It turns out that America’s MPPs have hearts as golden as the parachutes they’ve received from various distinguished institutions. Carville paints “a daddy, a momma, two children, a paycheck and a future”; Ireland envisions “a general spiral of progress on the issues I care about”; Schwarzkopf pictures “a kind of universal well-being.” Trione writes that when she sprung the paints on former senator Alan Simpson, he said, “This is appalling to me.” But he produced a preschool-expressionist landscape of his native Wyoming, with “one of the most unique plants the world has ever known, known only to the imagination.” (“This is the damnedest interview I’ve ever had,” he concluded.) The funniest is critic Harold Bloom’s scrawl–looks like about 30 seconds’ work–of a triangle-faced lady scowling at a book. But you know who can really paint? Former NASA administrator Daniel Goldin, whose rendering of a rocket, suns and “very happy planets” looks like a modernist masterwork until you see what it’s supposed to be. He’s about the only one who should’ve given up his day job.
