A political affair to remember

Excerpt

SHE wore high heels, the skimpiest aqua shorts; and her blouse, a gauzey affair, purfled with metallic threads, seemed to billow and cling as though a breeze blew in the still and much-breathed air of Bourbon Street. She might well have caught the eye even if the airport limousine had not suddenly veered toward her as she stepped from the curb.

Jack Dangermond, bound for Los Angeles that afternoon, is musing over three things he wished he had had time to share from the speaker's rostrum at the 37th annual meeting of SCSA. A tall, slender man with an intense and bookish look about him, Dangermond heads a firm that specializes in compiling geographic information for decision-makers. He has advised the Libyans on the best place to plant crops, the Venezuelans on the siting of a new town, the Australians on the burial of a pipeline, and NASA on the way it should look down at the world.

“About one percent of my time with people is effective communication,” he says—so quietly that special care is required …