Visiting Column #39 -- Danke Sehr!

February, which ends this weekend, is a peculiar month.

It is, as you are well aware, the shortest month, even in leap years like this one.  It's cold, at least above the tropics in the northern hemisphere.  It isn't so cold here, where golf courses and swimming pools are generally open year-round, but it's still short.

And one of the places where it is indeed cold in February is Germany.

Yes, Germany.  I do speak enough German to have once bought a cuckoo clock in Kaiserslautern without a word of English spoken, enough to know that President Kennedy once said to a crowd in Berlin, in German, that "I am a jelly doughnut."  Presumably he fired his speechwriters thereafter, or at least instructed them to research the use of the indefinite article.

But the cold ... it is the only explanation for why February, 2020, has had a remarkable spike in readership of this column ... in Germany, of all places.  Not only has there been a spike, but for the month of February, and unless American-based readers can catch up in the last couple days, German readers will have taken the lead as the dominant source of readership of the column.

Now I should say "thank you", or "danke sehr", I guess, and I will.  I'm extremely grateful that the thousand-plus-a-few-dozen columns here are of sufficient interest for readers anywhere, let alone in Germany.  Please keep reading.

But I have to wonder as to whether the bulk of that readership consists of actual Germans named Schultz and Müller and Langerhans, or perhaps American expats -- or on military tours over there.  Certainly I haven't written about Germany but once or twice; the word "German" has only appeared in a dozen columns, many of which were about baseball, of all things.

Curiosity has not killed our cat, who is 16 as I write this, but it certainly is taking up shop in my geriatric brain.

If you have become a recent reader of the column, and are based in Germany, I encourage you to send me a tweet and let me know how you found this column.  I am extremely grateful for the readership of this site, and would like to know about you.

I appreciate your interest.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #38 -- The Most Effective Debate Prep

I know that President Trump has said recently that he "won" all of the debates in the 2016 campaign, said in the context of his assessment of the 2020 Democrat primary debates.  Now, I think one could argue that point, at least as far as the three with Hillary Clinton, not because she herself won them, but because as debates, they weren't very effective.

Of course, debates aren't really an effective medium for this purpose regardless, since as I wrote a few years back, the format does absolutely nothing to help the voter determine how the candidates differ.  I won't rehash all that, just read the linked piece.

But I'm going to say what most Trump supporters probably feel even to this day -- it was not a shining stage for candidate Trump.  He is a counterpuncher but, more importantly, the debate stage was still a fairly new medium for him in 2016.  Remember, he is a goal-oriented person and leader, and having not actually been in government to that point, he would have not been completely prepared to detail how he would get to the goals he had campaigned on.

But the debates are still what they were -- biased reporters asking biased questions, intended to help the Democrat and embarrass the Republican (oh, try to tell me that's not the case).  And until you have taken lots and lots of those questions, and until you have had a track record enabling you to answer them with an underpinning of actual policy, it's a different case. 

Now, I don't think it should be the media asking questions; I don't think there should be an audience, and I don't think the candidates need to be in the same room.  But I digress.

Fortunately, Mr. Trump's performance at the 2016 debates did not prevent his election and the subsequent turnaround of the USA back into a global power, both militarily and economically.  Maybe it helped, who really knows.  The polling was so poor prior to the actual voting that no one knows anything for sure.

But here's the thing.  The "Donald Trump, Candidate", who was the performer on the 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton, is a far earlier version of the president who will be in the 2020 debates, whether with Bernie, Bloomy, Booty, Biden or Pocahontas.  Why is that?

Well, I don't know how many of you have a news channel on in background, but those of us who do are aware that when the president travels, which is a lot, he rides the helicopter, Marine One, from the White House lawn to Joint Base Andrews, where the jet, Air Force One is based.  And invariably, walking from the White House to the helicopter, he stops to take questions from the press.  Lots of them.

Now this isn't a debate, of course.  But it is a mostly hostile press, lots of purveyors of fake news, and they can ask some tricky questions -- much like a presidential debate, if you're thinking the way I am.

