The Who Concert Tragedy made the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine in its January 24, 1980 issue. (Rolling Stone Magazine/January 24, 1980)

But I wasn’t part of the stampede, and I watched the entire concert not knowing anything had happened. So this is really a story, not about my witnessing first-hand rock music’s greatest tragedy, but about how there can be evidence of something unimaginable right in front of your eyes, without you being able to grasp until later what had taken place.

The first thing to strike us as unusual was all the ambulances outside the Coliseum. I’d say between 15 and 20 of them, maybe more, all of them with lights flashing. Now this is one of those moments, where, looking back, I should have known something really bad had just happened. Instead, Tom and I wrote it off to an especially high number of drug freak outs, a somewhat common occurrence at rock concerts of the time.

So we walk in the doors into the circular walkway just outside the seating area, and I look over and notice these enormous piles of shoes and clothes, just sitting there stacked up along the wall, two or three feet high. I think we believed at the time that it was some kind of a charity clothing drive, where folks going to the concert were dropping off old clothes to help people at Christmas. Later I found out what it really was: hundreds of pairs of shoes, pants, shirts, and everything else that had literally been ripped off of people caught in the crush. But at that moment, we didn’t see people screaming or crying or unconscious. Remember, we went late, the music had already started, so in we went to watch the show.

And we watched the entire show, not picking up one hint, not hearing a single rumor of what had taken place. The Who played a great concert (promoters and managers made the decision not to tell the band what had happened until they came off the stage). Tom and I left the arena, walked back to the car, and drove to a favorite pizza place. After sitting down, a waiter came over, and said words I’ll never forget: “We’re you guys at The Who concert?” he asked. Yeah, we shrugged. “Eleven people were crushed to death trying to get in,” he said. “You didn't know that?”

Tom and I stared at each other, maybe even laughed for a second, because obviously this was some sort of joke. Something like that could never happen. But after a few more uncomfortable minutes, I decided to get up and call home to my parents, just to make sure everything was okay. “Hi,” I said when my mother answered the phone, and when she heard my voice, she immediately burst out crying. “Are you alright, are you alright, is Tom okay?” she kept sobbing. And then my dad got on the phone and told me what had happened; eleven people were crushed to death in a mob that was trying to push into the arena for their best chance at a good seat. Eleven people were dead, because they went to a rock concert.

There was a huge investigation afterwards by a citizen commission. It turned out when the band started doing a sound check inside the Coliseum, those in line thought the show was already beginning. So they pushed and pushed and pushed. Most of those killed died of suffocation. Survivors talked of being taken off their feet by the surge of bodies, turned sideways or upside down. Security personnel and police did little to respond to the pleas of people telling them what was happening.

I think a lot about that night this time of year, around the anniversary date. I think about what could have happened if Tom and I had decided to go early, instead of late. But mostly I think about the question asked by that waiter: how could we not have known? How could so many people watching that concert not know what just happened? I’ll never forget the first sentences of the article in the “Rolling Stone” issue that covered the tragedy. They told how the first concertgoers to actually make it inside and run, thrilled, up to the front of the stage, were leaving bloody footprints on the concrete floor, the blood of the people who were trampled. On ABC’s Monday Night Football broadcast, there were newsbreaks, telling the entire nation about the dimensions of the tragedy before many people who were part of the crush knew about it.

The citizen task force eventually released a report, that to this day is a model for concert and crowd management. Here’s an excerpt, from a website that briefly tells the story of the tragedy:

“The task force's report, Crowd Management, was submitted on July 8, 1980, and remains a landmark document in the field of crowd management. Praised as being concise and balanced, the report’s recommendations won the respect of public safety professionals from around the world. Many of the task force suggestions became incorporated into legislation and public assembly planning in the United States.”

So I suppose one could argue that those eleven lives were not lost in vain, but I’m sure that’s small consolation to the family members and friends who must be thinking about them on this date, all these years later. Now, in this day and age of cell phones and texting, such a disaster could never occur without everyone knowing about it instantly. But that was then, and I’ll never forget those two hours when I was in the center of rock music’s deadliest night, and didn’t even know it.

