I've been traveling for the past few days and, as is my custom, I do a lot of reading on planes and in hotel rooms, looking for interesting little tidbits to fill up the blog.

This time I came back with quite a haul -- starting with a news report that last Thursday, Ireland elected its first black mayor in a commuter town west of Dublin. That reminded me of an earlier occasion when Dublin itself elected its first Jewish mayor. When Yogi Berra heard about it, he is supposed to have remarked, "Only in America."

I was even luckier on Sunday. The Detroit Free Press published a digest of current political quotations that included these gems from two GOP presidential hopefuls.

"I don't even agree with me on everything." -- Rudy Guiliani

"Some of our folks went to Washington to dry the swamp and made partnership with the alligators." -- Fred Thompson

In each case, the phrasing could have been better, but the message was clear.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy Roosevelt’s irrepressible, sharp-tongued daughter, once said of the Kennedys that the world had not seen a family like them since the Bonapartes.

Alice was in no position to make wisecracks about ruling families. She belonged to one herself. Her father and Franklin Roosevelt were distant cousins. Not only that, Teddy was Eleanor Roosevelt’s uncle.

For a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, this country has produced a remarkable number of princely houses. TR and FDR were related. John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, was the son of second president John Adams. Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president, was the grandson of ninth president William Henry Harrison. And, of course, President George W. Bush, our 43rd president, is the son of George H.W. Bush, our 41st president.

The Taft family of Ohio produced a president -- William Howard Taft, who served as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court after he left the White House –- and also three senators, two representatives and a lieutenant governor. The Frelinghuysens of New Jersey have served in either the House or Senate for six generations. Then there are the Chafees or Rhode Island and the Bayhs of Indiana. I've already mentioned the Kennedys.

Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution has calculated that as of the mid-1990s, about 700 U.S. families had sent two or more members to Congress. According to him, political dynasties “are all over the place.”

In fact, Sunday’s Detroit Free Press calculated that if Hilary Clinton wins the White House in 2008, and serves two full terms, then by the year 2016, the United States will have been governed for 28 years by either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. That would be nearly 12 percent of U.S. history to that point. It would also be nearly as long as the Wars of the Roses, the bloody struggle between the rival houses of York and Lancaster that devastated medieval England between 1455 and 1487.

“What has happened to the American republic?” asks University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. “How does it differ from a banana republic where a couple of dominant families often run everything for generations?

Professor Sabato thinks that American voters may be too fearful of change. He may be right. Perhaps we should spend tomorrow not celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but asking if this country needs another revolution to free itself from hereditary privilege and decadent royalty.

Andrew Sullivan is celebrating July 4th by posting a series of “Things We Love About America” –- quotes, poems, pictures, videos and other patriotic sentiments that have been submitted by his readers.

He’s assembled quite a collection and, as of mid-day, he’s still posting. For a look, see http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com.

I sent Andrew a quote from novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald that he hasn’t used yet. So I’m posting it as my own tribute to America on our national holiday. Here it is:

"France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter -- it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."

The quote comes at the end of a story called, “The Swimmers”, that was published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1929. I don’t know precisely what Fitzgerald is alluding to when he speaks of “a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered.” It might have been, “This is a war to end all wars”, or “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Both were revealed to be empty as soon as the guns of the First World War fell silent.

But America’s “willingness of the heart” survived the postwar disillusionment and selfish hedonism of the 1920s –- and, indeed, it endures to this day.

Renowned opera singer, director and philanthropist Beverly Sills, who died last Monday at the age of 78, was nicknamed “Bubbles.”

It suited her. Whether performing, speaking or being interviewed, she had an effervescent quality that endeared her to both opera lovers and the general public alike.

I saw her live in just two performances -- as Ginevra in Handel’s Ariodante, and Norina in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (the latter role giving her plenty of scope for her considerable comic gifts). And once I heard her give a speech at the National Press Club. This was in the mid-1990s, when she was chairwoman of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts organization.

The gist of the speech, as I recall, was a hard-headed defense of the performing arts. She said that in New York City, the arts more than paid their way. She backed up this assertion with detailed figures on how much money the people who came to the city to see a show spent while they were in town. If memory serves, she made a convincing case that the arts contributed more to the city’s economy than sports events.

It was a cogent and impressive performance, but it was also leavened by humor. I remember Ms. Sills telling a hilarious story about her good friend and fellow-diva, Leontyne Price.

