Obama’s Remarks on Rev. Wright

Barack Obama (NYT)
The following is a transcript of a press conference held by Senator Barack Obama in response to recent statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as provided by Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign and Federal News Service.
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: Before I start taking questions I want to open it up with a couple of comments about what we saw and heard yesterday. I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That's in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding to insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That's who I am. That's what I believe. That's what this campaign has been about.
Yesterday, we saw a very different vision of America. I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday.
You know, I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992. I have known Reverend Wright for almost 20 years. The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.
They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought, either.
Now, I've already denounced the comments that had appeared in these previous sermons. As I said, I had not heard them before. And I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church. He's built a wonderful congregation. The people of Trinity are wonderful people. And what attracted me has always been their ministry's reach beyond the church walls.
But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century, when he equates the United States wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced. And that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.
Let me just close by saying this: I -- we started this campaign with the idea that the problems that we face as a country are too great to continue to be divided, that, in fact, all across America people are hungry to get out of the old divisive politics of the past.
I have spoken and written about the need for us to all recognize each other as Americans, regardless of race or religion or region of the country; that the only way we can deal with critical issues, like energy and health care and education and the war on terrorism, is if we are joined together. And the reason our campaign has been so successful is because we had moved beyond these old arguments.
What we saw yesterday out of Reverend Wright was a resurfacing and, I believe, an exploitation of those old divisions. Whatever his intentions, that was the result. It is antithetical to our campaign. It is antithetical to what I am about. It is not what I think American stands for.
And I want to be very clear that moving forward, Reverend Wright does not speak for me. He does not speak for our campaign. I cannot prevent him from continuing to make these outrageous remarks.
But what I do want him to be very clear about, as well as all of you and the American people, is that when I say I find these comments appalling, I mean it. It contradicts everything that I'm about and who I am.
And anybody who has worked with me, who knows my life, who has read my books, who has seen what this campaign's about, I think, will understand that it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country.
Last point: I'm particularly distressed that this has caused such a distraction from what this campaign should be about, which is the American people. Their situation is getting worse. And this campaign has never been about me. It's never been about Senator Clinton or John McCain. It's not about Reverend Wright.
People want some help in stabilizing their lives and securing a better future for themselves and their children. And that's what we should be talking about. And the fact that Reverend Wright would think that somehow it was appropriate to command the stage, for three or four consecutive days, in the midst of this major debate, is something that not only makes me angry but also saddens me.
So with that, let me take some questions.
Q: What are you going to do --
Q: Senator --
Q: Senator --
SEN. OBAMA: Yeah, go ahead.
Q: Why the change of tone from yesterday? When you spoke to us on the tarmac yesterday, you didn't have this sense of anger, outrage --
SEN. OBAMA: Yeah. I'll be honest with you: because I hadn't seen it yet.
Q: And that was the difference you --
SEN. OBAMA: Yes.
Q: Had you heard the reports about the AIDS comment?
SEN. OBAMA: I had not. I had not seen the transcript. What I had heard was that he had given a performance. And I thought at the time that it would be sufficient simply to reiterate what I had said in Philadelphia. Upon watching it, what became clear to me was that it was more than just a -- it was more than just him defending himself. What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that -- that -- that contradicts who I am and what I stand for. And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I'm about knows that -- that I am about trying to bridge gaps and that I see the -- the commonality in all people.
And so when I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS and suggestions that somehow Minister Farrakhan has -- has been a great voice in the 20th century, then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.
Jeff?
Q: Senator, what do you expect or what do you plan to do about this right now to further distance yourself, if you think you're going to do that? And does this say about your judgment to superdelegates, who are right trying to decide which Democratic nominee is better? Because your candidacy has been based on judgment, what does this say about it?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, look, as I said before, the person I saw yesterday was not the person that I had come to know over 20 years. I understand that -- I think he was pained and angered from what had happened previously, during the first stage of this controversy. I think he felt vilified and attacked, and I understand that he wanted to defend himself.
I understand that, you know, he's gone through difficult times of late, and that he's leaving his ministry after many years. And so, you know, that may account for the change.
But the insensitivity and the outrageousness, of his statements and his performance in the question-and-answer period yesterday, I think, shocked me. It surprised me. As I said before, this is an individual who has built a very fine church and a church that is well- respected throughout Chicago.
During the course of me attending that church, I had not heard those kinds of statements being made or those kinds of views being promoted. And I did not vet my pastor before I decided to run for the presidency. I was a member of the church.
So you know, I think what it says is that, you know, I have not, you know, I did not run through -- run my pastor through the paces or review every one of the sermons that he had made over the last 30 years. But I don't think that anybody could attribute those ideas to me.
Q: What effect do you think this is going to have on your campaign?
SEN. OBAMA: You know, that's something that you guys will have to figure out. And you know, obviously we've got elections in four or five days. So we'll find out, you know, what impact it has.
But ultimately I think that the American people know that we have to do better than we're doing right now. I think that they believe in the ideas of this campaign.
I think they are convinced that special interest have dominated Washington too long. I think they are convinced that we've got to get beyond some of the same political games that we've been playing. I think they believe that we need to speak honestly and truthfully about how we're going to solve issues like energy or health care.
And I believe that this campaign has inspired a lot of people. And that's part of what, you know, going back to what you asked, Mike, about why I feel so strongly about this today.
You know, after seeing Reverend Wright's performance, I felt as if there was a complete disregard, for what the American people are going through and the need for them to rally together to solve these problems.
You know, now is the time for us not to get distracted. Now is the time for us to pull together.
And that's what we've been doing in this campaign. And, you know, there was a sense that that did not matter to Reverend Wright. What mattered was him commanding center stage.
Q: Have you had a conversation with Reverend Wright and --
SEN. OBAMA: No.
Q: What's going to happen if these distractions continue?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, the -- I want to use this press conference to make people absolutely clear that obviously whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this. I don't think that he showed much concern for me. I don't -- more importantly, I don't think he showed much concern for what we are trying to do in this campaign and what we're trying to do for the American people and with the American people.
And obviously, he's free to speak out on issues that are of concern to him and he can do it in any ways that he wants. But I feel very strongly that -- well, I want to make absolutely clear that I do not subscribe to the views that he expressed. I believe they are wrong. I think they are destructive. And to the extent that he continues to speak out, I do not expect those views to be attributed to me.
Q: I remember after the story -- when the story immediately broke, Trinity Church -- the current pastor kind of defended Reverend Wright. I'm wondering -- I don't know how they reacted to the latest, but I'm wondering if you continue planning on attending Trinity.
SEN. OBAMA: Well, you know, the new pastor -- the young pastor, Reverend Otis Moss, is a wonderful young pastor. And as I said, I still very much value the Trinity community. This -- I'll be honest, this obviously has put strains on that relationship, not because of the members or because of Reverend Moss but because this has become such a spectacle.
And, you know, when I go to church it's not for spectacle. It's to pray and to find -- to find a stronger sense of faith. It's not to posture politically. It's not -- you know, it's not to hear things that violate my core beliefs. And so -- you know, and I certainly don't want to provide a distraction for those who are worshipping at Trinity.
So as of this point, I'm a member of Trinity. I haven't had a discussion with Reverend Moss about it, so I can't tell you how he's reacting and how he's responding.
Okay? Katherine (sp)?
Q: Senator, I'm wondering -- to sort of follow on Jeff's question about you, know, why it's a little different now, have you heard from some of your supporters -- you know, you have some -- (off mike) -- supporters who expressed any alarm about what this might be doing to the campaign?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, look, the -- I mean, I don't think that it's that hard to figure out from -- if it was just a purely political perspective. You know, my reaction has more to do with what I want this campaign to be about and who I am. And I want to make certain that people understand who I am.
In some ways, what Reverend Wright said yesterday directly contradicts everything that I've done during my life. It contradicts how I was raised and the setting in which I was raised. It contradicts my decisions to pursue a career of public service. It contradicts the issues that I've worked on politically. It contradicts what I've said in my books. It's contradicts what I said my convention speech in 2004. It contradicts my announcement. It contradicts everything that I've been saying on this campaign trail.
And what I tried to do in Philadelphia was to provide a context and to lift up some of the contradictions and complexities of race in America -- of which, you know, Reverend Wright is a part and we're all a part -- and try to make something constructive out of it. But there wasn't anything constructive out of yesterday. All it was, was a bunch of rants that -- that aren't grounded in truth, and you know, I can't construct something positive out of that. I can understand it. I, you know, the -- you know, people do all sorts of things.
And as I said before, I continue to believe that Reverend Wright has been a -- a -- a leader in the South Side. I think that the church he built is outstanding. I think that he has preached in the past some wonderful sermons. He provided, you know, valuable contributions to my family.
But at a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally, and then he questions whether or not you believe it in front of the National Press Club, then that's enough. That's -- that's a show of disrespect to me. It's a -- it is also, I think, an insult to what we've been trying to do in this campaign.
Q: Senator, did you discuss with your wife, after having seen Reverend Wright -- (off mike) -- and what was her --
SEN. OBAMA: Yeah. No, she was similarly -- anger.
Joe?
Q: Reverend Wright said that it was not an attack on him but an attack on the black church. First of all, do you agree with that?
And second of all, the strain of theology that he preached, black liberation theology, you explained something about the anger, that feeds some of the sentiments in the church, in Philadelphia.
How important a strain is liberation theology in the black church? And why did you choose to attend a church that preached that?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, first of all, in terms of liberation theology, I'm not a theologian. So I think to some theologians, there might be some well-worked-out theory of what constitutes liberation theology versus non-liberation-theology.
I went to church and listened to sermons. And in the sermons that I heard, and this is true, I do think, across the board in many black churches, there is an emphasis on the importance of social struggle, the importance of striving for equality and justice and fairness -- a social gospel.
So I think a lot of people would rather, rather than using a fancy word like that, simply talk about preaching the social gospel. And that -- there's nothing particularly odd about that. Dr. King obviously was the most prominent example of that kind of preaching.
But you know, what I do think can happen, and I didn't see this as a member of the church but I saw it yesterday, is when you start focusing so much on the plight of the historically oppressed, that you lose sight of what we have in common; that it overrides everything else; that we're not concerned about the struggles of others because we're looking at things only through a particular lens. Then it doesn't describe properly what I believe, in the power of faith, to overcome but also to bring people together.
Now, you had a first question, Joe, that I don't remember.
Q: Do you think --
SEN. OBAMA: Do I think --
Q: (Off mike.)
SEN. OBAMA: You know, the -- I did not view the initial round of soundbites, that triggered this controversy, as an attack on the black church. I viewed it as a simplification of who he was, a caricature of who he was and, you know, more than anything, something that piqued a lot of political interest.
I didn't see it as an attack on the black church. I mean, probably the only -- the only aspect of it that probably had to do with specifically the black church is the fact that some people were surprised when he was shouting. I mean, that is just a black church tradition. And so I think some people interpreted that somehow as -- wow, he's really -- he's hollering and black preachers holler and whoop and -- so that, I think, showed sort of a cultural gap in America.