P.S. After I wrote this, I found on YouTube a portion of the old sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” that dealt with the concert tragedy. I was struck by how the discussion among the characters about what happened (in the show, the characters had gone to the concert the night before) was so accurate – the excitement leading up to the show, the ignorance of what had taken place by the vast majority of people there, followed by the shock when they finally heard the news, and the acknowledgment of the need to change the dangerous practice of festival seating. Although it’s a fictional show, it recreates, maybe better than a news program could, the gut punch feeling that all of us in Cincinnati were left with for a long time afterwards. It’s about 10-minutes long, if you want to check it out:

There’s something about the Plaxico Burress saga that’s not being told, or maybe can’t be told. I’m not just talking about the beyond-bizarre incident last weekend when the troubled Giants’ receiver had a gun accidentally go off in his pants at a crowded midtown nightclub. That’s just the latest chapter in what has been a slow-developing implosion of this extremely talented young athlete. As we said on PIX News last night, the gun incident came a mere ten months after Burress had caught the touchdown pass that won the Super Bowl for the Giants, an accomplishment that, by all rights, should gained him a measure of immortality in the minds of New York sports fans for generations to come. And, you’d figure, in his own mind.

Then came the demands for a contract renegotiation, which no one could claim was unexpected. He sat out the team’s June mini-camp, and after that, training camp itself, finally signing a mega-deal just before the first game of the season: $35-million, with $11-million just for the 2008 season. Okay, fine. We’ve seen plenty of athletes pout their way out of training camp or practice over contract matters, but Burress eventually got the deal he wanted. Fresh start, right?

No. So not right. In late September he simply disappeared for a few days, and wouldn’t return calls from the team asking where he, you know, was. That got him a one-game suspension. A few weeks later, he had a heated argument with Coach Tom Coughlin on the sidelines. (If at this point my narrative seems a bit choppy, there’s a good reason: after Googling the various Burress-behavior timelines, I’m coming across just too many incidents to include here).

While out with an injury, he was interviewed at an NBA game, where he told the world that basketball is the sport he loves the most. (This is just me again, but if I’m paid $35-million dollars to play a sport, THAT one is my fave, hands down. Or at least that’s what I’m going to SAY is my fave).

And then came the incident late Friday at the Latin Quarter nightclub. There’s so much involved in the shooting, and the multiple cover-ups afterwards, I’m not going to sort through it all here. Talk about complicated timelines. But I’ll just hone in on this: At some point Friday night, Plaxico Burress; rich, stupendously talented, has-the-world-on-a-string Plaxico Burress, made a choice to put a handgun in the waistband of his pants, and go out in public in a state and city where such an action is considered an extremely serious crime. The fact that he was clumsy enough to actually shoot himself brings an absurd and pathetic element to the whole, sorry situation.

Can anyone out there find any reason or sense in all of this? How can a public person fall so far, so fast from the place Plaxico Burress was last February: on the top of the world. I’m no psychologist, but it seems like a person who so quickly moves from ultimate triumph to self-inflicted tragedy has self-esteem and anger issues that could only be imagined. It’s all so sad. And the team he’s forsaken? Maybe the best in the NFL, seemingly cruising to another title. After all that, it turns out they might not even need Plaxico.

Well, all that didn’t actually happen on one day, but I sort of telescoped things for dramatic purposes. Not that Governor David Paterson needs any more drama on this succession question. If you’ve been following the news, you know it’s up to him and him alone to name Hillary Clinton’s replacement after she moves to the State Department next month. Naming a U.S. Senator: that’s quite a responsibility, considering it’s a call made with no oversight by either voters or other elected officials. But what oversight there is, in a manner of speaking, comes from the complex web of political considerations that will go into Paterson’s choice. Who does he want to please with his selection? Who does he NEED to please? What are the considerations for his own political future? What pressures is he feeling from the national democratic party and the U.S. Senate leadership?

Start with Andrew Cuomo. The state Attorney General his been raising his profile dramatically over the last two years, crusading against, among other things, crooked college loan programs and, more recently, keeping an eye on executive compensation for the New York-based financial firms receiving billions of dollars in federal bailout money.

As the son of a former governor, Cuomo might have an edge. Then again, it could work against him. The sorry end to the Bush Administration could well have New Yorkers down on any more political dynasties for awhile. Cuomo likes good publicity, as does New York’s senior senator, Chuck Schumer. Could that end up being a factor in this decision? Schumer will be bidding farewell to one person who’s much more famous than he is. Is he whispering in David Paterson’s ear to not bring in another new senator with an already-legendary name? (File both those factors into the considerations of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. getting the nod).

