DATELINE: kitchen island, Indy, 12 October 2006

Felt somewhat awkward being on TV after not appearing for a while, and I think it showed in the first segment. You have all these things ready to say, but then it's your turn to speak and you hear your voice ring hollow in this cavernous room, where you're staring at a camera and can only hear the show through your earbud (seeing nothing), and it just doesn't sound right. It's like you're not really there.

So you stumble around a bit, but then the sense of urgency kicks in and you begin to get that feeling of being on stage, and the words comes faster.

Larry Kudlow kind of freaked me a bit when, as the music swelled to signal the commercial break, he just kept talking right over it, like somebody giving their Oscar speech and refusing to cut it off. Larry just had this one last question he wanted to ask and by God, he was going to ask it. But all I heard on my side was the music plus his increasing speed and I figured he was walking us out the door, so to speak. So when he called my name, it wasn't exactly clear to me if I was supposed to talk. But I figured, better to err on the side of talking (always assume you're on camera) and so I started. But the connection was such that, once I started talking, any sound from their end went dead (like some cell phone connections), so while I was talking (and stumbling a bit on the answer), I kept expecting a producer to come on in my ear and tell me to shut it because it was a commercial break. But then Larry piped in and I realized I was still on the air. Whew!

After a long commercial break, I'm feeling pretty relaxed because the local remote station guys said that NY was saying CNBC would probably go to a NYC press conference on the plane incident, so I figured I was done. I wasn't happy with that, because I felt I was only so-so in the segment and wanted to redeem myself a bit by doing better in the planned second (after the commercials), but then we were back on just like that, talking Iran.

By then, I was feeling okay and my answers sounded a lot better. I got to end on my oft-stated distinction that you kill authoritarian regimes (Iran) with connectivity, while targeting the totalitarian ones for regime change (North Korea). Larry reads the blog, so I figured, based on his rather complex question, that that was what he was looking for.

When the second segment ended, I felt much better. Only natural to be a bit stiff when I haven't been on for a while (no radio either), so it was nice to feel my feet get wet again. Still, a crazy business and I am loathe to start letting my day revolve around it like so many people seem eager to do.

But with Larry, cause he reads the blog (he called me "my blog master on everything"), it does seem different. I don't like to go on just to comment on daily events, because, as I said yesterday, I'm not political and short-term in perspective, but strategic and long-term, and I figure that stuff just doesn't go over as well on the medium (better on radio). But because Larry reads the blog, I know he's only having me on when he feels it's time for somebody to say the kind of things I'm writing in the blog, so the process of selection here seems good. And, as more and more producers of these things read blogs, maybe that's the natural conduit vice having PR people push you in their faces. Interesting thought.

Cool to be on with Ignatius. My wife says he's got that slightly bemused look of his down like a charm for his time on camera when he's not speaking. She suggests I get one of my own and stop leaning to my left (I have a medical excuse: my eyes are out of alignment, hence I need fairly strong prisms in both my lenses, and my counter when not wearing glasses is to tilt my head a bit to the left to balance my sight and prevent the double-vision I can get when I'm tired; all of which means that not only am I an optimist, but a cock-eyed one at that!).

Beinart was pretty good, and pretty young, and pretty casually dressed (but also nicely complimentary to me on China). I felt so adult-like in comparison, that it depressed me a bit, especially when I leaned forward and got the top-down view of my hairline. Oh, to move through your forties...

I realize it was a China-friendly group, so my argument on alliance with China went over very easily (as in, unchallenged). Typically, Larry seems to pair me with some fire-breathing type on China or Iran who automatically brand my ideas as "dumbest thing I've ever heard" or some such wry response, so I realize it was a friendly room. But what's cool about being so out there on China is that, when it happens (or when I finally engineer it on my own), everyone will remember that I was one of the people advocating this shift for so long. And to me, that's the job of the grand strategist. Leave it to the political tacticians to declare something the "dumbest thing they've ever heard," because when the worm turns, they'll sing the new tune on key instantly, being so political.

Anyway, good warm-up for today. Got a film crew coming on behalf of a corporate client (Royal Dutch Shell). They want to film me answering a number of generic and specific questions about the future for distro within their senior management. This is being done in advance of my next trip to China, where I'll do my usual brief with a host of managers brought together from around the world, plus do a special career-advice bit with a bevy of up-and-coming Chinese managers, which should be a story worth telling in Vol. III, methinks.

Anyway, I'm now inescapably having to clean the kitchen and first floor in anticipation of these guests, plus I've got to look over the questions, so blogging must wait...

But to amuse me while I clean, "The Way West: How the West Was Lost & Won (1945-1893)," an American Experience documentary directed by Ric Burns.