INTRODUCTION OF DAVID M RUBENSTEIN
George Liebmann
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Jason Willick
Wed, Mar 27 at 12:11 PM
REMARKS OF GEORGE W. LIEBMANN, PRESIDENT OF THE LIBRARY COMPANY OF THE BALTIMORE BAR, INTRODUCING DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN, MARCH 26, 2024
I have always proceeded on the premise that introductions should not exceed three minutes in length. Our speaker’s monumental resume would make that difficult, but you all have read it. I shall therefore mention a lesser-known aspect of our speaker’s career.
As a scourge of the second-hand bookstalls, I recently came across the 900 page memoir of the Prince of Darkness, the conservative journalist Robert Novak. He talks in passing of our speaker’s very peripheral role, as a former junior member of the Carter White House staff, in former Vice President Mondale’s later selection of his running mate in the 1984 Presidential election, Geraldine Ferrero.
This experience gives him an acute understanding of the carelessness with which the nation usually selects its Vice Presidents.
This is a year in which the probable Presidential candidates are older men, though several years short of my age. According to the publicists of their opposing parties, they are each doddering, dilapidated, and descending into desuetude.
It is thus reasonable to ask our civic leaders, among whom our speaker is certainly one, to champion the cause of great care in selection of Vice Presidential candidates. In this year we do not need another William Miller, Sarah Palin, or even Geraldine Ferrero. Our elder statesmen, in business and in government. are largely powerless to change the Presidential nominees, but their voices, individually and collectively, can urge that they be judged in large measure by their selection of running-mates.
Whatever else may be said of former President Trump, he made a wise and responsible choice in 2016 and 2020. The difference this made was amply and ironically revealed on January 6, 2021.
At the risk of ruining our speaker’s evening, let me urge him to do what he can, with his friends in both parties, to ensure that wise choices are made of Vice-Presidential nominees, and that the Presidential nominees are judged on the basis of what they aspire to give to posterity.
Despite this disagreeable assignment, I am happy to introduce a man who has been and is a fine citizen of this country, and who certainly has not forgotten the city that he came from, David M. Rubenstein.
Posted in: Efficiency in Government, Judiciary and Legal Issues, Miscellaneous, Philanthropy, The Right, Urban Affairs