"Are you going?" Mr. Stiglitz asked.

Mr. King, a man who looks like his name should be Stamp Brooksbank or Delillers Carbonnel, apologetically nodded his silver head. He said that Mr. Stiglitz, whose work he's been keeping up with, should let him know when he's in Britain. Mr. Stiglitz, wearing a scratchy beard and a blazer with dandruff on the shoulders, turned. "Laura?"

"Nice to see you!" said Laura D. Tyson.

"You, too," said Mr. Stiglitz, who succeeded her as chair of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers when she left to become director of the National Economic Council.

"How've you been?" she said. A dreamy song by Beach House, the Baltimore duo, played outside, in the reception with Caribbean empanadas and assorted arepas.

"I've been fine!" said Mr. Stiglitz. "How are you? This is kind of a fun thing!"

"Oh," said Ms. Tyson, holding a Naked juice, "even better than I thought it was going to be."

It was the end of the first day of The Economist's Buttonwood Gathering. This was only its second year, and it had another day to go, but the auditorium already had that brawny and lacquered feeling certain spaces in New York City get when very important people are talking about very important things.

THE CONFERENCE BEGAN filling up Monday around noon, as a Fox News van idled outside, a few feet from a small group of protestors rallying against credit card rates. Justin Hendrix, The Economist's events chief, came onstage for an introductory pep talk. "I would like," he said, "everyone to stand up, if you will, and introduce yourself to someone you don't know." An executive in a suit with a name tag that said he was Arvind Rajan of Prudential was not in the mood to talk to a reporter. Mr. Rajan was previously at Citigroup, where he was the global head of structured credit research, and where he quite literally wrote the book on CDOs, The Structured Credit Handbook.

Economist editor John Micklethwait came on next. Quoting Alfred Marshall's 19th-century line about the dull heavy calm after panic and failure, he described himself as a paranoid optimist. His thick hair swooped down from left to right over his brow, above what will one day be stately English jowls. He introduced his U.S. economics editor, Greg Ip, who asked if states here could suffer crises in the not distant future. "There will be a terrible problem," Warren Buffett said to the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this summer about municipal bonds, "and then the question becomes will the federal government help."

It's February 2013, Mr. Ip said, setting the scene, and a state called New Jefferson, a version of California with chunks of New York thrown in, is two days away from defaulting on a $1.5 billion debt. "Ladies and gentleman, the Buttonwood Gathering is pleased to present the fiscal crisis simulation scenario."

"Alrighty!" Robert E. Rubin, the former Treasury secretary and Citi chairman, said, walking onstage to the big seat in between three on each side. "Good! Ha," he said, looking to no one in particular at his right and smiling, excited. Mr. Rubin was the simulation's director of the National Economic Council. "Well, let me start by thanking all of you for getting together so quickly. We have an immediate issue." Mr. Rubin was really into it. "Today, as you know, is Monday. On Wednesday, they have a $1.5 billion debt come due," he said. "The president asked us to get together to discuss what to do."

A day earlier, The Times' Frank Rich had called Mr. Rubin one of the great villains of the financial crisis, a man who made $115 million encouraging Citi to ramp up high-risk investments after years of leading deregulation that made the risk possible. Mr. Rubin really had been the council's chief under Mr. Clinton; when he left to lead the Treasury, Mr. Clinton replaced him with Ms. Tyson, who was onstage playing secretary.

His deputy was played by Jay Powell, George H. W. Bush's undersecretary of the Treasury for finance, and then a partner at the Carlyle Group. As he talked, Mr. Rubin pushed his glasses up onto his brow and started to take notes. He checked something off with a big whoosh of the arm and then looked at Mr. Powell, looked at the audience and tore out a page from his pad. He wrote on it, tightened his mouth, finished writing and put it under his stack of papers. Then he leaned back to look offstage, took a sip from his mug, looked at his deputy, looked away and jotted down another note. He crossed his arm and scratched his bottom lip with his top row of teeth. He folded his hands below his nose, thoughtfully.

Everyone else was basically still. Ms. Tyson sat between Mr. Rubin and George W. Bush's chief of staff, Josh Bolten, who was playing the chief of staff. He was next to the Columbia Business School dean Glenn Hubbard, who was playing the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, which he'd also been under the younger Bush. (That was Ms. Tyson's and then Mr. Stiglitz's post, too.) It was like watching popes do a nativity play.

There were pieces of faux-news delivered onstage by an aide in a yellow tie. The governor had gone public with the crisis, trying to force the federal government to help. If we don't provide support, Mr. Rubin explained, we risk a "Lehman-plus." If we do, we risk moral hazard. "This is a big deal, you've got a horrendous dilemma," he said. "I don't know if we should blink."

"I don't know if we have to blink, "said Mr. Hubbard.

Blinking was nearly a foregone conclusion: People like these would never let something important fail, even when playing make-believe. Eventually, a 30-day loan was decided on, but with heavy strings attached. At the finale, breaking character, Mr. Rubin told the audience that the exercise should make them appreciate the crisis' decision makers. "Seriously," he said, deadpan, pursing his lips so that his tongue pushed out slightly between them.

Afterward, Mr. Powell, who helped write the simulation's scripted sections, said that the point of the whole thing was to get people thinking about what we can do to avoid getting ourselves in another situation where the choice is between evils. "Because when it happens, when the system is really collapsing, policy makers don't have a choice."

Mr. Ip walked onstage and asked why management and creditors emerged mostly unscathed from the real-life bailouts. "It's not entirely true that all of the bond holders and all the Wall Street fat cats escaped," said Mr. Bolten. "That's just the political impression." He said that that very question had its own chapter in President Bush's new memoir. "Available November 9," he said, "from Crown Books."

"I can't tell you how ridiculous I find this to be," a redheaded woman in the audience said. "Why not give us the clear message that there will not be a bailout?"

"That would be another way to go," Ms. Tyson said. "No money ever." Mr. Rubin picked at his lip.

MR. KING, THE ENGLISH governor, came on next, which, as it turned out, was amazing timing. "Banks should be financed much more heavily by equity rather than short-term debt, much, much more equity; much, much less short-term debt. Risky investments cannot be financed in any other way," he said. "Of all the many ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today."

Buttonwood's keynote speech is called the Bagehot Lecture, after the 19th-century English businessman. "The present crisis dwarfs anything Bagehot witnessed," he said. "Bank of America today accounts for the same proportion of the U.S. banking system as all of the top 10 banks put together in 1960."

Mr. King did not speak for long. "The real failure was a lapse into hubris," he said. "There was an inability to see through the veil of modern finance to the fact that the balance sheets of too many banks were an accident waiting to happen."

Afterward, three of the most important men in banking, mustachioed PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian, unsmiling Deutsche Bank star Anshu Jain and the slight S&P president Deven Sharma, were outshined by Philippa Malmgren, a former adviser to George W. Bush. "The sharks are circling," she said. The men wore matching dark suits over light shirts, but she had what looked like a leather skirt and black heels. "The whale is there, and the whale is the United States."

They were followed by Citi chief executive Vikram Pandit. He opened with the idea that the new global banking rules known as Basel III "don't go far enough." It was eventually clear he meant exactly the opposite. Because of the new restrictions, he threatened, banks will take "deposits from mom and pop" and "lend to big businesses." Ed Skyler, the Bloomberg aide who left for Citi this year, stood against the left aisle, looking very serious, and recorded the speech on his iPhone's Voice Memos application, although he also seemed to be following along with a printed version of the speech. Nearby, a blond woman in a frilly shirt spoke into her wrist, very quietly.