I watch those mini-press conferences religiously.  They are must-see TV, because they're an indicator of how much President Trump has grown in the specific skill of taking hostile questions.  When he does one or two of those sessions each week for several years, while at the same time having mastered all the issues that he has to deal with as president, you can see how and why he is getting really good at it.

And of course, with the economy, our defense and immigration all markedly enhanced, directly because of his policies, he has a lot to say.  And he says it.

So here's the point.  The President Trump who will debate one of the Democrats' seven dwarfs in the fall, is not the same guy as the Candidate Trump who debated Hillary in 2016.  The Democrats forget that at their peril.  Providing he doesn't worry about getting zingers in, or calling his opponent names, and just focuses on how good everything is and ties it directly to this policy or that action of his, he will crush in the debates.

The Q-and-A medium is no longer new to him.  He is practicing every week, not in phony-bologna debate-prep sessions but by taking real, hostile questions from real, hostile reporters on the real White House lawn in front of the People's house -- where he really lives.  Those weekly sessions are the testing ground where the steel is sharpened.

It is an interesting point that the leftist media (forgive the superfluous adjective there) do not really ask particularly critical questions of the Democrat candidates, who are all equally leftist.  Sure, maybe a "How are you planning to pay for that?" once in a while, but there is never any critical follow-up. You have to assume that it dulls Democrat candidates' reflexes and skills when they're never asked good follow-up questions, right?

President Trump takes those questions with aplomb these days.  He's the boss, he knows his material and his innate showmanship kicks in when he has command of that material, which these days is "all the time."  The leftist press takes the bait gleefully, showing up for every one of those press availabilities (though never once crediting Trump for providing them, where their sainted Obama almost never did) and offering great, hostile questions to help Mr. Trump hone is debate skills.

The president is already a fine respondent to hostile questions, a skill he did not have polished to that extent in 2016.  Well, America, he is really, really good at it now, and those without a news channel in the background will find that out this fall.

I don't know if having those regular White House lawn pressers from the start was a conscious decision to help him practice responding to tough questions, but I'd imagine that at this point it has occurred to his staff that the more he does them, the better "debater" he will be this fall.

Of course, his best debate strength will be, simply, that his policies work.  Full stop.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #37 -- What Exactly Will Mike "Get Done"?

As this is being written, there have been two 2020 events, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, which have combined to accomplish pretty much nothing, except to enrich 7,559 campaign strategists.

Well, maybe not "nothing." They have shown that Joe Biden's "time has went", as he would probably say, and that Elizabeth Warren is capable of creating pretty much zero enthusiasm, including in a state next to the one in which she lives.

One interesting aspect of the past few weeks, though, is actually about a candidate who was not a participant in either the caucuses or the primary.

I refer, of course, to the former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who is running for president on sort of a delayed-video, or instant replay model.  That is, he is not putting his name on any of the earlier primary ballots, preferring to wait until around Super Tuesday, when there will be a bunch of primaries.

He is, however, engaged in a huge branding blitz.

About every thirteen seconds, anyone watching TV can expect to see a commercial for the Bloomberg candidacy, telling the viewer what a terrible guy President Trump is, and then using the tag line "Mike will get it done."

Now, exactly what Mike will "get done" is not really explicit in the ads, and I confess that I fast-forward past most of them any more.  I have already made up my own mind about President Trump and don't really need Bloomberg's flacks to tell me what to think about him.

And to be fair, the purpose of the tag line is to portray the generally unknown (outside New York) Bloomberg as a guy who "does things", as opposed to one who just talks about it.  A guy who actually does do things, you see, would stand in stark contrast to pretty much all the other candidates, none of whom has a great track record at doing anything but talking. 

About the only one who has "run anything" is Pete Buttigieg, who is the mayor of a little town in Indiana, and even the people in Fort Wayne don't think he has been effective.  Most of the rest are U.S. Senators, and let's face it they talk.  A lot.  Doing?  Not so much.

