RUTHFULLY YOURS

Two hundred and seventy years ago this month, aged 42 and weeks from the midpoint of his long life, Benjamin Franklin did something highly unusual. He retired. Specifically, he sat down at a perennially cluttered desk in his cramped Philadelphia print shop and signed an innovative “Co-Partnership” agreement with his foreman, David Hall. The document was a scant two pages in length, but it immediately changed the trajectory of Franklin’s life and career. Not coincidentally, later that year Franklin hired the distinguished Colonial artist Robert Feke to paint his portrait (now held in the Portrait Collection of the Harvard Art Museums) and record this pivotal moment for posterity.

Franklin’s retirement (memorialized in his best-selling autobiography) helped establish the modern concept of a multi-career life and ranks among his great inventions. The transaction gave 50 percent ownership of his firm to Hall. Franklin’s printing business was unlike any other in the Colonies: in the eighteenth century, printing was an inherently local trade focused on small business and government customers, and staple products like stationery, legal notices, currency, invoices, and invitations. Franklin cracked this parochial model open along two dimensions: as publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper and the wildly popular Poor Richard’s Almanac, he was a substantial owner of copyrights. He was also a sort of pioneering venture capitalist, providing custom-designed presses to aspiring printers in far-flung places (New York, Newport, Charleston, even Antigua) in return for a share in the profits.

Franklin was anxious to move on to other activities, but in the embryonic economy of mid-eighteenth century Philadelphia, the option of selling his firm did not exist. There were no investment bankers, no Googles or Amazons voraciously looking for acquisitions. The outline of the deal with Hall was based on the template created in his earlier printing investments and was designed to solve this problem by guaranteeing Franklin the next best thing to an outright sale: a long-term passive income.

There is an elegant simplicity about the entire arrangement with Hall. (Two pages! Today’s equivalent would be at least 25 times that length.) In return for the contracts, copyrights, type, and presses, Franklin received 50 percent of the profits for an 18-year period.

Donald Trump spent 90 minutes talking to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer at the White House on Friday trying to avoid a government shutdown, and after he left Mr. Schumer vouchsafed that “we made some progress.” But apparently not enough to stop him and his fellow Democrats from threatening to filibuster a government funding bill as we reached our Friday deadline. This is what Mr. Trump’s life will be like, times about 10, if Democrats retake the House and Senate in November. They’re going to torture him like a dancing bear.

The most important political fact of this latest shutdown melodrama is that Democrats feel they can get away with it. Democrats are essentially doing what GOP Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee tried in 2013 over repealing ObamaCare: Refuse to fund the government over an unrelated policy issue.

Democrats pilloried Republicans for that one, and Nancy Pelosi called them “legislative arsonists.” But now Mr. Schumer has rallied Democrats, or perhaps they’ve rallied him, to shut down the government over an immigration deadline that is still six weeks away and has nothing to do with funding the government. The audacity is impressive.

The House has passed its funding bill for 30 days along with some policy priorities Democrats profess to want, such as a six-year extension of the CHIP program for children’s health care. Mr. Trump says he’s waiting to sign it. But Mr. Schumer still wants to hold Mr. Trump and the government hostage to the minority’s political priority on immigration.

Democrats are insisting on their timetable for a deal to legalize the so-called Dreamers even though the two sides have only begun to negotiate in earnest and even though Mr. Trump has said he wants to work something out. Mr. Schumer is showing Mr. Trump who’s really in charge.

Later today, Oprah Winfrey will present the final episode of the epic 25-year run of her talk show. Whether you belong to the Oprah or the “Just Say Noprah” camp, it is difficult to deny that, for millions, Winfrey’s program has been much more than a talk show. The devotion that she has inspired goes beyond her massive car and gift giveaways and her ability to attract the most powerful celebrities to her stage.

In the late 1990s, Oprah made a concerted effort to change the nature of her show from an entertainment similar to rival programs hosted by Phil Donohue and Sally Jesse Raphael, to what she branded “change your life television.”

Though Oprah now admits it was presumptuous to insist that her show could transform any life, hearing some of the testimonials of loyal viewers certainly lends credence to her initial claim:

A woman who, five years ago, suddenly lost her 13 month-old baby, reflects on a show about a mother who has suddenly lost her twin boys. “Nothing could console me,” she says, “This show was the only anchor I could hold onto in my sea of pain.”

Another young woman describes her being in a car accident with a drunk driver. She survived, but her mother and her best friend were killed. “I was so lonely. When I got home, I would turn on the TV and just listen to Oprah. She taught me the power of forgiveness. It freed me.”

A teenage girl who grew up watching Oprah thanks her for “lifting the shame of being abused. You taught me it wasn’t my fault.”

Robert M Kaplan is a forensic psychiatrist. His book The King who strangled his psychiatrist and other dark tales is in press.

They have been told to shut up by the American Psychiatric Association, which has rejected the “diagnosis” of Hillary-supporting mental health “professionals” who swear that Donald Trump is a loony and must be removed from office. Something like that happened in Bavaria and didn’t end well

Following the publication of Michael Wolff’s book “Fire & Fury” — reviewed for Quadrant Online by Geoffrey Luck — there has been a cacophony of comment on the president’s mental state and whether Amendment 25 in the US Constitution can be applied to remove him from office. The amendment was instituted during the Eisenhower administration, the intention being to provide a mechanism for being rid of a president rendered incapable of governing. The example in mind was the severe incapacity of Woodrow Wilson from a stroke during his last years, his wife and doctor colluding to hide this from the government.

There are many examples of presidential mental states that led to concerns about psychiatric disorder; Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted final years in office being just two. In those cases, nothing was done and the fact remains that there has never been an attempt to remove a president on these grounds.

For those contemplating such action with the current incumbent, a look back in history at a baroque example will serve as a warning. The case concerns the monarchical defenestration of King Ludwig 11 of Bavaria and the Palatinate, known to this day as “Mad King Ludwig” (above). This is a startling tale of royal eccentricity and grandeur, venal relatives, penny-pinching bureaucrats and miscarriage of justice, to say nothing of broken medical ethics. Those studying the current White House will recall Marx’s dictum that history repeats itself first with tragedy, then with farce.

Ludwig was the splendid king of Bavaria. Influenced by Richard Wagner, he built a number of fairy-tale castles – Neuschwanstein, Herrenchiemsee, Linderhof, Nymphenburg and Hohenschwangau – for no purpose other than to meet his fantasies. His castle-mania drained the state coffers, causing much concern to the treasury and unpaid creditors escalated. His family, a Macbeth-like bunch, seethed with jealousy, resentment, intrigue and envy. To add to the problem, Ludwig queered the pitch with his rampant sexual exploits, rogering the stable men and guards in the royal barracks. His nocturnal sleigh-rides and opulent orgies with soldiers in artificial grottoes did not go down well in staunchly Catholic 19th century Bavaria.