Will Hillary Rain on Obama’s Parade?

The story I’d been hearing for some time has finally emerged in the mainstream media: namely that Hillary Clinton, her husband, Bill, and many of her major financial supporters, known as “bundlers” are so livid at what they see as underhanded — I’ve even heard it called “vindictive” — play by the Obama team, that it’s been suggested the Clintons intend to eviscerate what ought to be Obama’s coronation at the Democratic Party Convention in Denver next week.

There are reports that there will be a roll-call for delegates, in the hope that this crystallizes the magnitude of Hillary’s support.

Inevitably, all it would realistically do is highlight the rawness of the wounds from this year’s campaign trail battle — which is precisely what Obama wants to move on from.

The Clintons are doing their best to resist him.

Only a week ago, an effort was made by Hillary’s supporters at the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee in Pittsburgh to abolish caucuses, not least because Clinton’s supporters have long alleged that Obama won in Iowa — the crucial first caucus (where Hillary came third) because Obama supporters were bussed in from Illinois.

The efforts in Pittsburgh were rebuffed, but resentment lingers.

One New York-based Hillary bundler told me he is upset that Obama has not raised more than the half a million dollars he promised towards helping her clear her debts. (She still is $25 million in the red). He won’t be “bundling” for Obama.

Apparently he is not alone.

As of June 30th, only 10 of the 300 or so big Clinton bundlers had switched camps. (There has been some movement in July but it is said by sources to be insignificant.)

Also, angered Clintonites say they still hold a grudge towards David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign chief, who sent an email to reporters highlighting Hillary’s “I will continue” speech back in May, where she had alluded to Bobby Kennedy’s assassination.

“For Obama to come out, as he did, and say ‘we think it’s a non-story’ was ridiculous” says one Clinton backer. “Axelrod was the one pushing the story.”

But Clinton’s biggest gripe remains Obama’s hiring of Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary’s former campaign chief, and the declaration that Solis Doyle would be chief of staff to whomever Obama picks as Vice President.

“That,” says someone close to the Clintons, was “interpreted as personal. To appoint the VP’s chief of staff months before you’ve picked a VP is highly unusual — particularly given the fractious relationship between Patti and Hillary. It was as good as telling Hillary “It’s not going to be you.”

From Obama’s perspective, one wonders, is he mad or clever, giving both Clintons the stage in prime time consecutive nights before he speaks at the Convention?

One thing is for sure. When he finally appears in Denver, his speech needs to be better than his best. It isn’t just the times that call for more than a rockstar. His party does too.

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook

Not Even a Woman Can Win It For McCain

F riday saw a brilliant move by John McCain in choosing Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old governor of Alaska, to be his running-mate. Theoretically, if you look at the polls which had McCain close to the Obama-Biden ticket before this announcement, his appointment of Palin ought to make up for all his deficiencies. Palin is young. She’s female. She’s attractive; she’s got some celebrity, having been the runner-up in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant; She’s also wins our sympathy: she has one son off to war in Iraq; her youngest, born this year, has Downs Syndrome.

So I’m not surprised, to hear, while on holiday in France with English friends, as I have been hearing for the past two weeks, how, in their view, McCain has the American Election sewn up; They think that Obama will never overcome the racial prejudice of people who, unlike me, don’t live on the East Coast; that the blue collar voters just won’t go for a 47-year-old black guy who speaks like a rockstar but is thin on experience and substance.

Well, thank God, an American just joined us here on the Riviera. “You must be mad” he told our group. “There is going to be an Obama landslide in November.”

I inhaled.

I’ve been saying this for fourteen days — and no, it’s not because I’m drunk on the rhetoric of the Democratic convention. I recognize scripted political speeches for what they are.

But unless you are American or you have lived there for a long time (for me, it’s been eleven years) it is almost impossible to describe the disenchantment we feel about the George W. Bush era. He and his cronies have brought us to our knees, not just economically but spiritually. It wouldn’t matter who stood to follow Bush, I don’t think any Republican stands a chance in November.

I am prepared to wager that the polls have gotten the closeness of this race wrong (they’ve been wrong before) and that, Palin or no Palin, this is Obama’s moment.

Before 9/11 Americans did not fear in the way we fear now: we fear for our economy, for our safety, we worry who we can trust.

This wasn’t how things were when I arrived here.

