James Fallows

3. Jonathan Rowe, in his posthumous book Our Common Wealth (buy!). As I mentioned two years ago at the time of his sudden and unexpected death, Jon Rowe was a wonderful and original-minded writer who found a way to express concerns and ideas that made instant sense -- once he had pointed them out. His main contribution to The Atlantic was a 1995 cover story, with Ted Halstead and Clifford Cobb, on why GDP growth was a crude-at-best, destructive-at-worst way for a society to measure its overall progress and well-being.

At the time of his death Jonathan Rower was working on a set of ideas that now have taken form in a book edited (from his papers) by his friend Peter Barnes. Its power is, again, to give voice and form to a concept many people sense but that doesn't clearly make its way into political, journalistic, or academic discussion. That is the value of all the things to which we can't attach an immediate profit-and-loss value but that clearly matter to individuals, families, and entire societies in distinguishing satisfaction and happiness from malaise. Which is also a point Jonathan Rauch and David Runciman are addressing.

Please find the time to read these three works.

I have been in transit or otherwise offline since early yesterday, and so I am seeing only now the item that Ta-Nehisi Coates posted about the Atlantic's Michael Kelly, who was killed ten years ago this week while serving as an embedded reporter during the invasion of Iraq. 

>>[The speech] distinguished Gore, now and forever, as someone who cannot be considered a responsible aspirant to power. Politics are allowed in politics, but there are limits, and there is a pale, and Gore has now shown himself to be ignorant of those limits, and he has now placed himself beyond that pale.

Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts -- bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.<<

As mentioned earlier this week, the Atlantic has introduced a new layout for its online "article pages." You get the new look if you click on any headline for a specific post or article, including the link in the previous sentence. For now you can see the old look if you click on names in what was previously the "Voices" column -- for instance, Alexis Madrigal's or Ta-Nehisi Coates's, or Derek Thompson's, mine, etc.

The new look has bigger fonts, more white space between lines ("leading"), wider margins on each side of the screen, and a narrower column of item-text in the middle. Together these changes mean that you see fewer words per line of text; fewer lines of text per viewable screen; and thus (fewer words x fewer lines) many fewer words on the screen at a time. The changes are meant to make any given passage of text seem more approachable and less encyclopedia-looking. Also, moving the author-bios from the top to the bottom of each post makes more space for words or pictures in the very first screenful. [Note: these old/new changes are much more apparent on desktop or laptop web-browser versions, rather than on mobile devices.]

The changes have two other effects I've been thinking about.

One, it seems, is to reduce the visual cueing as to what is "normal" text and what is a quoted or excerpted passage. Two days ago, I quoted a long note from a reader (in the "Bartleby the Scrivener Joins the Air Marshals" item). The overwhelming majority of people who wrote back to me missed the fact that it was a quote, rather than a story I was telling about myself. Ideally, excerpts would always stand out because of their background shading and indented margins. But enough people are now missing the cues to make me think I should add new signals. Rather, I should return to a signaling system I used before a previous redesign, when the same problem kept cropping up -- and people thought I was speaking for myself when I was quoting Dick Cheney, etc.

Thus, from now on I will signal the beginning and end of excerpted passages with double marks like this:  >> and <<.  And, to err on the side of clarity, I'll mark each new paragraph within an except with its own single > mark.  [Nah, on reflection that would be overkill.] I can work out a macro to handle this, and it's better than the risk of confusion. For instance, a reader writes about the new formatting:

>> I think confusion about who is speaking in your blog entries [may]... result from continuing formatting imperfections.  There may also be some difference in the clarity of formatting between the version that arrives via RSS feed and the version one sees when one gets to it by clicking on the link.
 
In any event, despite some improvements, it is still not always possible to tell with immediate certainty whose words one is reading.  Most often, in my case, it is the boundary between your words and those you are quoting that sometime seems unclear. <<

And on the other hand, another reader writes:

>>I too thought the "Bartleby" story was about you and your wife.  Looking at it again, you clearly introduced it as sent in by a reader, and it was offset in grey as well (I of course trust implicitly that you haven't subsequently edited in those elements).

