Today was one of those days. So we’ll leave you with this thought from Louis C.K.’s responses to the “Proust Questionnaire” in the January issue (the Comedy Issue) of Vanity Fair because, well, we can sort of relate right now.:

How would you like to die?
Handcuffing myself to you and jumping into a cauldron of molten bronze.

Louis C.K.’s Fresh Air interview is here.

The office of the presidency has these god-like powers especially with regards to our foreign affairs,” Lewis says. “The president can be so powerful in some ways and in other ways, particularly with regard to domestic affairs, he’s hamstrung, so this weird disjuncture between his powers and his powerlessness is really striking.

— Michael Lewis Studies ‘Obama’s Way’

“What I noticed is that that office takes your personality and exaggerates it — you become a caricature of who you are. And he has a personality trait that costs him politically, and it’s the personality trait of a writer. He really is at bottom a writer, and the trait is — he’s in a moment and not in a moment at the same time. He can be in a room but detach himself at the same time. It’s almost as if he’s writing about it at the same time he’s participating in it. It’s a curious inside-outside thing, and the charge that he’s aloof grows right out of this trait.

— Michael Lewis on Obama, the person

charquaouia:

Julia and Paul Cushing Child’s 1956 Valentine’s Day card. Courtesy of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

Tomorrow: a vintage Julia Child interview.

vanityfair:

A May 1967 shot of Nancy Sinatra and John Barry, who died yesterday, in the studio to record the Bond theme for “You Only Live Twice.” Read Bruce Handy’s wonderful 2009 profile of the composer here. 

Tomorrow, we remember John Barry, with highlights from a 1999 interview, where he discussed composing the music for Goldfinger, Thunderball and other Bond films.

I think [Republican strategists] are afraid of [Sarah Palin] because they know she’s a polarizing figure who by-and-large turns off independents and independents, at the end of the day, are really the kind of people you want to get to win a general election. I think they also have a lot of fear that she is undisciplined and not very diligent about doing her homework and that to win the presidency, you have to put together one good month after another. And some person who worked with Governor Palin on the McCain campaign said that he ‘didn’t really think she was capable of putting together five good days in a row.’

— Vanity Fair national writer Todd Purdum tells Terry Gross why Republican strategists fear Sarah Palin.

We’re in a period of incredible volatility. The last time our country went through a period like this, you could argue, was in the years after World War II, when between 1946 and 1952, the House changed hands repeatedly. …But I think it means the public’s impatient, the public’s worried, the public’s lurching a little bit from side to side saying ‘We’ll take a chance on you. No. We don’t like what you’ve done. We’ll take a chance on the other guy.’ And I think what it means in the short-term is it’s a very cautionary tale for John Boehner and the Republicans and I think John Boehner’s well aware of this. They have to be very careful with how they handle their majority or they’ll lose it.

— Todd Purdum on the massive changes taking place in American politics

Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum on the likely House majority leader, John Boehner: “I think John Boehner knows very well, because of his own experience, that it’s one thing to get a majority … [but] it’s very, very hard to retain a majority if all you do is say no. And I think he and the advisers around him know they have to put something in front of the House and in front of the American people that they can be for, as opposed to just being against.”

I think Sarah Palin, as Oscar Wilde once said, ‘is the kind of thing you like if you like that sort of thing.’ She is incredibly polarizing. And the people who like her, love her to death. And the people who can’t stand her, really can’t stand her. And I think she has to be used very carefully as a surrogate and as an influence in politics — and as we’ve seen in the last week or two, there’s been a lot of buzz about how members of what’s left of the Republican establishment are actually quite nervous about Governor Palin because they think she could run for president. They think it’s possible that she could win a few primaries or even the nomination and I think most Republicans would think that would be an absolute disaster for their party.

— Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum, on the polarization and influence of Sarah Palin.