Harbor Cruise
I am moving slow this morning. I
rose at 0500, as usual, turned on the coffee and went back to bed. My fingers
are not cooperating either.
I went on the Kennedy School-sponsored harbor
cruise on MV Spirit of Boston last night. As a professional sailor, I should
know better. Never get on a ship for "fun." We departed at 1800 from he Soldier
Field complex and wove our way in two buses down to the International Pier. The
town is torn to pieces by The Big Dig, the multi-billion dollar project that
will transform this quaint colonial town into something new. Developers have
piled on and the wrack and ruin are quite extraordinary.
The Spirit was a
three-decker of massive proportions, held the usual bad buffet and earnest DJ.
The group has not firmly bonded yet, doubt that it will. We may be too diverse,
or too old and the course not long enough. I don't know yet if we will take on
the patina of the JFK School, regardless of how many tee-shirts we buy. The
school chartered two buses and we only solidly filled one. I suspect many stayed
home to read the material for class today. I was good enough to read two out of
three, and will hope to catch up on one of the breaks.
My attention span
is too short for cruises anymore. I stood out on deck for the most part, sipping
cheap white wine and looking at the planes hurtling into Logan and the islands
slipping by. I was approached by two of our Internationals, so I am getting a
pretty good idea of who our class collectors are. I will have to report this
when it is all over. One of them, my Taiwanese room-mate, was sleeping quietly
as we docked and later locked himself out of the apartment. He pounded on my
window to gain re-admittance.
I had a long conversation with our
Azerbaijani, Tariq. We talked about the politics of the coming Turkic hegemony
across Asia Minor and oil and gas. The danger of having America too close or too
far away.
I recall dancing with Christie, one of our handlers, the first
time I have essayed that activity since knee surgery last March. I am limping
slightly this morning. In sum, Day Three was good. It was hot but the humidity
had blown away with a sea breeze and it felt good, the sort of day that golfer
Gary Player used to say made him feel strong.
Academically it was
stimulating. We debated the Tony William’s DC-recovery metrics this morning, the
failed effort of the Social Security Administration to get our Personal Earnings
and Estimated Benefits (PEBES) on the web, and the disaster of the Reagan
Administration's attempt to restore tax exempt status to Bob Jones
University.
When we were talking about Tony Williams, the professor
mentioned that he had been a student here a few years back. He further recounted
several meetings with the District senior managers and I had an epiphany- this
is how this works. The ideas come from here, flow into the government and then
everybody comes back here in an endless cycle. What a club! Intellectually I
suppose I knew that, but the visceral realization of who these people are was a
stunner. These are the Pros from Dover, providers of the School
Solution.
There is an arrogance that comes with that, the knowledge that
they have read all the current literature and have the working plan. There
is a sense of entitlement that goes with it, something so ingrained that I am
sure they don't even recognize. These are the people the talk radio warns us
about. I was talking to Dr. Kelman, our poly sci professor. I noted that
graduates of the school were everywhere, applying his metrics and developing
five-point plans. He said they had a high rate of success with the mid-career
Masters program. The undergrads were a bit of a crap shoot, he noted. Some of
them wound up as investment bankers. He smiled and said he was proud that no
Kennedy School graduates were currently in jail.
We got off on the fifth
floor of the Alfred Taubman Building. Everything at Harvard is named after
somebody and some bequest. The endowment is colossal, in the tens of billions.
"Except for Taubman" he said, gesturing at the warm wood around us. " The
benefactor had been unfortunately convicted of some irregularities in the
Sotheby’s Auction House.The cherry and mahogany paneling was added right at the
end, at his direction, and caused some cost over-runs."
The buffet lunch
included three kinds of vegetarian quiche and fully accommodated all dietary
requirements of our diverse international group. Interesting program, I thought,
and scooped up some egg and mushroom. I thought about a five-point plan with
applicable metrics to verify performance.