One of those lives, one of those second acts, passed from the scene the other day. Charles Colson once said that he feared what he might have become had he not gone to prison. But because he did, he transformed his life. He became a tireless minister to incarcerated men and women around the world, and the group he founded, Prison Fellowship Ministries, has offered solace and inspiration to hundreds of thousands of prisoners.

Mr. Colson, who died at the age of 80 last week, spent the first act of his life in politics, where he gained the attention of Richard Nixon in the 1950s. When Mr. Nixon became president, Mr. Colson gleefully took on the role of professional hatchet man. He said that he would “walk over my own grandmother” if it would help re-elect Mr. Nixon in 1972. He compiled a list of Mr. Nixon’s enemies, and helped create a culture of dirty tricks and sleazy politics that led to the Watergate scandal.

Mr. Colson was sent to prison for obstruction of justice in 1973. He became an evangelical Christian and, after prodding by a question from the late Mike Wallace about the morality of his past political actions, Mr. Colson began his remarkable second act as a counselor to those in despair.

Truth be told, there was a great deal of skepticism about Mr. Colson’s new life. Many at the time believed it was a mere ploy, yet another dirty trick authored by a master of the art. But Mr. Colson let his work speak for itself. He founded Prison Fellowship Ministries in 1976, and it quickly became a national and then an international movement. The group currently ministers to prisoners in more than 100 countries.

Mr. Colson’s ministry also works with prisoners after they have been released, when they, too, must compose a second act for their lives. And Mr. Colson himself became a strong voice on behalf of prison reform, arguing for alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders.

Charles Colson’s transformation from henchman to humanitarian helped others transform their lives as well. There are, it seems, plenty of second acts in American lives.

"I didn't know anything at that point," Mr. Redford, who grew up in Los Angeles, told Time editor Rick Stengel. "All I knew was, when he handed me that award, I got a chill. Oooh. What a bad vibe."

Mr. Redford's new film is a not-so-subtle indictment of the military trial of Mary Surratt, the mother of a John Wilkes Booth associate, and its screening at the Time Warner Center was timely. Just a few days before, the Obama administration had abandoned plans to try 9/11 conspirator Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a civilian court, opting for a military tribunal instead. "I guess you could say, in terms of the film, it was a bit of a gift," Mr. Redford said of the decision.

Still, he didn't harbor any illusions about what the film might accomplish, having learned a lesson from Mr. Nixon's reelection shortly after Mr. Redford released The Candidate in 1972.

The film came out the year after 18-year-olds got the vote. Unfortunately, Mr. Redford said, "they didn't show up."

--Reid Pillifant

Feldstein also has uncovered new evidence that documents one of the more outrageous schemes of the Nixon presidency: a plot to assassinate Anderson by either putting poison in his medicine cabinet or exposing him to a "massive dose" of LSD by smearing it on the steering wheel of his car. While the aborted scheme to murder Anderson has been reported - and disputed - before, Feldstein found new corroboration: A confession before his death by ex-White House "plumber" Howard Hunt.

The Nixon/Anderson conflict really kicked into high gear when Anderson publicized documents that revealed Nixon was arming Pakistan during that country's war with India. The U.S. was supposedly neutral in the conflict. White House tapes captured Nixon's response to Anderson blowing the whistle: "So listen, the day after the election, win or lose, we've got to do something with this son of a bitch."

Even more bizarre--Nixon (and his men) were convinced Anderson, a Mormon, was part of a larger Mormon conspiracy. As NBC's Michael Isikoff notes in his article about Feldstein's book, there was a grain of truth in Nixon's Mormon paranoia. A Mormon military aide leaked the Indo-Pakistani documents to Anderson.

Howard Hunt, Gordon Liddy and Chuck Colson were scheming to take Anderson down in various baroque ways before a larger crisis took all their attention. According to Howard Hunt, Colson wanted to put a "drug-laden pill in a bottle that Anderson was taking medicine from." Gordon Liddy was more creative. Hunt said Liddy "had an idea that that by wiping poison on a man's wrist that could kill him that way."

Watergate may have been one of the best things to happen to Jack Anderson--who outlived Nixon by 11 years, in the end.

[NBC]

And that is what Barack Obama has done by defending the right of American Muslims to build a community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan.

Politicians assume risk reluctantly and sometimes hesitantly. Often they must be forced by events to choose principle over expediency. Contemporary commentators carp and nitpick, but history rewards such choices-and punishes those who make them necessary.

In Johnson's case, the judgment of time has imbued his decision on civil rights with an aura of wisdom that mitigates his terrible escalation of the war in Vietnam. His prediction that the Republicans would seek white votes by exploiting racial themes was vindicated by Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy"-an electoral success that left an indelible stain on Nixon and his party.

