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'DONALD! HEY,
DONALD!
DONALD!'
THE men were yelling, eager to call him by name. A storm front of cigar
smoke was gathering above the hotel ballroom, packed elbow-to-elbow for
a breakfast-hour sports forum with a crowd that included some of New
York's most wealthy, powerful and famous men.
Mayor
Koch was there, former Mayors Lindsay and Beame, two United States
Senators, the five borough presidents, judges, labor leaders, busines
stycoons and sports celebrities, as well as team owners and executives
such as George Steinbrenner, Sonny Werblin of the Knicks and Rangers,
Fred Wilpon, president of the Mets, and several hundred men who make it
their business to rub shoulders at such functions.
Yet,
somehow, everyonme at this sports function was drawn to Donald Trump,
the 37-year-old owner of the New Jersey Generals, a franchise in the
upstart United States Football League. As Mr. Trump inched his way
toward the exit, dragging a dozen reporters, emn int he crowd stood on
their tiptoes to wave and call to him - like so many bejowled rock-star
fans. There was a desperation about them as they reached throught he
reporters to pat him on the back, to grasp his hand or just to stuff a
business card into his coat pocket. If only he could cut them in.
Donald
J. Trump is the man of the hour. Turnon the television or open a
newspaper almost any day of the week and there he is, snatching some
star form the National Football League, announcing some preposterously
lavish project he wants to build. Public-relations firms call him,
offering to handle his account for nothing, so that they might take
credit for the torrential hoopla.
He has no public-relations agent. His competitors wonder how this can
be, but watching him at the sports forum provided an explanation. While
executives of the other teams told the audience about problems of
negotiation and arbitration, about dirty restrooms inside their arenas
and street crime outside and about 'attempting to move the Mets in the
right direction,' Donald Trump was electrifying the room the
rat-a-tat-tat revelations, dropping names of star N.F.L. players and
coaches he would sign in a matter of hours. He said further that he
would 'continue to create chaos' for the N.F.L. and, by the way, that
he planned to build a domed stadium in New York.
>While critics charge that Mr. Trump is a raving egomaniac, bent on
putting his name on every inanimate boject in the city, he claims that
putting on the Trump name is value added.
'These
units are selling,' says Blanche Sprague, who is in charge of sales at
Trump Plaza, 'because of the Trump name.' A man holding a trowel says
he is proud to be working on a Trump building and always tells his
friends are waiting to
get in.
Trump
Tower represents his guiding principle: Spend whatever it takes to buid
the est. Them, let people know about it. In New York, there is no limit
to how much money people will spend for the very best, not second best,
the very best.
Trump sums up Trump Tower this way: The finest apartments in the
top building in the best location in the hottest city in the world.
This is Trump-speak. Mr. Trump has said that Trump Tower is for the
'world's best people,' and one who doubts his modesty commented that by
way of proving it, Mr. Trump was moving in himself. The Trups recently
had their third child, and the growing family will soon settle in a $10
million triplex penthouse.
The
real-estate market is Mr. Trump's thermometer for gauing just how 'hot'
a city is. 'New York is, right now, perhaps the hottest city ever,' he
says. Recalling recent years when Paris, London, Los Angeles and
Chicago had been hot, 'at some point, real estate here will have to go
down, but that point is not in sight. One element that makes the market
stronger here than in other U.S. cities is the Europeans, South
Americans and others.'
Arriving
in his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, Donald Trump is handed
a sprial notebook by his secretary, Norma I. Foerderer, that lists
about 50 telephone calsshe has received this morning that she deems
worth mentioning. 'It's carzy,' he remarks. 'People are coming to me
now because I have credibility.' He says he senses it is ephemeral. He
is seizing the moment.
Mrs.
Foerderer and a few others guard the ramparts, beating back dozens,
sometime hundreds, of callers each day who would like to throw in with
Mr. Trump n a variety of deals. Visitors are treaed to a slide show on
Trump Tower while they wait - with superlatives by The Trump
Organization and vocal accompaniment by Frank Sinatra. In their efforts
to get through to Mr. Trump, some of the visitors tell Mrs. Foerderer
they are old buddies of his, others bring candy and flowers. They want
to propose marriage to Mr. Trump or to put a tank of dolphins in the
lobby or have him back a Hollywood film or do a television series about
rich people living in Trump Tower or sell him some oil wells in
Oklahoma or some land in Ankara or ask if he would be interested in a
plan to bulldoze Ellis Island to build a nice golf course and clubhouse
out there. Some people try to make it simple for him and just ask for
cash. The day before he has sent $3,000 to an unfortunate family he has
red about in the newspaper, something he does frequently, according to
Mrs. Foerderer.