You know, the sad thing is that although the sound bites I've -- as I stated, I think created a caricature of him. And when he was in that Moyers interview, even though there were some things that, you know, continued to be offensive, at least there was some sense of rounding out the edges. Yesterday I think he caricatured himself, and that was a -- as I said, that made me angry but also made me sad.
STAFF: Last question.
SEN. OBAMA: Richard.
Q: You talked about giving the benefit of the doubt before -- mostly, I guess, in the Philadelphia speech, trying to create something positive about that. Did you consult with him before the speech or talk to him after the speech in Philadelphia to get his reaction -- (off mike) --
SEN. OBAMA: You know, I tried to talk to him before the speech in Philadelphia. Wasn't able to reach him because he was on a -- he was on a cruise. He had just stepped down from the pulpit. When he got back, I did speak to him. And I -- you know, I prefer not to share sort of private conversations between me and him. I will talk to him perhaps some day in the future. But what I can say is that I was very clear that what he had said in those particular snippets, I found objectionable and offensive and that the intention of the speech was to provide context for them but not excuse them, because I found them inexcusable.
So -- yeah, go ahead.
Q: The other day, on Sunday, you were asked whether -- to respond to -- (off mike) -- is this -- you said you didn't believe in irreparable damage. Is this relationship with you and Wright irreparably damaged, do you think?
SEN. OBAMA: There's been great damage. You know, I -- it may have been unintentional on his part, but, you know, I do not see that relationship being the same after this. Now, to some degree, you know -- I know that one thing that he said was true, was that he wasn't -- you know, he was never my, quote-unquote, "spiritual adviser."
He was never my "spiritual mentor." He was -- he was my pastor. And so to some extent, how, you know, the -- the press characterized in the past that relationship, I think, wasn't accurate.
But he was somebody who was my pastor, and married Michelle and I, and baptized my children, and prayed with us at -- when we announced this race. And so, you know -- so I'm disappointed.
STAFF: Thank you.
SEN. OBAMA: All right. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Is The US Now A Non-Geneva State?

From Andrew Sullivan
The manner in which free societies lose their moral compass is always incremental. Step by step by step, certain core values are whittled away. There is rarely a moment at which a government stands up, and asks its people if they wish to abandon such "quaint" notions as the Geneva Conventions, the rule of law, humane interrogation or habeas corpus. These things are abandoned incrementally or secretly, slice by slice, euphemism by euphemism, the chronology always clearer in retrospect than at the time. And each incremental step is always portrayed as a small but essential temporary sacrifice for the sake of security in a time of great and imminent peril.
And so defenders of torture have long argued that is is essential to make torture legal - but only in the ticking time bomb scenario. And yet, such a scenario has not yet happened and the United States has still indisputably abused and dehumanized thousands of prisoners in its custody, "disappeared" and tortured hundreds, and seen more than a dozen die in "interrogation". We now know, moreover, the following undisputed facts: the president of the United States and his closest advisers devised, orchestrated and monitored interrogation methods banned by the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo Bay and subsequently in every theater of combat; these techniques were used not only in the extra-legal no-man's land of Guantanamo Bay but also at the prison at Abu Ghraib where photographic evidence of many of the actual techniques explicitly authorized by the president - stress positions, hoods, mock-executions, etc. - was incontrovertible. We now know that those techniques that the president expressed "shock" at were already explicitly authorized for use by other agents by him long before Abu Ghraib was exposed.
Moreover, even after attempts by the Court and the Congress to rein in these methods - which were once prosecuted by the US as war-crimes - the president continued to defend, use and advance violations of Common Article Three in violation of the law and the Constitution. In the last week, we have also learned the following: that some Gitmo inmates have testified to being injected with some kind of substance:
Adel al-Nusairi remembers his first six months at Guantanamo Bay as this: hours and hours of questions, but first, a needle. "I'd fall asleep" after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.
"I was completely gone," he remembered. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will.' "
We have also discovered that the president is still insisting that he has the power to violate Geneva at will on a case-by-case basis, rendering the rule of law moot and the Constitution toothless. Money quote:
While the Geneva Conventions prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity,” a letter sent by the Justice Department to Congress on March 5 makes clear that the administration has not drawn a precise line in deciding which interrogation methods would violate that standard, and is reserving the right to make case-by-case judgments.
“The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.
And so abuse and torture are entirely dependent, we are told, on the apparent motives of the abusers and torturers. But torture is actually defined in the law as an illegal tool devised not for sadism's sake but as a means to extract information. And notice the extremely slippery slope. We no longer have torture as an extreme last resort in the face of a ticking time-bomb; we have authorized it simply "to prevent a threatened terrorist attack." That means any time anywhere by anyone authorized by the government after 9/11, no? And if a foreign government were to use such a standard? What do we say then?
We also know that the torture and interrogation camp at Guantanamo Bay has become for many of its inmates the functional equivalent of a lunatic asylum. It is not very hard to see why. If you were not crazy before you got there, it will not take long for the abuse and isolation and total hopelessness of the place to get into your head. The cells are 8 by 12 feet, have no windows and inmates are in solitary confinement and stationary for 22 hours a day. There is no escape and no possibility of a fair trial by any traditional standards of "fair". No one locked up in these conditions has been tried or convicted of anything. And we wonder why some have attempted suicide or gone on hunger-strike? From the New York Times a few days ago on the conditions endured by the most high-profile of the prisoners:
“Conditions are asphalt, excrement and worse,” [Hamdan] wrote his lawyers in February. “Why, why, why?” At Guantánamo, there are no family visits, no televisions and no radios. A new policy will for the first time permit one telephone call a year.
In the cells where Mr. Hamdan and more than 200 of Guantánamo’s 280 detainees are held, communication with other detainees is generally by shouting through the slit in the door used for the delivery of meals. Mail is late and often censored, lawyers say.
Conditions are more isolating than many death rows and maximum-security prisons in the United States, said Jules Lobel, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who is an expert on American prison conditions.
We have evidence of what abuse and torture does to prisoners, in the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen subjected to torture at the behest of the president:
Dr. Hegarty, one of two mental health professionals who examined him, said Mr. Padilla was "fearful of being thought of as crazy." She described him as "hypervigilant," his eyes darting about, his face twitching into grimaces, his "startle response" on constant high alert.
"During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body," Mr. Patel said. "The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel."
These things are continuing for all we know. This is what the United States has become. To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.

Reno urged to prepare for worse as earthquakes continue
By MARTIN GRIFFITH
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Scientists urged residents of northern Nevada's largest city to prepare for a bigger event as the area continued rumbling Saturday after the largest earthquake in a two-month-long series of temblors.
More than 100 aftershocks were recorded on the western edge of the city after a magnitude 4.7 quake hit Friday night, the strongest quake around Reno since one measuring 5.1 in 1953, said researchers at the seismological laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno.
The latest quake swept store shelves clean, cracked walls in homes and dislodged rocks on hillsides, but there were no reports of injuries or widespread major damage.
Seismologists said the recent activity is unusual because the quakes started out small and continue to build in strength. The normal pattern is for a main quake followed by smaller aftershocks.
"A magnitude 6 quake wouldn't be a scientific surprise," John Anderson, director of the seismological lab, said Saturday. "We certainly hope residents are taking the threat seriously after last night."
But Anderson stressed there was no way to predict what would happen, and said the sequence of quakes also could end without a major one.
Reno's last major quake measured 6.1 on April 24, 1914, and was felt as far away as Berkeley, Calif., said Craig dePolo, research geologist with the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology.
A rockslide triggered by Friday night's quake was blamed for causing a 125-foot breach in a wooden flume that carries water to one of two water treatment plants in Reno, a city of about 210,000.
A backup pump was used to divert water to the plant, and the breach was not expected to cause any water shortages, said Aaron Kenneston, Washoe County emergency management officer.
The U.S. Geological Survey said Friday night's quake was centered around Mogul, just west of Reno. The area of upscale homes along the eastern Sierra was rattled by more than 100 quakes the day before, the strongest a magnitude 4.2 that caused high-rise casinos to sway in downtown Reno.
The strongest aftershock measured 3.7 and was recorded after noon Saturday.
Mike Lentini of Reno said Friday night's quake felt "like a big truck hit the building" and awakened his family.
"It's the unknown. It's shaking, and when's it going to stop?" he said Saturday. "And when stuff starts falling off the shelves it's a whole other ballgame."
Jars of mayonnaise and bottles of ketchup and shampoo fell from shelves at a Wal-Mart store in northwest Reno. Overhead televisions swayed at a sports bar in neighboring Sparks, 11 miles east, where bartender Shawn Jones said the rumble was significantly stronger than Thursday's event.
"The bottles were shaking, so I sent everybody outside," he said.
Hundreds of mostly minor quakes have occurred along one or possibly more faults since the sequence began Feb. 28, said Ken Smith, a seismologist at the Reno laboratory. The quakes have occurred along an area about 2 miles long and a half-mile wide.
"We can't put a number on it, but the probability of a major earthquake has increased with this sequence," Smith said Saturday. "People need to prepare for ground shaking because there's no way to say how this will play out."
Among other things, scientists urged residents to stock up on water and food, to learn how to turn off water and gas, and to strap down bookshelves, televisions and computers.
"It's getting a little bit frightening," Daryl DiBitonto of Reno told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "I'm very concerned about this increase in not only activity, but also in magnitude."
The quakes around Reno began a week after a magnitude 6 temblor in the northern Nevada town of Wells, near the Utah border. The Feb. 21 quake caused an estimated $778,000 in damage to homes, schools and historic downtown buildings, dePolo said.
Scientists said they're unsure whether the seismic activity at opposite sides of Nevada is related.
Nevada is the third most seismically active state in the U.S. behind California and Alaska. The Wells quake was the 15th of at least magnitude 6 in the state's 143-year history.
A magnitude-7.4 quake south of Winnemucca in 1915 is the most powerful in state history.
Associated Press writer Scott Sonner in Reno contributed to this report.

I Left My Son in San Francisco Learning to quash my alpha-mother tendencies and let my kid grow up.

By Bonnie Goldstein (SLATE)
My baby recently left home. He's 19 and launching his life in an age-appropriate way: subsidized by his parents, at school in a distant city, directing himself toward self-sufficiency and maturity. Nevertheless, the day his move became effective, I felt like I'd left him alone in the woods with no pebbles. This tender son was born 16 years after his big sister. She was learning quadratic equations as he was learning how to hold a spoon. When either child faltered, I'd try to help: "Here, let me."
My daughter, now an adult, lives in New York, far from our kitchen table in Washington, D.C., a circumstance to which we both eventually adjusted. But when Nate moved to San Francisco in January, taking all the worldly possessions he could fit in a suitcase (including his apparently indispensable Xbox), I was a wreck. This despite the fact I went with him to help him acclimate. With his laptop's browser bookmarked to Bay Area Craigslist, he acquired a MUNI bus schedule, a BART diagram, and a large folding map of the seven-mile peninsula. We studied neighborhoods while bunking temporarily in the garage of family friends in the Richmond district.