Then there are those urging Paterson to make his choice from upstate, or a woman, or a Latino, or a Latino woman from upstate. New York City congresswoman Nydia Velázquez is on many people’s short lists, as are other veteran congressional representatives in the state.

But I’m going to make my prediction from slightly off the grid, although his name has been mentioned. I’m talking about Nassau County executive Tom Suozzi. He brings a lot to the table. He’s young, a family man, he’s popular in a county notorious for eating its political young (not to mention, he helped turn one of the nation’s most stubbornly Republican areas over to the democratic side). Suozzi is a good speaker, and he’s shown he’s not afraid to take stands on some pretty touchy issues.

In addition, it could get Suozzi out of Paterson’s way when Paterson runs for a full term as governor, which actually is another advantage of naming Cuomo. But maybe Suozzi WANTS to be governor, more than he wants to be senator. He would be a formidable opponent for Paterson.

Ah, so many political considerations, so little time. But look for Suozzi. If I’m wrong, I’ll deny this entire conversation ever took place.

Of course, we’ve been reporting on this collapse for over two months now, so maybe I’m a little late to the pity party. But I suspect this week, with the plummeting dow and the existential threat to the nation’s auto industry and the predictions of doom for retailers, has brought a lot of people to the realization that we are in very, very serious trouble, and heading into deeper trouble..

That’s partly why The Great Depression stands out so much in our history. It hit just about everybody, and it lasted for 13-years, which must have felt more like forever. Is it any wonder it shaped, forever, the worldview of our parents (if you’re around my age) and our grandparents? But in the decades since, even The Depression came to be seen as something the country successfully overcame, and, more to the point, something that could never possibly happen again.

I’m not saying it IS happening again. But then again, when the Secretary of the Treasury says we are experiencing something now that could only happen once or twice a century, as Henry Paulson said today, the comparisons don’t feel too off the mark. I certainly don’t have the financial expertise to give you graphs and charts showing how it might or might not be true. I’m just talking about the way it feels. Everybody said the stock market had reached its bottom last week. Everybody was wrong. It’s starting to worry me, and it’s starting to feel like its going to be part of my worldview for a long time.

It’s a tough, tough question, one of those where I find myself coming down on the side of whomever I talked to or whatever I read last. So I’ll try and split the difference this way: “pardoning” a wayward party member IS a meaningful gesture, if reconciliation is your new leader’s primary goal. But… it’s a shame for Democrats that Joe Lieberman happened to be the test case. As I’ve written on this blog before, Lieberman’s behavior during the campaign, and even for several years before that, went beyond the pale for even a party maverick. Opposing your party (and by extension, Lieberman’s constituents in Connecticut, who a) defeated him in the 2006 democratic primary, and b) overwhelmingly went for Barack Obama two weeks ago) is one thing; spitting in their collective faces is another.

Well, we’ve been over and over this. Maybe Lieberman will try and prove to fellow democrats they did the right thing, and he’ll go all in for the party agenda. Maybe he’ll do just the opposite. Maybe it won’t matter much. Whatever the case, I can’t help but thinking Joe Lieberman is smiling tonight, thinking he can get away at this point with just about anything.

Rereading my blog post of last week about Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman’s future in the Democratic party, I’m now struck by how my assumptions in the piece were based on a Washington political paradigm that may no longer exist. Lieberman’s fate in the wake of his fervent support for defeated presidential candidate John McCain, as well as his negative attacks on Barack Obama, his own party’s candidate, has been much in discussion this week. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking—assuming, I should say again—that Lieberman would be treated as a traitor by his fellow democrats; that he would be stripped of his committee chairmanships, sent to the furthest reaches of the back bench (if he was allowed to caucus with Democrats at all), denied support for any of his legislative efforts, made to wear a big red clown nose, and perhaps even be given a wedgie.

But many assumptions were shattered this week when word came down that what Barack Obama was going to order Senate Democrats to do with Lieberman was….. nothing. Nothing. From a Washington Post article today:

“In a phone conversation with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Obama said that expulsion of Lieberman for his support of the Republican presidential ticket would send the wrong signal after Obama’s promises to set partisanship aside, according to a Senate democratic aide familiar with the conversation.”

Well, sure Obama promised to set partisanship aside. But Lieberman at one point during the campaign, when asked if Obama is a Marxist, said, “Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question.”

