Out of My Mind

by Andy Rooney

TOM: Who’s going to do the dirty work if we don’t have immigrants? You know, run the garbage trucks, do the heavy lifting on construction jobs. Who’s gonna mow the lawns of rich people like you?

  ED: If I can’t get anyone to mow it, I’ll mow it myself, or just let it grow. Lots of Americans are unemployed.

  TOM: No, you got that wrong. Technically, they aren’t all what you call unemployed or out of work. Some of them don’t want to work. If they aren’t looking for work or don’t want to work because they don’t have to, they aren’t unemployed. You can’t count them. They’re retired.

  ED: Yeah, or lazy. They just like getting unemployment insurance.

  TOM: You don’t approve of unemployment insurance?

  ED: Yeah, but if someone’s on it for a long time, they ought to lose it. They should get out there and look for a job.

  TOM: Boy, you’re tougher than President Bush.

  WORKING FOR BUSH

  A President of the United States has more work than he can handle so he needs plenty of help. President Bush has surrounded himself with assistants he trusts and, according to the people who watch him closely, he takes a lot of advice from aides. Some White House experts don’t even think it was the President’s idea to attack Iraq.

  President Bush’s most important assistant for several years was Andrew H. Card Jr. but he quit the job in 2006. I guess he wanted to spend more time with his family. That’s what they always say even if they don’t have one. Card was called “Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff.” Most of us will never know the real reason why someone like Card decides to call it quits—or did President Bush decide for him? The President has regularly denied that there were going to be any major changes on his staff. However, he must have been looking for someone to point at after the precipitous decline in his popularity. Maybe Andy Card was his choice.

  I have in front of me, as I write, an interesting document that lists everyone on the White House staff, what their jobs are and how much each is paid. The top pay is $I6I,000. That’s what Card and ten other top assistants got. In the business world, $I6I,000 is peanuts. The heads of most big corporations wouldn’t put on a tie and come to work for less than a million dollars a year.

  This list is for 2005 but I don’t think it’s changed much. Melissa S. Bennett is on here. She has a hard job. Melissa is “Deputy Assistant to the President for Appointments and Scheduling.” She gets to tell the President where to go.

  Liza Wright Renner is “Special Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel.” In other words, the President has so many assistants working for him that he has to have an assistant in charge of the other assistants.

  Anita McBride is “Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady.” I don’t see why “Deputy Assistant to the President” is part of her title. Does she have to check with George before she does something for Laura?

  Dennis Grace is called “Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director, Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.” I guess he’s in charge of religion.

  Janey Roell Naughton and Elizabeth Ann Horton are both called “Ethics Advisor.” I don’t know about that, either. It seems to me President Bush ought to know what is ethical and what isn’t without having two women tell him.

  Janet Lea Berman is “White House Social Secretary.” That could be a hard job. She makes $92,I00. After they have a party at The White House, maybe she gets to take home some of the leftover sandwiches.

  Marguerite Murer is “Director of Presidential Correspondence.” She reads the mail, I guess. That would be a hard, important job if she also has to answer it. Nuts are always writing to the President and I suppose she has to be polite to them. Marguerite makes $92,I00. There’s also a “Director of Mail Analysis.” She must get to tell the President when people really hate something he did.

  Misty Marshall is the “Director of Correspondence” for the First Lady.

  There are thirteen speechwriters listed. Someone named “Joan R. Doty is called “Senior Writer” but she only makes $36,900. I wouldn’t write “Nice to be here” for the President for that kind of money. Robert Thomas Pratt Jr. is a “Senior Writer” and he gets paid $42,800. They don’t list any “junior” writers. The writers must have to wait on the table the President is speaking at to pay the rent.

  Lee F. Bockhorn was also listed as a speechwriter. He was making $40,900. Lee’s name is just below Sarah Penny’s name, and Sarah makes $4I,000 as the West Wing Receptionist. You can see how important they think writing is in the White House.

  Clare Ross Taplett is “Deputy Director of the Gift Office.” She must help decide where to throw all the presents people send the President.

  Julia Phillips is a “Gift Analyst.” She must decide how much a present is worth.

  After reading this list, I can see why Andy Card decided to quit his job in the White House and look for work.

  THE KYOTO DECISION

  My daughter, Ellen, lives in London working as a photographer. Recently, she got an assignment in Cuba. She emailed me her hotel phone number there because I wanted to call and see how she was doing in Havana. I picked up the phone on my desk and started to dial the number. Suddenly, I had a terrible thought. I slammed down the receiver.

  “Wait a minute,” I said to myself. “If I call Cuba on my telephone, someone in the FBI is going to put me on a list of Americans who call Cuba.” I had never been ashamed to be American before.

  We Americans think of the United States as the greatest nation on earth. In the view of most of the rest of the world, we’re objectionable about it because they think our pride exceeds our greatness.