On my last day there, I watched him fill out his first rental application for a small low-ceilinged room on San Benito, walking distance from college. The Chinese man who was "helping the landlady" had given us a form so foreign to Nate it could have been written in characters. I resisted saying, "Here, let me."
I have been working on curbing my rather overbearing alpha-mother tendencies. During Nate's final year of high school, I impersonated him online, filling out and submitting 11 versions of the Common Application for undergraduate admission. The guidance counselor at his private school told parents such "clerical" support was expected. It became my full-time job. Nate was apathetic about college applications, even with (or maybe because of) such competent staffing. High school barely engaged him. His assignments were often late or incomplete.
"Forget California," the college adviser told him, dismissing Nate's only tentative regional preference. "The U.C. system considers only your grades." The good news: His SAT scores were good, "especially that 760 in math." He should "concentrate" on engineering programs, she counseled. Although Nate loved Legos and had a knack for calculus, I was not convinced those talents should determine a career choice. He was also intrigued by human behavior and was a whiz at those logic puzzles you find on the LSAT. Nate's best friend, more certain of his passions, was planning to be an architect, however, so the adviser's suggestion of a mechanical major took hold. OK, I'll be an engineer, Nate seemed to say, glad that's settled, before losing interest altogether.
Nate's contribution to the college admissions process consisted of showing up for standardized tests and writing a personal composition at gunpoint: a list of sentences beginning with the word I. "I get lost in my own imagination; I love to engage in a heated, smart argument; I can't stand spiders; I can take a hit." As his clerical assistant, I helped reorder the declaratory statements and broke them into five-line groupings to resemble blank verse. The result was acceptance at the engineering departments of several universities, including the University of Wisconsin, which he chose.
His Madison dormitory room had loft beds, built-in desks, and a TV donated by his rural Wisconsin roommate, basic cable included. I came along for freshman move-in weekend. We drove between Home Depot and Target, systematically collecting housewares and snack food for the small dorm fridge. Only when I left that Monday did he whisper, "Don't go."
I did, though, and I didn't go back, either; too cold.
Nate's adjustment to post-secondary education was mixed. He liked his meal card. He did not enjoy advanced calculus across a cold, windy campus. He hunkered in, slept as much as he wanted, and found the cooking channel especially compelling. At Thanksgiving he reported midterms had gone fine. Returning to school after Christmas, he learned that his sedentary first semester had earned him academic probation and a 1.0 GPA. Despite vowing to shape up, Nate continued to miss multiple physics labs that spring. In May he was officially dropped. Restricted from registering for September, he could take "a semester to reflect" and return the following January.
He felt awful. Failure is painful. Also, he was sure we were going to disown him. His freshman experiment took a big chunk out of the college fund. But the fact is, he wasn't ready. He had not particularly wanted to grow up, he now admits. For a time, he even hoped he was developmentally disabled, so he wouldn't have to.
His dad and I were "disappointed" and "concerned," of course, but completely on his side when the bottom fell out. Feeling guilty for not visiting him, I soothed, "We'll figure out what went wrong and relaunch."
He came home to an unscheduled intervention. While he'd been watching the food channel, his sister had had a spectacular season. We were hosting a garden party in her honor the same weekend he arrived with his duffel bag. "Get ready for every grown-up you've ever known," I warned him, "to ask how you did at school."
"Poorly," I overheard my straight-talking son admit to a guest, "but that was my fault. I didn't complete my assignments." As disturbing as the circumstances were, I was glad to have him back. I hadn't finished raising him yet.
"Let's set January as a goal," I offered. "You'll go back to Wisconsin or decide on some other approach." He returned to our basement: a cozy boy-cave close to the kitchen. He did yard work for friends, signed up for psychology classes at the local community college, and got a job busing tables for the bistro up the street.
By mid-December, Nate was making good tips and had a B-plus grade average. But he was not interested in returning to Wisconsin. He had no friends there, engineering was hard, the weather was freezing, and the prospect of a midyear housing search was daunting.
"I'd rather find a room on a beach," he confessed.
I suggested applying to another four-year university for the following autumn. He was welcome to remain in the boy-cave till fall. "I'm not doing that," he insisted. "I love you guys, but I've gotta get out of here." It was the most independent thing I ever heard come out of his mouth.
"In that case," I suggested, "go to community college somewhere you want to live."
Hmm, he wondered. "Do they have them in California?"
The very next day, he registered online for spring semester at City College of San Francisco. By the New Year, he was filling out the San Benito rental's questionnaire. Where the form asked for "occupation," I told him to write student and watched as he used a pencil "so I can erase." The landlady was set to approve him when another applicant offered $100 a month more. Such experiences teach you how to compete. As consolation, she e-mailed about a vacancy coming up soon in a "better neighborhood."
I left him with his bus schedule to start classes (psychology, sociology, and philosophy—no math). As he haphazardly carried on the rental hunt, our friends in the Richmond district wondered how long he'd be staying. At my urging, he contacted the landlady from the San Benito apartment. She was already considering someone for her place in the "better neighborhood" but agreed to show it to him. The Victorian house had a second-floor bedroom overlooking Golden Gate Park. Nate uncharacteristically called me the moment he saw it. "Mom, I want this."
The competition, a buddy of another resident in the house, had "a little bit priority," the landlady said, but Nate doggedly persuaded her of his own good qualities: He is well-mannered. He won't be having parties. His parents will pay by direct deposit. To his own amazement, my boy closed the deal. The following weekend, he moved out of our friends' garage to his own 300-square-foot home with hardwood floors and a working fireplace. Being 6 feet 3 inches, he especially loves the 14-foot ceilings. As a practical matter, the hearth perfectly accommodates his Xbox.
I'd been hammering Nate with my personal list of essential maturity skills before he left home. One must be able to make decisions, develop relationships, understand transactions, show up consistently, communicate clearly, I droned while making him double recipes of butterscotch pudding. On his own, he does not e-mail and rarely calls me. I tried to insist he check daily for my electronic correspondence, helpfully providing a list of cyber cafes in his neighborhood. "There are physical limitations which may prevent me from fulfilling your rules," he e-mailed politely. "I will make them personal goals to be accomplished." When I wanted to go help him "settle in," he asked me to wait "until I get things the way I want them." Don't come.
I pay for his groceries through a Visa account, every bit as functional as the freshman meal card. Lately, he's not that happy with my clerical performance. I didn't decipher my bank's electronic deposit feature in time for his first rent installment, so I sent the landlady's check to his address via the post office. "Look for it in the common mail pile," I alerted him, "so you can make sure she gets it." Nate, concerned the money would be lost and surprised his competent mother might cause him to renege on his obligation, got a little perturbed. He mocked me, "That's like you saying, 'I didn't complete the assignment!' "
From my view, Nate is a kid who still requires clerical and financial assistance, but he's been making himself a "habit list," hoping to change that. "If you do something every day for a 30 days," he says, it becomes "routine." Though not yet possessed of a five-year plan, Nate is at last intent on completing his tasks, one assignment at a time. My difficult job will be to let him go, rise and fall. I know I will, well, eventually!

Anti-US cleric al-Sadr threatens new uprising in Iraq
ROBERT H. REID
BAGHDAD — Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gave a "final warning" to the government Saturday to halt a U.S.-Iraqi crackdown against his followers or he would declare "open war until liberation."
A full-blown uprising by al-Sadr, who led two rebellions against U.S.-led forces in 2004, could lead to a dramatic increase in violence in Iraq at a time when the Sunni extremist group al-Qaida in Iraq appears poised for new attacks after suffering severe blows last year.
Al-Sadr's warning appeared on his Web site as Iraq's Shiite-dominated government claimed success in a new push against Shiite militants in the southern city of Basra. Fighting claimed 14 more lives in Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Fighting in Sadr City and the crackdown in Basra are part of a government campaign against followers of al-Sadr and Iranian-backed Shiite splinter groups that the U.S. has identified as the gravest threat to a democratic Iraq.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, also a Shiite, has ordered al-Sadr to disband the Mahdi Army, Iraq's biggest Shiite militia, or face a ban from politics.
In the statement, al-Sadr lashed back, accusing the government of selling out to the Americans and branding his followers as criminals.
Al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, said he had tried to defuse tensions last August by declaring a unilateral truce, only to see the government respond by closing his offices and "resorting to assassinations."
"So I am giving my final warning ... to the Iraqi government ... to take the path of peace and abandon violence against its people," al-Sadr said. "If the government does not refrain ... we will declare an open war until liberation."
U.S. officials have acknowledged that al-Sadr's truce was instrumental in reducing violence last year. But the truce is in tatters after Iraqi forces launched an offensive last month against "criminal gangs and militias" in the southern city of Basra.
The conflict spread rapidly to Baghdad, where Shiite militiamen based in Sadr City fired rockets at the U.S.-protected Green Zone, killing at least four Americans. U.S. officials say many of the rockets fired at the Green Zone were manufactured in Iran.
The Iranians helped mediate a truce March 30, which eased clashes in Basra and elsewhere in the Shiite south. But fighting persisted in Baghdad as U.S. and Iraqi forces sought to push militiamen beyond the range where they could fire rockets and mortars at the Green Zone.
The Americans are attempting to seal off much of Sadr City, home to an estimated 2.5 million people, and have used helicopter gunships and Predator drones to fire missiles at militiamen seeking refuge in the sprawling slum of northeast Baghdad.
At a news conference Saturday, Iran's ambassador to Baghdad said his government supports the Iraqi move against "lawbreakers in Basra" but that the "insistence of the Americans to lay siege" to Sadr City "is a mistake."
"Lawbreakers (in Basra) must be held accountable ... but the insistence of the Americans to lay siege to millions of people in a specific area and then bombing them randomly from air and damaging property is not correct," Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi said.
Qomi warned that the American strategy in Sadr City "will lead to negative results for which the Iraqi government must bear responsibility."
At least 14 people were killed and 84 wounded in Saturday's fighting in Sadr City, police and hospital officials said. Sporadic clashes were continuing after sundown, with gunmen darting through the streets, firing at Iraqi police and soldiers who have taken the lead in the fighting.
According to the Interior Ministry, at least 280 Iraqis have been killed in Sadr City fighting since March 25, including gunmen, security forces and civilians.
In Basra, Iraq's second largest city about 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi soldiers backed by British troops pushed their way into Hayaniyah, the local stronghold of al-Sadr's Mahdi militia.
As the operation got under way, British cannons and American warplanes pounded an empty field near Hayaniyah as a show of force "intended to demonstrate the firepower available to the Iraqi forces," said British military spokesman Maj. Tom Holloway.
Last month, Iraqi troops met fierce resistance when they tried to enter Hayaniyah. On Saturday, however, Iraqi soldiers moved block by block, searching homes, seizing weapons and detaining suspects.
