CALENDAR JOTTINGS

American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman Ornstein and Brookings Institution senior fellow Thomas

Mann will moderate a panel this morning entitled “How Would George W. Bush Govern in a Second Term?” Panelists include Mr. Gergen and Dan Balz of the Washington Post.

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KNICK-KNACKS

Author Harold Evans, dapper attorney Ashton Hawkins, and the State of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation president Stephen Briganti recently visited the Museum of the City of New York to see the show devoted to Senator Moynihan…Phil Gramm, the former senator who is vice chairman of UBS Warburg, was spotted with wife Wendy in Midtown heading into Sardi’s on Sunday evening.

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SMART SET

A galaxy of gray matter was in evidence as the John F. Kennedy School of Government held a reception in Midtown on Sunday evening. The school maintains a bipartisan spirit, having held a party earlier this summer during the Democratic National Convention.

Graduates young and old mixed over cocktails with faculty and friends in a collegial environment.

In attendance was Nation magazine publisher Victor Navasky, who is participating in an event in which the Constitution will be read by actors, writers, and others. He said he would be reading one of the amendments. “I put in for the Fifth,” he said, but was unsure if he would get it.

Philanthropist Walter Shorenstein talked with government professor Graham Allison, who is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Dean David Ellwood chatted with admissions and recruitment director Alexandra Martinez. National Journal’s Congress Daily reporter Jerry Hagstrom spoke with Virginia Dajani of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Also seen were Martha King of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and the director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School, David Gergen.

Harvard president Lawrence Summers said that despite people having different political views, “we can show some common commitments” to the way society is governed. The audience chuckled when President Summers added that Mr. Ellwood is “still in his first 100 days” which he said were dynamic for the Kennedy School.

After offering a toast, Mr. Summers said, “That is the end of speechmaking tonight.” He added, to laughter, “There will be plenty of speeches over the next few days.”

Harvard presidents are stars inside and outside Cambridge, Mass. A humorous anecdote was once told of a visitor to the university office of Charles Eliot, who served as president of Harvard from 1869 to 1909. Eliot’s secretary is reputed to have said, “President Eliot is away in Washington visiting Mr. Roosevelt.”

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PRESS (ESPRIT DE) CORPS

Associated Press president and chief executive Thomas Curley and AP senior vice president and executive editor Kathleen Carroll invited journalists and others Sunday evening to a reception at the wire service’s new world headquarters in New York.

Their digs – the size of two football fields – are located on three floors at 450 West 33rd St. with splendid views of the Hudson River. The building is also home to the New York Daily News and Thirteen/WNET New York.

Health services coordinator Keisa Caesar was among those giving tours. There is a gift shop where visitors can buy books penned by AP journalists as well as shirts and coffee mugs bearing the AP logo. Intriguingly, the carpet on the main floor had the letters AP spelled out in Morse code and running like a ticker tape or a highway median strip.

The modern space appears well planned: the graphics department, for example, receives abundant natural light. AP corporate communications director Jack Stokes jokingly told the Sun that the company arranged for the sunlight to bounce off the Hudson.

Just how international is their newsroom? Depending on which area one is in, the clocks feature different world times. For example, in the entertainment news area, the clocks overhead show what hour it is in Hollywood, London, and Hong Kong.

AP deputy managing editor Thomas Kent helped in laying out the office space, which is clustered according to subject matter rather than strict departmental boundaries.

The office came with its own basketball court, a remnant from a former tenant. When and if the company gets an official team together, one wonders if the AP will use a full-court “press.” The AP is not the only unusual organization to have a basketball court. Columbia University law school professor Kent Greenawalt once spoke of playing basketball at the Supreme Court during the time he was clerking for Justice John Harlan. He and others joked that theirs was “the highest court in the land.”

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BATTLE OF THE SIGNS

At a table at the Sheraton Hotel, pins were being sold that said, “I only sleep with Republicans.” Another pin read “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Democrat.”…Protesters walking not far from the hotel had a sign “Re-elect Bush – Four More Wars.”