For
a billion-dollar corporation, there aren't too mny people around. Mr.
Trump runs The Trump Organization, which includes several companies
that buy, sell and develop land, own land and buildings, and a company,
now inactive, that bought and sold gold, which, Mr. Trump confirmed,
reaped him a $32 million profit. Mr. Trump owns all of these. He is a
50-50 partner in companies that own the Gran Hyatt hotel, Trump Tower
and Harrah's at Trump Plaza. He owns 90 percent of the Trump Plaza
cooperative building partnership. The Trump family owns 25,000
apartment units primarily in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island - the
empire that Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump's father, built. The elder Mr.
Trump looks after these apartments from an office at the rear of an
apartment building at 600 Avenue Z in Brooklyn.
Fred
Trump's empire, which he built from scratch, had an estimated value of
$40 million when Donal joined the business 16 years ago. Donald's
brother, Robert, is an executive vice president of the organization.
(An older brother, Fred Jr., died several years ago.) His two sisters
are Maryanne Trump Barry, a Federal Distict Court judge in Trenton, and
Elizabeth J. Trump, a secretary at the Chase Manhattan Bank. They were
raised in a 23-room house in Jamaica Estates. The family is of Swedish
descent.
Donald
Trump makes or approves practically all decisions. Although there is a
board room, there is no board. At the moment, he is telling a doorman
on the other end of the telephone not to put that tacky runner down on
the eautiful marble floor when it rains. He does not seem to write
anything down, keeping volumes of company files as mental notes.
Mr.
Trump's wife, Ivana, is also an executive vice president of the company
and has an office next door to her husband's. She is a former fashion
model - 'a top model,' in Mr. Trump's words - who was married to Donald
Trump seven years ago by the family's minister, the Rev. Norman Vincent
Peale.
Ivana Trump, mother of three, retains her model's figure and glamour at
age 35. Designers and manufacturers of perfume, jewelry, dresses nad
panty hose have proposed naming product lis after her and using her in
advertisements. She says she is not interested. She works 10 hour days
at the office, handles a heavy social calendar and does most of the
cooking for the family. Without trying to arouse undue sentiment
against her, it shoud also be added that she is a top-flight skier, an
alternate on the 1972 Czechoslovak Olympic team.
She
speaks with a thick accent that only seems to add to her allure.
'Cowboys?' she says, her eyes brightening and her voice rising, as it
does when she talks about most anything. 'We don't want Cowboys! Where
can we go with Cowboys?' She was explaining why her husband bought the
New Jersey Generals instead of the Dallas Cowboys. Says Louise M.
Sunshine, another executive vice president: 'If it is not the
impossible, Donald is simply not interested. There has to be
creativity. Money ceased to be the object a long time ago.' Mr. Trump
agrees with this assessment.
Mrs.
Trump acts as interior designer for his projects, in concert with other
designers. she and Mr. Trump make thousands of decisins, from picking
all the wallpapers, curtain backings and braid for the doormen's
uniforms to menus and doorknobs. Their selections seem based on
galvanic skin response. They want the bathmats for Harrah's to add a
measure of excitement.
Mrs.
Trump spent a week at a quarry in Italy matching slabs of the
distinctive, peach rose and pink Breccia Perniche marble for the atrium
of Trump Tower. Some people criticize 'that pink marble' and Mrs. Trump
responds: 'And what do they prefer? The cheap white travertine that is
used in baks and all the other buildings? It is too cold, too common.
Donald and I are more daring than that.' When people criticize the
Trump Tower doormen's uniforms, she ansers: 'They are fun. Why must
everyone be so serious?'
The
couple's attention to detail is exceptional. Workmen at the Trump Plaza
say that ona recent visit, Mr. Trump spotted a hairline crack that
others could barely detect in a bathroom of one of the 140 cooperative
apartments. He not only complained but stood there until a work crew
came and replaced the marble.