  I’m one of the objectionable Americans who probably has a higher opinion of our country than it deserves. What worries me is not the high opinion I have of it but my diminishing sense of pride because of things like not daring to call Cuba because it would get me on a list of people suspected of being un-American.

  Our country no longer seems as great as it once did. We are no longer the good guys always doing the right thing as the leaders of the free world.

  We have always been best friends with the English and they’re still doing fairly well. China, Japan and even Russia are doing better, and I don’t want to see my country fall behind any of them in any category. Every country on the planet has its strengths and weaknesses but some have more strengths and fewer weaknesses.

  It isn’t popular to say, but it still seems incontrovertibly true that the people born and raised in some countries are less capable at living than the people of other countries. I think the accomplishments of the civilizations of Europe and North America have exceeded those of the South American and African countries by any standard you can name. There is no explanation for why this is true and I know that it’s politically incorrect of me to mention it.

  It would be interesting to have the people of every country in the world take an I.Q. test so we could match the collective intelligence of a nation with its standing in the world. If we lived by our professed belief that “all men are created equal,” the scores for all nations would be equal. However, we don’t really believe that. Something has gone wrong in some nations along the way. Climate may make a difference.

  The character of the population of the United States is changing for a variety of reasons, and our image around the world is changing because of that. About one million people are entering the United States as legal and illegal immigrants every year. They are no longer primarily European, as they once were.

  This country was made great by the people whose initiative made them pick up, leave home and come to America for a better life. It is not certain that the people coming here now are motivated by the same things as the immigrants who made their way here 100 or more years ago.

  There’s no question that the United States has a lower standing among nations today than it had a 150, 50 or even 15 years ago. It was hardly noted by most Americans, but the single most damaging
blow to our international reputation came in 2001 when the Bush administration refused to comply with the Kyoto Treaty designed to reduce global warming.

  The treaty, which sought to reduce the kind of pollution that has trapped heat around the earth and produced a warm band was signed by 141 nations. Under the influence of the major manufacturing corporations who didn’t want to spend the money to clean up their act, their friend President Bush opposed the treaty. This has had a lasting and negative effect on our standing in the world community.

  PART SEVEN

  My Life

  People trying to be nice say, “What’s wrong with being old?” It’s a dumb question to which I have a ready answer: “I’m going to die before you do—that’s what’s wrong with it.”

  HOPELESSLY COPELESS

  The comedian Roger Price, long gone now, invented and used the word “copeless” in describing himself. He was unable to cope, he said and I often think of the word—which is not in any dictionary—in relation to myself.

  I was stopped by the flashing lights of a New York City police car last week. Unaware of having done anything wrong, I assumed the cops were after someone in front of me and wanted me to move over so they could get by and apprehend the culprit. It turned out, I was the culprit. One officer came to a position slightly behind the window of my car and said, without inflection “Registration and license, please.” It was a bloodless “please” and did not suggest I had a choice.

  “What did I do?” I asked.

  “License and registration,” he repeated, without the “please” this time. My license was in a small leather case I carry instead of a wallet. I opened the door to get out.

  “Where you going?” he said not in a friendly voice at all.

  “It’s in my pants pocket,” I said. “It’s easier to get if I’m standing.”

  I had forgotten, in a moment of angst, that when a cop stops someone in a car, he stays well behind the driver and, as a precaution against the possibility the driver has a weapon, does not permit the driver to get out.

  I showed him my license but could not find my registration. Like my clothes closet, my desk drawer, my garage and my basement, my car looks like an unemptied wastebasket. Everything is right there somewhere but I don’t know where.

  “You have an outdated sticker on your license plate,” he said. “I’m going to let you go this time but get that sticker and put it on.” I thanked the cop more effusively than he deserved and drove off.

  If I were arrested for every sticker I hadn’t stuck, every form I’ve failed to fill out, every item to be returned that I had not returned, I’d be in prison for life. I don’t fill things out and return them. I don’t know my social security number. I don’t know when I pay the doctor and when some plan pays him. Neither do I know one medical plan from another. My bank writes to say I should change over from one plan to another and I don’t understand whether it’s something I should do for my own good or whether it’s another bank sales gimmick, better for them than for me.

  I hesitate to say so in print, but I do not keep track of what I have in my bank account and if the bank stole from me, I’d never catch them.

  My company informs me that they are going to have a new system for the company retirement plan and will I please fill out the form and indicate that I want it, don’t want it and how much of it do I want—or not want. The fact that I don’t plan to retire is not an option they offer.

  The details of the difference in the plans grew unfathomable to me and I do what I always do. Nothing.

  Yesterday I read a story about the rivalry between the personal computer business and television interests. A new device called a Moxi is a digital box that goes on top of your television set “designed to serve as an integrated digital video recorder, CD player, DVD player, MP3 music player with an Internet connection and a high-speed wireless home network.”