But I'm still struggling with the "what" part of Bloomberg's message, as in "what needs to get done."

I say that because, as a voter in a swing state, the things I care about are already getting done -- not by people in Bloomberg's party, the Democrats, but by the current president.  Take health care for veterans and reforming the VA hospital system, for example.  I care about that.  President Trump is getting it done already.  I don't need for "Mike" to do anything, nor would I (or most vets) risk letting someone new change the trajectory of reform.

How about the southern border?  Drugs, human traffickers and gangs were flooding over, along with border-jumpers who chose not to go through the legal pathway to residence here.  Well, hundreds of miles of effective walls are being put up as we speak, by a guy who knows how to build things.  He is also the president now, by the way. 

The Democrat candidates all raised their hands to say that not only are they fine with open borders, but they want all those people to get free health care at citizen-taxpayers' expense.  Bloomberg is a Democrat, too, and by not participating in the debates until now he was spared having to make that choice to put his hand up.  But we know how the current president feels, and what he is doing to protect us.  That's already "getting done", so I don't think I want to see what Mike would do differently.

Second Amendment rights?  Yeah, that's really scary, because I don't know what old Mike thinks he would want to "get done" on that one.  Based on his record as mayor, I think he's more likely to send around the Army to confiscate every weapon he can find in the hands of private citizens.  The current president is a staunch defender of the 2nd Amendment.  I think I'll stay that course.

Trade?  Let's see, President Trump's predecessors negotiated a series of deals that were embarrassingly deferential to Europe, to China, to Mexico and Canada, and which gave the USA no leverage to prevent jobs from fleeing overseas and to stop exacerbating our trade deficit.  Trump's approach?  The "big stick" policy -- mess with the USA, and we'll slap tariffs on your products and grind your economy into the ground.  It's the golden rule of economics -- he who has the gold makes the rules -- and we're the buyers.

Since Trump's anti-swamp, America First trade approach is based differently from his conciliatory predecessors and is actually working, it makes no sense to "get done" whatever Bloomberg thinks needs to get done on trade.  And we could go on.

Mike Bloomberg has yet to face the media, although he'll be on the next debate upcoming.  It is really hard to imagine he will perform well on it, though -- this is the guy who literally was asked by some guy seeking a picture in a "say cheese" moment to "say 'stop and frisk'," after which Bloomberg stopped, posed and said "stop and frisk."  Hard to think even the leftist moderators are going to go easy on him.

The main thing, of course, is that all the things that fall into the "get it done" category are already getting done by President Trump, and they're getting done the way the USA needs to have them "gotten done", that is, properly.  There is nothing out there that America needs to have Michael Bloomberg do that isn't already being done, and being done better than he would.

OK, stopping us from buying 24-ounce sodas.  Trump's leaving that one for Mike.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #36 -- Raspberries and Baseball

Deep as we are into the 2020 presidential campaign, it feels like a good time for a laugh-at-myself story.  Actually, it always feels like a good time for one of those, so let's go ahead and do a short one today.

Back in 1979, I was the product manager for a medical electronic instrumentation company.  My product, not that it is relevant to the story, was a computerized coronary-care unit monitoring system.  The company had a demonstration model that I could have shipped to a hospital, set up in a CCU and stay with it for a week or so to show how it worked.

Accordingly, I traveled a lot, and that was before the days of airline points, unfortunately.

So this one time, I was in Montreal for a week.  The hospital was the ancient Sacre-Coeur, and I was there to set up and speak to the nursing staff, despite my lack of facility in French of any kind.  By the time I left, I was able to make a credit-card or collect phone call in French, but otherwise all I could do was steal a few relevant phrases from Singing Nun songs where possible.  I'm serious.