In 1997 America was a country, in which, as Joe Biden put it so evocatively last week, people believed if they worked hard enough they could achieve anything. They certainly believed that if they worked hard enough they could tell their children “it’s going to be ok.”

I may not be American, but I grew up with parents who told me that anything was achievable if you just tried hard enough. So, like everyone around me, I have felt the change in the air of late, seen the worried brows reflect the dire economy and never felt so disappointed.

I’ve watched the bewilderment as people read the newspapers and learn we invaded the wrong country; seen the concern when we learn that, as Barack Obama put it, Osama bin Laden is still alive despite billions spent on a war with a country he’s not even in.

So, now, no matter how hard I work, I can’t tell my sons “It’s going to be ok.”

This is why, when Obama says he stands for hope, many people (myself included) do not hear this as political rhetoric. For them, and for me, it is real.

What isn’t real is John McCain’s beauty pageant appointment of Sarah Palin. This is the same McCain who recently recommended his wife appear in a topless beauty contest. So Palin’s appointment is just transparent chess-playing politics. And in the long-term I don’t think it’s going to work. Why?

Because as Barack Obama pointed out last Thursday, it wasn’t so much his achievements that took him to the Democratic presidential candidacy, but the American voters, who have signaled they are ready for a change. They’ll still be around in November, and with Hillary Clinton, now gracefully out of contention, there’s 18 million more of them.

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook

Lehman’s collapse rattles the really rich

T he phone has rung off the hook all weekend. “Are you OK?” I’ve asked friends whose husbands have been at Lehman Brothers. No, of course they are not. They just saw everything they’ve worked for go down the drain. A lunch barbecue with a Lehman executive who has been there 16 years was cancelled. No explanation needed.

The Saturday papers predicted the end of other institutions, too: Merrill Lynch, AIG. On Sunday morning one of my savviest investor friends told me not to worry about Merrill Lynch. He said it had too many good parts to implode. He had seen John Thain, the chief, very recently and had a long talk. Thain had said his bank was too valuable to go under.

By Sunday night my friend was on the phone again. Now, the news was that the Bank of America was ready to buy Merrill at $29 a share. Given that Merrill’s share price had fallen to $17 on Friday, this news, said my friend, proved that he and Thain had been right.

Sort of. We live in terrifying times. Even the election is not as much of a distraction as it should be from the economic pandemonium we are experiencing. At lunch and at dinner we all debate whether the panic is manufactured or whether a collective mental panic has always played an integral role in recessions, regardless of what the reality is.

Ordinarily people might be wondering about other things right now. For instance, there is artist Damien Hirst’s brash step of cutting out the middle man in selling his works; there is the huge exhibition of contemporary art in Russia on Wednesday. Soon Daniel Radcliffe comes to Broadway in Equus. We’re ending fashion week. But women talked not about clothes but about children, schools and how stressed their husbands were.

Until this week I’ve never heard really rich people — as in billionaires — sound scared. But now they do. Sure, they say, it’s no time to be panicking. Stay calm and there are fortunes to be made. There are lots of assets going cheap and some people are going to get rich.

But for most of us it is time to hunker down. Time to hope we don’t get that phone call: “Are you OK?” The answer, for all of us in New York, is no, we are not.

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook

Be very afraid of the hockey moms

Like 37 million Americans last Wednesday night, I sat transfixed as I watched the previously unknown figure of Sarah Palin turn herself into the angel of the Republican party. But the burning issue in my mind was: what is a hockey mom?

As a New York mother, I don’t believe the subject has ever come up at the school gates. Our offspring are just five. They’re still learning to skate. But after listening to Palin, the reality that my sons, New York born and bred, might soon take up hockey hit me like a weapon of mass destruction.

“Hockey moms”, according to the websites, come in three types. First, the X-treme hockey mom. She knows all the coaches at the colleges and the rankings. She sounds truly terrifying.

Then there is the Power Play Hockey Mom. She organises all the games, raffles and bingo nights. She is definitely a fleece-wearer.

Then there’s the “Cool-not-cold Hockey mom” — who lets Dad drive the kids to the games while she stays in bed, sure that sleep is the most essential requirement for the household leader.

Should anyone in this family want to play hockey, this is the role I will be adopting.