Ms. Price was out shipping one day, when a large, rather absurd woman bustled up to her and gushed, “I know you! You’re Joan Sutherland!”

Ms. Price, whose heritage was African rather than Australian, smiled indulgently and replied, “No, I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’m not Joan Sutherland … I’m Beverly Sills.”

The audience roared at the punch line. Bubbles triumphed again.

Libertarian David Boaz of the Cato Institute noted Sunday on the Cato website (www.cato-at-liberty.org) that Christian rightists are finding it particularly hard to find a suitable presidential candidate right now. Among the Republicans, Giuilani is pro-choice, Romney is Mormon and McCain once called religious right leaders “agents of intolerance.”

Mr. Boaz said he would like to see a pollster ask conservative Christians two questions:

1. Would you support a presidential candidate who is divorced, has estranged relations with his children, never sees his grandchildren, rarely attends church, strongly opposes a law to ban gays from teaching school, and as governor signed the nation’s most liberal abortion law?

2. Would you support him if you knew his name was Ronald Reagan?

Bravo, David.

I would add only one comment. This is the same Ronald Reagan who is supposed to have admitted that prior to his marriage to Nancy, he woke up one fine morning in the Garden of Allah hotel with a woman he didn’t know.

Allegedly, Reagan described the incident as follows: “I woke up one morning and I couldn’t remember the name of the gal I was in bed with. I said, ‘Hey, I gotta get a grip here.’”

William Manchester once ventured the opinion that every political commentator is entitled to an occasional romp into fantasy. In the July/August issue of Washington Monthly, Ted Sorensen does more than romp; he fairly somersaults into the improbable, the unlikely and the banal.

Sorensen, who is renowned for having been a speechwriter to President John F. Kennedy, submits the draft of an acceptance speech that he wishes the 2008 Democrat nominee would give.

Alas, even Ted Sorenson can’t make a generic speech for a generic candidate sound interesting. Even the opening is trite: “My fellow Democrats: With high resolve and deep gratitude, I accept your nomination.”

With mounting skepticism and sinking heart I read on: “It has been a long campaign –- too long, too expensive, with too much media attention on matters irrelevant to our nation’s future.”

What else is new, Ted?

Then he turns a somersault: “In this campaign I will make no promises I cannot fulfill, pledge no spending we cannot afford, offer no posts to cronies you cannot trust, and propose no foreign commitments we should not keep.”

Cross your heart and hope to die?

There’s more in this pompous and self-righteous vein. If you want, you can buy the magazine and read it for yourself. I came away shaking my head: Was this political pabulum really written by the same man who helped to pen John Kennedy’s inaugural address, one of the greatest speeches in the history of American politics?

But I’ll admit I was intrigued by the ending of the speech, which goes like this:

“I’m told that John F. Kennedy was fond of quoting Achimedes, who explained the principle of the lever by declaring, “give me a place to stand, and I can move the world.” My fellow Americans –- here I stand. Come join me, and together we will move the world to a new era of a just and lasting peace.”

JFK was fond of quoting Archimedes? I scratched my head over that one. Still, if anyone would know, Sorensen would. So I Googled JFK and Archimedes, and sure enough, President Kennedy did use that quote from Archimedes in a speech.

The date was September 20, 1963. The occasion was an address to the U.N. General Assembly. And the quote was used with great effect in the penultimate paragraph of the speech:

“Two years ago I told this body that the United States had proposed, and was willing to sign, a limited test ban treaty. Today that treaty has been signed. It will not put an end to war. It will not remove basic conflicts. It will not secure freedom for all. But it can be a lever, and Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends: ‘Give me a place where I can stand and I shall move the world.’

“My fellow inhabitants of this planet: Let us take our stand here in this Assembly of nations. And let us see if we, in our own time, can move the world to a just and lasting peace.”

Kennedy’s reference back to his 1961 speech to the General Assembly was very shrewd. In that earlier speech he had said:

"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

So in both the 1961 and 1963 speeches, he invoked classical antiquity –- first, as a warning; and second, as a challenge. Tying them together as he did was great rhetorical technique. Undoubtedly, Sorensen helped to write both speeches –- sterling examples of what he could do in his better days.

As for today, well -- does Mr. Sorensen really think that a Democrat running for president would quote Archimedes before a nationally-televised political convention? That must be the greatest romp into fantasy of all.

The July/August issue of the Washington Monthly that I mentioned in my last post also includes an interesting commentary by editor and former Clinton speechwriter, Paul Glastris.