Another
worker at the site recalled that Mrs. Trump had an entire elevator cab
replaced rather than have a small gap filled where the trim failed to
meet the elevator wall. The construction manager of the Atlantic City
project, Tom Pippett, said, when Mrs. Trump gave birth to the couple's
third child, 'We hoped to get her off our backs for a least a month or
so.' But she delivered the baby on a Friday and returned to work the
next Tuesday.
Irving
R Fischer, chairman of the board of HRH Construction Corporation, one
of New York City's largest, and construction manager of Trump Tower,
recalls mrs. Trump's decision that the handrails ont he balconies at
Trump Plaza were the wrong color. 'He saw a gold Cadillac down the
block,' he says, 'and yelled, 'That's the color!' We had to go out and
buy goddamned Cadillac paint for the railings. These are things no
other developer in the city ever thnks about. They leave it to
architects and decorators.'
After
lunch in the Trump Tower atrium restaurant - 'have a roll, these are
the best rolls in the city' - Mr. Trump walks up to the
Sherry-Netherland Hotel for talks, through an interpreter, with a group
of Argentines. They are principal owners of 76 acres on the West Side,
the largest single piece of undeveloped private property remaining in
Manhattan, site of the proposed Lincoln West development. Although
partners in the development say Mr. Trump is considering joining them
in the project, a knowledgeable source says Mr. Trump left the meeting
with an option to buy thm out entirely.
'He
is an almost unbelievable negotiator,' says Irving Fischer of
HRH
Construction. 'I don't worship at the shrine of Donald Trump,' he says,
'but our company has given up trying to negotiate costs with him. We
just say: 'Tell us what you want, you're going to get it
anyway.''
Mr.
Trump refuses to dicuss his deals publicly, but his negotiating
bilities were there for all to see recently when he decided to sign the
Giant's all-pro linebacker, Lawrence Taylor. Before the negotiating was
over, Mr. Taylor's agent foundhimself paying Mr. Trump $750,000 in cash
to get his player released from a contract he signed with the Fenerals
so that he could re-sign with the Giants, and Mr. Trump had reaped
millins of dollars of free publicity for having gone after one of the
best players in football.
Three
years ago, Mr. Trump went into a room with the owners of the Barbizon
Plaza Hotel and an adjacent apartment buiding, purchased the property
for about $13 million, according to records, and less than two months
later took out a mortgage on it for $65 million. Sources in the
industry say the value of hat parcel on Central Park South may now be
as much as $125 million.
'Trump
can sense whn people might want to get ot of a project,' says a
developer, 'and he moves in, very quickly and very quietly so others
will not get into the biddig and drive the price up. He trusts his
instincts and has theguts to act on them.
Roy
M. Cohn, Mr. Trump's friend and attorney, adds: 'He has an uncanny
sense of knowing that something is a good deal when it looks dismal to
everyone else.'
Such
was his first deal in Manhattan, his purchase of the Commodore Hotel on
East 42nd Street in the mdid-1970's, when even the Chrysler Building
across the street was in foreclosure. Fred Trump described his son's
efforts to buy the hotel as 'fighting for a seat on the Titanic.' But,
Donald Trump says, 'I saw all those people coming out of Grand Central
Terminal, and I said to myself, 'How bad can this be?'' He completely
renovated the hotel, reopening it as the chrome-and-glass Grand Hyatt
Hotel.
In
Atlantic City, he invested $1 million in land and other costs before
the referendum on gambling was passed in 1976. By the early 1980's, his
investment was $22 million. 'Everyone said stay away from Atlantic
City,' Mr. Trump says. 'Everybody but about four guys. I wa one of the
four.'
According
to sources in Atlantic City familiar with the deal, Harrah's paid Mr.
Trup $50 million in the casino hotel, which Mr. Trump already had under
construction. Harrah's put up an additional $170 million in fiancing,
agreed to charge Mr. Trump no managing fee and has guaranteed him no
financial losses in any year.
He
had moved in quietly, sending 14 different people to purchase 15
parcels of land and keeping his name out of it. 'If the seller was
Italian,' says Mr. Trump, 'we sent an Italian' - something he probably
did not learn at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of
Finance, where he received a B.A. in economics in 1968. He bought and
sold a few pieces of real estate in Philadelphia when he was bored with
classes.
'It's
in his genes,' says Fred Trump, explaining his son's success in real
estate and recalling his three sons growing up on construction sites
and in rental offices.
'Donald
Trump is the Michael Jackson of real estate,' says Mr. Fischer. 'We've
been dealing with him since he was 16. He was an old trouper at age 25.'