Obviously the hockey mom is a regional phenomenon. Few Manhattan mothers describe themselves this way — yet it occurs to me that both the X-treme mom and her “power play” subordinate would in fact translate very well in New York. This is, after all, the city that is home to the ultimate competitive mother of the Alpha child.

I am startled by the number of times I am told by proud parents how bright a child is, how good-looking, how talented. So you turn up at a school concert or play expecting to see either a young Laurence Olivier or Mozart and you watch something closer to Miss Piggy and Kermit from the Muppets. The one upside of all this is that one’s own children blend in to the latter scenario.

But this is America where, regardless of reality, all offspring are prodigies. And this is what the hockey mom, particularly the X-treme hockey mom, believes. Of course she does. Doubt is not in her vocabulary. As Palin says, she’s a pitbull in lipstick.

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook

Not even a woman can win it for McCain

J ohn McCain made a brilliant move in choosing Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old governor of Alaska, to be his running-mate. This appointment ought to make up for all his own deficiencies. Palin is young. She’s female. She’s attractive; she’s got some celebrity, having been the runner-up in a Miss Alaska beauty pageant.

She also wins our sympathy: she has one son off to war in Iraq; her youngest, born this year, has Down’s syndrome. So I wasn’t surprised to hear from English friends that they believe John McCain now has the election sewn up.

They think that Barack Obama will never overcome the prejudice of people who don’t live on the East Coast; that the blue-collar voters just won’t go for a 47-year-old black guy who speaks like a rock star but is thin on experience. But there is going to be an Obama landslide in November – and I don’t think that because I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid rhetoric of the Democratic convention.

Unless you are American or, like me, you have lived here for a long time, it is almost impossible to describe the disenchantment about the Bush era. He and his cronies have brought us to our knees, not just economically but spiritually.

I don’t think any Republican stands a chance in November. Palin or no Palin, this is Obama’s moment. Before 9/11 Americans did not fear in the way we fear now: we fear for our economy, for our safety, we worry about whom we can trust.

In 1997 America was a country, in which, as Joe Biden put it last week, people believed if they worked hard enough they could achieve anything. But I have felt the change in the air of late, and never felt so disappointed. I’ve watched the bewilderment as we learn we invaded the wrong country and see that Bin Laden is still alive. When Obama says he stands for hope, many people do not hear this as political rhetoric but something real.

What isn’t real is John McCain’s beauty pageant appointment of Sarah Palin. And I don’t think it’s going to work. Because, as Obama has pointed out, it wasn’t so much his achievements that took him to the Democratic candidacy, but the American voters, who are ready for a change. And with Hillary Clinton now out of contention, there’s 18 million more of them.

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook

Will Hillary rain on Obama’s parade?

T he story I’d been hearing for some time has finally come out in the open: Hillary Clinton, Bill, and many of her major financial supporters, known as “bundlers”, are so livid at what they see as underhanded play by the Obama team that they intend to eviscerate what ought to be Obama’s coronation at the Democratic Party Convention in Denver this week.

There are suggestions there will be a roll-call for delegates, in the hope that this crystallises the magnitude of Hillary’s support. All it would realistically do is highlight the rawness of the wounds from this year’s campaign battle – precisely what Obama wants to move on from.

But the Clintons are doing their best to resist. Only a week ago, Hillary’s supporters tried unsuccessfully to abolish caucuses, not least because Clinton’s supporters have long alleged that Obama won in Iowa – the crucial first caucus – because his supporters were bussed in from Illinois.

One New York-based Hillary bundler told me he is upset that Obama has not raised more than the $500,000 he promised towards helping her clear her debts (she still is $25 million in the red). He won’t be “bundling” for Obama. Apparently he is not alone. As of 30 June, only 10 of the 300 or so big Clinton bundlers had switched camps.

Angry Clintonites also say they still hold a grudge towards David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign chief, who sent an email to reporters highlighting Hillary’s “I will continue” speech back in May, where she had alluded to Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. “For Obama to come out, as he did, and say ‘we think it’s a non-story’ was ridiculous,” one Clinton backer told me. “Axelrod was the one pushing the story.” But Clinton’s biggest gripe remains Obama’s hiring of Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary’s former campaign chief, and the declaration that Solis Doyle would be chief of staff to whomever Obama picks as vice president. “That,” says someone close to the Clintons, was “interpreted as personal. To appoint the VP’s chief of staff months before you’ve picked a VP is highly unusual. It was as good as telling Hillary ‘It’s not going to be you’.”