According to Mr. Glastris, President Clinton once scrawled the comment, “WORDS, WORDS, WORDS” next to a paragraph of lofty language drafted by one of his speechwriters.

Mr. Clinton certainly knew how to hurt a guy. In case you didn’t notice, his comment was a quote from Hamlet. In Act II, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet (who is feigning madness) enters reading a book. Polonius, the busybody lord chamberlain, bustles up to him and asks him what he’s reading. Hamlet replies mockingly, “Words, words, words.”

So, by his comment, Mr. Clinton was not merely saying, “This is bombast,” or, “This is overly rhetorical.” Instead, he’s responding much as playwright Ben Hecht responded to a negative review that was written in a particularly florid style. Hecht’s marginal note read, “Shelley’s loose again.”

Mr. Clinton was known to dislike high-flown language. Supposedly, he told one of his speechwriters, “I don’t want to speak to people; I want to talk to them.”

Now, on the surface at least, that sounds sensible –- even admirable.

The president wanted to “talk” to people –- to give it to them straight, in plain language, free from any artifice or rhetorical devices.

Yes, it sounds good –- on the surface. But is this really what we want from our leaders? If it’s “talk” you want, you can get that at the barber shop.

Imagine Lincoln beginning the Gettysburg Address by saying, “Eighty-seven years ago, a bunch of really cool dudes got together to make a country.”

Instead, Lincoln began the Gettysburg address with, “Fourscore and seven years ago …” He used an expression that was archaic even in 1863. In other words, he used rhetoric –- and so did Mr. Clinton, despite his protestations to the contrary.

Here is Mr. Clinton in November of 1995, in a televised address to the nation, explaining why the U.S. was going to send ground troops to Bosnia to enforce peace in that province:

For nearly four years a terrible war has torn Bosnia apart. Horrors we prayed had been banished from Europe forever have been seared into our minds again. Skeletal prisoners caged behind barbed wire fences, women and girls raped as a tool of war, defenseless men and boys shot down into mass graves, evoking visions of World War II concentration camps and endless lines of refugees marching toward a future of despair.

How many of your friends “talk” to you like that?

I’m not knocking Mr. Clinton. I personally regard that as one of the best speeches his presidency.

But was he “talking” to the nation at that moment, or was he “speaking”?

In fact, is there ever an occasion that requires a speech when you can get by with just “talking”?

Mr. Clinton thought so, but his use of rhetoric, at least in his major addresses, belies him.

His speechwriters knew better. According to Paul Glastris, the dirty little secret of the Clinton speechwriters was how much they cribbed from Ronald Reagan –- “because he and his speechwriters were the modern masters of the form.”

“Talk” to people, indeed!

As a speechwriter, I am sometimes asked why so many graduation addresses fall flat.

It’s a good question, and the best answer I can give is this: The speaker thinks the occasion is all about him or her, instead about the graduates. So the speaker luxuriates in the spotlight, while the graduates fidget impatiently, waiting to receive their hard-earned diplomas.

This is not to say that commencement speakers should never talk about themselves or their life experiences. If they have useful lessons to pass on to the graduates, they should by all means do so. But the focus should be on the young people, not the speaker.

The current issue of Speechwriter’s Newsletter reprints what might be called a model graduation speech. It was delivered by Sen. Barack Obama at Southern New Hampshire University on May 19.

Sen. Obama talks about himself in the course of his speech, but it is always to illustrate a life lesson he is trying to make to the graduates.

For example, he talks about a night of wild partying he enjoyed as an undergraduate. The partying got out of hand and the dorm was trashed. Indeed, the debris was so extensive that the next morning, when the cleaning ladies arrived, one of them was reduced to tears at the sheer enormity of task before her.

When one of Obama’s girlfriends heard about the incident, she told him: “That woman could have been my grandmother, Barack. She spent her days cleaning up after somebody else’s messes.”

Sen. Obama told the grads that that observation drove home for him the first lesson of growing up: The world doesn’t just revolve around you.

In telling that little story about his own journey to maturity, Sen. Obama sets up the audience for a profound observation about the relationship between the individual and society:

“I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that debt.

“It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And it’s because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential –- and become full-grown.”

I found the second paragraph particularly intriguing. Conservatives tend to emphasize individual responsibility; liberals tend to emphasize social responsibility. In one neat phrase, “our individual salvation depends on our collective salvation”, Sen. Obama suggests that individual responsibility and social responsibility are two sides of the same coin.

