Howard, let’s say we set up a draft-Brooks movement?

Capital idea, Bruce. I assume you’re here for the same reason–the store is locked and the Czar has the only key, which ain’t working.

J.E., I remember that movie vividly. The wife and I saw it when our firstborn was about 18 months, and we assumed he’d sleep through it in the darkened theater. We each took turns taking him outside while the other tried to watch the movie.

In any case, I’ve seen it in its entirety since. It’s where I first heard the term “flop-sweat.” I wonder if, like the Brooks character, TGL doesn’t have some flop-sweat in his future.

Obama has always seemed to me like this character’s dream of what he’d be if he were pretty and photogenic. Obama is the pretty-boy anchor who really, deep down, despises the whole pretty-boy-anchor gig, and who, if he were stuck at home, would be singing along to French indie-pop. He’s like a whole “type’s” adolescent fantasy come true.

Brooks doesn’t let that “type” off the hook, and I love him for that.

If Albert Brooks scripted a send-up of self-important “smart power” multilateralism, it would look like the effort in Afghanistan. And in Brooks’s hands, of course, the inevitable comeuppance would be handled with painful honesty.

J.E., I suspect Brooks could do a better job–on the domestic front, too.