"I do think we should end too big to fail, it's absolutely the right thing to do," said Mr. Pandit, whose bank, Mr. Rubin's former place, is usually the first example of cross-border giants that are still impossible to wind down. "It's being looked at right now."

After the speeches, an usher went through the audience and held on to a microphone while questions were asked. The analyst Mike Mayo pulled it away. "I heard that I was shut out from meeting with Citigroup," he said into his microphone. "And that was similar to the experience I had in 2002," he said. There were minor problems with crotchety questions a day later, when, among other things, Mr. Stiglitz spoke with the billionaire Wilbur Ross; the Treasury deputy Neal Wolin spoke with RBC CEO Gordon Nixon; and Jim Chanos talked with Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach.

"Mike! Good to see you again," Mr. Pandit said. He politely suggested that maybe the other members of the audience were probably interested in other matters. "And you are always welcome into Citigroup anytime you want."

Ms. Tyson asked about what's known as the shadow banking system. "We'd like to see more of that addressed," said Mr. Pandit.

Nassim Taleb, the trader and N.Y.U. professor known for the book The Black Swan, came on next. "Can we do something about these lights? I'll say the truth, don't worry, but I can't concentrate with these lights. Excuse me," he said from the podium to a large man who was possibly a lingering member of Mr. Pandit's detail, "Can you do something about these lights?" The lights on him dimmed.

"I'm quite disgusted at these discussions," he said. "We can't change humans, make them less greedy. We can't make them less stupid." He spoke about a new theory called anti-fragility, and, like Mr. King, spoke furiously about leverage. "You have the illusion of going faster, but the probability of crash is so high that you'll never get there," he said.

Afterward, the day ended like it began: theatrically. Two white rappers in fake mustaches battled as John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek. They rhymed "ever so pious" with "confirmation bias," "psychology's role" with "fearless and bold" and "ex-post simulation" with "real estimation."

Mr. Stiglitz grinned in the front row. Mr. Micklethwait watched from an aisle, beaming so broadly that his chin stuck forward.

"We thank The Economist for bringing us here," said Hayek.

"And to the lobby for cocktails," said Keynes, "some wine and some beer."

mabelson@observer.com

It has seemed throughout this Wall Street debacle that the most powerful have eluded disgrace. John Thain, whose problems at Merrill Lynch were not limited to a $68,000 credenza, was put in charge of the giant lender CIT this February, for example. A month later, Jon Corzine, pushed out of Goldman Sachs, was made CEO of a brokerage. And last week, Robert Rubin, whose years at the Treasury and then Citigroup made him a symbol of deregulation and excess, and whose affair with a former trader was detailed this spring on the Huffington Post, announced his new investment-bank job. Even Steven Rattner, the private-equity guru caught in New York State's massive pension fund scandal, is writing a book and awaiting his comeback.

Mr. Cioffi is not.

Once a legitimate heavyweight of the hedge fund world, he was arrested just after dawn on a summer morning two years ago, handcuffed between two F.B.I. agents. In what is still the only serious criminal case of the financial crisis, Mr. Cioffi and a colleague were put on trial for defrauding investors, who lost $1.6 billion when the subprime bubble burst.

As the newspapers put it, the collapse of his funds, which he had told clients were in fine shape, set off a chain reaction that eventually swallowed Bear Stearns itself. Mr. Cioffi was also charged with insider trading, having moved some of his own money from the funds before the end.

Last November, they were both found not guilty. "The entire market crashed. You can't blame that on two people," a juror said afterward. "How much can two men do?"

In his first public comments since then, Mr. Cioffi, 54, described his life after the fall. He and his family have sold off their New Jersey house and are renting nearby, but plan to move to Naples, Fla., near his parents. He cannot find work, but he has set up shop managing his own money in the two-floor office complex. "I'm not in a bad place. I'm in a good place," he said. "I mean, I certainly would have liked my career to have ended differently. But there's a lot of pain in this world."

FOR THE FIRST 40 months that Mr. Cioffi ran his two hedge funds, neither of them had a losing month. Investors had to phone up his friends at Bear Stearns to get attention, Reuters reported. He had been one of the firm's pioneers of CDOs, securities created from sliced-up and repackaged assets, like subprime mortgages. In fact, his first fund, started in 2003, and the more leveraged fund that followed, which actually had "Leverage" in its name, were built from them.

In early 2007, when the subprime market began its spectacular fall, Mr. Cioffi told his clients they would be fine. "This is not a systematic breakdown," he said on an April investor call, when he insisted there was "no basis for thinking this is one big disaster." At the same time, he and his colleague admitted to each other in emails that their world may be "toast."

During last year's trial, where those emails were read, Mr. Cioffi wasn't rattled, he said. "I felt very comfortable with where I stood. I knew I had done nothing wrong. I knew I was innocent. And I had faith in the system."

By the time the trial began, his old firm had been shuttered for a year and a half. "Keeping in mind that I had a lot going on at the time, I really wasn't thinking so much about [it]," he said. "I obviously felt badly that Bear Stearns no longer existed, but I didn't feel like what happened at the hedge fund contributed to the demise, nor caused their demise."

The notion that the implosion of his highly leveraged funds badly damaged his firm's finances and reputation, he said, is mistaken. "I didn't have any feelings of guilt. I mean," he said, and then paused. "I didn't have any feelings of guilt. Over what?"

Instead, he is resigned to the fact that people need scapegoats in the wake of a disaster. "Look, I think it's just human nature. People want to have a bogeyman," he said. "People don't want to take responsibility for their own actions."

BEFORE THE TRIAL, he unloaded his house in Southampton, along with the New Jersey home. "We sold them from a position of weakness," he said. "People knew." He kept his house in Vermont, where he was raised, but couldn't close on a luxury apartment at the iconic Stanhope on Fifth Avenue, where he lost his deposit. "Believe me, that was kind of our dream, and unfortunately it ended badly."

His choice of automobile has changed, too. "All young men growing up want to see the day when they can afford a sports car of some sort. I was lucky enough to achieve that," he said. "Now it's just a phase of my life that's over." He says he enjoys driving his wife's Honda Pilot. "I would recommend it to everyone, downsizing and simplification. One thing you learn is that one can get by with a lot less than one thinks we need."

Every morning, he drives to the office with his 2-year-old poodle-spaniel, and his two sons, who are both around 25. "They like the market, they like trading, so it's a good opportunity. And it was a great situation for me as well." They get there by 8, and leave by 5, and then he works out, does research and watches the Yankees. "I've tried to create a routine," he said. "I think it's important to have a regular schedule. I don't consider myself retired; I consider myself self-employed."

His acquittal did not end the S.E.C.'s separate investigation. "So I've been unable to find work back on the Street," he said. His personal setup, which he calls Ralph Cioffi Asset Management, does equity investing and some trading. He enjoys it. "I'm lucky that I have this ability to still work, granted on a much smaller scale, managing what I have left."

But if he's opening up a new brokerage account, or out around town, sometimes he worries that his reputation has preceded him. "Maybe I'm imagining that," he said. "It's just one of those things you feel." People don't necessarily know his face, though pictures of him in handcuffs were in the papers. "Even though one's found innocent, you still have that stigma. It never goes away," he said. "I guess at some point in time all of that will fade."

In another New Jersey suburb, Howie Hubler, the Morgan Stanley mortgage trader who lost his bank billions of dollars, is also back at work, building up a firm called the Loan Value Group. The two men used to do a bit of business together. "I'm happy that he's moved on and has found something to do with his life," Mr. Cioffi said. "I don't think he was a villain."