I believe he’s right. And I think the graduates took the lesson to heart.

I spent yesterday afternoon at a delightful matinee performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera, Ruddygore, given by the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston.

As I invariably am at these Houston G&S Society productions, I was swept up in a wave of bittersweet nostalgia. My acquaintance with Gilbert and Sullivan goes back to my boyhood days, when my family took me to definitive performances of the operettas by Britain’s famed D’Oyle Carte Opera Company.

I use the word “definitive” advisedly. It was the D’Oyle Carte company that first mounted the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas -- and kept performing them for over a century afterwards, under the personal supervision of three generations of the D’Oyle Carte family. You don’t get much more definitive than that.

The D’Oyle Carte Company folded in 1982. But its rich traditions live on in Houston, thanks in large measure to director/performer Alistair Donkin, who was once an understudy with the celebrated British company. Under his expert guidance, the Houston society has produced Gilbert and Sullivan at a standard of excellence that has impressed audiences even on G&S’s home turf. In 2004, the Houston society’s production of The Mikado won first place at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton, England.

That’s why watching the Houston productions never fails to bring a tear to my eye: they take me back to those matinees in New York City over forty years ago, when I first saw those wonderful D’Oyle Carte productions.

Ruddygore is a spoof of gothic melodramas that also contains a lesson or two for speechwriters.

Writing is a solitary profession, and writers tend to be introverts. That’s a serious handicap if you have to make a living by writing. If you’re a freelancer, you have to be extroverted enough to attract clients; and if you work for a corporation, you have to constantly demonstrate that your work is contributing to the bottom line. In either case, you have to be a shameless self-promoter, even if that means going against your nature.

That brings me back to Ruddygore, and a patter song with this refrain:

If you wish in the world to advance,
Your merits you're bound to enhance,
You must stir it and stump it,
And blow your own trumpet,
Or, trust me, you haven't a chance!

Speechwriters should take this advice to heart.

First: Always remember that you have two clients: the person you write for -- and yourself. And you are just as important as the client.

There's no conflict of interest here. If you're working to make your client look good, you're also making yourself look good. For example: Are you hired to write a speech? Offer to turn the speech into an article or op/ed for your client. If it gets published, the client looks good and you've got another impressive writing sample to add to your portfolio.

Second, be visible. One reason why speechwriters are so vulnerable in the corporate world is that we're often faceless, anonymous beings. Some of us think that being invisible makes us secure. Wrong. Don't assume that if you keep your head down and do a good job you're safe, because you're not.

On the contrary, safety lies in being visible within the organization. Volunteer for projects that will help you grow professionally, win you friends and allies and add to your portfolio. Offer to write an article for the company magazine, for instance. Help out with the annual United Way drive or the political action committee. But whatever you do, make sure the higher-ups are aware of the contribution you’re making to the company’s overall success and profitability.

In other words, don’t be afraid to blow your own trumpet. It’s not a matter of puffing your ego. Very often, it’s a matter of your survival.

Some decades ago (I’m not sure exactly when, but obviously before the feminist revolution), there was a series of public service advertisements built around the slogan, “Send me a man who reads.” The ads suggested that reading was one of the surest ways of getting ahead in life.

An article in this past Saturday’s New York Times recalled those ads to my mind. The article described how the libraries of leading CEOs revealed the keys to their success. Successful CEOs, it seems, are not only enthusiastic readers, but have very eclectic tastes.

Some of the CEOs mentioned in the article were devoted to poetry. This is not altogether surprising, because poetry encourages creative thinking and fresh approaches to problem solving.

Sidney Harman, founder of a $3 billion corporation that bears his name, was quoted as saying, “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers.” Mr. Harman favors poets because he regards them as the original systems thinkers. “They look at our most complex environments,” he observes, “and then reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”

I can think of at least one contemporary poet who would agree with Mr. Harman on that. Richard Wilbur, who was a combat soldier during World War II, once said that he started writing poetry as a way of imposing order on chaos. Consider these two stanzas from one of his earliest published poems, “First Snow In Alsace”:

Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.

As if it didn’t know they’d changed,
Snow smoothly clasps the roofs of homes
Fear-gutted, trustless and estranged.

Like the snow, rhyme and meter soften the horror of war. They also aid us in our efforts to piece together some meaning from tragedy.

Other poetry-loving CEOs include Steven Jobs of Apple. According to the Times, Jobs’ own history of book collecting attests to his “inexhaustible interest” in the works of William Blake.

