The Luncheon Society

In late 2010, I got an email from Becky Draper, a friend and Bill’s daughter, to organize a Luncheon Society to support her father’s book.  Besides being the founding rock upon which Silicon Valley was built, he and Pitch Johnson made those early investments in the valley back in the day when what a VC actually did had to be explained to emerging entrepreneurs. Of course, we quickly said yes.

Draper’s father was a banker at Dillon Reed, an army officer, and diplomat. During the Berlin Airlift, the senior Draper worked with General Lucius Clay, who organized the rescue of the city after it had been cut off by the Soviets. The younger Draper was there too, as an attaché to his father.

After the war and a job at Inland Steel, he and Pitch Johnson headed west to make their fortunes. Those thoughts and other are found in his new book, The Startup Game, and it is a book that has been well-received in many quarters. The majority of those around the table were in the starting phases of their own entrepreneurial efforts.

Since the Fortune.com “q and a” piece by Dan Primack captured so much of the conversation, I just decided to rerun his piece. Continue reading →

Richard Wolffe and Jonathan Alter have put together the best historical first draft of the Obama Presidential Campaign and the first two years of the Presidency. Richard Wolffe wrote Renegade, the inside story of the rise of Barack Obama and his campaign as it emerged from the doldrums of 2007 to the early caucuses and primaries into the Denver Convention in 2008.  The Promise, by Jonathan Alter, follows the Obama White House through the early days of the Obama White House, including the challenges of building out an endgame of Afghanistan and dealing with some of the conflicting personalities on his economic team.  In the third book in the troika, Richard Wolffe returns with Revival, which expands the thematics of his first book and parachutes them right into the healthcare debate.  

Richard Wolffe has joined The Luncheon Society on three occasions (most recently last December 2010 in Los Angeles) and Jonathan Alter has joined us twice, both times in Manhattan.

A great story before we begin.  Steve Schlesinger, the son of Arthur Schlesinger Jr, a former speechwriter for Mario Cuomo and the Director of the World Policy Institute at the New School University reflected on the irony that during the 1980’s his father’s next door neighbor was non-other than Richard Nixon, the bete noire of the Kennedy Administration. His younger brother Robert would look over the back fence only to be shooed away by the Secret Service and when Nixon sat out in the backyard, it was often in full suit and tie.

To get a detailed breakout of the gathering we had in Los Angeles with Richard Wolffe, here are the notes from that gathering.  Revival came out as the profile of the Administration was battered from the midterms, but between the release and that December dinner, Barack Obama made the best use of the Lame Duck session and compiled the best legislative record since Lyndon Johnson’s first full term. Continue reading →

In Richard Panek’s latest book, “The 4% Universe,” he asks, “What if everything we knew about the universe was wrong?” Who will solve the riddle? Somebody is going to figure this out and will win the Nobel Prize to become the Einstein of their age. We have only just begun to understand what’s “out there.”  

Richard Panek, who has also written “Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud, and the Search for Hidden Universes” and “Seeing and Believing: How the Telescope Opened our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens,” has an unerring knock of explaining complex scientific concepts to the rest of us.

There are times that somebody else can better describe a gathering than me. On January 27^th, we had a mind-blowing conversation with New York Times Science writer Richard Panek surrounding the glue that keeps our universe together, most notably Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Continue reading →

There’s an old joke that says, “there are two sides to every story—but the bad side pays better.” If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, perhaps a liberal might just be a conservative who has been hung out to dry by the health insurance industry.

For nearly two decades, Wendell Potter served as the top Public Relations executive at CIGNA and an health insurance industry insider until he resigned in 2007.  Wendell Potter’s career as an insurance industry whistleblower began in June 2009 as an expert witness in front of a US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, while the healthcare debate was still in full bloom.

His testimony began:

“Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be here this afternoon. My name is Wendell Potter and for 20 years, I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick — all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.

I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand — or even to obtain — information we need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world. I hope you get a real sense of what life would be like for most of us if the kind of so-called reform the insurers are lobbying for is enacted.

When I left my job as head of corporate communications for one of the country’s largest insurers, I did not intend to go public as a former insider. However, it recently became abundantly clear to me that the industry’s charm offensive — which is the most visible part of duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaigns — may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans.” Continue reading →

There are times when Luncheon Society gatherings come blessed with unbelievable serendipitude; our evening dinner in Santa Monica with MSNBC’s Richard Wolffe underlined our luck.

Hours earlier, President Obama announced that he had struck a deal with the Republicans to extend the Bush era tax cuts for another two years, including those who made above $250,000 per year. There would be much to discuss.

It was a compromise that ran counter to promises from his 2008 campaign.  A number of progressive commentators, along with many around our table, howled with cries of “betrayal,” and “weak.”  However, as I scribbled a few recollections a month later, it appears that the President has rebuilt his fortunes, recaptured his momentum, and even may have gotten the last laugh. 

First, when any deal is struck between Congress and the White House, the President (by virtue of the gravitas of the office) earns the lion share of the accolades. Like baseball, the tie goes to the runner.  Second, by removing the tax cut extension issue as a thorn, it opened the door for some landmark legislation, including the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the New START Treaty, the Food Safety Bill, the Defense Authorization bill , and a continuing resolution to keep funding the federal government. Continue reading →