He plans to leave the Northeast relatively soon. "I can honestly tell you I am very much at peace. I am very happy with my new life, I am very happy with my self-employment," he said. "I'd love to be able to get back to a more normal, traditional job. But, obviously, I don't think that's a possibility."

mabelson@observer.com

Correction: Howie Hubler worked for Morgan Stanley, not Merrill Lynch

Wall Street’s regret for its role in the financial crisis—what contrition looks like, how it’s expressed, why it exists in the first place, and then why it doesn’t—has come to the forefront this week. That’s thanks to sorely differing performances at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission from two former Citigroup executives last Thursday, not to mention statements from former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and a rare shareholder letter from Goldman Sachs the day before.

“Let me start by saying I’m sorry. I’m sorry that the financial crisis has had such a devastating impact on our country,” Chuck Prince, Citi’s former chief executive, said Thursday. “I’m sorry for the millions of people, average Americans, who have lost their homes.”

But Bob Rubin, the former chairman of the executive committee board at the same bank (where he made more than $100 million), said he did not have much control at Citi. What’s more, he said, nearly everyone else failed to foresee the crisis, too. His relative defiance, and Mr. Prince’s emotional explanation of what went wrong and how it can change, are two prototypes for how Wall Street looks at its past.

SLIDESHOW: 'The Wall Street Sorry Scale' >

Now that the Dow closed above 11,000 for the first time in 18 months on Monday, is there a point to forcing leading executives to explain past mistakes? “And what if, after all that vitriol,” The Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote Monday, naming skeptical economists like Nouriel Roubini, Joseph Stiglitz and Times columnist Paul Krugman, who the next day explained why an apology was in order, “it turned out that taxpayers might actually lose nothing, or even make a profit? Could it be?”

The message from Wall Street, in other words: move along.

MILD SEMI-REGRET IS more common than non-apologies and passionate atonement. On the day before the Citibank testimony, Mr. Greenspan said he’d been wrong 30 percent of the time, but would not elaborate, and he opened his remarks by blaming foreign historic events, like the Berlin Wall’s fall, on where we are today.

In November, likewise, Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein said the firm had “participated in things that were clearly wrong and we have reasons to regret and apologize for,” but did not explain what the things or the reasons were. On the morning of Mr. Greenspan’s speech, Goldman released a letter to shareholders that said the bank did not “‘bet against’ our clients.”

On Friday, the investigative newsroom ProPublica released a massive profile of Magnetar, a hedge fund that created and bet against massive bundles of subprime mortgage investments that soon became worthless. Responding to that report, the hedge fund denied that it had any intent or reason to believe that its subprime securities were built to fail.

The next day, Frank Rich’s column was headlined “No One Is to Blame for Anything.” But, to be fair, there have been dozens of apologies from financiers, just odd ones. Wall Street, after all, has become savvier since William Vanderbilt’s “the public be damned” and J.P. Morgan’s “I owe the public nothing.”

“We’ve said repeatedly that we are disappointed in our performance and that it wasn’t up to our standards,” Ed Sweeney, spokesperson for the credit-rating agency S&P, said this week. “I think, frankly, that people—I’m trying to think of the word here—ratings are only one piece of the investment-decision-making process, and the investment-research process, and that’s how we think they should be used.”

“Among our disappointments has been the ratings of mortgage-backed securities issued between 2005 and 2007,” S&P president Deven Sharma told Congress in September. “Over the course of 150 years, however, our track record is something in which our people can take pride.”

“Did the company make mistakes? I’ve never used the word ‘mistake,’” Mr. Sweeney said.

The Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack stands alone as the only big Wall Street boss who has consistently said otherwise, though he stepped down this year as CEO. In a high-finance version of the famous scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, there was silence from his seven peers when the House Financial Services Committee asked if there was a need for apology. “Anyone,” a committee member said. Mr. Mack responded by describing years of mistakes.
This November he pressed for more regulation. “We cannot control ourselves,” he said. “I’m behind closed doors with these people all the time,” Morgan Stanley spokesperson Jeanmarie McFadden said, “and people legitimately understand that things must change.”

JPMorgan’s chief, Jamie Dimon, even if he doesn’t have a reputation for unabashed pride, has not been as forthcoming. “We did make mistakes,” he said at the first crisis commission hearing in January, “and there were things we could have done better.”

“What should we apologize for?” the New York Post wrote the next day, quoting a Wall Street insider. “I’ll tell you this much, we do a lot more for America than Congress does.”

That hearing marked the one-year anniversary of John Thain’s departure from Merrill Lynch. When he left, he apologized for the infamous $1.2 million renovation of his office, “in the light of the world we live in today.” In a following interview, asked what was wrong with predecessor Stan O’Neal’s office, he said, “Well, his office was very different than the general décor of Merrill’s offices. It really would have been very difficult for me to use it in the form that it was in. And you know, I, it needed to be renovated no matter what.”

SOMETIMES THERE ARE no apologies at all. In the second-to-last paragraph of his recent memoir, former Treasury Secretary and Goldman chief Hank Paulson explains, “I don’t mean to minimize our troubles, but every major country has more-significant problems.”

The lobbyist Scott Talbott, a senior vice president for the Financial Services Roundtable, said that while Wall Street isn’t entirely innocent, it’s not the villain. “The basic fundamental problem occurred at the kitchen table, where the borrower got a mortgage that they couldn’t afford to repay. So if you’re fixing the system,” he said, “you’ve got to focus on the kitchen table.”

To the extent that Wall Street apologizes, with a few exceptions, it gives the sense that the crisis was caused by a regrettable combination of rivals’ incompetence, some bad judgment that’s since been remedied, a great deal of historic bad luck and gruesome governmental failures that make them look relatively blameless. Life goes on.

James Kwak, who wrote the book 13 Bankers with the former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, said that’s part of an “intellectual cover-up.” What he means is that when Mr. Rubin or Mr. Greenspan describes the crisis as an unforeseeable natural disaster, despite the evidence to the contrary, it distracts from the man-made causes.

“There was a conscious intention to break down the regulatory system and to make sure that the banks were essentially allowed to do whatever they wanted to do, especially when it came to new products,” he said.

Barbara Kellerman, a lecturer at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government who has written about leaders’ contrition, says that what’s important about apologies are timeliness and sincerity, and what comes along with them. “Nobody begrudges the right people have to make a profit, and the more profit the better,” she said, “but in a way that’s reasonably fair and adhering to the law, and not corrupt, and not greedy to the point of nausea.”

“The issue is,” said the Wall Street firm’s chief of communications source, pointing to rivals who were more heavily leveraged, “if we were to say we were sorry, what would we say we’re sorry for?”

mabelson@observer.com

"He couldn't go out there," said the source. "He has to be studiously neutral in all this stuff."

Asked when a selection for the the Treasury position could be made, the source said, "They’ve got to be close, and I can't imagine there will be any massive surprises."

Obama's key New York supporters familiar with the transition process have said that Summers, Geithner, and, to the extent that he is interested, Rubin, are the favorites for the job.

As for other important economic positions, the source said, "My guess is that you'd see N.E.C. filled right around when you see Treasury. And I think it would be probably not from that list," referring to the members of the Economic Advisory Board.

That position, the source said, was more likely to be filled by a person more familiar and versed in the ways of Washington.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a heavy New York administration like the last time,” said one prominent New York donor, referring to the prospect of an Obama presidency. “It’s a new world.”

To an extent, the fortunes of New York’s would-be appointees to prestigious federal positions rose and, eventually, sunk with the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, with attention and influence shifting to power players in Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

But New York won’t be shut out entirely. Because of the city’s status (even if somewhat diminished) as the country’s financial capital, its hedge funds and banks will provide a number of names for top economic jobs in an Obama administration.

According to several Democratic insiders based in New York, Timothy Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, comes up frequently in discussions of possible appointees.  

