Safire

No one said being a Joban was going to be easy."The Joban life is the life spent maintaining personal convictions," William Safire writes in his newly published book, "The First Dissident: The Book of Job in Today's Politics."And here it was on a Wednesday, less than a week before Election Day, and he was doing what any number of good citizens have done recently: Discussing who would get his vote for president.The problem was that Mr. Safire, the influential political columnist for the New York Times, had peeked behind Door No. 1, Door No. 2 and Door No. 3, and hadn't liked any of the choices.

TWO WEEKS before Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union, New York Times columnist William Safire opened his column with the following sentence:"Revealing the true colors of a tyrant, Mikhail Gorbachev now seeks to thwart the democratic will of the independent republics his former empire by bidding for the support of the veteran Red Army generals." The ostensible basis for this arrant nonsense was the fact that Gorbachev had held meetings with his military commanders. By that criterion, Safire as easily could have written that George Bush was plotting to become a "tyrant" for meeting with Gen. Colin Powell.

It is a remarkable, yet oddly fitting irony that Mikhail Sergeivich Gorbachev would end his political career on the day that much of the world observed as the birthday of the Prince of Peace.From the outset we have viewed Gorbachev not just as the Man of the Decade, (as Time magazine anointed him) or even the Man of the Century (as Richard Nixon called him) but rather as a Man of the Ages. To find someone who has so significantly changed history one must look to such towering figures as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror and Peter the Great.

Washington -- A YOUNG English bureaucrat named Samuel Pepys, pronounced "peeps," kept a detailed, chatty diary for the decade of the 1660s; historians came to treat it as the most invaluable window on that world of plagues and fires.By employing the old and rewarding device of keeping a journal, and by mixing it with the new world of CD-ROM, people today have the chance to become the Pepyses of the future. Not only that, the amazing combo of human brain and technical brainchild makes it possible to build a personal life story to enrich and enliven an extended old age.Writing a daily letter to yourself -- an investment of only 20 minutes a day -- not only teaches you how to write and think, but is a therapeutic outlet for pent-up resentments and secret desires.

WHEN GEORGE Bush's heart fluttered, about 200 million other hearts also speeded up their RPMs. Few things make the American psyche quiver like an ailing president.Especially when the vice president is a Sesame Street cartoon character."I'm in great shape. Don't worry about me," Bush says at every White House photo op.Each day Bush's spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, scoffs at reports that the boss isn't in the pink. Always he decribes the First Patient as in rip-roaring health."He feels good. Good spirits, good sense of humor, and for all outward apearances he's in excellent health," said Fitzwater Monday.

OUT OF TIMER.E.M. (Warner Bros. 26527)Once a band makes it to the big time, it usually loses its sense of adventure. Not R.E.M., however; if anything, the group seems more willing than ever to take chances. With "Out of Time," the band tinkers with its instrumentation and toys with a variety of pop styles. Yet no matter how far afield these go, R.E.M. never loses its identity or sense of direction, whether it's dabbling in old-time country with "Half a World Away" or flirting with funk in "Radio Song."