From Obama’s perspective, one wonders, is he mad or clever, giving both Clintons the stage in prime-time, consecutive nights, before he speaks at the Convention?

One thing is for sure. When he finally appears in Denver, his speech needs to be better than his best so far.

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook

Creative Brits are the talk of the town

In New York, the pre-movie hype about Woody Allen’s latest movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, had all been about the kiss between Penélope Cruz, onscreen and real-life girlfriend of male lead Javier Bardem, and America’s modern version of Marilyn Monroe, Scarlett Johansson.

So as I shovelled down popcorn at the New York premiere last week I was taken aback: who was the other female lead – the non-famous actor who plays the part of cerebral, no-nonsense Vicky, the on-screen contrast to Johansson’s mercurial Cristina? Her dark brown eyes conveyed a dismaying pain, a depth of feeling obviously at odds with her more controlled words.

At the dinner afterwards, hosted by the producer, Harvey Weinstein and his gorgeous English wife, Georgina Chapman, everyone was asking the same question. “Who was she?” Eventually I asked Javier Bardem. “She’s Rebecca Hall,” he explained in his low, gritty voice. In other words, she’s the daughter of the British director, Sir Peter. Bardem became passionate: “She is really, really talented,” he said.

Hall is not the only British actor to have excited New Yorkers this summer. Ricky Gervais is a stand-out as a British dentist in Ghost Town; Pierce Brosnan was a joy in Mamma Mia! and Christian Bale’s performance as Batman in The Dark Knight has caught the attention of directors. And as for British director Chris Nolan? With The Dark Knight he is the first director to transform a traditional blockbuster into a thinking-person’s film while breaking all box office records.

British talent excelling in Hollywood is not a new phenomenon. But as the downturn takes hold there are fewer roles and fewer quality films: that makes British success all the more striking.

I can’t explain why British people are good at acting or directing or writing or being creative – but the Americans have long accepted that they just are. The answer occurred to me as I talked to Chapman, who has broken through as a leading fashion designer: she told me with a laugh, “I don’t think I could face going to a gym” – not a view shared, I suspect, by the toned Americans in the room. Perhaps it’s that distinctively British refusal to be cloned, an insistence on being individual, that sets our creatives apart.

Whatever it is, this summer, in New York, it’s working.

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook

It’s official: guys can wear shorts to work

F or women, dressing for summer here is a whole lot easier (and cheaper) than in London. You know that stepping outside will feel like walking into a blast furnace, so you choose pretty light sundresses and then you buy a cardigan to battle the freezing air-conditioning inside.

But for the men? I have long pitied the sweating faces on top of summer suits and shirts (most eschew ties) who have to walk into the heat for lunch, or meetings, or the commute home.

Now, though, sartorial change is afoot, at least according to the New York Times, a trend confirmed by my own observations.

It’s official: most guys can wear shorts to work. The transition has occurred thanks to male icons like the hunky CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper, who wore shorts while delivering dispatches from abroad; then there’s star hockey player Sean Avery, who is interning at Vogue this summer. He showed up there in a shorts suit.

Meanwhile our new national guru and presidential candidate Barack Obama wears shortsleeved shirts, which until recently were a major fashion faux pas but now suddenly seem cool. The new casual dress code is a mammoth transition from the days when President Nixon felt he had to keep his shoes on on the beach.

There are those in hospitals and on Wall Street who are still required to cover their knees but most don’t wear jackets and certainly not ties. New York men have worked out that the trick to looking cool is to wear tan or stone-coloured trousers and a light-coloured shirt. Pink or pale blue looks good but white is a big no-no – you can see sweaty armpits through it. Nothing is less attractive than perspiration. The French were quite right when they complained that they didn’t want to see their premier, Nicolas Sarkozy, sweating on his daily jog. (Now he exercises behind closed walls.) To be confident is to be cool.

Dressing in tune with the weather is not a superficial matter. My boss has always shown up to the office in long shorts, an Aertex shirt and loafers; he looks comfortable, casual, yet the shoes show he knows he’s not on the beach. And that’s the crucial line. Shorts are OK. Looking as if you are about to sunbathe is not. Thus, in my offices at least, there is one unwritten rule: “No sunglasses on the head.” You have been warned.
Sharing

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook

I’ve almost put my sons on the stage

T he light-bulb went off while I was driving home last weekend. From the back seat of the car, my twin five-year-olds burst into song: “I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker …”

I have no idea where they heard such unsuitable lyrics (well, actually I do – their father will be spoken to) but it occurred to me that, since they were in tune, hey, why shouldn’t they put their talent to commercial use? I could rest and they could be the family breadwinners.