I must say if I was running for president, and if someone in my own party said something like that about me, and then if I ended up winning by a mile…. well, vengeance would be mine. I mean, that’s how politics have been done in Washington for the last 16-years, right? You diss me when you’re in power, I’ll get you back when my turn comes. I’ll try and impeach your party’s president, you’ll paint a target on my back when the next election rolls around. You disagree with me, I’ll say you’re not a Real American. Etcetera, etcetera.

But Obama isn’t demanding Lieberman’s head on a platter. In fact, it seems like he’s taking the Lieberman situation not as a partisan dilemma, but as an opportunity: what better way to show that you really are “post-partisan” than to immediately let your wayward fellow party member back into the fold? It might work in a few other ways, also. There’s really no better way to disempower your “enemies” than by forgiving them, even if you’re just doing it tactically. Bitterness and anger have become the coins of the realm in our national politics. But forgiving and seeking compromise? This guy wasn’t kidding about change.

Not that Joe is going to get out of this unscathed. There is talk in the democratic caucus of taking away Lieberman’s chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, and letting him chair a much lower-profile panel, to slap him with some kind of sanction. While Obama is playing the good cop here, he has still essentially left it up to Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership. And don’t count out the vocal progressive bloggers, who DO want Lieberman’s head. Jane Hamsher writes:

“One point I think needs to be made. This isn't about Joe Lieberman maintaining membership in a country club as a matter of feel-good "bipartisanship." There's actually a job that needs doing here, and when Chris Dodd and Evan Bayh say that they want Lieberman to retain his chairmanship, they are saying that the extraordinary waste, graft, greed and cronyism that have built the Department of Homeland Security to a bloated, ineffectual taxpayer-funded behemoth under Joe Lieberman is just fine.”

So does not holding a grudge against Lieberman make Obama look stronger, or weaker? Certainly the Lieberman matter has given Obama a chance to demonstrate the core message of his campaign less than a week after the election. But it’s also highlighted the intra-party squabbles likely to emerge as the President-Elect actually begins governing. It looks like a lot of old assumptions are going to be questioned in the months ahead.

***UPDATE: A few points worth clarifying on the “What about Joe?” issue: Saying Obama was going to “order” Senate Democrats to do anything is only a manner of speaking. His recommendation, it might be better to say, is that the leadership not expel Lieberman from the caucus.

Further, many commentators are focusing on the ambiguity of that recommendation. Although Obama is saying Dems should keep Lieberman in the fold, he isn’t saying anything about whether he should be punished by losing his committee chairmanship, or face some other sanction. There’s disagreement on the blogosphere about whether this will help or hurt Lieberman in his bid to stay in the caucus and keep his chairmanship.

He made it through 19-months of a grueling campaign without ever really seeming tired. But after three days of being President-elect… and three days of finding out more about the scope and depth of the financial crisis.. I thought Barack Obama looked a little weary today at his first news conference since the election. Who could blame him? What a whiplash that has to be: the ecstasy of winning a historic presidential race, followed immediately by a fuller understanding of just how hard the job is going to be. One politico joked to me on Tuesday that the winner of the race was going to demand a recount.

There are a lot of reasons President Bush is finishing his time in office with lower approval ratings than Vlad the Impaler. But one thing that turned off people of all political persuasions was the secrecy. Secrecy, it seemed much of the time, for the sake of secrecy. An Obama presidency must go the opposite way on this. Americans are generally reasonable people, capable of handling disagreements with a president on issues and policies... if we’re kept in the loop. What doesn’t jibe with the democratic ideal is a White House that makes decisions at undisclosed locations through undisclosed methods. Voters have shown they’re willing to trust Barack Obama with the country, despite his inexperience. He needs to make that trust a two-way street.

But I’m sure all presidents start off thinking that: they’ll take their big decisions before the people. Then, little by little, the bunker walls go up. The bubble forms. The media become a monolithic beast to be avoided and held in contempt. Before the new president attends his first Christmas tree lighting, greater openness is the last thing on his mind. President Obama must not go this route.

It’s worth being cautious on this matter with Obama; I got the feeling during the campaign he doesn’t care much for reporters, and there are indications the feelings are mutual. From Newsweek’s issue this week telling the story of the race:

“Curiously, though Obama drove his rivals mad by receiving reams of mostly friendly publicity, he was not well liked by reporters, many whom found him chilly and guarded.”

