

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