Mr. Obama also receives the advice of former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. To the extent that they want to go back into government, the door is presumably open to them.

(Mr. Summers has relayed advice to Mr. Obama directly or through the campaign’s economic adviser, Jason Furman, another New Yorker likely to get some sort of job offer from an Obama administration.)

The stock of Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co, who has successfully avoided the shoals of the financial crisis, has risen as well.

Another choice that some donors have discussed as a potential Treasury secretary is Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey, who was the CEO of Goldman Sachs before Hank Paulson, the current Treasury secretary, staged a coup and replaced him. Since Mrs. Clinton dropped out of the race, Mr. Corzine has been especially enthusiastic and influential in bringing around New Jersey support.

Some less immediately recognizable New Yorkers are also in a position to be players in an Obama administration.

Chief among them is Michael Froman, a top executive at Citigroup, who served as Mr. Rubin’s chief of staff at Treasury, and who is playing a key role in the transition process. A Harvard classmate of Mr. Obama, he is extremely close to the candidate, and the feeling is that if he wants to play a significant role in government, he’ll have the opportunity to do so.

Other New Yorkers who are helping with transition and might play a role in the new administration are Jamie Rubin, the son of the former Treasury secretary, and an accomplished investor in his own right; Jeh Johnson, an attorney at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and a former general counsel of the Department of the Air Force; Josh Steiner, the founder and managing principal of New York City-based private investment firm Quadrangle Group and a onetime chief of staff at Treasury; Josh Gotbaum, the former chief executive of the September 11 Fund who has worked for the Carter and Clinton administrations and Lazard Frères; Seth Harris, a faculty member of the New York Law School and a former counselor to the secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration; and Kevin Thurm, an executive at Citigroup, former Rhodes scholar and a former deputy secretary and chief operation officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Among the New York-area fund-raisers who bucked the Clinton trend and provided early support for Mr. Obama, several are likely to have a line into an Obama White House.

First among them is Orin Kramer, a financier at Boston Provident, a former aide in Jimmy Carter’s administration and a prodigious fund-raiser, who was perhaps the most influential bundler in Mr. Obama’s corner. Robert Wolf, an investment banker and CEO of UBS Americas, has expressed interest in a position, some insiders say. Also mentioned is Mark Gallogly, a private-equity expert who founded the firm Centerbridge after leaving Blackstone. Jim Torrey, a fund manager, has been especially enthusiastic and successful in raising money for Mr. Obama. Other founding members of the Obama fund-raising machine in New York include Provident Group managing director Brian Mathis and Frank Brosens, who runs Taconic Capital Advisors and is seen as very close to Bob Rubin.

Law is another major industry in New York, and insiders suggest that it will provide some candidates for jobs at the Department of Justice. Aside from the aforementioned Mr. Johnson, insiders have mentioned Preeta Bansal, a partner at Skadden, Arps and a former solicitor general of the State of New York who has worked on foreign policy, immigration and legal issues for the campaign. Before that, she worked on Supreme Court nominations in the Clinton White House, and like Obama, she is a graduate of Harvard Law. David Carden, an attorney at the law firm Jones Day, has roots in Illinois and has raised a lot of money for Mr. Obama. Andy Schapiro, a partner at Mayer Brown who attended Harvard with Mr. Obama and clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for Justice Harry Blackmun on the Supreme Court, is also named as a potential candidate for a position.

The most prominent New York-based figure who could potentially figure in a significant role in the Obama foreign policy operation is Richard Holbrooke, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He is, as several Obama insiders pointed out, too important not to be considered. At the same time, though, he has a couple of political problems. One is that he was an enthusiastic supporter of Hillary Clinton. The other, potentially more serious, is that he has had a rocky personal history with Anthony Lake, one of Mr. Obama’s most senior foreign policy advisers.

There’s at least one famous New Yorker who is less likely to get a call from the Obama administration than was once supposed.

Despite the advice he has offered to the next president in Newsweek columns, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is no longer in consideration as a candidate for a top job. To the degree that he was discussed at all, Mr. Bloomberg’s name all but vanished from serious conversation when he pushed a bill to overturn a two-term limit on city elected officials through the New York City Council, according to a number of insiders interviewed for this article.   

Though there’s much to be decided about which New Yorkers will eventually make the final cut, the decision-making portion of the transition process is certainly farther along than the resolutely tight-lipped Obama campaign has let on.

According to a senior Obama campaign official, a dozen groups completely separate from the campaign’s policy working groups have been operating under John Podesta, the former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, to come up with personnel in areas like the economy, health, climate change, foreign policy and national security. And according to another source with knowledge of the transition process, the campaign has already whittled those names down to “shortlists.”

jhorowitz@observer.com 

On July 1, Obama's national finance chair, Penny Pritzker, will be in New York for a series of meetings and fund-raising events with major Clinton bundlers, according to one Obama donor familiar with the plans. And Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett met yesterday with Clinton bundlers at a get-together organized by former treasury secretary and Clinton supporter Robert Rubin.

Mr. Bloomberg has also enlisted the help of a transplanted New Yorker-Bill Clinton-who has recorded a video message with a lower-lip-biting reminiscence of the 1992 Democratic convention in the city, officials involved in planning the events have told The Observer. The video will be shown on a giant screen for party officials during their tour of Madison Square Garden on July 30.

When the D.N.C.'s site-selection committee arrives for a three-day tour on July 29, the officials say, party members will dine on catered delicacies from Nobu, Union Square Cafe, Tribeca Grill and Tabla-all at one sitting. They will enjoy a bus tour of the city narrated by New York documentary filmmaker Ric Burns. They will sip cocktails in a rooftop garden atop Rockefeller Center. They will have a private breakfast at Mr. Bloomberg's mansion on East 79th Street. They will be serenaded by actress Sandy Duncan, of Peter Pan fame, who will sing a song written especially for the occasion entitled "The Winning Way."

And during their tour of the Garden, they will watch a video of New York politicians talking about the Democratic history of the arena, which hosted conventions in 1976, 1980 and 1992. On the tape, Mr. Clinton intones: "I've always felt that Madison Square Garden was the perfect venue for us. It was full of the history of the Democratic Party, the memories of President Carter's nomination in '76, the scene of so many important things that have happened in the history of our country. For me, the Garden will always be special."

Mr.Bloomberg-along with Loews Hotels C.E.O. and top Democratic fund-raiser Jonathan Tisch and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who are co-chairing City Hall's effort to get the convention-has enlisted a parade of top New York restaurateurs, actors, Wall Street executives and politicians to help in the effort. And with good reason. With the stock market on the skids and the municipal-budget crisis deepening daily-and a recent blackout adding to the city's atmosphere of 1970's-era gloom-Mr. Bloomberg is in desperate need of some good economic tidings. Delivering a convention would fit the bill, promising to pump $180 million into the local economy and sending a message to the nation that the city remains vibrant and safe after Sept. 11.

"I personally believe that the 1992 convention helped turn the city's fortunes around and started the change in perception the city enjoyed over the coming decade," Dan Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development, told The Observer . "After years of bad news, people began seeing it as an exciting and interesting place. People said, 'Wow-look at New York. This is not the place we thought it was.'"

Winning a convention in New York in the aftermath of Sept. 11, Mr. Doctoroff said, could accomplish a similar goal: "Nothing could more eloquently speak to America's resolve not to be defeated than to see democracy celebrated in this city."

To accomplish that goal, Mr. Bloomberg has dangled a generous bid before national party officials. The city would spend $20 million for security, while Mr. Tisch and Mr. Rubin have pledged to raise $50 million more from private-sector sources.