Lt. Gen. Ali Ghaidan said he expected the whole area to be secured by Sunday. He said troops had detained a number of suspects but refused to give details until the area was cleared.
The fighting in both Basra and Baghdad is part of a campaign by al-Maliki, a Shiite, to break the power of Shiite militias, especially al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and improve security in southern Iraq before provincial elections this fall.
Al-Sadr's followers believe the campaign is aimed at weakening their movement to prevent it from winning provincial council seats at the expense of Shiite parties that work with the United States in the national government.
Tensions between the Sadrists and other Shiite parties have been rising for months before the Basra crackdown and escalated after parliament last month approved a new law governing the provincial elections.
Clashes also broke out near Nasiriyah, a Shiite city about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, leaving at least 22 people dead, police said. A curfew was clamped on the town of Suq al-Shiyoukh, where the fighting broke out between police and al-Sadr's followers.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said an American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in Salahuddin province. At least 4,038 members of the U.S. military have now died since the war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Elsewhere in Iraq, at least five people died and 18 were injured in separate bombings in the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk and the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba.
The attacks capped a violent week that has raised concerns that suspected Sunni insurgents are regrouping in the north. U.S. and Iraqi troops have stepped up security operations in Mosul, believed to be one of the last urban strongholds of al-Qaida in Iraq.
On Saturday, a Washington-based group that monitors Islamic extremists said al-Qaida in Iraq has announced a one-month offensive against U.S. troops.
The SITE group said the announcement was made on Web sites by the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who took over the extremist group after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike

After America
Is the West being overtaken by the rest?
by Ian Buruma April 21, 2008
Parag Khanna sees a decadent West confronting a united Asia: “Because of the East, the West is no longer master of its own fate.”
Every so often, a grand thesis captures the world’s imagination, at least until it is swept away by events or by a newer, more plausible thesis. The latest one to do so, in policy think tanks, universities, foreign ministries, corporate boardrooms, editorial offices, and international conference centers, is that America’s time of global dominance is finished, and that new powers, such as China, India, and Russia, are poised to take over. It’s an idea that has had as much currency within the United States as elsewhere.
All great empires set too much store by predictions of their imminent demise. Perhaps, as the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy suggested in his poem “Waiting for the Barbarians,” empires need the sense of peril to give them a reason to go on. Why spend so much money and effort if not to keep the barbarians at bay?
Still, the current economic growth of China—and also of India and Russia—is impressive. In “Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade” (Harcourt; $26), the former Economist editor Bill Emmott refers to a World Bank analysis predicting that both China and India “could almost triple their economic output” in the next ten years or so. By the late twenty-twenties, China could overtake the United States as the world’s biggest economy. The spectacle of Chinese turbo-capitalism is inspiring Marco Polo-like awe in some Western commentators. Mark Leonard, the author of “What Does China Think?” (PublicAffairs; $22.95), reports, with more enthusiasm than plausibility, that “a town the size of London shoots up in the Pearl River Delta every year.” Parag Khanna, in “The Second World” (Random House; $29), informs us, rather gleefully, that “Asia is shaping the world’s destiny—and exposing the flaws of the grand narrative of Western civilization in the process. Because of the East, the West is no longer master of its own fate.”
It has been a while since policy mavens have used terms like “destiny” with a straight face. But that’s the kind of language we are beginning to hear, now that American “hyper-power” (as a former French foreign minister liked to call it) is being challenged. There are good reasons for skepticism about such grand forecasts. Economic statistics in autocracies such as China are notoriously unreliable, and it’s worth recalling all those breathless predictions, a few decades ago, of Japan’s imminent global domination. But, even if we aren’t so quick to write off America’s cultural, political, economic, and military clout, the fact that the American economy has to rely on infusions of cash from China, Singapore, and the Gulf states suggests that something important is taking place.
Exactly what is happening, and with what consequences, are matters of dispute. Some see great opportunities. At the start of “The Post-American World” (Norton; $25.95), Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, states that his book is “not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.” He’s among those who argue that the newly rich powers should be embedded quickly and snugly in international institutions such as the G8, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Others say that it’s naïve—so very “old Enlightenment,” as Robert Kagan, the author of “The Return of History and the End of Dreams” (Knopf; $19.95), puts it—to imagine that the aggressive ambitions of great nations can be muzzled that way. Protecting the Free World, Kagan thinks, will require a stiffer military backbone. He envisages a clash between the global constellation of democracies and the nouveau-riche autocracies. Khanna, for his part, describes a vigorous East united against a more and more decadent West. (He is fond of quoting Oswald Spengler—always a bad sign.)
Zakaria sees the future in less belligerent terms. His is the voice of what might be called the Davos consensus, after the Swiss resort where, under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, financial and political élites gather each year for convivial networking. What’s striking about that consensus, though, is how swiftly it can change. The first time I visited this august assemblage, around the turn of the century, the received opinion was that the United States was so far ahead of the rest of the world that no one could ever catch up. This year in Davos, America’s fall was on everyone’s lips.
Zakaria, who is judicious, reasonable, smooth, intelligent, and a little glib, predicts nothing so rash. He points out that, aside from some pockets of backwardness, the whole world has been getting much richer. Global capitalism has been a huge success. Far from menacing local cultures, as some fear, globalization has, by his accounting, been good for cultural diversity. France and South Korea, “long dominated by American movies, now have large film industries of their own,” he writes, omitting to mention that France had one before Hollywood threatened to wipe it out, and that its revival in France, as in South Korea, has been due more to state subsidies than to global capitalism. Still, even though the economic scene looks gloomier now than it did when he finished his book, Zakaria is correct to insist that many people everywhere have benefitted from the global boom.
The problem, Zakaria writes, is that “as economic fortunes rise, so does nationalism.” This is apparent in Russia, of course, but it is equally so in China, where he talked to a young businessman, and felt as if he “were in Berlin in 1910.” Actually, the prickly nationalism of many Chinese may have less to do with their newfound prosperity than with China’s fraught combination of political autocracy and economic liberalism: nationalism and economic boosterism are all the autocrats have at their disposal to try to legitimatize their continuing monopoly on power. In any case, Zakaria is inclined to think that rational calculation will ultimately prevail. He maintains that the Chinese are by nature a pragmatic people, who will surely realize that it is in their interest to be embedded in the liberal global order. “The veneration of an abstract idea,” he explains, “is somewhat alien to China’s practical mind-set.”
This piece of cultural analysis does not quite explain the veneration, fairly recently, of Chairman Mao’s highly abstract ideas. In fact, ideology has always played a large role in Chinese politics, and Robert Kagan, perhaps the cleverest of the neoconservatives, points out the limits of Chinese pragmatism. Like the Russians, he writes, the Chinese leaders have “a comprehensive set of beliefs about government and society and the proper relationship between rulers and their people,” and are convinced that the chaos and uncertainties of democracy pose threats to their nation. “Chinese and Russian leaders are not just autocrats therefore. They believe in autocracy.” This is indeed what Chinese rulers have believed for thousands of years, drawing support from some highly abstract ideas expressed in Confucian philosophy.
Zakaria says that China, like India, wants “to gain power and status and respect, for sure, but by growing within the international system, not by overturning it. As long as these new countries feel they can be accommodated, they have every incentive to become ‘responsible stakeholders’ in this system.” But can powerful autocratic regimes really be accommodated in global economic institutions, without undermining either their own autocratic powers or the liberal democracies? As Kagan says, “Power is the ability to get others to do what you want and prevent them from doing what you don’t want.” Something may have to give.
Zakaria’s answer is “consultation, cooperation, and even compromise.” The United States, he reminds us, is still ranked by the World Economic Forum as “the most competitive economy in the world.” What’s needed to perpetuate American supremacy is greater knowledge of the world outside, a willingness to open the borders to new immigrants, and, above all, a policy of consulting foreign leaders instead of lecturing them or going it alone. “The chair of the board who can gently guide a group of independent directors is still a very powerful person,” Zakaria observes.
The harder edge of Robert Kagan’s prose is bracing after Zakaria’s smooth assurance. Reading Kagan is like reading the work of a very clever Marxist: the logic is impeccable, even when the premise is wrong. His main premise is not particularly new. In a line of thought popular among German conservatives between the two World Wars, Kagan holds that liberals are dreamers who believe that nations will behave decently once they are part of a rational world order, where all are free to pursue their enlightened self-interests within a framework of internationally agreed-on rules, as promulgated by such institutions as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Trade, and the mutual dependencies that result from it, will eliminate belligerence between powers, liberals suppose. But, in Kagan’s view, liberalism, or what he sometimes calls “Enlightenment liberalism,” is deluded. Like the German conservatives, Kagan sees a very different world, one that is “embedded in human nature” and animated by what the ancient Greeks called thumos, “a spiritedness and ferocity in defense of clan, tribe, city, or state.” Here such phrases as “national destiny,” shaped by history and blood, have a congenial home. The United States, he points out in his new book—as he did at greater length in his previous book, “Dangerous Nation” (2006)—has “intervened and overthrown sovereign governments dozens of times throughout its history.” An “expansive, even aggressive global policy was consistent with American foreign policy traditions,” because the essence of Americans’ patriotism “has been inextricably tied to a belief in their nation’s historic global significance.” Once a red-blooded interventionist, always a red-blooded interventionist. That, for Kagan, is the nation’s destiny—and a good thing, too.
Kagan’s account of America’s essential nature ignores long-standing traditions of isolationism, Lincoln’s fierce opposition to the Mexican War, because of his respect for sovereign boundaries, and Woodrow Wilson’s promotion of the kind of international institution that Kagan discounts. In Kagan’s view, the debacle of the Vietnam War dented American confidence in an expansive foreign policy. The neoconservative project, accordingly, has been to regain the confidence to carry out America’s destiny once more, in the name of democracy and “the belief that all men are created equal and have certain inalienable rights that must not be abridged by governments.” To people who share this faith, he writes, “wars that defend these principles” can be right “even if established international law says they are wrong.” They think that the United States shouldn’t let international institutions hamper its interventions in foreign countries.
But, Kagan argues, autocratic powers like China and Russia have no love for those institutions, either. To them, he writes, “the international liberal order is not progress. It is oppression.” They will therefore form alliances with fellow-autocrats, who will oppose any encroachment on their sovereignty. International institutions, for them, represent just such an encroachment. And the Europeans, despite their enthusiasm for the international system, will nevertheless see that it’s in their interest, as fellow-democrats, to stick with the United States. The idea of embedding the growing powers of Asia, Russia, and the Middle East in the kind of new liberal order favored by people like Fareed Zakaria is, for Kagan, a hopeless dream.