Generally, these trips were in support of the local sales rep for the company.  In this case, the rep was a fellow named "Jed" Jedrychowski.  Jed was from Poland, but had lived in Quebec for a long time, and spoke excellent English along with the French that was spoken routinely in his home by his wife and kids.  I really liked Jed, and appreciated that he invited me to his home a time or two -- not all the sales reps realized that life on the road was pretty lonely for the product manager.

Back then, as today, I loved to read baseball books.  I wasn't as picky then, because with all the plane flights and meals alone, I had a lot more time and needed a lot more books, even the pap biographies.  But some books were excellent, and I especially loved "The Summer Game", which I mentioned in a piece a few years ago (https://uberthoughtsusa.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-greatest-writer-of-two-centuries.html).

The book was the work of the great writer Roger Angell, who will turn 100 in September.  It was a compilation of the first ten years (1962-1971) of his baseball articles for the New Yorker magazine, and a showcase of his brilliance as an observer, and his mastery of written English.  I happened to be re-reading The Summer Game during that trip, so it was fresh in my mind.

One of the articles I'd just read was about the first season of the Montreal Expos, which had started in 1969 as the first Canadian major-league team.  Angell had a mildly jocular take on the whole thing, visiting a doubleheader at Montreal's Jarry Park, and writing about a few events, with inserted French to try to take the reader through the "new" French-Canadian fan's view.  This, for example, about the start of the second game:

"The second partie started just as dishearteningly, with the visitors scoring three points on three coups surs in the first, but matters improved electrifyingly in the second, when the Expos pulled off a triple play (line drive to Bob Bailey, au premier but, who stepped on the bag to double up an occupant Cardinal and then flipped to l’arret-court, Bobby Wine, who beat the other base-runner to second)."

I didn't speak French, then or now, but I didn't need to; the context was more than sufficient to convey the meaning of the words.  But then came this passage from later in the game narrative, which stumped me:

"When the gerant, Gene Mauch, came out to relieve his willing but exhausted young starter, Mike Wegener, he got the framboise from the fans."

"Framboise"?  What does that mean?

This was 1979, mind you, long before the common use of the Internet.  So while I had wondered, on reading it (at 30,000 feet), what that word could possibly mean in that context, it was not the instant information-gratification era, and so I didn't think to look it up.  It wasn't after all, that important.  I could have called my Dad, who spoke French and 4-5 other languages, if I had thought about it.

But here I was in Montreal, with the book fresh in my mind, when Jed and I were walking down a hall at Sacre-Coeur Hospital.  He was probably chatting with me about something or other, when it struck me that he, a Polish-Canadian who spoke fluent French, could clarify Angell's phrasing for me.

Of course, I had to explain the context to him.  I could have just asked him what "framboise" meant, but as my wife always says, I go by way of Kansas City in explaining things, so I told Jed the whole story, that Angell was sticking French words into a baseball story, and then gave them the line and asked him, in that phrasing, what the word referred to.
 
We were still walking down the hall in the hospital when I asked.  Long hall. Jed looks at me strangely.  He was not a big pro sports guy then, but even with that this was clearly an odd usage for him.

"Framboise?", he said.  "That doesn't make sense.  It is like, ah, 'strawberry' ..."

"Raspberry!!", I shouted.  Immediately I realized I was in a quiet zone of a foreign hospital and had just shouted a word that had no medical purpose.  At that moment I was in the doubly embarrassing situation of having shouted in a quiet zone in a hospital, and had a guy looking at me oddly, with no clue as to why the word "raspberry" (A) had any meaning in baseball, and (B) was in any way funny enough for me to shout in the aforementioned quiet zone.

"It's really 'razzberry', Jed", I explained, "It just means booing or making an offensive sound like they do at a ball game.  They were booing the manager for pulling the pitcher out.  Comes from Brooklyn, where they make all kinds of sounds, if that helps."

It probably didn't help, and it certainly didn't adequately explain to Jed why I thought it was so funny.  But either way, it didn't affect our friendship any, and though it is over 40 years since that time, I still have a visceral reaction when I see a raspberry.

I'll get over it, I promise.  Some day.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton