Bob Schwartz

I came across the above image in my folders. I probably intended it to illustrate a post about Michael Cohen. I don’t recall. It is in no way a reflection of or commentary on lawyers in general. But it is too good to pass up.

John Dean: I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next two years.
President Nixon: We could get that. If you—on the money, if you need the money, I mean, you could get the money fairly easily. From the Russians. (sentence added)
The Nixon Tapes

You can be forgiven if you’re not thinking about Watergate in the context of current presidential corruption. It was a long time ago, and unlike Trump, Richard Nixon, while evil, was actually a very smart and capable man, who did a few good things and some very bad things as president.

I do think about Watergate, and today remembered one of the infamous conspirational conversations recorded on the Nixon Tapes. Here Nixon discusses with his White House Counsel John Dean paying a million dollars in hush money to the Watergate defendants. I wondered what it would have been like if Nixon suggested raising the money from the Russians—then as now our enemies.

Date: Wednesday, March 21, 1973 – 10:12am – 11:55am
Participants: Richard Nixon, John Dean

John Dean: Where are the soft spots on this? Well, first of all, there’s the problem of the continued blackmail—

President Nixon: Right.

Dean: —which will not only go on now, it’ll go on when these people are in prison, and it will compound the obstruction-of-justice situation. It’ll cost money. It’s dangerous. Nobody, nothing—people around here are not pros at this sort of thing. This is the sort of thing Mafia people can do: washing money, getting clean money, and things like that. We just don’t know about those things, because we’re not used to, you know, we’re not criminals. We’re not used to dealing in that business. It’s a—

President Nixon: That’s right.

Dean: It’s a tough thing to know how to do.

President Nixon: Maybe we can’t even do that.

Dean: That’s right. It’s a real problem as to whether we could even do it. Plus, there’s a real problem in raising money. [Attorney General John] Mitchell has been working on raising some money, feeling he’s got, you know, he’s got—he’s one of the ones with the most to lose. But there’s no denying the fact that the White House and [John] Ehrlichman, [Bob] Haldeman, and Dean are involved in some of the early money decisions.

President Nixon: How much money do you need?

Dean: I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next two years.

Short pause.

President Nixon: We could get that.

Dean: Mm-hmm.

President Nixon: If you—on the money, if you need the money, I mean, you could get the money fairly easily.

Dean: Well, I think that we’re—

President Nixon: What I meant is, you could get a million dollars. And you could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten.

Dean: Mm-hmm.

President Nixon: I mean, it’s not easy, but it could be done. From the Russians. (sentence added)

“Defense Stocks Rally As U.S. Exit From Iran Deal Adds To Mideast Tension”

There are so many messages in today’s headline from Investor’s Business Daily. None of them good.

1. No matter how enlightened and high-minded—or unenlightened and low-minded—the proponents of war are, there are always going to be those who profit from it. The promise of profiting from war is one way to convince influential people and enterprises to support a war footing. That is not cynicism; it is history.

2. The list of Mideast wars, past and present, is too long to list here. Also long is the list of thoughtful people who think the regional situation right now is more tense than it has been in a very long time, and think that the Trump/Bolton position, popular mostly among the extreme and the extremely nationalistic and uninformed, only adds fuel to the flames.

3. Jared Kushner is officially in charge of peace in the Mideast. So we can all rest easy. Unfortunately, among other poor decisions, he invested in money-losing buildings instead of profitable defense stocks, so he is not sleeping all that well. Wherever he is hiding.

In America, and in much of the world, we pay attention to Trump every day, sometimes for hours on end. We do it because he is a powerful public executive who can affect many lives. We also do it because he is there, a major natural disaster or train wreck, fascinating even if it doesn’t affect us. This is exactly what Trump wants, the only thing he wants. If that attention used to be voluntary, he believes it is now mandatory because he is the most powerful person in America and the world.

Forbes just released its ranking of The World’s Most Powerful People:

This year’s list highlights the consolidation of power in the hands of an elite few. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, seizes the top spot for the first time ever after China’s congress amended its constitution in March, broadening his influence and eliminating term limits. He enjoys a cult of personality not seen since Chairman Mao.

Xi’s elevation to the world’s most powerful person unseats Russian President Vladimir Putin (#2), who held the top spot for an unprecedented four consecutive years. Putin has ruled Russia since May of 2000, and this year he was re-elected to a fourth term with nearly 77 percent of the vote. That’s the largest margin of victory for any candidate for the office since the fall of the Soviet Union.

One year into his term, President Donald Trump falls to the No. 3 spot. Trump has seen limited success pushing his agenda through a Congress controlled by his own party, is under investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies, and can’t shake off scandals arising from his personal and business life –but he’s still Commander in Chief of the world’s greatest economic and military power….

To compile the ranking of The World’s Most Powerful People, we considered hundreds of candidates from various walks of life all around the globe, and measured their power along four dimensions. First, we asked whether the candidate has power over lots of people. Pope Francis, ranked #6, is the spiritual leader of more than a billion Catholics. Doug McMillon (#23), is the CEO of the world’s largest private employer, Wal-Mart Stores, with more than 2.3 million workers around the globe.

Next we assessed the financial resources controlled by each person. Are they relatively large compared to their peers? For heads of state we used GDP, while for CEOs, we looked at measures like their company’s assets and revenues. When candidates have a high personal net worth, like the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos (#5), we also took that into consideration. In certain instances we considered other valuable resources at the candidate’s disposal, like access to oil reserves.

Then we determined if the candidate is powerful in multiple spheres. There are only 75 slots on our list –one for approximately every 100 million people on the planet– so being powerful in just one area is often not enough. Our picks project their influence in myriad ways: Elon Musk (#25) has power in the auto business through Tesla Motors, in the aerospace industry through SpaceX, because he’s a billionaire, and because he’s a highly respected tech visionary.

Lastly, we made sure that the candidates actively used their power. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (#36) has near absolute control over the lives of the 25 million people who live in his country, and is known to punish dissent with death.

To calculate the final rankings, a panel of Forbes editors ranked all of our candidates in each of these four dimensions of power, and those individual rankings were averaged into a composite score. This year’s list comes at a time of rapid and profound change, and represents our best guess about who will matter in the year to come.

If you feel the need to pay constant or even obsessive attention to a powerful person, let it be someone—anyone—except Trump. Just about anybody on the list below may be smarter, more interesting, more accomplished, and in many cases more important than Trump.