Just as Cold War thinking, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, created a certain ideological clarity, this clean division between the democrats and the autocrats is invigorating in its simplicity. The real world, alas, is rarely so clean. Kagan acknowledges that the United States sometimes has to support authoritarian regimes to further its interests. But, like the Cold Warriors of old (who were slow to recognize the sharp divisions between China and the Soviet Union), he tends to see potential enemies as a common front. As an example of the new axis of autocracy, Kagan cites the Shanghai Coöperation Organization, a loose alliance consisting of China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. These are all autocracies, but is their alliance really based on a shared horror of democratic intervention, as Kagan believes? As Bill Emmott points out, the S.C.O. was formed because of concerns about Islamist movements in China, Russia, and Central Asia, but also because China doesn’t want Russia to dominate Central Asia and thinks that the S.C.O. can boost its influence there.
Kagan may well be correct to argue that the Chinese see themselves as a traditional rising power, like Germany and Japan in the nineteenth century, both of which stressed military as much as economic strength. The question for the United States and other democracies is how to keep autocratic powers safely contained. Compared with Russia and China, the United States still has overwhelming military might. But how useful is that as an instrument of policy? Emmott points out that things are very different from the days when imperial Germany and Japan started throwing their weight around. A rising power no longer needs a strong military to secure natural resources. They can be bought on open markets, or acquired from unsavory regimes in exchange for easy credit. And the democratic countries have business interests that are at odds with a staunch opposition to autocracies that have poor human-rights records. We like those cheap Chinese imports.
Nor is it so clear that military muscle is a better way to defend democratic interests than international institutions. Both are needed, to be sure. But Kagan himself observes that Russian and Chinese leaders are right to worry about those institutions. He poses the key question: “Can autocrats enter the liberal international order without succumbing to the forces of liberalism?” If the answer is no, that would be a pretty good reason to try to ensnare them in it.
About twenty years ago, there was a common belief that military power meant little, that the soft power of Germany and Japan would rule the world. This was a mistake. But hard power can easily be overrated, as the war in Iraq and the “war on terror” demonstrate. Kagan rather skates over the subject of the war in Iraq, which he ardently supported: “A stable, pro-American Iraq would shift the strategic balance in a decidedly pro-American direction.” Well, yes.
He does, however, make a significant point that is overlooked by those who believe that the combined blessings of trade, capitalism, and rising prosperity lead inexorably to liberal democracy. And this is the international appeal of autocracy. The Soviet Union, after an initial spurt of industrialization, was a model of economic failure. Contemporary China, so far, is not. As Kagan says, “Thanks to decades of remarkable growth, the Chinese today can argue that their model of economic development, which combines an increasingly open economy with a closed political system, can be a successful option for development in many nations.”
Some commentators, like Mark Leonard, see this as a revolutionary intellectual breakthrough. In fact, the Chinese experiment has antecedents: Pinochet’s Chile, South Korea under military dictatorship, and, to some extent, Bismarck’s Germany. (Zakaria’s previous book, “The Future of Freedom,” explored the topic of pro-development autocracies in some detail.) It’s not surprising that Third World dictators should be attracted to this model. More worrying is the allure it has for technocrats, businessmen, architects, and politicians even in the democratic West. Who wouldn’t prefer to make deals in a country without independent trade unions? Who would turn down the chance to redesign entire cities without public interference?
In foreign policy, as Leonard points out, China has a distinct advantage over the United States, especially after the Iraq misadventure: “Where American policy-makers champion the Washington Consensus, the Chinese talk about the success of gradualism and the ‘Harmonious Society.’ Where the USA is bellicose, Chinese policy-makers talk about peace. Whereas American diplomats talk about regime change, their Chinese counterparts talk about respect for sovereignty and the diversity of civilizations.” Such talk is self-serving and disingenuous, but in most of the world it is also more appealing. Moreover, a dogmatic insistence on isolating dictators, such as the Burmese junta, does little to oust them, and actually diminishes America’s influence.
In some Asian countries, China’s economic success has strengthened the notion that democracy is just another outmoded Western idea hopelessly unsuited to Asians. Parag Khanna is inclined in this direction. Somewhat oddly for a man whose résumé includes fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, and the New America Foundation, he is enthralled by the idea of Western democratic decadence, an idea that’s promulgated with particular enthusiasm in Singapore. (The name of Kishore Mahbubani, Lee Kuan Yew’s promoter of “Asian Values,” duly appears in his book and in several of the others under review.) In its contempt for liberal democracy, Khanna’s “The Second World” would be refreshing if it were not so wrongheaded and so badly written: “Located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Shanghai subsumes China’s best and brightest into a culture of doing in the way New Yorkers are known for, its first world urban culture and cosmopolitan design already earning it the status of a global hot spot.”
Having talked to hundreds of fellow think-tankers and pundits all over the world, Khanna has concluded, among other things, that “democracy is even less in demand because many Asian countries actually have good leaders.” This is an extraordinary statement, in light of the democratic movements that have arisen in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, China, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Indonesia in the past few decades. It’s true that spokesmen for the Chinese (and Singaporean) élites tend to be suspicious of democratic change, and to associate democracy with mob rule. According to Mark Leonard, “Many scholars complain that Chinese intellectuals have lost their traditional role as the social conscience of the nation—and been co-opted by the government.” In fact, advising the rulers is the traditional role of Chinese intellectuals. (Many of those with a social conscience are in exile, or in jail.) Still, advice can be critical, up to a point. The Chinese thinkers Leonard interviewed tend to be either neoliberals, who want more capitalism, or leftists, who want more socialism. Some are more pro-democratic than others; few share the naïve trust in their leaders that Khanna assumes is the natural habit of Asians.
Even less persuasive is Khanna’s belief in a united Asia, a kind of revival of Japan’s wartime Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, this time under a Chinese roof. He quotes a Malaysian diplomat (where does he find these people?) who claims that “creating a community is easy among the yellow and the brown—but not the white.” This claim isn’t supported by the rivalry between India and China. And it’s not supported, either, by the enormous difficulties that Southeast Asian nations have had in overcoming regional hostilities, and political differences, simply in order to institutionalize their shared economic interests in the trade bloc ASEAN.
To Robert Kagan, the increasingly warm relations between India and the United States, symbolized by a nuclear pact in 2006, are a sign that the democracies are beginning to line up together. India has been a democracy for some six decades, and its relations with the United States used to be much frostier than America’s relations with Pakistan under military dictators. But things changed after the Cold War. India no longer needs to play the United States off against the Soviet Union. Instead, it needs the United States as a counterweight against China.
India being a democracy, Khanna rather disapproves of it. China has order, he says, while India “achieves less because it is chaotic.” But Japan, which is hardly chaotic, has also edged closer to India, and shows little sign as yet of wanting to break away from America’s nuclear embrace. If anything, the Japanese are even more suspicious than the Indians are of a resurgent China. For the first time since the eighteen-seventies, Japan has a serious Asian rival, and politicians on both sides of the East China Sea are still picking at the wounds of the last great war. When it is in the interest of the Chinese government to stir up nationalism, usually for domestic reasons, memories of Japanese atrocities are recalled, and this invariably provokes nationalistic counterblasts from the Japanese.
However fast the economies of new powers are growing, then, forecasts of their world domination leave out a great deal. China has a demographic problem—too many boys—compounding its potentially catastrophic ecological problems. Russia’s wealth is dependent on the price of oil. India, with its messy democratic system, might well have staying power, but no one sees it as a threat to the United States. And, besides, the “Harmonious Society” of Asia could still be violently disrupted by conflicts over Taiwan, North Korea, Tibet, Kashmir, and various islands, some of them sitting on oil reserves claimed by Vietnam, India, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. China is frightened that Japan might become a nuclear power, and makes every effort to keep it down, or at least out of the United Nations Security Council. Russia and China watch each other tensely across the Siberian border. North Korea periodically lobs missiles in the direction of Japan. And the South Koreans and the Southeast Asians are stuck between a democratic Japan they don’t trust and an autocratic China they must warily accommodate.
The one nation whose presence still guarantees a measure of stability in Asia is the very one whose influence commentators are so quick to write off: the United States of America. The Chinese may not like the fact that the United States has so many bases in Japan and South Korea, but they still prefer it to a nuclear-armed Japan. Cases of American G.I.s molesting local girls enrage the populations of South Korea and Japan, but they still feel safer with a U.S. military presence than without it. Aside from the disaster in Vietnam, the United States has been a reasonably good Asian cop. But how long can it continue to play that role? The longer this postwar arrangement goes on, the longer it will take the East Asian powers to manage their own security responsibly. The same can be said of the Europeans, as became painfully clear in the Balkan conflicts.
Kagan is right when he says that “the world’s democracies need to show solidarity for one another, and they need to support those trying to pry open a democratic space where it has been closing.” But this task would be made a lot easier if the United States were to depart from what Kagan believes to be its national destiny of “expansive, even aggressive, global policy,” and amplify its influence by fully engaging with international institutions, instead of seeing them as threats to its national sovereignty. Democracy would be a far more persuasive model than Chinese or Russian autocracy if some of its main proponents were less eager to believe that the open society comes out of the barrel of a gun. ♦

chatterbox (Slate)
Who Is the Working Class, Anyway?And do the proles really hate the party of the working man?

By Timothy Noah
At a San Francisco fundraiser on April 6, Obama uttered his now-famous remark about white working-class Pennsylvanians:
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
This theory of white working-class alienation from the Democratic Party derives from Thomas Frank's compellingly argued 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas? To Frank, the proletariat suffers from a form of "derangement" in believing that its woes derive from the decline of traditional values—patriotism, organized religion, self-reliance, the heterosexual two-parent nuclear family, etc.—when the true source of its troubles is a set of economic policies that favors the rich. Republicans have come to win blue-collar votes in elections by portraying Democratic tolerance of racial and cultural diversity as depravity—"abortion, amnesty, and acid," in the famous slogan used against George McGovern in 1972. (This is not a new trick.) GOP officeholders typically set their conservative cultural agenda aside after the election is over to concentrate on cutting taxes, reducing regulation, busting unions, and so forth. But the white working class continues to fall for the bait-and-switch because the demoralized Democratic Party lacks the courage to lure it back with a muscular appeal based on economic justice.
Frank's is probably the dominant theory today about how the Democrats lost their core working-class constituency. This is in large part because Frank avoids the usual euphemisms and pieties to make his case with clarity, humor, and anger. These qualities render What's the Matter With Kansas? insanely readable, but they also make it unwise for any politician to adopt its diagnosis as his own. Working-class people don't like being told they're deranged (or "bitter," to use Obama's term), even—make that especially—if it's true. Obama will therefore have to either shut up about Democrats' struggle to win working-class votes—that's the usual tack, and the one I'd probably advise—or find himself another theory. Below, three possible candidates:
1) The white working class likes being pandered to even less than it likes being insulted. This is the official line of the Democratic Leadership Council and other party centrists. One heard it a lot after the 2000 election and, to a lesser extent, after the 2004 election. It is the argument that ended the career of Bob Shrum, a political strategist with a penchant for putting left-populist rhetoric into his candidates' mouths; Shrum was a key figure in Gore's 2000 campaign and Kerry's 2004 campaign, and his input was widely blamed for contributing to their losses. Shrum's recent memoir, No Excuses, serves up some evidence that a class-based "on your side" pitch will often work well for Democrats running in Senate, House, and gubernatorial races. That's how Shrum got to be a hot political consultant in the first place. Shrum argues that it can work at the national level, too, and, given recent signs of a leftward drift at the grass roots, that may be truer today than it was in 2000 and 2004. But nobody's ever pulled it off, including Shrum.