As I wrote in my post of two days ago, Obama IS a bit chilly, and it’s something he’ll have to work on. He needs to show warmth, and yet keep a thick skin where the media are concerned. He needs to see them as his conduit to the people, not as his sworn enemy. It’s definitely something he’s capable of. In today’s news conference, he was honest, self-deprecating, slightly playful and yet very serious. He’s good at this, or at least he can be if he wants to be.

So here’s my short list of suggestions for maintaining an openness and transperancy with the American people:

• Have news conferences all the time. White House reporters should get tired of going to your press conferences.

• Whenever anyone at a staff meeting says “we’ve got to keep this under wraps/out of the media” on an issue of public policy, give that person a group noogie and make him pay for the donuts that day. If necessary, appoint an Assistant Deputy Undersecretary for Bunker Mentality Eradication, whose job it will be to tell you your presidency is turning inward.

• Initiate an American version of Britain’s questions for the Prime Minister, where the PM regularly goes before Parliament and has to answer whatever the people’s representatives want to ask. This will have the added advantage of dialing partisanship way down, which I believe Mr. Obama has mentioned is one of his goals.

That’s good for starters. To sum up: Obama needs to err on the side of being too open. See how it plays. As he said himself today, we’ve got a tough time coming up. Americans need to be his fully-informed partners to help him find the right solutions.

So let me focus here on just one cultural element of what it means to America and the world to have Barack Obama as our next president:

Cool is back.

But when I talk about Barack Obama, I’m going back to a different kind of definition of “cool.” Here are a few internet definitions for the term I came across:

“Cool is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance, style and Zeitgeist.”

“..marked by calm self-control (especially in trying circumstances.)”

And from a glossary of jazz terminology, cool is:

“The style of the early 50’s.. the basis was bebop, but the fastest tempos were not used and the sound was quiet and understated. Miles Davis was one of the main originators.”

Hmmm.. Put those three together, and it sounds like Barack Obama to me.

There aren’t many presidents who would wear the “cool” label very well. Bill Clinton was charismatic as president, but he wasn’t cool. John F. Kennedy is the most obvious choice, but he came from a rich and powerful family, and his public persona arguably came more from celebrity than it did coolness.

But Obama? He comes from regular folks. His “aesthetic” seems to stem from his intellect and his experiences, not as an adjunct to being suddenly famous. We’ve had 19-months to judge his behavior, comportment, and self-control in trying circumstances, and I think he passed. Even on appearance and style, he finished with a kick. The man wears a leather jacket well, and if he was tired last night after two years of non-stop traveling and non-stop pressure, I sure couldn’t tell.

In one sense, Obama’s cool could also be seen as one of his weaknesses. After all, “cool” is colder than “hot,” and I think some voters didn’t connect with him because his calm came off as aloof. We also want to see some raw passion, sometimes even some anger, in our leaders. There will be plenty of time for that in the next four years, I suppose. But even his placid and cool façade melts when you see him with his wife and daughters, and I think being smart and composed doing your business, and then delighted and happy when you’re with your kids is…. well, very cool.

But the jazz aspect of cool applies best to Obama. Read it again: the fastest tempos not used (I’m personally sick of the fast tempos of the past eight years), and the sound is quiet and understated. Miles Davis popularized it, with his late 40’s masterpiece album, “The Birth of the Cool.”

Quiet and understated. Calm self-control. The ability to keep an even keel in a crisis. Sounds like a promising prescription for these times. I was so impressed by the way he took the stage last night for his victory speech in Chicago. In the white hot spotlight of the world, after a stupendous victory that was unimaginable six months ago, he was completely self-possessed. It’s almost like a football player who just scored a big touchdown. I half-expected an end zone celebration, an in-your-face to all the people who said it couldn’t be done. But that didn’t happen at all. President-elect Obama, to keep the touchdown metaphor for a moment longer, didn’t do a crazy, attention-getting dance. He calmly flipped the ball to the referee, and got ready for the next play.

Cool is reborn. This is going to be interesting.

The second—make that the nanosecond—it was out of my mouth, I knew I was in for it. A few garbled syllables on Friday night’s newscast, and I was on my way to a little more internet fame that I would have preferred.

Here’s a link to it, but first, as they say on the late night talk shows, let me set up the clip. It was just before a commercial, and Kaity and I were reading the “coming up” tease. One of the items involved a non-fatal shooting on Long Island, in which the victim was working as a babysitter. Shooting. Babysitter. Roll the clip:

Let me say first of all, I am a professional, and I should be able to handle phrases like this without blurting out inadvertent barnyard epithets. But, gentle reader, YOU try saying “babysitter shot” five times real fast, and see what happens. Go ahead, try it, I’ll wait...