For Mr. Obama, the decision to speak out on the Cordoba House project was inevitable because his political opponents have behaved so irresponsibly. Republican leaders, including top Congressional figures and aspiring presidential candidates, have stigmatized Muslim Americans and their faith in a manner that brings shame on us before the world and alienates our allies in the struggle against extremist violence.

Facing a loyal audience of Muslims at a White House dinner celebrating the end of Ramadan, he was obliged to uphold the values of the Founders. He was not required to endorse the location of the Cordoba House project, two blocks north of ground zero, which has abraded the sensitivities of some 9/11 family members. He had only to declare, as he did, that in America Muslims enjoy all the same rights as those of every other faith or no faith.

As the son of a Kenyan Muslim and with an Arabic middle name, Mr. Obama obviously carries a heavy burden in this confrontation with opportunists and bigots. It would be difficult for any president to stare down opponents who are riding high on the current wave of anger and paranoia directed at a religious minority. It is far more difficult for this president, who has been subjected to scurrilous media campaigns questioning his own faith and even his citizenship.

Those hard circumstances emphasize his courage-and the cowardice of those who sidle away or remain silent now. The deepest responsibility falls upon George W. Bush, who could silence the worst excesses of his fellow Republicans and conservatives with a simple statement backing his successor. He knows that Mr. Obama is doing the right and lonely thing. His duty is clear and he too must choose: either redemption or ignominy.

jconason@observer.com

The Goldman-skewering Senator from Michigan all but commandeered the s-word for the week, but he's really just the latest in a long (and occasionally esteemed) line of public officials who, when circumstances require it, are unafraid to drop some heavy shit.

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Republican Congressional candidate Chris Cox is calling on Governor David Paterson to "resign, effective immediately," in light of allegations in today's New York Times story.

Cox, incidentally, is the grandson of Richard Nixon.

In a statement, Cox said Paterson should step aside "so someone else can work to restore confidence and integrity to the office of governor."

So far, two Democrats have publicly called for Paterson to not seek election later this fall: Representative Steve Israel and State Senator Bill Perkins.

Altschuler says: "Folks here are getting hit from all sides: higher property taxes; the shenanigans in Albany; the amount of debt in Washington."

Altschuler's main rival for the G.O.P. nomination is Chris Cox, son of the state G.O.P. chairman and grandson of Richard Nixon. They're running in Long Island's first congressional district, currently represented by Tim Bishop, a Democrat.

It’s not clear what Mr. Paulson was angling for when he decided to publish a 477-page autobiography. If he wanted to burnish a legacy, to get himself removed from the list of the crisis’ great villains (he’s No. 6 on Time’s), it didn’t work. The phrase “we had little choice” is actually the best he can come up with to justify the bailouts.

And he couldn’t have wanted to simply provide a good inside look at his life and times, because On the Brink is a portrait of the bureaucrat as a nauseous and drowsy man. He solemnly describes how he dry-heaved in front of an American flag, in a bathroom stall and in front of Senator Judd Gregg. Other hour-by-hour details (especially a chronicle of his work-related sleeplessness) would be autobiographical triumphs if they didn’t contrast so grimly with the book’s void of thoughtful analysis. With the exception of a short and intensely dry afterword, it lacks any dissection of the intricacies of the crisis, its causes or its aftermath.

What’s much worse is the sense he gives that there wasn’t much fussing over detail as the crisis unfolded, either. He and his colleagues flew by the seat of their pants, Mr. Paulson concedes, “making it up as we went along.” He says he realized on Sept. 12, 2008, that AIG was “one more institution to put on our watch.” The government spent $85 billion to bail it out on Sept. 16.

His memoir is like Tolstoy. It gives the spectacularly unsettling sense that world history is decided by an assortment of guys who are improvising, and may not be particularly good at it. Only, unlike in Tolstoy, there’s a lot of nausea.

THE GOOD NEWS HERE is that Mr. Paulson is not shy about his personal eccentricities. He concedes a fondness for locking himself “in the bathroom with Sports Illustrated to relax in quiet.” He used to speed through his children’s bedtime stories because of his work schedule; one night, his wife, who likes to call him Pea, forced him to read with expression. “No, no!” the kids objected. “Read like a daddy, not a mommy.”

During his own childhood, he bailed hay, turned butter, fostered pet raccoons and took Canadian canoe trips “with difficult portages.” Dad used to cut his hair: “He did such a bad job that he left bare patches on our scalps, then he filled in the bald spots with pencil and said no one would notice.” He didn’t mind, though it traumatized his little brother, whose fragility ensured he’d become a mere Lehman Brothers bond salesman and not a Goldman Sachs CEO or Treasury secretary.