While party officials are guarding specific details of the bids, people familiar with the process say that New York's public/private bid of $71.5 million is far higher than those of its main rivals. Indeed, according to an internal D.N.C. document compiled in May, Boston's bid is $49.5 million, Detroit's is just under $50 million, and Miami's is $40 million.

Still, there is no shortage of factors that could scuttle Mr. Bloomberg's goal of winning the convention. First among these are the rival cities. Boston-which, ironically enough, is Mr. Bloomberg's native town-is making an equally aggressive pitch for the convention. The city's effort is being orchestrated by Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, and it's already creating yet another Boston–New York summer rivalry. Boston officials recently led D.N.C. officials on a tour of their city, stuffing them at a clambake and taking them to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.

Miami and Detroit also have their advantages. Miami could help deliver Florida's big bloc of electoral votes, which but for a few hanging chads might have gone to the Democrats in 2000. And Detroit is in the swing state of Michigan and has a strong labor presence as the home of the United Auto Workers.

Then there's the fact that both the Mayor and Governor of New York happen to be Republicans. Some senior Democratic Party officials are wary of staging a convention here, they say, because it could highlight the G.O.P.'s successful incursions into traditionally Democratic territory.

Finally, there's the question of whether the city can handle not one, but two conventions. Mr. Bloomberg has compiled an equally generous bid for the Republican convention, and as The Observer reported in May, he has entrusted his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani, with the task of winning over the G.O.P. But in the event that the Republicans do come to the Garden, the Democrats might elect to go elsewhere. Senior Democrats have expressed some doubt that city officials will be able to reconfigure the Garden in time for their convention if the Republicans are there first.

Mr. Doctoroff dismissed those concerns. "We've looked at it, and we think that there's a common infrastructure that could be employed for both conventions," he said. "There are a lot of structural elements in common. We'd have to sit down and work it out with both parties." The last time a city hosted both national conventions was in 1972, when both parties met in Miami.

Despite these concerns, there are plenty of factors working in New York's favor-such as the presence of Mr. Tisch and Mr. Rubin. The two men are reassuring to Democratic Party officials, because their extensive private-sector connections ensure that they'll succeed in raising the funds they've pledged to raise-unlike in 2000, when Los Angeles officials found themselves scrambling to come up with the promised cash.

"Having nationally respected figures like Tisch and Rubin ensures that we have the support of the business community," said Robert Zimmerman, a member of the D.N.C. and a top fund-raiser in New York. "And the support of business leaders is as critical as the backing of the labor movement in making the convention work." Adding to this credibility in the financial community, much of the organizing will be done by Mr. Tisch's close associate, Jeffrey Stewart, the finance chairman of Charles Schumer's 1998 Senate campaign.

A Lavish Tour

Then there's the lavish presentation being planned, which focuses on wooing Democratic Party officials with wine and song. When members of the site-selection committee arrive in New York on the afternoon of July 29, they are scheduled to be taken to Times Square Studios, the home of Good Morning America . There they will be joined by Mr. Bloomberg, as well as Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. Restaurateurs Danny Meyer and Drew Nieporent will be on hand serving food from their famous kitchens. A cast of actors and singers led by Ms. Duncan is set to stage a Broadway-style show for the visitors, in which they'll sing "The Winning Way."

The event in Times Square is meant to emphasize two points: first, that New York is not only fully functional again, but entirely safe; and second, that coming to New York means being within walking distance of the headquarters of many of the world's biggest media companies. In an era when lackluster politicians and shrinking news budgets have led ratings-obsessed networks to pay less attention to political conventions, Mr. Bloomberg hopes to persuade D.N.C. officials that proximity to media companies will pay off in crucial prime-time coverage.

"If they have the convention here, it will resonate throughout the rest of the country to a far greater degree than if they have it anywhere else," Mr. Rubin said. "Given that coverage is declining, I think that's a compelling case."

On the morning of July 30, the officials will attend a breakfast hosted by Mr. Bloomberg in the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That event, attended by a number of top local labor leaders, is designed mainly to let national party officials know that their convention won't be marred by any labor problems.

After the breakfast, a bus tour narrated by Mr. Burns will carry the officials to Madison Square Garden, where they'll watch the video and be led on a detailed technical tour of the arena. They will attend a luncheon at the New York Stock Exchange, a not-so-subtle reminder that there's no better place to raise political cash than New York. That evening, the guests will be treated to cocktails atop Rockefeller Center and dinner in the Rainbow Room. And the next morning, they will have a farewell breakfast at Mr. Bloomberg's Upper East Side mansion. (Yes, that last one was Mr. Bloomberg's idea.)

In the end, it's not clear what impact all the morsels of Nobu sushi will have on high-level decision-making among national Democrats. The most important factors in choosing the location of a convention-even more important than the politics-are the size of the bid and the chosen city's likelihood of being able to handle such an immense logistical challenge. In that regard, of course, New York has a good shot. It has proven itself up to the transportation challenge-in 1992, the city ran shuttle buses up and down the avenues between midtown hotels and the Garden. And unlike other cities, which have to rely on hotels in far-flung suburbs, New York has 66,000 hotel rooms, the vast majority of which are on the same island as the arena.

"Democrats have very fond memories of the 1992 convention, and 9/11 clearly makes New York the sentimental favorite," said a Democratic Party official in Washington. "But the bottom line will be, first, which city has the best bid, and second, how well the city stands up to its bid in reality."

executives go through these days when they introduce their colleague Robert

Rubin, the former U. S. Treasury Secretary. They'll start with an insider's

crack about his time at a "tiny little firm called Goldman." They'll finish

with hosannas.

So it went on Oct. 17, when Citigroup vice chairman Deryck Maughan stepped up to the

podium in the Salomon Smith Barney auditorium at 388

Greenwich Street, ready to introduce Citigroup's

resident pop icon. A packed house of clients and Japanese investors (the event

was co-hosted by the Japan Society) sat rapt, waiting for the show to begin.

"Now, if I don't do this right, I have to answer to the

chairman of Citigroup's executive committee, so I've got a particularly

effusive introduction prepared," said Mr. Maughan,

his British accent smoothed out by the 10-plus years he's spent in Manhattan

boardrooms.

Soon came the Goldman dig: "As to Bob, he is best known for

his role at Citigroup, though there was a time that he was a managing partner

at a smaller firm called Goldman Sachs, where we first met."

Then came the acclaim: "Bob has served

his country in an extraordinary fashion, a role that President Clinton

acknowledged when he awarded him the Medal of Freedom."

As usual, Mr. Rubin responded with a wry crack: "That's the

whole intro? I'd hardly call that effusive-more in the neighborhood of

adequate, I'd say."

Lately, this ritual has begun to take on more meaning. Mr.

Rubin is in a position of great influence at Citigroup, sitting at the right

hand of Sandy Weill, the chairman and chief

executive. Insiders are saying, if he doesn't take the job himself, he'll be

instrumental in selecting the successor to the 68-year-old Mr. Weill when Mr. Weill chooses to

step down.

The circle of possible successors has been shrinking

rapidly, but  the

contenders are believed to include Mr. Maughan; Mike

Carpenter, chairman and chief executive of Salomon Smith Barney; and Victor Menezes, the Citibank chairman responsible for emerging

markets.

A number of Mr. Weill's would-be

successors have already departed Citigroup, including Jamie Dimon,

his protégé, forced out in November 1998; Robert Lipp,

who headed consumer operations and remains a board member; and Joseph Plumeri, a 20-year friend and associate of Mr. Weill's.

There was also Jay Fishman, Citigroup's chief operating

officer and former chairman of the Travelers Group, the conglomerate's

insurance subsidiary, who announced his departure to a Minnesota-based

insurance company on Oct. 11-removing another contender from the short list.