I can't begin to comprehend why I and so many other people misread it that way; it's a fascinating little accidental psych experiment you happened to conduct there.<<

The other effect of the new-look presentation may be to make individual paragraphs seem more approachable -- but to make medium-length-or-longer posts seem less so, since it now takes many more screen-scrolls to get through them. I'll try to use this as discipline to make things shorter, more often -- and also to provide a link and reminder on longer posts to "Try reading this one in 'Classic' view."

OK, now for some closing info that bridges the purely procedural and the at-least-semi-substantive, here is one of the (several hundred!) replies that have arrived on the Bartleby-of-the-air question. I've set it off with the new coding. And you could consider looking at this in Classic view. A reader writes:

>>You must have been distracted by so many people mistaking you for your original correspondent, but the responses suggest a staggering inability to read.

The original report was clear. Your correspondent arrived early to the airport and had book the two seats, "but we checked in about two hours before the flight, and received our tickets. Two seats in the middle of the plane (I like that because in business the configuration is 2-2-2, and either of us can get up without disturbing the other) as we had booked."

I am more mystified by the responses,

1) "I get your desire to be together, but why should that trump the desire of someone else to sit where he selected?  Would it have been nice?  Sure.  But it was still his choice.  Not one that you are entitled to make for him." [JF note: these quoted passages are from a previous reader.] The alleged air marshall didn't reserve that seat, they did. A reservation is an entitlement.

2) "I like to get there early to get the seat I want, not only on an airplane, but a tour bus, or sightseeing excursion, or a table or stool at a bar. You'd be surprised at how often I am asked to inconvenience myself and move to a less desirable seat in order to accommodate some guy who wants to sit by his wife or vice versa. Sometimes I don't mind. But a lot of times it is a great inconvenience to have to hoist up all the bags et cetera just to accommodate some guy or his wife who may have come in late and feels entitled to preempt any lower person who is traveling alone." Agreed. The couple had a reservation and had arrived early. They in exactly the position of this female traveller. They are being asked to sit somewhere else for his convenience.

3) "But I always do so understanding that I'm asking a favor, and if they "prefer not to" -- for whatever reason, or for no reason at all -- then to me, that's that.  In my view, no one has any social obligation to trade seats." Exactly. The air marshall was not asking, but demanding a favor from them.

I could go on, but I think that those responding to the original article either are not reading the details correctly, or they are just being too obsequious to the air marshall and the airlines some-people-we-just-can't-move security theater.<<

And, from another reader:

>>I think the emails you posted yesterday miss the mark in a couple of ways.

1)The man and his wife purchased seats together, confirmed they were sitting together, and only didn't know the wouldn't be sitting together until they boarded the plan.  It's only at that point did they try to shuffle the seating in the cabin.  It's not like the had separate seats and started badgering other passengers so they could sit together.

2) While I certainly empathize with the woman who feels the pressure from the tyranny of couples, her shrill response misses a key point.  People (mates, friends, spouses, business companions) who travel together do so mostly because they want to be TOGETHER.These folks are trying to have a shared experience, and I think it's fair to ask a single traveler to move if there are other single seats available..  Single travelers certainly have the right to sit where they want, but understanding and empathy go a long way.<<

And why not, one more. Another reader writes:

>>First on air marshals:

 [My wife] and I heading to Seattle from PHL. Big Birthday trip. Booked months in advance. Paid up for first class. Selected good seats. She hates to fly. Sitting together helps with her fears. They are real to her.

We are boarding the plane, and we are pulled aside. "we are sorry but your seats have been reassigned and we have selected other seats for you". They weren't together. I raised quite a fuss. USair. They 'found' seats together.

The marshals slept the whole way back. WTF. They were off duty. No follow up questioning was replied to.

Second:

I travel for work: (GA 250 hrs+; 700 mile legs and less) and USairways 50k miles per year (long haul).   Almost every trip is for 'work' Why is it that when I am going to work I have to make way (while in the TSA line) for those who work at the airport/airlines? Frustrates the shit out of me (and most everyone around me). We are all going to work. As my kids emote: "just sayin".

P.S.  TSA Pre-check is wonderful, but when they randomly force you through the regular lines it costs 30 mins. So much for 'planned' time saving.<<

More to come.