His
success also derives from his marketing skills. 'I want to bring a
little showmanship to real estate,' Mr. Trumps says. He is often
compared to the late William Zeckendorf, the renowned New York builder,
who was said to owe much of his success to his personal flair. Other
New York developers - including the Lefraks, the Rudins, te Tishmans,
the Fishers, the Roses - go quietly about building more buildings than
does Donal Trump, making their millions and keeping their names out of
things.
Some developers find
Mr. Trump's high-profile approach disagreeable, but most concede that
it has worked for him.
Preston
Robert Tisch, a developer and chief operating officer of the Loews
Corporation, who lost out to Mr. Trump in the battle over whose site
would be chosen for the city's convention cneter, concludes: 'He
captured the imagination of people to a greater degree than I could.'
The
condominiums in Trump Tower are selling rapdily at what many believe
are exorbitant prices, while less costly units in Museum Tower, for
example, another 'superluxury' building a few blocks away, are not.
According to a marketing study of four such buildings made by the
rudential Insurance Company of America, Donald Trump seems to be the
only person in New York who knows how to market superluxury apartments.
How do you sell a one-bedroom apartment costin as much as a line item
in the Department of Defense budget? 'You sell them a fantasy,' Mr.
Trump explains. 'He deserves full credit for his success,' says another
builder. 'He spent $1 million on the waterfall in Trump Tower. No one
else would have done that. If the building fails everyone will say:
'Well sure, what jackass spends a million bucks on a waterfall?''
'What
sets Trump apart,' says Ben V. Lambert, a real-estate investment
banker, 'is his ability to pierce through the canvas and get things
don.He gets projectsliterally off the ground while others are having
meetins and doing feasibility studies. But his real skill is putting
together complex pieces of the puzzles: fiancing, zoning, parcels of
land and such. This ethereal part of building is perhaps more important
than the brick and mortar.'
Some
have said that his father's money and political contacts with the
Brooklyn Democratic organization, which produced former Mayor Abraham
D. Beame and former Gov. Hugh L. Carey, are an important part of Donald
Trump's success formula. To be sure, they played a part in his gaining
a foothold in Manhattan real estate a decade ago. 'It's good to know
people,' Fred Trump told his son. Henry J. Stern, the Parks
Commissioner who wa then a City ouncil memer, sharply criticzed the tax
abatement Mr. Trump received - the first ever for a commercial
developer - on the Grand Hyatt Hotel project. 'Donald Trump runs with
the same clique that continues to manipulate things behind the scenes
in this city,' Mr. Stern then charged.
In
retrospect, Mr. Stern now says: 'The tax abatement was a good thing. It
made it possible for Donald Trump to take a risk an build a hotel that
started a turnarond of that entire area.' Mayor Koch agrees with that
assessment, as does Mr. Tisch, who, at the time, vociferously opposed
the abatement as unfair to other developers and hotel operators.
'Donald
Trump, Mr. Stern concludes, 'is a transplanted 19th-century
swashbuckling entrepreneur, and it is up to public officials to rein
him in. I don't so much fault him for asking the city for thigs as I do
public officials who gave him his way.
'It
is not a crime to contribute to politicians,' says Mr. Stern. 'For a
New York real-estate developer not to contribute would probably make
him look overtly hostile.'
Charges
of political influence were also made when Mr. Trump hired Louise
Sunshine to lobby for his site for the convention center. Mrs. Sunshine
had been the chief fund-raiser for Governor Carey's re-election
campaign and was collecting a state salary at the time. Concern was
voiced over the intermingling of roles.
Some
people still worry about Mr. Trump's political connections. Ruth W.
Messinger is a City Council member who, despite her continued
opposition to the project, has worked for four years to try to insure
that a development at Lincoln West will be reasonably compatible with
the neighborhood. Reports that Mr. Trump may buy into the project, she
says, 'scare me to death.'
'He
seems to get his way in this city,' she says. Mr. Trup is rather
astonished that people feel this way after the city denied him a tax
abatement on Trump Tower worth abot $15 million to $20 million.
Although
it has yet to become an issue, some eyebrows were raised when Mr. Trump
was named to a panel studying the feasibility and site selection of a
domed sports complex in New York even though he has expressed a strong
desire to build it.
Mrs.