So within days I was sitting in a windowless room in Astoria, Queens, in a casting session for the US remake of the British TV series Life on Mars.

I’d already been faxed through the three pages of lines for the part of “young Colin” (Colin has a twin brother, apparently). We’d rehearsed in the kitchen the night before and, I must say, I was quite taken aback by how much they enjoyed themselves.

But in the audition waiting room the atmosphere was deadly serious.

My two wanted to talk to the other kids. But they were practising their lines with their parents. “Hey,” said one of mine,”I say those sentences too.” His rival’s mother gave him a death stare.

Soon came our turn. In went the first twin. I thought it a bit odd he was away for 15 minutes. He only had four sentences to say. Then his brother went in. Then I was called. More death stares.

“Have they ever done this before?” the casting director, a nice brusque woman, wanted to know. “Er … no,” I stammered.

“Could they stay and meet the director in two hours?” Two hours?

“Absolutely not,” I said thinking of all I had to do that day. She looked a bit surprised. We settled that they’d return during lunch hour in the next week.

The boys never met the director. The casting director now says she needs much older boys – but I was told she will want mine for other projects.

Had my unaccommodating attitude ruined it for the offspring, I asked their “agent”. I was assured, no. She added: “Most mothers call every morning wanting to know if jobs are available, and their children are utterly obnoxious. Until they are 10 this doesn’t hurt the kid’s chances, but generally casting directors don’t want nuisances on the set.”

It’s a relief: I’m not a “stage-mother”. Except I am still working – and the boys are still singing inappropriate songs in the back of the car.

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook

Divorce is Up, Personal Trainers Down

L ast week, in the wake of the near-implosion of mortgage insurer Fannie Mae, and with rumors swirling about the fate of Lehman Brothers, where the stock has plummeted 70 percent, I got an email from a friend. Instead of his usual pithy jokes — he sent me his investment fund’s second quarter report.

He wrote:

“Even as skeptics, we were amazed that the Federal Reserve kept interest rates so low for so long, that Congress and the Administration spent money so flagrantly, that lenders reduced their credit standards to such lax levels, and that consumers continued spending as their economic prospects dimmed.”

The world is now feeling the downside of such profligacy, and there is likely more bad news to come.”

The pressing question, as I look around, is at what cost to us is this bad news – not just in economic terms?

Bruce Yaffe, MD, who has a practice at Lenox Hill hospital, notes that he is seeing a surge in stress-related illnesses – from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, to acid reflux, to headaches, to musculoskeletal symptoms and sleep disturbance.

Dr. John Ryder, a New York stress management specialist says he is seeing more people resorting to pills and alcohol.

These findings do not surprise me.

Financiers tell me they spend their days looking at screens reflecting market movements, unable to work.

Worst affected are former middle-aged employees at Bear Stearns, which collapsed in March. They saw a lifetime’s savings in stock wiped out and are forced to consider taking salaries they would have sneered at a year ago from the few banks now hiring – British brokers Collins Stewart – or Australia’s Macquarie.

But people in every sector fear they could be laid off at any second.

Friends at Paramount suddenly got axed when Deutsche Bank pulled its film financing last week. Film-making is a risky business. Advertising revenues are down. “Flat is the new up” is the new joke in publishing. It’s not really that funny.

College graduates are being told they no longer had the job they thought they had locked up for September.

One person took a job with drug-makers Pfizer only to be told he’d be laid off within a month.

Small wonder that walking down Madison Avenue is like being in a ghost town, and that sales assistants are prepared to make house calls with designer clothes marked down by 80 per cent.

Divorce rates are up; personal trainers are losing their clients. No one has the time or inclination to work out.

The toll of all this is unguessable. Physical breakdown occurs after two years of major stress, according to the sociologist Alvin Toffler.

Two years…by then George W. Bush – whose “flagrant spending” my friend wrote about – won’t be in office to be held accountable.

This article was originally published, in slightly different form, by the London Evening Standard

Digg StumbleUpon Facebook