This was supposed to be Beto

I'm reminded of the late playwright,

Simon Gray's funny confession of a

breakfast table habit of scanning 

the obituaries - did they die at an

age less than his, did they go on 

to actuarial heights he was doomed

not to reach? 

and we're always told that those

who persisted to a great age did so

with grace and style and full of en-

ergy, still climbing mountains at

eighty-three, conducting symphonies

at ninety-one -- I think, what right

did they have? who decides these 

things? 

Patently, this is the shirt our in-

tended Texan was destined to fill,

and (barring good health among his

rivals) may still do. But now it's

been absconded with, by another ver-

sion of the bright young thing, of

a more multi-faceted stamp. Flat-

footed, the 2-term mayor of South

Bend is not, in zigging and zagging

his compromises with the hardest-

hearted in the Resistance, and the

technicians of political necessity.

The phrase, "real man," has not been

deployed yet, quite probably for fear

of wasting it until the exquisite is-

sue of the ballot box is upon us. It

will be. Still, the mayor is filling

in the shirt awfully fast, and one

can almost see what right he has,

and who decides these things.

Simon Gray

Coda

Faber and Faber

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