Hillary Clinton has been attacking Obama nonstop since his "bitter" remark surfaced, even to the point of boasting that her father taught her to shoot right there in Pennsylvania ("behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton"). This last prompted a reporter to ask when she'd last attended church or fired a gun, a question she refused to answer, and gave Obama an opening to mock her posturing: "Hillary Clinton is out there like she's on the duck blind every Sunday." If proles don't like being pandered to, mightn't Clinton's overkill hurt her? The logic is seldom applied to the "values" agenda, but there's no reason it shouldn't be. One possible indicator: A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette online poll shows (at this writing) 43 percent of respondents identifying Clinton as the most "out of touch with the voters of Pennsylvania," against 28 percent identifying Obama and 20 percent identifying John McCain.
2) The white working class isn't the problem; Dixie is. This theory has been forwarded by Paul Krugman and Thomas Schaller, among others. It would not be wise for Obama to embrace this theory before he locks up the nomination, lest he forsake Southern superdelegates or primary delegates in North Carolina and West Virginia, whose contests still lie ahead. (Obama has tended to do particularly well in the South in part because African-Americans are well-represented in the Southern Democratic Party base.) But after the convention, Obama, if he is the Democratic nominee, might as well write off the South, because Democrats can't win there. Princeton's Larry Bartels made the case two years ago in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. According to Bartels, the white voters lacking college degrees who have abandoned the Democratic Party in droves are nearly all Southerners. Outside the South, the decline among voters in this group who support Democratic presidential candidates is less than 1 percent. Moreover, if the white working class's interest in "guns or religion" indicates derangement or bitterness, then the white working class isn't very deranged or bitter. According to Bartels, there is no evidence that social issues outweigh economic ones among white voters lacking college degrees. Social issues have admittedly become more important to voters during the past two decades, but the derangement/bitterness index has risen most steeply not for the proles but for the country-club set. For example, white voters with college degrees give more than twice as much weight to the issue of abortion than white voters lacking college degrees. Most devastating to Frank's analysis, "most of his white working-class voters see themselves as closer to the Democratic party on social issues like abortion and gender roles but closer to the Republican party on economic issues" (italics mine).
If this is correct, then Obama should apologize to Pennsylvanians not because his gaffe was condescending but because it was inaccurate.
3) Don't sweat how the white working class votes, because soon it won't exist. Less crudely, the white working class will exist, but it will no longer conform to the familiar definition. It will continue to shrink, but not as fast.
Bartels defines the white working class as white people who lack college degrees. This notion of the white working class works fine if the setting is 1940, when three-quarters of all adults age 25 and older were high-school dropouts and 95 percent lacked a college degree. Today, however, only about 14 percent of adults 25 and older are high-school dropouts, and only about 70 percent lack a college degree. Fifty-four percent have "at least some college education." These data are included in a new Brookings Institution study by Alan Abramowitz and Ruy Teixeira, who further point out that since 1940 the percentage of workers who have white-collar jobs has increased from 32 percent to 60 percent. Nobody knows what to call the newly swollen ranks of people at the low-income end of white-collar America. In the 1980s, a University of Massachusetts journalism professor named Ralph Whitehead floated the term "new collar," but it didn't take. Increasingly, it seems most logical to call these people "working class," even though they often make more money than we once associated with the working class.
In complicating their definition of class, Abramowitz and Teixeira rely on four factors: income, education, occupation, and "subjective class identification," i.e., the class that people think they belong to. This rejiggering has the effect of shoring up Frank and knocking down Bartels to some extent. The trouble with Bartels, they maintain, is that his definition of the white working class includes too many people who aren't working at all because they're disabled, retired, going to school, or raising kids. Most of these people are too poor to categorize as middle-class, while some are too wealthy. In addition, Abramowitz and Teixeira prefer to measure working-class allegiance to the Democrats not by presidential votes but by Democratic Party identification, which has plummeted dramatically. By that measure, the Democrats are experiencing their greatest difficulties with working- and middle-class white voters and their least difficulties with upper-class white voters. Abramowitz and Teixeira say it isn't true, as Bartels argues, that white-working-class defection from the Democratic Party is a regional problem almost entirely confined to the South. Using their revised definitions of the white working class and Democratic Party allegiance, the defection remains more dramatic in the South (a 34 percent drop in party identification between the 1960s and the current decade), but it's also substantial in the North (an 11 percent drop).
On the other hand, Abramowitz and Teixeira favor Bartels over Frank on the question of whether working-class whites score higher on the derangement/bitterness index than wealthier whites. Although they found working-class whites more likely to oppose abortion than upper-class whites, for instance, the working-class whites were far less likely than upper-class whites to abandon the Democrats over the abortion issue. Only 57 percent working-class whites opposed to abortion identified with the GOP, compared with 92 percent of upper-class whites opposed to abortion. Abramowitz and Teixeira also lean toward the DLC and away from Frank on the question of whether economic populism can save the Democrats, mainly because working-class Americans, like Americans as a whole, tend to harbor unrealistically grim notions about how bad life is for everyone else while simultaneously harboring unrealistically sunny notions about how good life is for themselves. (This phenomenon, which isn't new, is nicely described in David Whitman's 1998 book, The Optimism Gap, and in Gregg Easterbrook's 2003 book, The Progress Paradox.) "The white working class today is an aspirational class," they write, "not a downtrodden one." In promoting economic security, they conclude, Democrats would do best to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and don't mess with Mr. In-Between.
Obama, being a quick study, will note that none of these theories suggests that it's ever a good idea to tell a person whose vote you want that you find him "bitter." But the bitterest people, these studies suggest, aren't the proles. They're the very ones who, judging by economic circumstances, have the least to be bitter about.Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

Bush Approved Meetings on Interrogation Techniques

President's Comments to ABC News Prove Top-Level Involvement in Allowing Harsh Coercion
By Dan Eggen Washington Post
CRAWFORD, Tex., April 11 -- President Bush said Friday that he was aware his top national security advisers had discussed the details of harsh interrogation tactics to be used on detainees.
Bush also said in an interview with ABC News that he approved of the meetings, which were held as the CIA began to prepare for a secret interrogation program that included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and other coercive techniques.
"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people" by learning what various detainees knew, Bush said in the interview at the presidential ranch here. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
The remarks underscore the extent to which the top officials were directly involved in setting the controversial interrogation policies.
Bush suggested in the interview that no one should be surprised that his senior advisers, including Vice President Cheney, would discuss details of the interrogation program. "I told the country we did that," Bush said. "And I also told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it."
The Washington Post first reported in January 2005 that proposed CIA interrogation techniques were discussed at several White House meetings. A principal briefer at the meetings was John Yoo, who was then a senior Justice Department attorney and the author of a draft memo explaining the legal justification for the classified techniques the CIA sought to employ.
The Post reported that the attendees at one or more of these sessions included then-presidential counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, then-Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, then-National Security Council legal adviser John B. Bellinger III, CIA counsel John A. Rizzo, and David S. Addington, then-counsel to Cheney.
The Post reported that the methods discussed included open-handed slapping, the threat of live burial and waterboarding. The threat of live burial was rejected, according to an official familiar with the meetings.
State Department officials and military lawyers were intentionally excluded from these deliberations, officials said.
Gonzales and his staff had no reservations about the proposed interrogation methods and did not suggest major changes, two officials involved in the deliberations said.

Reflections (From The New Yorker)
Mine Is Longer than Yours; The last boomer game.
by Michael Kinsley
Extending your own life expectancy is the most selfish motive imaginable for doing anything. Do it, by all means.
At first, I thought I was alone in the pool. It was a sparkling blue gem, implausibly planted in the skyscraper canyon of downtown Los Angeles, as if David Hockney, heading toward Beverly Hills, had taken the wrong exit on the I-10 freeway. This fine pool was the consolation and only charm of the Soviet-style complex where I had rented an apartment so that I could walk to work at the Los Angeles Times. It was early, not even 6 A.M. I had finished my laps and was enjoying the emptiness of the pool, the faint sounds of downtown gearing up for the day, and the drama of the looming office towers. As we learned on September 11th, they really can fall down on top of you. But they wouldn’t on that day. I felt healthy and smug.
Then what I had thought was a ripple in the water turned out to be—no, not a shark with hectoring John Williams music pulsing from a boom box in its stomach. It was a tiny old man in a tiny black bathing suit. He was slowly, slowly completing a lap in the next lane. When, finally, he reached the side where I was resting and watching, he came up for air. He saw me, beamed, and said, “I’m ninety years old.” It was clearly a boast, not a lament, so I followed his script and said, “Well, isn’t that marvellous” and “You certainly don’t look it” and on in that vein. He beamed some more, I beamed, and briefly we both were happy—two nearly naked strangers sharing the first little dishonesties and self-deceptions of a beautiful day in Southern California.
Perhaps sensing some condescension in my praise, he then stuck out his chest and declared, “I used to be a judge.” And I started to resent this intruder on my morning and my pool. Did I now have to tell him it was marvellous that he used to be a judge? What was so marvellous about it? What was his point? But, even as he said this, a panicky realization of its absurd irrelevance seemed to pass across his face, and then a realization of its pathos. When he was a judge—if he had been a judge—he had not felt the need to accost strangers and tell them that he was a judge. And then he seemed to realize that he had overplayed his hand. He had left this stranger in the pool thinking the very thought he had wanted to dispel: the old fool is past it. And finally (I imagined, observing his face) came sadness: he had bungled a simple social interchange. So it must be true: he was past it.
On an airplane seven or eight years ago, I turned and discovered Robert McNamara in the next seat. He is ninety-one now, so he must have been more than eighty at the time. I asked him why he was going to Denver. He said that he was meeting a female friend at the airport and heading for Aspen. It seems that when his wife died he had commissioned in her memory one of a chain of primitive huts on a trail between Aspen and Vail. Now he was going to ski the trail and stay in the huts with his lady. He told me this, then beamed, like my friend in the pool.
Well, life is unfair, but let’s not get carried away. Longevity is not a zero-sum game. A longer life for Robert McNamara doesn’t mean a shorter life for you or me or the average citizen of Vietnam. He’s done that damage, and at his age he won’t be doing more. In fact, he seems to have been spending the gift of a long life trying to make amends—mainly, as he described his recent agenda to me, by flying around the world to conferences where the world’s suffering is deplored. Nevertheless.
Still, to get to that view of things, I had to suppress an irrational feeling that McNamara had won big in a game he shouldn’t have been entitled to play. Yes, life is unfair, and never more so than in how much of itself it gives to different people. Deaths of young adults are mourned with special pain, and the very, very old are celebrated. But any age between about sixty and ninety doesn’t rate a second glance as you flip through the obituaries. Anywhere in there is a normal life span, even though the ninety-year-old got fifty per cent more life.