Messinger does not much care for Mr. Trump's 'contentiousness' in
pressing a lawsuit against the city over refusal of his tax abatement
on Trump Tower or for his filing suit against the official who refused
it, Anthony Gliedman, the city's Housing Commissioner. Says Roy Cohn:
'You don't use the term 'settlement' with Donald.
Mr.
Trump's critics charge that this is typical of his bullying ways.
Tenants of an apartment building at Central Park South and Avenue of
the Americas owned by Mr. Trump charge thathe is trying to force them
out. He has expressed a desire to build a lavish new hotel on the site
of that building and the adjacent. Barbizon-Plaza Hotel. Mr. Trump has
filed suits against several of the tenants and Housing Court judges
have thrown several of the suits out f court on grounds that they were
brought in bad faith to harass and annoy the tenants and were a blatant
attempt to force the tenants out throug spurious and unnecessary
litigation.
For
his part, Mr. Trump claims that millionaires are paying $400 for large
apartments with park views in the rent-controlled building. He has had
tin placed over windows of vacant apartments, giving the building the
look of a tenement. He has offered to house homeless peole in the empty
apartments, an offer Mayor Koch declined because he viewed it as as an
obvious attempt to make remaining tenants want to leave.
Mr.
Trump first became a target for many of his critics when, in 1980, he
jackhammered two Art Deco has-relief sculptures that had adorned the
Bonwit building, which he was razing to make way for Trump Tower. He
destroyed them rather than donating them to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, which had expressed interest in the pieces. Critics never fail to
mention the episode. Now, Mr. Trump says he is sorry he did it, but
insists that little interest was shown in preserving the statues until
after they were demolished.
Mr.
Trump does not place patience on his list of virtues. Workmen confirm a
story that he paid $75,000 to truck several 40-foot trees from Florida
to Trump Tower, where a tunnel was built into the building so the trees
would not be damaged by frost. The 3,000-pound trees were then
installed in the lower plaza of the atrium. Mr. Trump did not like the
look. He ordered the trees removed, and, when workmen balked for 24
hours, Mr. Trump had the trees cut down with a chainsaw.
It
is often pointed out that Mr. Trump is prone to exageration in
describing his projects. Oh, he lies a great deal, says Philip Johnson
with a laugh. But it's sheer exuberance, exaggeration. It's never about
anything important. He's straight as an arrow in his business dealings.
Sometimes
exaggeration just seems to swirl around him. A recent television show,
'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, reported that his Greenwich, Conn.,
waterfront home is a $10 million estate. Mr. Trump will admit that, yes
he paid less than one-third of that and says: I didn't tell them that.
Various
figures, ranging from $6 million to $10 million have been reported as
the amount he paid for the Generals, but, as one who was involved in
the negotiations says, the figure is closer to $1 million. Mr. Trump
answers: I never told them those other figures.
And
just about every profile ever written about Mr. Trump states that he
graduated first in his class at Wharton in 1968. Although the school
refused comment, the commencement program from 1968 does not list him
as graduating with honors of any kind. He says he never told them that
either.
Some of mr. Trump's critics are worried that the man who may change New
York's skyline before he's through may simply have no taste. The worry
abot palace-guard doormen and talk of high-rise castles.
If
the charge is that Donald is unsophisticated, says Roy Cohn, they are
in some ways right. If you go with Donald to see an art collection,
he's not that interested. He'd rather look out the windows at building.
His
taste is all right, says Philip Johnson, but it is sometimes
overwhelmed by his sense of publicity. He will become less and less
glitzy. He'll listen to me.
Oddly
enough, for all of those who criticize his buildings as not in the best
of taste, architecture critics have generally hailed them. In her
review of the glass-and-chrome Grand Hyatt, for example, Ada Louise
Huxtable spoke of the building's ingenuity and elegance and called it
urbane and elegant New York. After an afternoon of negotiating with the
Argentines, Mr. Trump returns to his office and momentarily takes a
seat behind a desk big enough for F-14 landings. The office is not,
however, what is known in the decorating profession as a power office,
the kind common among top executives that is designed to induce
groveling. It is of casual, modern decor with models of buildings and
blue-prints scattered about.
Mr.