Uh-huh. See? And people think news anchoring is easy.

As I said, I realized immediately what I’d done. For one, there was the reaction of Kaity sitting next to me; I think the phrase “convulsing with laughter” is appropriate. The minute we hit the commercial, I turned to her and said, “well, looks like I’m headed for youtube.”

I was. The clip had been posted by the next morning. In the comments section on my previous blog post, someone named Dan wrote: “Hey, Jim… Great slip-up on the news last night!!! Loved it!” And then he personally directed readers to the youtube clip. Thanks, Dan. How thoughtful.

Youtube. It’s been a game changer in the ever-popular world of news bloopers. It used to be an anchor “mis-read” (I like the sound of that better) went the way of all live TV, off into the distant universe where only advanced civilizations on planets thousands of light years away would have future access to the goof. (Although clips of anchor bloopers used to get collected at individual stations, to be presented on a “Christmas reel” that was played at the station’s holiday party, usually at the point when everyone was all liquored up. It’s why I stopped going to station Christmas parties.) But now with youtube, bloopers are like diamonds; they’re forever.

Such is life in the digital age. Bloopers have gone global. It wasn’t exactly how I planned to make my mark on the world, but I guess it’ll have to do for now.

May I call you Mike? It’s so much less formal. First of all, congrats on the term limits thing. Actually, that’s sort of what I wanted to write you about. I have some thoughts about your political future, and it doesn’t include you running for mayor again.

Brilliant, right? Trust me, Mike, it is.. and here are some reasons why.

1. Third terms don’t usually work out

You should have talked to Mario Cuomo about this when he was at City Hall testifying on your behalf at the term limits public hearing. Boy, some irony there, huh? He’s going on about how you should be allowed to run again, when his own third term as New York governor didn’t turn out so hot. It left him in a position to lose to an unknown legislator named George Pataki, who, come to think of it, you should also consult about the wisdom of staying in office for three terms.

Voters seem to tire of a politician after eight to ten years. I know, I know, the city needs you and only you to fix the economic crisis. But knowing you, you’ll probably take care of that in a few months, and then you’re looking at three-and-a-half more years of parades and groundbreakings. You’ve got a terrific legacy, Mike. Stop now, and be remembered as one of New York City’s greatest mayors. Go for three, and you’ll just be…. Ed Koch.

2. The Money

It’s being reported that you’ll spend $100-million in a campaign to win a third term. I know that’s not much to you, but it’s a decent amount of money. If you don’t run, you can use it to buy more mansions. Or, better yet.. if it’s the legacy you’re concerned about… also announce tomorrow that the $100-million you WERE going to spend on the mayor’s race is now going to be donated to the city school system. They will build statues of you, Mike.

3. Your new pals in the City Council will turn on you

Interesting piece on the oped page of the Times today. An assistant professor at New York University says that sweet little arrangement you made with council members allowing them to also run third terms if they voted your way could backfire.

“With the additional time in office.. members will accrue the expertise and power that come with increased seniority…This will add up to more leverage to check the mayor.”

Check the mayor? I’ll bet you don’t like the sound of that.

Now we come to your endorsement of Barack Obama. Here’s why this will work for you:

1. Choose your cabinet position

If you think remaining mayor will help end the financial crisis, think about the impact you’d make as Secretary of Treasury. No? You could keep working for better schools as Secretary of Education, but that’s probably not glam enough for you. Let’s rule out Agriculture. Or let’s rule out a cabinet position altogether. You could be some kind of czar! An economic czar, or Czar of Health and Environment. You could stop people from smoking in every bar in America!

2. President Bloomberg

Ah, NOW I’ve got your attention. Hang in there as Secretary of something or Czar of something for eight years, give lots of money away while you do it, and you can write your own ticket in 2016. You might have to change party affiliation again, but that’s not a big deal for you. You’d be a little on the old side; 74, by my calculations. But what voter is going to turn away from the man who saved the economy, the environment, and the nation’s schools over a little thing like age?

So that’s the plan. You need to get on this pretty quickly; if you endorse Obama AFTER Tuesday, people will see it as opportunistic. And you’re above that.

Sincerely,

Jim