After leaving one job for the other in 2006, Mr. Paulson says his “number one concern was the likelihood of a financial crisis,” and that he told George Bush, in a wood-paneled Camp David conference room, all about credit default swaps, systemic risk and the growth of unregulated hedge funds. If that’s true, it’s Wall Street’s version of the “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US” presidential brief.

Then again, Mr. Paulson doesn’t explain why his first sleepless night didn’t come until Bear Stearns began to collapse two years later. Instead, he offers that he could kick himself for saying in an April 2007 speech that the subprime problem was “largely contained,” then points out that plenty of other people were wrong, too.

But he should have known better. At a dinner with top bankers at the Fed a few months later, as he tells it, the most powerful chief executives on Wall Street were mournful addicts begging to be forced to quit their opiates. “Isn’t there something you can do to order us not take all of these risks?” Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince asked; Blackstone’s chief, Stephen Schwarzman, said he couldn’t resist taking easy money. What does it mean that these kingpins knew what they were doing and were begging to be stopped? Mr. Paulson won’t say.

About the problem of rococo Wall Street greed, he admits that he “pushed back hard” against TARP’s pay restrictions, adds that he “was as appalled as anyone at Wall Street’s pay practices” and then jogs away from the mess. Eventually, he shuffles back to describe a conversation with a Democratic senator—“once again my ear was being chewed off about compensation.” He doesn’t mention that he sold half a billion dollars’ worth of Goldman stock when he came to the Treasury, reportedly saving more than $100 million in taxes thanks to new I.R.S. rules about federal service.

Except for whiffs of his ire for politicians (Nancy Pelosi makes him pour his Diet Coke into a glass), the book flatters widely and passionately. The Watergate villain John Ehrlichman, a boss during Mr. Paulson’s early days at Nixon’s Domestic Council, is “dedicated”; Bob Rubin “put the public interest ahead”; the Chinese are old friends of his; AIG’s Bob Willumstad is “an incredible gentleman”; and Lehman’s Dick Fuld is “direct and personable.” Never mind that Mr. Paulson reportedly considered the latter to be a thuggish glutton.

What’s much worse is that the book makes the circumstances of Lehman’s fall even more convoluted. Mr. Paulson says that he and Tim Geithner, despite their public stance against more bailouts, agreed just a few days before the bankruptcy that “a Lehman failure would be more expensive for the taxpayers.” He writes that he would have helped the firm by supporting a takeover, as he did with Bear Stearns, but that the government’s “hands were tied” because no suitors wanted Lehman. That makes no sense: Bank of America and Barclay’s were both interested, and both shrank away when the government said it couldn’t help.

AS TARP WAS BEING DEVELOPED, his own chief of staff and a White House deputy both took Mr. Paulson aside to complain he was moving too fast. The steps needed to be analyzed more carefully, and they felt his approach discouraged dissent. “I told them that if I had waffled one bit,” he writes, “we wouldn’t have a program to debate.”

Last weekend, two days before the release of the book, TARP’s inspector general released a report to Congress outlining the program’s neon-colored shortcomings: “It is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the system have been addressed to date.” Most of TARP’s goals have simply not been met: Home foreclosures remain at record levels, unemployment is the highest it has been in decades and lending to American businesses and consumers continues to fall.

As far as that last point goes, the only thing he says on the matter is, “I didn’t think I could tell the banks how much to lend or to whom.” That’s because his message, which he can’t help but eventually make explicit, is, “I make no apology.”

Bear Stearns was rescued but Lehman wasn’t. Citigroup was going to buy Wachovia until Wells Fargo swooped instead. Cancerous Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were given clean bills of health by their regulator just before nationalization. AIG was given a gruesome amount of money that will almost never be returned. And that’s just the way it is, On the Brink says.

Not only did Mr. Paulson “not have time for regret, recriminations, or second-guessing,” but he doesn’t use the newfound power of hindsight. He even calls it a pandering “political approach” to criticize the rating agencies, which were essentially paid to say all was well with a diseased system.

Surely he has more sophisticated and subtle insights into the ugliness of American finance, but he keeps them to himself. “I don’t mean to minimize our troubles,” the book’s finale declares, “but every major country has more-significant problems.”

mabelson@observer.com

Cox this morning announced that Warren County Chairman Mike Grasso has switched his support to him from Wojtaszek, and I reported yesterday that Saratoga County chairman Jasper Nolan is set to do the same. Fred Dicker, in a radio interview, asked Bruno about how the race was progressing and whether Cox was leading.

"I think that's what is reported and probably so, but it's not over until it's over," Bruno said, on WGDJ Talk 1300. A convention to elect a new chairman has not yet been called.

"They've got plenty of time to make their calls, to see people," Bruno said. "And that's the pure process. That's what ought to take place."