  I am still struggling with channels higher than 13 on the television set. Is the whole world more able to cope with the new technology than I am?

  It’s a good thing I can type and put down one word after another on a sheet of paper because, if I couldn’t, I don’t know what would happen to me. I’m copeless.

  ON BEING A COLLEGE PRESIDENT

  To save them embarrassment, I’m not going to name the college I attended. Their president resigned and they’ve sent me a letter saying I’m a candidate for the job.

  If this is a joke, I am mildly amused but should tell them that I probably take myself more seriously than they do. If this is some kind of a fund-raising gimmick—nothing is too outrageous for a college fundraiser—I object and may stop giving them “funds,” which I call money.

  If the college is serious, I can only say that if nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve. Are they crazy or something? Do they really believe I’m capable of being a college president? Do they think I’d give up my day job to do that even if I was capable of doing it?

  Along with the letter informing me that I’m under consideration by the search committee, there’s a ten-page outline of the job. On page 8 is a section titled DESIRED QUALITIES and I don’t have any of them. According to the outline:

  “A viable candidate must:

  “Be a good listener.”

  Count me out there. I’m not a good listener. If anyone else is talking, I’m impatient until I get a chance to say something.

  “Be able to make timely and difficult decisions.”

  Not me. Half the time, I can’t even make the easy decisions.

  “Maintain a strong commitment to openness and consensus building.”

  No, I’m not committed to being open-minded. You can carry being broad-minded too far. By this time in my life, I know what I know and I know what I think and it’s very damned unlikely that I’m going to change to build what you call a consensus.

  The fact is, I’m no more capable of being a college president than I am of being president of this country. Maybe less. The president of the United States gets help from hundreds of capable assistants. A college president is out there all by himself fighting off the wolves.

  Being a college president is one of the worst jobs known to man or womankind. Everyone is out to get the president. He has to quarrel with the Board of Trustees. This group is made up largely of business people who know nothing about education but have been appointed on the strength of the size of their contributions to the college.

  There’s always a faculty contingent that opposes the president on philosophical grounds.

  Parents want the president’s attention and he doesn’t have time to give it. He’s not leading an educational institution along a path to greater learning. He’s out there raising money more than half the time at an unending series of alumni functions.

  Let me ask a couple of questions of the search committee that thinks I might be college president material:

  When I’m in office, will it be OK with you if I cut the number of football scholarships to zero?

  Will I be able to go over the list of faculty members and see if I can put my finger on the ones who aren’t really teaching?

  Will I be able to rewrite the schedule for the academic year so that instead of having classes on just 126 days out of the 365, the university would hold classes something like 240 days a year? I’d give students one month off in the summer. Classes would start the day after Labor Day and continue until a Christmas vacation of one week.

  There would be a spring break of one week in March or April. There would be classes every weekday and Saturday mornings. Class attendance records would be routinely mailed to parents so they’d know they were getting what they paid for.

  If I were president of the college, students would not be treated like young adults. They would be treated like old children—which they are.

  Do you still want me?

  CARS I HAVE KNOWN

  I call the odometer on my car a speedometer. It rolled past 60,000 this morning. That’s when I start think
ing about buying a new car. I don’t do it right away; I just start thinking about it. I usually get close to I00,000 miles before I actually turn a car in.

  Not many of us buy a new car because we need one. A new car is irresistible once you get thinking about it, even though there’s nothing wrong with your old one. The tires do it for me. I don’t like to spend the money for a new set on a car I know I’m not going to drive another 50,000 miles.

  To pass the time on long drives, I’ve often tried—and failed—to remember and count all the cars I’ve owned. I’d list them, but no one under 50 would know the names. Is Borgward familiar to you?

  We own four cars now. That sounds silly for two people but I leave two of them in the garage in the country from early October until mid-May. One is my 1987 Jeep Cherokee. It’s a good car with about 90,000 miles on it, but the dealer would give me only $5,000 on a trade so I’ve kept it.

  The other part-time car is my great 1966 Sunbeam Tiger with the Ford V–8 engine shoehorned into its little body. I paid $3,600 for the car and wouldn’t sell it for $I00,000. It was rebuilt in 1988 and is in pristine condition. I drive it with the top down through the rolling hills around our country house in upstate New York. It makes me feel young again, but I think I can hear people by the side of the road whispering, “Look at that old fool.”

  My parents owned a memorable Packard when I was growing up. It was one of the best cars ever built in the United States—one of the best of anything ever built anywhere—and this fact makes me suspicious of the free enterprise system. A company manufacturing such a superior product should not be forced out of business for lack of business. When we used to make the 75-mile trip from home to our summer cottage in 1936, my mother drove the Packard at 70 mph, the same speed I would drive my 2006 model car today.