Citigroup's official position on the topic of Mr. Weill's succession is that he's not ready to leave yet and,

when he does, it's an issue for the board of directors to decide. A spokesman

declined comment and did not make Mr. Weill, Mr.

Rubin or Mr. Maughan available for interviews.

But according to others familiar with the internal workings

of Citigroup, the succession appears more and more to be an issue that Mr.

Rubin may help decide-either by tipping his hand toward a candidate, or by

pleasing the board of directors and Mr. Weill and

accepting the position himself.

Road Show

These days, Mr. Rubin can often be found on the stump for

Citigroup, the firm that gave him a home-won him, actually-after he departed

his cabinet position and Washington, D.C.

Mr. Rubin will usually speak for 30 minutes, being careful

to say very little of note. He'll mention the federal surplus, urging that the

pot of money he helped build up under President Clinton be preserved. He'll

admonish against excessive tax cuts, offering the opinion that this is not the

way to go.

As to the future-well, it looks cloudy. "Before Sept. 11,

our economy was faced with many economic imbalances: overinvestment by

businesses, high levels of consumer debt and, until recently, the high level of

the stock market," Mr. Rubin noted on Oct. 17. "The events of Sept. 11 have

added to all this. In my view, the likelihood of a considerable period of

economic uncertainty has increased."

He was the master, as usual, of self-deprecation, prefacing

many of his comments with "I'm no expert" or "There are others who know much

more than me." In place of specifics-"If you could just tell us, Mr. Rubin,

what you are investing in these days," cooed CNBC anchor Consuelo Mack, who was

moderating the session-Mr. Rubin merely offered that smile.

The low-key Rubin charm was, however, lapped up by the

audience of Japanese investors and clients. And they are not alone. Everyone,

it seems, from Republican Senators to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to

Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan-to say nothing of those on Mr. Weill's short list-wants to bask in the warmth of his

still-very-considerable glow.

But around Citigroup, it's more than his easy charm or even

his title: chairman of the executive committee of the Citigroup board. It's Mr.

Rubin's proximity to Mr. Weill in the power structure

(he is the second member of the office of the chairman, Citigroup co–chief

executive John Reed having been the third until he was forced out by Mr. Weill in February 2000), as well as his physical proximity

(his corner office abuts Mr. Weill's at Citigroup's

midtown headquarters).

And it's also his apparent closeness to Mr. Weill. Mr. Rubin has emerged as the Citigroup C.E.O.'s

alter ego, his embodiment of the perfect Wall Street man-a throwback, perhaps,

to an old-line, clubbier type of banker that Mr. Weill

seems to admire. Unlike Mr. Weill, Mr. Rubin

conquered the Street from inside the boardroom-relying on his suavity, his

trader's acumen and those perfect grace notes. And he's here to stay, searching

now for an apartment, as he mentioned in his speech.

Handing over the reins of Citigroup to him would be the

perfect capstone to Mr. Weill's career. But the

beauty of Bob Rubin is that he professes no interest in the position. It's why

he's climbed to such heights: He has mastered the art, rare in banking and

politics, of hiding the rawness of one's ambition. He became Treasury Secretary

by seeming not to want it; now his almost blasé disregard for the Citigroup

post makes Mr. Weill and his board all the more

desperate to give it to him. Meanwhile, those who really want it seem

positively shrink-wrapped as they fight for it.

So far, Mr. Weill has yet to show

his hand, and he seems in no hurry to do so-indeed, he announced that no one

would replace Mr. Fishman in his Citigroup corporate position. And while Mr. Weill has said that he hopes to appoint a successor by

2002, nothing has been formalized. The board itself-stacked with friends and

supporters of Mr. Weill, and more than happy with the

stock's performance under his leadership-seems ready to defer to him on the

issue.

Meanwhile, it's anybody's race-and for the moment, at least,

Mr. Maughan, 53, is putting his best foot forward. In

appearance, he's as smooth as a banker comes: tall and strapping, his suit

always the darkest of blues, his silvery coif always very well maintained.

His rise to the top has been an unorthodox one. Ten years

ago, he was an obscure managing director for Salomon Brothers, working out of

the firm's Tokyo offices. He hit

the ground at Salomon in 1983 as a bond salesman, having worked for 10 years

before that in London at the

British Treasury.

When Salomon chairman and chief executive John Gutfreund was forced out in 1991 because of the

Treasury-note auction scandal, then-shareholder Warren Buffet needed a fresh

new face, one free of the old take-no-prisoners Salomon taint. After a

10-minute interview, he selected the British-born Mr. Maughan

to reinvent the disgraced firm.

It was a difficult task, and Mr. Maughan

made enemies in the process as he steered Salomon away from its ballsy, bond-trading

roots to the more disciplined, broad-based and less controversial firm that Mr.

Buffet wanted it to be. In 1997, Mr. Maughan smartly

got Mr. Weill, then the chairman of Travelers-whom he

knew from their directorships for Carnegie Hall-to buy his firm for $9 billion.

At the time, the deal was hailed as another Sandy Weill stroke of genius: 1.7 times book for Salomon Brothers

and its swank offices in London and

Japan. Mr. Weill had always wanted to go global; now he'd be doing it

on the cheap.

Then came the Asian crisis and $395

million worth of global bond-trading losses. Ooops. In November 1998, the

long knives came out. Mr. Dimon-who together with Mr.

Maughan had been co-chief of Citigroup's

investment-banking operations under the Salomon Smith Barney rubric-was ousted,

and Mr. Maughan was bumped upstairs and given the

vaguest of briefs: advising Citigroup on strategy.

Mr. Maughan is, however, a

notorious cultivator of powerful friendships. Charming Mr. Buffet had firmly

installed him at the top at Salomon, and Mr. Maughan

seemed bent upon doing the same with Mr. Weill. He

took over responsibility for Citigroup's Internet strategy after Mr. Reed was

forced out in 2000 and was given mergers and acquisitions as well-a nice charge

to have when working for the acquisitive Mr. Weill.

He is also a man about town, still serving on the Carnegie board with Mr. Weill, as well as in directorships at the Lincoln Center

Theater and Mt. Sinai

Hospital.

Now, with Citigroup on the prowl for more acquisitions and

increasing emphasis being placed on its international operations, could it be

that Mr. Maughan's ship is finally docking?

International Links

"There is no question he is on the short list," says Michael

Holland, a money manager and former Salomon Brothers colleague of Mr. Maughan's. "The stars surrounding Sandy Weill

always wax and wane. Whenever he decides to exit stage right, whomever's most

luminescent will be the next C.E.O. In Deryck's case, it is his international background that is

very big in his favor. And I would not underestimate the importance of the Deryck Maughan schmooze factor.

His ability to forge the important corporate relationships has always been

nonpareil. He identifies them, homes in on them and makes them."

So Mr. Maughan was surely beaming

when Mr. Rubin, during his Q&A with the audience on Oct. 17, talked a bit

about Citi-group and its mergers-and-acquisitions

activities. "We need to take the long view. There is no question that we would

be receptive to acquisitions in strategic emerging markets at prices deemed

appropriate to Citigroup," Mr. Rubin said. Then he added, with a nod of his

head to Mr. Maughan, sitting in the front row: "But

you should ask Deryck. He is in charge of M&A,

amongst other things at Citigroup."

I might have put this out of mind, but then I saw my niece Eliot, who'd just come back from Scotland, struggling with the same readjustment, and I realized how widespread the problem is, especially as the world becomes a smaller and smaller place. And if you just think about it, the remedy is fairly straightforward: change the American system over to driving on the left.

At first blush, that sounds like a daunting challenge, but I don't think it would be that hard. Americans are a very positive, can-do people. Once they understood the benefits, it could happen very quickly.