If seems a bit incongruous that the CEO of a company on the cutting edge of 21st Century technology would be fascinated by the works of an 18th Century English mystical poet, it’s not. Indeed, one can easily imagine how the CEO who just gave us the iPhone might have been inspired by these lines from Blake:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Dee Hock, the father of the credit card and the founder of Visa, was devoted to the “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam. Why? I suspect it’s because Omar recognized nearly a thousand years ago that people wanted instant gratification. For example:

And as the cock crew, those who stood before
The tavern shouted –- “Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.”

Even more to the point is this later quatrain:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and –- sans End.

After reading this article, I’m tempted to tell young people who want to succeed in business that they shouldn’t waste their time going for an M.B.A. They should major in English instead.

My good friend Professor Carl Dolmetsch responded to my last post by sharing a story he heard from a British friend of his. The friend’s uncle was a sergeant in the British army, who served in Burma during World War II.

Burma was a relatively quiet theatre in that war, and boredom was a major morale problem. So the uncle, who taught English in civilian life, offered to give some instruction to the troops to help relieve the tedium. When the company commander approved his proposal, the sergeant major assembled the men and announced: "Blokes, this here is Sgt. Murdoch, and ‘e's volunteered to tell you all about Keats … And I'll bet none of you buggers knows wot a Keat is!"

Apparently, the rank and file of the British army in those days had little acquaintance with the glories of English literature.

That wasn’t altogether unfortunate. I once heard Sir John Gielgud give an interview in which he said that the wonderful thing about performing Hamlet for the troops back then was that most of them had no idea how the play would end.

Oh, to have been in one of those audiences! It would have been the closest one could get in the 20th Century to one of Shakespeare’s openings.

A study published last week by the New England Journal of Medicine made headline news across the country. The study claimed that a person’s chance of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if one had a friend who became obese during a given time period. If the friend was of the same sex, the odds of becoming obese jumped by 71 percent. If, on the other hand, one associated with people committed to losing weight, the odds of one slimming down likewise increased significantly.

None of these findings would have surprised that old cynic and master storyteller W. Somerset Maugham, who described the same phenomenon over 60 years ago in his wickedly amusing short story, “The Three Fat Women of Antibes.”

The story concerns three women friends –- each single, fortyish, fat and rich -- who rent a house together on the French Riviera. Their aim is to reinforce each other’s commitment to diet and exercise and to indulge in their shared passion for bridge.

The experiment in weight loss goes well until one member of the group proposes that they invite a recently-widowed friend named Lena Finch to join the party for a couple of weeks. Since Lena is also fortyish, on a diet and a bridge-player, the other members of the party –- thrilled at the prospect of having a fourth at bridge -- eagerly assent to her coming.

Lena duly arrives, and immediately puts the three fat women under an enormous strain. Yes, she’s on a diet, but since she’s naturally thin, and has grown thinner since her husband’s death, the diet is intended to help her gain rather than lose weight.

The doctor has ordered Lena to eat bread and butter, cream, potatoes and all the other rich foods that the three fat women have had to deny themselves. “You’ll get simply enormous,” one of the trio warns Lena.

“No I shan’t,” Lena replies gaily. “You see, nothing ever makes me fat. I’ve always eaten everything I wanted to and it’s never had the slightest effect on me.”

General consternation seizes the three heavyweights in the party.

With undisguised relish, Maugham describes the torture to which Lena unwittingly subjects her calorie-counting companions: “They ate grilled fish while Lena ate macaroni sizzling with cheese and butter; they ate grilled cutlets and boiled spinach while Lena ate pate de foie gras; twice a week they ate boiled eggs and raw tomatoes, while Lena ate peas swimming in cream and potatoes cooked up in all sorts of delicious ways. The chef was a good chef and he leapt at the opportunity afforded him to send up one dish more rich, tasty and succulent than the other.”

By the time Lena’s visit draws to a close, the other three women are so eaten up with frustration and envy that they can barely be civil to each other. Harmony is restored only when they give up dieting altogether and go back to gorging themselves on the rich foods they enjoy so much.

The New England Journal of Medicine had to make a detailed study of over 12,000 people to conclude that our friends can make us fat. Maugham drew the same conclusion over sixty years ago, using nothing more than his shrewd observation of human nature and an acid-dipped pen.

His story is unfashionable today. It is sexist, misogynistic and even cruel. But it’s undeniably funny and, based on these latest findings, it’s apparently true.