The Current Wisdom

NEAL B. FREEMAN

The needle on our bureaucratic power meter jumped off the scale the other day as we walked the corridors of the old Executive Office Building. Piled outside the doors of what used to be Richard Nixon’s hideaway office suite were several roomsful of furniture. Plasterers, painters, and carpenters buzzed about, touching up the kitchen, the private bath, and the nest of high-ceilinged rooms opening into larger, equally high-ceilinged rooms. All of this activity announced the arrival of a bureaucratic presence. The new occupant: Lyn Nofziger. . . . Your required reading for this month, you’ll recall, is Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder. By the time you reach page 226, you will be neither startled nor distressed to read there, nestled among some of the finest-spun prose ever donated to the dismal science, this sentence: “There is indeed such a thing as a free lunch.” . . . The most underrated appointee of the month, hands down, is Fred Fielding, the President’s new counsel. Fingered by conservatives as an ideological foe, by liberals as a “Watergate figure,” and by rumor-tossing media as Deep Throat, Fielding has absorbed more potshots than anybody but Ray Donovan. A modest prediction: Fielding will turn in a solid, professional job.

NEAL B. FREEMAN

The needle on our bureaucratic power meter jumped off the scale the other day as we walked the corridors of the old Executive Office Building. Piled outside the doors of what used to be Richard Nixon’s hideaway office suite were several roomsful of furniture. Plasterers, painters, and carpenters buzzed about, touching up the kitchen, the private bath, and the nest of high-ceilinged rooms opening into larger, equally high-ceilinged rooms. All of this activity announced the arrival of a bureaucratic presence. The new occupant: Lyn Nofziger. . . . Your required reading for this month, you’ll recall, is Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder. By the time you reach page 226, you will be neither startled nor distressed to read there, nestled among some of the finest-spun prose ever donated to the dismal science, this sentence: “There is indeed such a thing as a free lunch.” . . . The most underrated appointee of the month, hands down, is Fred Fielding, the President’s new counsel. Fingered by conservatives as an ideological foe, by liberals as a “Watergate figure,” and by rumor-tossing media as Deep Throat, Fielding has absorbed more potshots than anybody but Ray Donovan. A modest prediction: Fielding will turn in a solid, professional job.