The first obvious issue is: Do you do it all at once or gradually?

I think the logical answer is gradually. You're changing deeply ingrained habits and "Well, that's the way my dad did it" attitudes. Reflexive attitudes, unthinking ones. You'd need to sell the change to the public, and that would take some time. The only way to do that would be to show how well it could work in a large American metropolis.

Let's say you began in Atlanta (if for no other reason than the South has always had an Anglophile soft spot). You'd want to set aside a three-day weekend to convert city streets and highways, possibly four days. This is a more challenging technical problem than you might think. You'd have to switch the street signs, the stop signs and so forth from the right-hand side of the street to the left, and change the wording on many of those same signs. "No Right on Red," for instance, would become "No Left on Red." Traffic lights would be turned around to face the opposite direction. In some cases, they might have to be rewired.

But a solid crew of highway workers, assisted by volunteer squads from a civic-minded drive-on-the-left group, could make short work of all that. I'm anticipating a massive civic effort on behalf of driving on the left, with everything that implies: a sophisticated logo, an appealing mascot, and all this unfolding months in advance of the actual changeover. You'd want a very upbeat promotional campaign emphasizing the positive aspects of the change. Needless to say, you would need a peppy slogan and a jingle.

I don't think it's possible to underestimate the effect of a good jingle on people's habits. My first beer was National Beer because I grew up listening to the commercials between innings of baseball games:

National Beer, National Beer,

You'll like the taste of National Beer;

And while we're about it,

We're proud to say,

It's brewed on the shores

Of the Chesapeake Bay.

If that sounds simple, you're right. A catchy jingle along similar lines would make driving on the left seem not just the right thing to do, but fun. You'd combine the carrot with the stick–an ad campaign where people like my niece could speak plainly and honestly against a simple backdrop about the dangers of the present system.

Those who wanted to help–and I think they'd be legion–would get red vests and hats and slickers that would make them feel like they were in on the ground floor of something exciting. You'd have a gleaming new yellow truck delivering fresh boxes of buttons and bumper stickers that said, "Drive on the Left! You Know It's Better!" with a target date underneath. Or "Drive on the Left! It's Easier!" (I leave the slogans to pithier minds.)

As for a mascot, my first thought was a penguin, which would hold up its left flipper and wave us along, with a goofy smile on its face to disarm even the harshest critics.

It would surprise you how many civic-minded people are out there just waiting to help. My sister-in-law is the type that, when there's a problem facing the community and a strong public interest at stake, is always there, selflessly giving of her time. People like my sister-in-law would turn out early on a Saturday morning to dig up stop signs and move them, or paint new signs, or hand out brochures at lights and calmly explain the change.

The next question is: If people are only driving on the left inside Atlanta, what happens if they want to leave the city?

The logical answer is transition or "criss-cross" points at the city borders, with stoplights and large slanting arrows painted on the street. For the first couple of weeks, you'd post an officer at these places–deploying them, with the ceremonial crash of a champagne bottle, on Sunday morning, so people could adjust to the system before Monday-morning rush hour. They'd wear colorful sashes with the logo, which by then everyone would know.

The beauty of the plan is, no one has to turn around or change their itinerary. Everyone's still going in the same direction; they'd merely have to cross over opposing traffic to get to their new lane, and vice versa. In some cases, this might entail building overpasses–yes, at considerable expense–but the key would be to do so in advance, so that the weekend in question would go smoothly.

And, of course, all these criss-cross points would be temporary. Before long we'd move on to the rest of the country, once Atlanta had shown how doable it was, and how effective.

Obviously, that would require sales. The President would have to get behind it; perhaps more importantly, the First Lady (just as Lady Bird Johnson convinced the country to beautify American highways). She would work closely with a national chairman, someone gutsy and highly effective, a Robert Rubin type. Throw in a popular role model like Magic Johnson or Charles Barkley, and people would get swept up in the excitement. Cities might actually compete to go first.

Inevitably, the usual host of critics and naysayers would come out of the woodwork. Just as predictably, they would light on the plan's shortcomings, and once it was implemented they could surely point to some confusion and a few fender-benders, some raised voices and frayed nerves. But the great majority of people would see these types of problems as par for the course. I think the general feeling would be, "Hey, we can do that!"

Ordinary Americans would get behind the idea when they realized that they were leading the world toward greater efficiency and uniformity, something we all want. Before long, you'd have committees forming in cities, with local celebrities. You'd have a sort of movement, and people would want to be a part of it. There's nothing wrong with a little rah-rah if the cause is something you can actually believe in.

There you have it. I'm not saying it's completely figured out, but it's damned close, and I'm open to suggestions. Maybe the mascot shouldn't be a penguin; some might say it should be a bear. (More American; and the obvious slogan, "Bear Left …. ") We can talk about all of that.

classes publish a giant crimson-bound volume of classmates' reports of a form

made familiar by Christmas letters: the overlong account in restrained,

enthusiastic tones about how pediatric medicine has been an adventure, or

quoting Thoreau while informing your readers that you now own three companies

and your daughter has lately gotten into Harvard and climbed Rainier.

One of my fellows from the Class of '76, the comedy writer

Stephen O'Donnell, calls this book "the Torah." My Torah arrived a couple

months back, and I was surprised by how many people remembered Harvard differently

from me. They were grateful to Harvard; they felt blessed by Harvard. Myself, I

remembered mostly the slights of my smarter (if equally arrogant) classmates,

my social failures, the inability to get laid (this was before the Galbraith

Committee hammered out the Exchange of Undergraduate Privileges agreement with

local women's colleges). Harvard was the zone of ferocious competition and

status anxiety, which I was determined to put behind me. My wife anchored these

feelings when she got pissed off over the paltry $35 I gave to the Harvard

College fund each year, or railed about the tons of junk mail the class sent

proselytizing me to come back to the reunion. The reunion was a no-brainer: I

wasn't going near that snakepit.

And so I drove up on June 7, and checked into a dormitory in

the Yard.

What had changed my mind? Vanity, and spiritual blackmail.

First, a classmate e-mailed me to ask if I was available to participate in a

panel on the "writing life." Why, I'd love to, I e-mailed him back. Saturday, huh?

Is that before or after the clambake?

Right, sure … of course ….

As for the psychic push,

a close friend who'd been to his two years ago commanded me to go to mine. The

reunion had forced him "to own my history and who I am today," he said. While I

wasn't sure I needed closure on my personal journey yet, still I sensed that in

my Harvard hatred there was some gritty shrapnel of truth that I'd do better

not to avoid.

I walked in at the end of Commencement, in time to catch a

picture from a religious album: Fond Al Gore pushing his mother in a wheelchair

out from under a great white tent. He seemed ridiculously happy. Then I came

upon a bunch of former friends of mine whom I barely recognized, clad not in

jeans and long hair but absurd fairy-tale black hats and morning coats, and

standing atop the dais as if at the threshold of heaven. They were class

officers, escorting the Class of '76 up to heaven. The top hats fell across

their lined foreheads as the tails fell over their slack butts-footmen to august

King Harvard, never seen though his works were everywhere, benevolent and

oppressive.

I sat with my class on

the dais as Robert Rubin spoke, and reminded me of everything I disliked about

the place. That they'd chosen a globalist tool, that I could understand. But 30

minutes in the absence of any humanity or poetry began to feel desolating. Oh,

there was one anecdote: The philosophy professor had upended a wastebasket on

the desk to serve as his rostrum, and rubicund young Robert had learned all he

needed to know in that class. But the connection between Spinoza and the

Mexican bailout-that eluded Rubin's verbal powers. Between yawns, a wag in the

next chair handed me his annotated program: "1. Life is complex. 2. Make

difficult choices."

