I Know I’m Better than That
My next-door neighbor at the summer cottage just left, having won his 75th of the 97 chess games we’ve played this season. That’s a 22% win-rate for me, and I know I’m a better chess player than that. When I win, it’s a decisive, no-nonsense, thoroughbred performance—not a blunder in sight. But he’s a master of the end game, and life is about end games.
Which is also a political truth, as we face the voting booth in four more days
Jeff Bezos thinks of himself as ‘better than that,’ as he quashes the Washington Post newspaper (which he owns) from making its presidential preference known. Those wealthy enough to own newspapers often imprint their political and social beliefs on the front page, as did Colonel Robert McCormick at the Chicago Tribune and Randolph Hearst at his many papers. My father was fond of saying of the three Chicago papers that he read, the Trib spoke for the right, the Sun-Times for the left and the Daily News for the truth.
Dad’s been gone for fifty years now, but there still remain a half-dozen papers who make a difference, and the Washington Post is one.
Trying to keep a recommendation quiet, Bezos has given it worldwide attention and made its intent all the more powerful
It hasn’t as much to do with who Bezos will vote for. I suspect that in the anonymous confines of a voting booth, he may well pull the crank for someone other than Donald. But he kept his paper from suggesting that, and the fallout has been substantial. All hell broke loose as two reporters told the world that editorial page staffers had already drafted an approved endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Several Editorial Board members (one of them a Pulitzer Prize winner) resigned, along with a substantial number of journalists. Over 250,000 subscribers also abandoned ship, at a perilous financial time for the industry, so once again we are publicly exposed to ‘unintended consequences.’
It seems even billionaires have their price, and Bezos has shown us his
In 2019, Amazon accused Trump of political retribution after his administration denied the company a $10 billion Pentagon contract to provide cloud computing services. Between Amazon and Blue Origin (his infant aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider), Bezos is not about to un-butter that bread if Trump gets elected. The Blue Origin people sat down with the Donald immediately after the news broke—but hey, who’s connecting dots? It’s probably entirely coincidental that Bezos has just shown an interest in buying Boeing’s space division.
Perhaps now, Bezos may find his bread buttered on both sides. He killed the endorsement and made it ten times as powerful in a single stroke. The downside is that bread can no longer avoid falling butter-side down in Kamala’s administration.
Hmm, yep, consequences.
Even so, he’s not alone in the game. Over at SpaceX, Elon is slathering jam on the same bread. Seldom do we ordinary mortals get such a front-row seat as billionaires trip the light fantastic in a power dance.