Even Barrons is getting on Bush's case now...
UP AND DOWN WALL STREET
By ALAN ABELSON
BARRON'S ONLINE
The Prevaricator
FOR THE MOST PART, the humor that plays well on Wall Street is pretty down to earth or, as you go down the primate scale to the trading desks, down to dirt. It's not infrequently in awful taste, willfully scornful of racial, ethnic and gender sensibilities, shamefully irreverent. Did we neglect to mention the jokes are often very funny?
Sometimes, of course, besides provoking a chuckle, the jibes and jests inspire reflection, illustrating as they do some profound moral precept or universal truth. Take, for example, this offering, passed along to us by an old Street hand and a fabulous font of funny stories.
An investment banker is sipping his glass of Chablis in the lush comfort of his starter mansion in Greenwich (he's a young investment banker), relaxing after a hard day suborning analysts. He's unaware of his wife stealthily approaching his chair from behind and is completely unprepared for the blow she delivers with furled newspaper to the side of his head.
"Hey," he cries out. "What's that for?"
"That," she answers, "was for the piece of paper I found in your pants pocket with the name Betty Jane written on it."
"Betty Jane? Oh, for gosh sakes," he says, laughing. "Remember last Thursday, when I went with that boring client to the track? Betty Jane was the name of a horse someone gave me a tip on."
Apologies were made and accepted and marital bliss enveloped the couple.
A few days later, our investment banker was engrossed in watching the Mets blow another lead, when once again his wife crept up behind his chair, and without warning struck him on the side of the head, this time with a cast-iron skillet. When he regained consciousness, he asked shakily, "What in the world was that for?"
Leaning toward him, eyes aglint, she rasped, "Your horse called."
The moral here is... well, there are several morals. Don't write down the name of a horse on a piece of paper likely to fall into your wife's hands, especially if the name is Betty Jane. And, for gosh sakes, don't give the horse your home phone number.
But there is still another moral, this one ground in principle as well as pragmatism: Prevaricate at your peril. A careful study of the human comedy since its beginnings eons on eons ago reveals that few people and no politicians ever truly master the art of evading the truth.
You would think, of course, that to describe someone as a prevaricating politician would be redundant, if only because perennial practice should make perfect. But even if the truth-slayer survives exposure during his many years feeding at the public trough and passes on to that big, smoke-filled room in the sky, his reputation remains at risk. And history is a hanging judge.
Nor, alas, has this fair land proved immune to civil servants at the highest level employing smoke and mirrors to obscure the truth. For shining examples, you don't have to go back any further than Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and -- need we add? -- the Pinocchio President, himself, Bill Clinton. Now, it emerges, a seemingly reflexive redactor, George W. Bush, is striving mightily to prove himself worthy of this equivocative company.
Unlike his immediate predecessor, whose impulse toward evasion was manifest long before Monica, Mr. Bush ostensibly displayed a refreshing preference for openness early in his tenancy at the White House. But that engaging quality has gradually given way to something more familiar and less admirable. In the run-up to Iraq, in the confusions that followed our triumphant rout of Hussein & Gang, in his blatantly theatrical landing on the aircraft carrier, and in the treatment of the report, released last week, on 9/11, he has too often let "image" and politics trump probity.
That same regrettable aversion to the truth and reality when the truth and reality aren't lovely or convenient have been glaringly in evidence on the economic front, as well. Mr. Bush didn't cause the recession or the dismal lack of vibrancy in the economy. He had absolutely zilch to do with the punctured bubble at the root of the current economic malaise.
Yet in some strange way his defensiveness about the state of the economy encourages him to veer to extremes, whether downplaying bad news or making wildly overly optimistic projections. Anyone with half an eye -- just by way of illustration -- could see that the deficit was ballooning indecently, all the while the Oval Office was purring reassuringly, not to worry, the deficit was under control. A year ago, as Merrill Lynch's David Rosenberg reminds, the official forecast was for a deficit this fiscal year of $109 billion and the blessed surplus would return by fiscal 2005.
Six months later (and six months ago) came the grudging admission that this year's deficit was likely to run a bit larger than originally assumed -- over $300 billion. And just recently, to the surprise of no one but the president, his dog and his numbers crunchers, the White House allowed as how the shortfall now looked as if it might weigh in at $455 billion this year and $475 billion next.
But the comforting word had already come down to be spread by the party parrots in Congress that deficits don't matter. (As Goldman's Bill Dudley wryly asks, If deficits don't matter, why do we have taxes?)
Not the least of the troubles with prevaricating, whether spousal or political, as the investment banker learned and the president's softening poll ratings demonstrate, is the obvious one: It inexorably diminishes credibility. It fosters suspicion even when there's no reason to be suspicious, as witness the refusal of the locals to believe that the Hussein brothers were gone for good.
The tendency to duck and weave, to elide what's discouraging and exaggerate what's hopeful, in no way, as noted, distinguishes Mr. Bush from many of the more than two-score men who occupied the presidency before he did. But more's the pity. Even for an incorrigible cynic like us, who believes staunchly that the only way to look at an office holder is down, it would have been a nice change. |