I stayed up late that night drinking whiskey out of plastic

cups in a girls' dorm room. By now I'd gone through the looking glass into my

undergraduate years. I was as uncomfortable as I was then, sitting on the

floor, flanked by two guys who were much cooler than I was. Or at least one of

them had been. In college he'd had long hair and worn a spangled T-shirt; I

know because he passed around a photograph where he was hanging out with two

beautiful girls from our class. I'd wanted to date one of them, the smart one.

Hadn't given me the time of day. I remembered the name I'd come up with for

her, the sullen voluptuary.

Spangles was now in high-end real estate. In the Torah, he

bragged about his toys-an automatic weapon and an S.U.V. Cool? Not cool? Not.

Stretched out on the bed as we drank was a woman who had

almost relieved me of my virginity when I was 17. We had both been drunk, she

more than me. She had told me to go, and then, a minute later-much worse-her

roommate from the other room called out to me to leave. I slunk away. My

virginity had to wait another year or two. I felt that night with fresh shame,

and hoped she'd forgotten.

Across the room were the famous O'Donnell twins, Stephen and

Mark. They had M.C.'d the talent show that night, which had been a tremendous

success. They had introduced acts they'd never seen with droll one-liners.

Mark was the star of our class, the most talented person I

think I've ever met. I'm sure others have had the same impression, and I can

only imagine what a burden this has been to Mark, making his way as a

playwright and novelist in New York. I still remember some of his jokes. "Big

feet?"-this said with a sexual twinkle in the eye-"Big shoes."

Or, "Sarge, get me out of this chicken outfit!"-a cartoon of

two soldiers, one in a chicken costume. During the talent show, I studied the

similarities and differences in the O'Donnells' styles. Mark was touched in

college and was still touched. He had an earnest way of stretching his neck out

like an eaglet and raising his eyebrows as he looked for the precise insight,

which he then produced, from another world. His voice was a little breathy and

ethereal. Stephen was more matter-of-fact, earthly and hairy.

The differences were less pronounced in college. They were

often confused, and sometimes used this confusion to their advantage, as when

Mark filled in for Stephen at a kitchen job-or was it Stephen Mark? Now they

were both successful writers who live a few blocks from one another on the

Upper West Side. During the talent show, I'd watched them looking at one

another, saw what sly affection was in their eyes, the surprise and delight one

experienced at what the other said, and felt a little excluded, as from a

higher species. At the end of the evening, they danced with one another on the

stage.

And now I must draw a

curtain on middle-aged dorm life. Suffice it to say that literature has

not treated the theme of a dozen graying, middle-aged men sharing a

bathroom-men who, if they have one thing they can count on, it's some privacy

on the throne ….

The next morning, half of them have checked out for the

Charles Hotel.

At breakfast I entered the reunion's Dante-ish space. I was

in the afterlife, populated by ghosts, and doing the business of the afterlife:

being acquainted with my disappointments.

It seemed like every guy who in his 40's was half-broken by

crisis seemed to find me, or I found him. It wasn't as if the entire class was

this way. No, most of them were making tons of money and doing just fine. They

were the wheels of capital or the instruments of law, the forceps of medicine

or inkblots of the press (that metaphor was actually teetering a long time ago

…). They were making a median income of $160,000 a year, and they were

beginning to coast. "Hey, I heard that you're still working hard," one of them

said, casually and sincerely, to another in the breakfast line. They were the

tough, boring, balding fiber of the social carpet.

The guys who came looming up to me were the seekers. A tall,

handsome former Catholic, spun out by divorce and now studying, at the feet of

his younger son, how to live in the moment-or as the boy says, "in the thrum."

A blond guy who I had last seen beside me 27 years ago, washing dishes in a

dining hall, who was about to go into a monastery after a career in I'm not sure

what, politics maybe, he mumbled but didn't want to say. He and I stood around

wondering how much of our college sexual experience had been date rape.

And I spent an hour with

a starfucker who had stopped believing in the stars ….

Bummer.

These ghosts did a ghostly service: They acquainted me with

my own denied disappointments (my failure to write intelligible, or

publishable, novels). And I did the stuff you do in the afterlife. I apologized

sincerely to a woman I'd screwed over, and she, ever kind, accepted it. I put

my arm around my fiercest college rival, for one sweet moment. I looked up from

my conversation with the former Catholic to see a beautiful child at the next

table. As it turned out, he was the child of a friend. I wanted to touch his

hair, and I wondered if he was as interior as I was as a child. Then I thought,

if I hadn't been so immature, I might have had kids ….

That was when I ran into my first love. Mike Brown was

long-nosed, blue-eyed and thrilling. His eyes were as blue as the waters of

Seagate, Coney Island, where he grew up and played the violin. Mike was my

first tough Jew, and my first genius; he was someone who had fully and

unapologetically occupied himself.

Now Mike stopped outside a doorway in the Yard.

"Right in there, I got on

an elevator one day with a dean. I'd had crabs a few months before, and the

only way to get rid of them is with this stuff called Pyrinate A-200. Which

stinks. And on this elevator was the unmistakable odor of Pyrinate A-200. So I

said to the dean, 'You have my sympathy. It's no fun. But if you want a better

method, you should shave one half of your pubic hair, light the other half on

fire, and get them with an icepick when they come running out …. '"

Mike still talks like that, even though he was successful in

Seattle. I walked him back to his dorm, two gray ghosts going down the

spiritual Jewish elevator together, stinking of nostalgia, and remembered who

I'd been when I met him, a nerdy kid from a strong but narrow background.

I'd wanted Harvard to make me worldly, and it did. My

in-laws were impressed by the fact that I'd gone to Harvard. So was my first

daily newspaper editor. So is the King of

Tonga. I've pulled out my golden passport up and down the line. Considering

that, I felt a surge of gratitude to Harvard. Tears came to my eyes, and I

grabbed Mike with tenderness.

"What is it with all this hugging?" he said.

As Mark O'Donnell was

the star of our class, so he was the star of the afterlife. On my writing

panel, he gave a wicked insight. Writing should be play, he said. "You've never

heard of play-block …. You never hear girls who are playing with their dolls

say, 'I just don't know what these dolls should say!'" Middle age had improved

the O'Donnells, like some old cheese. They looked a little more like cheese,

too, as we all did: crumbled and pale, a yellowy blue streak here and there.

Stephen, the hairier, squintier, darker-voiced cheese, sat on a media panel. He

said the reunion had moved him to treat his classmates with more charity.

"You've tried everything else," he said. "Why not try

plainness and truth and even mercy with one another?" Well I don't know,

Stephen-maybe because Harvard didn't encourage plainness and mercy?

The O'Donnells dazzled me partly because of their story.

They were from Cleveland, their dad was a welder, there were 10 kids. And from

early on these two too-funny boys-"my truest friend and a most remarkable and

entertaining companion since we shared a womb during the first Eisenhower

administration," Stephen said of Mark in the Torah-had been dynamic Harvard

success monkeys. Yet Stephen's report in the Torah brimmed with sadness, too.

"I made two terrible mistakes. Getting married when I really

shouldn't have (bad). And not getting

married when I really, really, should

have. The second is much worse, a much bigger loss. I suffer over it all the

time. Why do I mention it here? I don't know. It seems big to me. The useful

message to you all might be to bravely go with your heart always and

everywhere. I wish I would've operated that way starting about, oh, 1954. I've

paid attention enough to know regrets don't do any good, but I'm still in the

woods on this one …. "

His words came down over you like grace. They offered things

Harvard never taught: going with your heart, clemency for failure. But then,

how had I made my connection to the O'Donnells? I suppose I ought to have mercy

for Harvard.