Dicker asked Bruno about a reported attack coming from the Wojtaszek camp that essentially criticizes Cox for being Richard Nixon's son-in-law. Bruno denied having anything to do with it.

“They were crackling with tension and dissent and anger and raw emotion,” Mr. Buchanan recalled recently to The Observer. “When Richard Nixon walked out there, it was the Colosseum, and everybody’s thumb was down. It was something worth covering and worth watching.”

Six months into Barack Obama’s presidency, White House press conferences have proved to hold little potential for combustibility. Instead of hand-to-hand combat, those who have tuned in on TV have been treated to the stultifying sight of a White House lullaby. Mr. President, what enchants you the most?

“Obama has an adulatory press corps,” said Mr. Buchanan. “There’s no real tension there. It’s convivial.”

And nearly unwatchable.

On Wednesday, July 23, Mr. Obama strolled into the East Room arena and proceeded to deliver arguably the most listless televised hour of his current term. With Congress still mulling over various plans for health care reform, Mr. Obama came to the American people with nothing specific to sell. Perhaps as a result, it was an affair with little seduction. In the absence of passion, Mr. Obama offered up a seemingly long series of mild-mannered rebuttals of ideas and charges from persons not in the room.

“I’ve heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it’s better politics to ‘go for the kill,’” said Mr. Obama. “Another Republican senator, that defeating health care reform is about ‘breaking’ me.”

It was an admirable stab at stirring up some drama, at creating some excitement around a topic and a debate that fail to inspire much emotion in Americans despite the fact that health care is a vital issue. But the effort fell flat. Worse, the president gave his best lines to his unnamed adversaries. In the end, those who welcomed him into their living rooms were left to suffer a bore. Mr. Obama didn’t exactly vomit on the rug, to borrow a phrase from The Selling of the President. It was more of a dry heave.

No wonder, then, that with each passing press conference, fewer and fewer Americans are re-issuing the invitation. Since the start of the year, President Obama has held four prime-time press conferences. According to Nielsen data, each successive foray onto national television has attracted significantly less total viewers than the last, from February’s 49.4 million on the stimulus plan to March’s 40.3 million on the economic recovery to April’s 28.8 million on the first hundred days to this most recent outing—24.6 million viewers for a press conference about the stupidity of the Cambridge police, er, health care.

Recently, The Observer spoke with a handful of seasoned political operatives who have advised various presidents over the years about media strategy. Everyone agreed that the president should be concerned about his plummeting ratings. Opinions differed, however, on where things had gone wrong.

Nicolle Wallace, the former director of communications for the White House under George W. Bush, told The Observer that she thought the president’s plunging television ratings were a symptom of other problems.

“The unpopularity of his policies is catching up with him,” Ms. Wallace wrote to The Observer via email. “He is and will probably remain very personally popular. People like him and people historically root for their president. But the country didn’t change its basic values and fundamental philosophies last November. They were intrigued by Obama and furious at the party in power. Obama has misread his ‘mandate.’ The public doesn’t want the federal government to run American companies, hire and fire CEOs or take over their health care.”

And then there was a stylistic problem: “The reliance on the prompter makes it very boring and unemotional TV,” Ms. Wallace added.

David Gergen, political consultant and adviser-to-many-presidents, chalked up Mr. Obama’s struggles last Wednesday to the subject matter. “Health care is such a complicated subject,” said Mr. Gergen. “My impression is that he handled it with great depth. But it’s hard to hold people’s attention.

“Given the complexity of the subject, he might have been better advised to give a speech with charts and graphs,” said Mr. Gergen. “Then there would also have been a structure. Here’s what’s wrong with the current system. And here, in three or four steps, is how we plan to fix it. The very nature of a press conference is that you jump from one subject to the next. It’s hard to have a logical presentation.”

But the main problem, Mr. Gergen believed, was one of frequency. The White House is scheduling Obama TV way too often. “People can get a little numb,” said Mr. Gergen. “By comparison, Franklin Roosevelt, a superb communicator, had three fireside chats in his first six months. History suggests that even the best communicators, if they go too often, wear out their welcome.”

Mr. Buchanan agreed. He suggested that Mr. Obama’s strategists should learn to use their top TV draw more sparingly. “Nixon would always tell me that he was a great admirer of the Gauls,” said Mr. Buchanan. “The sense of reserve—of distance between the head of state and the people—is something that provides a magnetism and an attraction.”

He recalled the quotation from the English essayist Walter Bagehot: “We must not let daylight in upon the magic.”

“You see this happen with the British royal family,” said Mr. Buchanan. “Familiarity breeds contempt. It loses its luster. It’s a bore.”

fgillette@observercom