What’s more, of all the gifts that life and luck can bestow—money, good looks, love, power—longevity is the one that people seem least reluctant to brag about. In fact, they routinely claim it as some sort of virtue—as if living to ninety were primarily the result of hard work or prayer, rather than good genes and never getting run over by a truck. Maybe the possibility that the truck is on your agenda for later this morning makes the bragging acceptable. The longevity game is one that really isn’t over till it’s over.
Between what your parents gave you to start with—genetically or culturally or financially—and pure luck, you play a small role in determining how long you live. And even if you add a few years through your own initiative, by doing all the right things in terms of diet, exercise, sleep, vitamins, and so on, why is that to your moral credit? Extending your own life expectancy is the most selfish motive imaginable for doing anything. Do it, by all means. I do. But for heaven’s sake don’t take a bow and expect applause.
This is the game that really counts. Perhaps you imagine that, as eternity approaches, the petty ambitions and rivalries of this life melt away. Perhaps they do. That doesn’t mean that the competition is over. It means that the biggest competition of all is about to start. Do you doubt it? Ask yourself: what do you have now, and what do you covet, that you would not gladly trade for, say, five extra years? These would be good years, of cross-country skiing between fashionable Colorado resorts, or at least years when you could still walk and think and read and drive. You would still be a player in whatever game you spent your life playing: still invited to faraway conferences about other people’s problems, if you ever were; still baking your famous chocolate-chip banana bread for the family if your life followed a less McNamarish course. What would you trade for that? Or, rather, what wouldn’t you trade? O.K., you’d give up years for the health and happiness of your children. What else? Peace in the Middle East? A solution to global warming? A cure for AIDS? These negotiations are secret, mind you. No one will know if you selfishly choose a few extra years for yourself over an extra million or two for Planet Earth. We’ll posit that you’re a good person, though, and that to spare the earth from a couple of the Four Horsemen you’d accept a shorter span for yourself.
Few people ever have the opportunity to make an explicit choice between years of life and some noble cause. Among those who do are soldiers. People who volunteer for military service or act bravely in battle consciously risk giving up most of their Biblically allotted threescore and ten, and for some this choice is both wise and generous beyond belief. Unfortunately, every war has at least two sides, and at most one of them is the good side. The math suggests that, in the course of history, most of these sacrifices probably were a mistake. Robert McNamara’s years equal those of four soldiers who died in Vietnam.
Anyway, back to you. Children, country, future of the world are off the table. And, yes, these are the important things. But there are other things that make life sweet. The baby-boom generation in America is thought to have found something approaching genuine happiness in material possessions. A popular bumper sticker back in the nineteen-eighties read, “He Who Dies with the Most Toys Wins.” This was thought to be a brilliant encapsulation of the baby-boom generation’s shallowness, greed, excessive competitiveness, and love of possessions. And it may well be all of these things. It’s also fundamentally wrong. Is there anything in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue—or even listed on Realtor.com—for which you would give up five years? Of course not. That sports car may be to die for, but in fact you wouldn’t. What good are the toys if you’re dead? “He Who Dies Last”—he’s the one who wins.
Boomers realize this, of course. Don’t forget: back in the Dark Ages, we invented jogging. (Our knees may now regret it.) Competitive consumerism wasn’t invented by boomers or yuppies. However, it is deeply rooted in yuppie culture. I win if my house is bigger than yours, or if my cell phone is smaller than yours. Or if my laptop computer is thinner or my hiking boots are thicker. And yet all this is meaningless, isn’t it? And I don’t mean that in a spiritual way. Be as greedy and self-centered as you want. The only competition that matters, in the end, is about life itself. And the standard is clear: “Mine is longer than yours.”
The oldest boomers, born in the late nineteen-forties, are just turning sixty, and the last boomer game is about to start—the game of competitive longevity. So how are you doing? Let’s say you’re sixty. To begin with, you’re still alive, which gives you a leg up. Or are the real winners in our youth-obsessed generation the boomers who died young, like John Belushi? Well, perhaps, but you’ve missed that boat. There may be glamour in dying in your early twenties. There is no glamour in dying in your late fifties.
In 2004, the most recent year for which there are final figures, life expectancy at birth in the United States was 77.8 years. That’s 75.2 years for males and 80.4 years for females. But if you’ve made it to sixty your life expectancy is 82.5 years: 80.8 for men and eighty-four for women. (In Katha Pollitt’s recent book of essays, “Learning to Drive,” there is a vicious one called “After the Men Are Dead.”)
Of course, these are only averages. Factors that you control, such as diet, exercise, and smoking, can affect your score. So can factors that are beyond your control but are already known or knowable, such as your family health history. What most affects your own outcome, though, is the simple fact that averages are only averages. Think of this as good news: for everyone who dies in his or her forties, there must be three or four who make it into their eighties in order for the averages to work out.
You might compare the coming boomer longevity competition to a tontine. This was a macabre form of investment, popular in Europe and America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which the amount you got back depended on how many of your fellow-investors you outlived. Even without a cash prize, though, we all would like to win. Life would be pretty empty without your friends. But not as empty as death.
We are born thinking that we’ll live forever. Then death becomes an intermittent reality, as grandparents and parents die, and tragedy of some kind removes one or two from our own age cohort. And then, at some point, death becomes a normal part of life—a faint dirge in the background that gradually gets louder. What is that point? One crude measure would be when you can expect, on average, one person of roughly your age in your family or social circle to die every year. At that point, any given death can still be a terrible and unexpected blow, but the fact that people your age die is no longer a legitimate surprise, and the related fact that you will, too, is no longer avoidable.
With some heroic assumptions, we can come up with an age when death starts to be in-your-face. We will merge all sexual and racial categories into a single composite American. We will assume that there are a hundred people your age who are close enough to be invited to your funeral. Your funeral chapel won’t fit a hundred people? No problem. On average, half of them will be too busy decomposing to attend. As Max Beerbohm noted in his novel “Zuleika Dobson,” “Death cancels all engagements.” And why a hundred? Because it’s easy, and also because it’s two-thirds of “Dunbar’s number,” of a hundred and fifty, which is supposedly the most relationships that any one set of human neurons can handle. We’re crudely assuming that two-thirds of those are about your age.
Anyway, the answer is sixty-three. If a hundred Americans start the voyage of life together, on average one of them will have died by the time the group turns sixteen. At forty, their lives are half over: further life expectancy at age forty is 39.9. And at age sixty-three the group starts losing an average of one person every year. Then it accelerates. By age seventy-five, sixty-seven of the original hundred are left. By age one hundred, three remain.
The last boomer competition is not just about how long you live. It is also about how you die. This one is a “Mine is shorter than yours”: you want a death that is painless and quick. Even here there are choices. What is “quick”? You might prefer something instantaneous, like walking down Fifth Avenue and being hit by a flower pot that falls off an upper-story windowsill. Or, if you’re the orderly type, you might prefer a brisk but not sudden slide into oblivion. Take a couple of months, pain-free but weakening in some vague nineteenth-century way. You can use the time to make your farewells, plan your funeral, cut people out of your will, finish that fat nineteenth-century novel that you’ve been lugging around since the twentieth century, and generally tidy up.
The government statistics on how people die are lavish and fascinating. Let’s forget for a moment that it’s a catalogue you can’t really shop from. And yet you also can’t put it down and say “No, thanks” to the whole thing. So what’s your pleasure? Or should I say, “Choose your poison”? In 2004, five thousand eight hundred people did choose poison, and suicide in general—the only option that you actually can choose—ranked eleventh among causes of death, with thirty-two thousand people casting their votes for it. Half of these people used guns. About twenty-one thousand people died of poisoning classified as “accidental” in 2004. That’s almost half as many as died in car accidents. Accidents in general ranked fifth, with a hundred and twelve thousand out of a total of 2.4 million deaths.
The top three causes of death in 2004 were heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Together, they account for more than half of all deaths in the United States, so choosing among these three is a good way to avoid disappointment. But an informed choice isn’t easy. Heart disease runs the spectrum from a sudden fatal heart attack while opening Christmas presents with your grandchildren to years of bedridden decline. A stroke could be your best option (you’re gone in a few seconds) or among your worst (you’re alive for years but unable to move or talk). Nevertheless, among the big three, cancer is clearly the one to avoid. Although often these days people are cured of cancer, the topic here is what kills you, and our premise is that something is going to kill you eventually (a premise with considerable data to back it up). Cancer, if it kills you, is not likely to do so gracefully.
No. 14 on the government’s “best killer list” (as it is not called) is Parkinson’s disease. Of the 2.4 million who died of all causes in 2004, eighteen thousand died of Parkinson’s. This interested me, because I have Parkinson’s, and one of the first things you are told, at least if you are still middle-aged when you get the diagnosis (I was forty-two; now I’m fifty-seven), is that you are not likely to die of it. It turns out that people do die of it, but rarely before very old age, even if they got the diagnosis when fairly young. In 2004, Parkinson’s killed three hundred and forty-nine Americans between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-four. It killed sixty-six hundred from the much smaller group of Americans over the age of eighty-five. (This is encouraging: not only do most people with Parkinson’s not die of it but, even of those who do, more than a third make it past eighty-five.) Back in my own age group of fifty-five to sixty-four, Parkinson’s was surpassed by Alzheimer’s (542 and headed up, up, up), homicide (879 and headed down, down, down), “events of undetermined intent” (399), “accidental exposure to smoke, fire and flames” (412), asthma (520), diabetes (10,780), H.I.V. (1,562), and, of course, various forms of cancer and heart disease.
Parkinson’s is what happens when your brain stops producing enough dopamine. It has a strange collection of symptoms that are distributed somewhat randomly among its victims. Almost no one has all of them. Everyone has some. It is classified as a “movement disorder,” and it certainly is that, though the disorder can take the form of stiffness approaching paralysis or shaking and exaggerated movements approaching an epileptic fit. And there are other symptoms, unrelated to movement, such as insomnia, depression, and bad skin. Some people with Parkinson’s have trouble walking through open doorways. (You have to back up and give yourself a running start.) The drugs you take to alleviate the symptoms have symptoms of their own, ranging from involuntary movements of various sorts to (my favorite) a compulsion to gamble.
Even fifteen years after I got the diagnosis, my symptoms are on the mild side, though no longer undetectable. They got even milder after I had an operation, a couple of years ago, to implant wires in my brain and two pacemaker-type batteries in my chest. The batteries send pulses to a particular point in the brain that . . . well, I don’t really know much about how it works. But the result is that I take fewer pills than before and have much less “off” time, when the pills don’t work. The procedure, known as deep brain stimulation, or D.B.S., was approved for Parkinson’s six years ago and has been tried for other ailments as well, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even Tourette’s syndrome. For each disease, doctors go for a different spot in the brain. It’s almost like phrenology reinvented, with the important difference that D.B.S. works. My surgeon, Dr. Ali Rezai, of the Cleveland Clinic, is a renowned pioneer in deep brain stimulation and a great enthusiast. I have joked with him that if I came to the Cleveland Clinic complaining of athlete’s foot he’d know just the spot in my head where the wires should go.