Trump has abandoned the flashy haberdashery he favored some years ago -
a wardrobe that included a burgundy suit and matching shoes - and he
now dresses conservatively if casually, often wearing dark suits, white
shirts, subdued ties and loafers. He speaks slowly and softly and in
the same casual manner to eminent architects an business moguls as to
the cofee and sandwich vendor outside his casino-hotel. He is said, by
acquaintances, to be generally even tempered and rarely seems ruffled.
He is not given to unkind remarks and is nearly always in a positive
frame of mind. I never think of the negative, he says. All obstacles
can be overcome.
He
talks boastfully about his projects, but is uncomfortable talking about
himself. He does not smoke and does not drink alcohol. He plays golf
and tennis regularly. His wife describes him as an all-American boy who
likes country music best and prefers a steak and aked potato to
anything called cuisine.
Although
he is 6 feet 2 inches, he does not particularly stand out in a crowd.
His sandy hair is probably a bit long by standards of the corporate
world, with the sides slicked back just a bit. More often than not,
published profiles describe him as handsome. His smile is an
impudent-looking curl of the lip that makes his protrait appear less
like the head of a billion-dollar corporation in his office than Elvis
Presley in Viva Las Vegas.
He
has boyish looks that are accentuated by the company he keeps. His
equals in the business world are all much older than he and these are
the people he most often socializes with. He has dificulty now figuring
out who his real friends are, as billionaires will.
He
has not yet indulged in planes, race cars, polo ponies, art work,
yachts, and the like. He says he doesn't have time for all of that now
and prefers putting his money back into his deals. Of course there is
the estate in Greenwich, and, Mrs. Trump says, We have a speedboat up
there, and I like to go out and go a hundred miles an hour in it and
come back. We don't want to sit on a yacht all day. His father pulled
Donald Trump out of a prep school because he didn't want his son
growing up with spoiled kids with $40 ball gloves, sending him instead
to military school. His father bragged at the sports forum that he had
taken the subway and saved $15 car fare.
Mrs.
Trump says that, though they both work long hours, they try to spend
two or three nights a week at home with the children, aged 6 years, 2
years and three months, buut the social obligations do pile up. In
addition to dinner parties, Mrs. Trump says they like to attend
Broadway openings an that they frequent the ballet and opera. Mrs.
Trump is active in support of the United Cerebral Palsy Fund and other
charities, as well as the New York City Opera. She is also an active
supporter of Ronald Reagan.
Mr.
Trump seems to have maintained a detached view of his flood of fortune
and publicity. He frequently mentions that all of the attention and
success may well be fleeting.
His
friends say that he is not yet fully cognizant of his station. He loves
to got to '21' for lunch and be impressed with all the wealthy,
powerful, famous people, says an acquaintance. He doesn't quite realize
that he's one of them.
That may be changing. He
recently make a secret offer to buy the place.
After
dusk, he rides throught the city on his way to the last appointment of
the day, enjoying the lights that make the whole city sparkle like the
inside of Trump Tower. He talked about his plans for the future, as
much as anyone who operates on spontaneous combustion can.
Mr.
Trump says whatever else he gets into he will undoubtedly stay in real
estate. He hints everal times at a deal in the works, a big deal, very
Trumpish, regarding television. but he will not divulge details.
The
football thing is cute, Trump Tower and the piano and all of that, it's
all cute, but what does it mean? he says, sounding what borders on a
note of uncharacteristic despair.
Asked to explain, he
adds: What does it all mean when some wacko over in Syria can end the
world with nuclear weapons?
He
says that his concern for nuclear holocaust is not one that popped into
his mind during any recent made-of-television movie. He says that it
has been troubling him since his uncle, a nuclear physicist, began
talking to him about it 15 years ago.
His
greatest dream is to personally do something about the problem and,
characteristially, Donald Trump thinks he has an answer to nuclear
armament: Let him engotiate arms agreements - he who can talk people
into selling $100 million properties to him for $13 million.
Negotiations is an art, he says and I have a gift for it.
The
idea thathe would ever be allowed to got into a room alone and
negotiate for the United States, let alone be successful in disarming
the world, seems the naive musing of an optimistic, deluded young man
who has never lost at anything he has tried. But he believes that
through years of making his views known and through supporting
candidaes who share his views, it could someday happen.
He
is constantly asked about his interest in running for elective office.
Absolutely not, he answers. All of the false smiles and the red tape.
It is too difficult to really do anthing.
He dislikes meetings and
paperwork and is in the enviable position of being able to avoid both.
[There's way more ]