During the operation, your head is screwed into a metal frame and the frame is screwed into the operating table. My surgery lasted nine hours, and for most of it I had to be awake, so that the doctors could test the connection, like asking somebody to go upstairs and see if the light in the bedroom comes back on while you fiddle with the circuit-breaker box in the basement. It’s not fun, but it doesn’t hurt (your brain has no nerve endings for pain), and everything except the operation itself is sort of fun. Immediately after surgery, all the symptoms of Parkinson’s disappear—even though the batteries aren’t turned on for a month. The very process of implanting the wires mimics the effect of the electricity from the batteries. Over the next two or three weeks, the symptoms return. Then, when the batteries are turned on, they disappear or are reduced again. These results are instantaneous, though they vary from patient to patient, and it takes up to a year of visits, every month or so, to get the adjustment right.
Along with the benefits, there are some minor nuisances. At the airport, I can’t go through the metal detector. Instead, I stand spread-eagled while the T.S.A. man feels me all over, using (he assures me) the back of his hand for “sensitive areas.” I am supposed to keep my distance from refrigerator doors—especially those big, heavy Sub-Zero refrigerator doors that virtually symbolize yuppie desire—because they use strong magnets to stay shut, and these can interfere with the batteries. I can usually get a rise out of my wife by walking innocently past our refrigerator and pretending to be sucked toward the doors and pinned against them. When I wanted some wireless earphones to use on the exercise machine, every brand I tried crackled with interference. I finally figured out why: my built-in antennae. This is all a small price to pay.
The future for people with Parkinson’s is unclear, but in a good way, because that future is getting better. New drugs are coming along all the time. The demographic power of the boomer generation, as it enters the Parkinson’s years, will spur more research and new therapies. And, of course, there is the promise of stem cells. John McCain has voted against President Bush’s near-ban on stem-cell research, so the ban is likely to be lifted whatever happens in November.
The lost years are maddening, especially since the opposition to stem-cell research, if it isn’t purely cynical, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The embryos used in stem-cell research come from fertility clinics, where it is standard procedure to create more embryos than are needed and to dispose of the extras. (For that matter, this is standard procedure in the method of human reproduction devised by God as well.) Thousands of embryos live and die this way every year, and there is no fuss. President Bush even praised the work of fertility clinics in his speech announcing the restrictions on stem-cell research. You cannot logically be against stem-cell research on the ground that it encourages what happens in fertility clinics, and yet be in favor of, or indifferent to, fertility clinics themselves. And yet for seven years that has been my country’s official position.
Even when the ban is lifted, stem-cell research is unlikely to develop fast enough to bail me out. Factoring in other new treatments, I figure that my chance of being alive at eighty is about as good as that of any other fifty-seven-year-old American male. That chance is almost exactly fifty-fifty. And I’m more likely to be felled by a heart attack, just like my boomer buddies, than by Parkinson’s. On the other hand, the chance that I’ll be cross-country skiing in my eighties is small. Not that I ever did much cross-country skiing. (One incidental benefit of Parkinson’s has been regular opportunities to ring changes on that old joke “Doctor, doctor, will I be able to play the piano?”) When it comes to having the tiniest telephone or the biggest refrigerator, I’m still in the game. But when it comes to the ultimate boomer game, competitive longevity, I’m doing color commentary. This is not because I’m more likely to keel over early but because having a chronic disease—or, more to the point, being known to have a chronic disease—automatically starts you on your expulsion from the club of the living.
Sometimes I feel like a scout from my generation, sent out ahead to experience in my fifties what even the healthiest boomers are going to experience in their sixties, seventies, or eighties. There are far worse medical conditions than Parkinson’s and there are far worse cases of Parkinson’s than mine. But what I have, at the level I have it, is an interesting foretaste of our shared future—a beginner’s guide to old age.
Many of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease resemble those of aging: a trembling hand, a shuffling gait, swallowing—or forgetting to swallow, or having trouble swallowing—a bewildering variety of pills. Of the half-dozen or so main Parkinson’s drugs, the most effective by far goes by the trade name Sinemet. Its principal ingredient is levodopa, a chemical that turns into dopamine in the brain. Levodopa works differently for different people, and often stops working or develops intolerable side effects. But for me right now Sinemet’s effects last about four hours. During those four hours, I go through the whole cycle of life, or, at least, the adult part. I take a pill and shortly feel as if I am twenty. My mood is sunny and optimistic, I move fluidly, I’m full of energy—I don’t know whether to go out and run a couple of miles or finish that overdue book review. This feeling lasts for a couple of hours, then it starts to wear off. Another half hour, maybe, and I’m back where I belong, in middle age. Half an hour after that, I’m feeling old, stiff, tired, and gloomy. Then I pop another pill and the cycle starts all over.
I was around fifty when I went public about having Parkinson’s, and the effect was like turning sixty. A person who is sixty and healthy almost surely will live many more years. But sixty is about the age when people stop being surprised if you look old or feel sick or drop dead. (It’s another decade or so before they stop pretending to be surprised.) It’s often said of people that “she’s a young seventy” or “he’s thirty, going on forty-five.” And it’s true: there is your actual, chronological age, and then there’s the age that reflects how you look, how you feel, how much hair you have left, how fast you can walk, or think, and so on. At every stage of life, some people seem older or younger than others of the same age. But only in life’s last chapter do the differences get enormous. We are not shocked to see a seventy-one-year-old hobbling on a cane, or bedridden in a nursing home, and we are not shocked to see a seventy-one-year-old running for President. The huge variety of possible outcomes—all of them falling within the range considered “normal”—makes the last boomer competition especially dramatic. So does the speed at which aging can happen. Sometimes it’s even instantaneous. Fall, break your hip, and add ten years. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. It’s easy to imagine two sixty-year-olds, friends all their lives. One looks older because he’s bald: no big deal. Ten years later, when they’re seventy, one has retired on disability and moved into a nursing home. The other is still C.E.O., has left his wife for a younger woman, and, in a concession to age, takes a month off each year to ski. Contrasts like these will be common.
About thirty-six Americans out of a thousand over the age of sixty-five are residents of nursing homes, and for those over eighty-five the figure is a hundred and thirty-nine out of a thousand. The odds look reassuring—even among the very-oldsters, it’s only one out of seven. Trouble is, just being out of a nursing home doesn’t necessarily put you in a Mrs. McNamara Memorial Love Shack. Actual nursing homes are just the penultimate stop along a trail of institutions that boomers have become familiar with—and try not to think about—in dealing with our parents. It starts with so-called “independent living,” and runs through “assisted living” to the nursing home, with possible detours through “home health care” and “rehab,” and thence to the hospital and points beyond. One admirable goal of these institutions is to ease the inevitable transition from active, contributing citizen to dependent, living off the financial and emotional acorns stored over a lifetime. But these institutions also announce the transition and push people along. Entering one of these places is entering a new phase of life as clearly as going away to college.
Decades before the nursing home, though, we all cross an invisible line. Most people realize this only in retrospect. If you have a chronic disease—even one that is slow-moving and non-fatal—you cross the line the moment you get the diagnosis. Suddenly, the future seems finite. There are still doors you can go through and opportunities you can seize. But every choice of this sort closes off other choices, or seems to, in a way that it didn’t use to. In every major decision—buying a house or a car, switching your subscription from Newsweek to Time—you feel that this is the last roll of the dice. It needn’t be this way: in the fifteen years since Parkinson’s was diagnosed, I’ve moved half a dozen times, changed jobs about as often, got married, let my New Yorker subscription lapse and then renewed it. Each change feels like an unexpected gift, or a coupon you’d better redeem before it expires.
This terror of being written off prematurely (like being buried alive) makes it difficult to write about a medical condition that may linger and get worse slowly for decades while you try to go about your life like a normal person. People say, in all kindness, “Hey, you look terrific,” which leaves you wondering what they were expecting, or how you looked the last time you saw them. They seem taken aback that you are around at all. The first time you hear or read a casual reference to “healthy persons,” it is a shock to realize that you are permanently disqualified for that label. And then you realize—even more shockingly—that you’re the only one who’s shocked. Everyone else has adjusted, reassigned you, and moved on. Even if you feel fine, you walk around in an aura of illness.
People with Parkinson’s often develop a blank, unblinking stare known as “facial masking.” They also tend to mumble. If you know someone who has Parkinson’s, symptoms like these can lead you to think that he’s losing his wits. Cognitive problems affect a minority of Parkinson’s victims, primarily those who get the disease late in life. Some researchers believe that “young onset” Parkinson’s, meaning before the age of fifty, may be an entirely different disease. But, of course, you can’t count on everybody you meet in a day being totally up to speed on the latest research. The familiar dream that you are in the middle of an exam you haven’t prepared for has some basis in reality for a person with Parkinson’s, just as it must be for many people in their seventies and for almost all those in their eighties. Twelve years ago, I was described in this magazine as having “a languid, professorial air . . . his arms stiffly by his side; his eyes seem stretched open, for he seldom blinks, and [he] speaks slowly, deliberately, quietly [with] parsimonious gestures.” Since I’ve gone public, no one has suggested that these symptoms add up to looking “professorial.”
For a yuppie careerist, the first painful recognition that you have crossed the invisible line probably comes at work. You’ve done fine, but guess what? You will not be chairman of the company, or editor of the newspaper, or president of the university. It’s mathematically inevitable that for every C.E.O. there will be half a dozen vice-presidents whose careers will seem successful enough to everybody but themselves. Nevertheless, to them this realization is poignant. For someone with a chronic disease, it’s slightly different. It’s not that the arc of your career never quite reached the apogee that you hoped for. It’s that the arc was unexpectedly chopped off. (Why that should seem more unfair, I cannot say. But it does.) For most people, the realization comes when somebody younger than you gets a job that you covet. For the person with a chronic disease, it’s when somebody older than you gets it. You’re over. He’s still a player. He wins.
Timing is everything. Last year, Chief Justice John Roberts had the second of what appeared to be epileptic seizures. The first had occurred fourteen years earlier. No one even suggested that he should have to resign from the Court. But do you think President Bush would have nominated Roberts if the second seizure had already occurred? Unlikely. Why risk it?
It is a treasured corollary of the American Dream that most people who are successful in midlife were losers in high school. As you enter adult life, values change and the deck is reshuffled. You get another chance, and maybe, if you’re lucky, the last laugh. But it isn’t the last laugh. The deck is shuffled again as you enter the last chapter. How long you live, how fast you age, whether you win or lose the cancer sweepstakes or the Parkinson’s bingo—all these have little to do with the factors that determined your success or failure in the previous round. And there is justice in that.
Some people win both rounds, or even all three. But they, too, cross that invisible line at some point. Old soldiers aren’t the only ones who just fade away. Where is Robert McNamara these days, anyway? ♦