1) We've had another of the periodic refreshes of our web design. You can see the old look if you click on the name of one of our writers -- for instance, the Ta-Nehisi Coates author site. You can see the new look if you click on the headline of any particular item or posting, like this (wonderful) one about Ta-Nehisi's experiences on arrival in France.

• Click on his name, at the very top of the item, to get a newest-first stream of all his postings, in "classic look" smaller-font layout;
• Just read them that way; or 
• Scroll to the item just before or after the one you were previously reading, and then click on that item's title. Repeat as needed.

Now you know.

I just renewed my mail subscription to the Atlantic. [JF reply: Thank you.]

So it occurred to me: what if you had a comments section (even if just on some posts) limited to verified subscribers?  You might sell a lot of subs!  Would be a smart discussion too, I bet.

This is the first comments strategy that has some appeal from my point of view. Probably technically too complex to implement, but an interesting thought experiment. For why I prefer to quote reader messages, rather than enabling comments, see here and here.

3) Speaking of subscribing, on the flight from DC to Los Angeles several days ago I sat next to a woman who had bought our latest issue at the airport newsstand. After she finished a few hours' work on her computer in first part of the flight, she pulled out the magazine and read it carefully cover to cover. I sat there, discreetly watching, and beaming positive thoughts in her direction. When she reached the last page she pulled out the (hated by everyone, but effective) blow-in subscription card and put it in her purse.

As the plane headed in for a landing I dared ask her how she'd liked the magazine, and explained why I was asking. "That is a great issue," she said. And she was right. While of course I love all issues of our magazine, I think this one really is exceptionally strong from very beginning to very end -- in range, surprise, execution, and refreshed look. Please do check it out.

Bonus incentive: in this issue you'll see the answer to my version of the Andrew Sullivan "View from your window" contest, which I posted in January.

I agree with (my former Atlantic colleague) Andrew Sullivan that the bright new age of "sponsored" online content creates all kinds of challenges for publications, readers, and even advertisers.

Ta-Nehisi Coates beat me to the punch* in quoting the magazine's official statement on the "sponsored content" advertorial from the Church of Scientology that was on our site for about 12 hours yesterday. Because it's important, here's that statement in full:

We screwed up. It shouldn't have taken a wave of constructive criticism -- but it has -- to alert us that we've made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way.  It's safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out.  We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge--sheepishly--that we got ahead of ourselves.  We are sorry, and we're working very hard to put things right.  

That ad was a mistake in both concept and execution. I am sorry that we ran it in the first place, which we and others will always remember as an error; but I think the quick response and forthright statement reflect the best parts of the magazine's tradition. I am saying all of this as a loyal and long-time Atlantic employee but as an observer of rather than participant in this recent drama. (That is, I had nothing to do with any part of this: the origin of the ad, the decision to pull it, or the drafting of this statement.) Every person and every institution makes mistakes. We've recognized, admitted, and tried to correct this one, and we'll do our best to learn from it.
__
* On the other hand, I'm on an actual airline flight as I type and post this. My rare escape from United reminds me that other airlines offer Gogo-in-flight.

Until I saw his gracious "Signing Off" message yesterday, I had not realized that Robert Wright was stopping his (almost) daily postings here, so that he could instead concentrate on finishing a book about Buddhism and teaching at Princeton. It is piquant to reflect on a world in which those are the options -- Buddhism book+Princeton on the one side, daily in-the-fray postings on the other -- but I think things have always been that way, with allowances for differences in the technology of each era, for people with diverse interests.

My purpose in noting this is to underscore the quality, depth, and seriousness of what Bob Wright has contributed here during this past year. (That's his official author-pic at right.) We don't agree about everything, and on occasion over the decades and in this past year we have differed, even sharply and unpleasantly. But he has brought a sophistication and grown-up-ness to almost every topic he has dealt with, which is worth recognizing because it's another sign of how serious discourse can adapt to each new technological vehicle. Also, it's a sign of what the Atlantic aspires to! To be honest, Bob Wright and I also agree in many more areas than we disagree.

I hope you'll read Bob's entire sayonara post -- and just in case, here's the link again. In case you don't, I'll highlight these two aspects.

First, his three-point action plan about America in the world rings true to me. I've spent a lot more of my life outside the U.S. than Bob has, and when we disagree it's often because I think he is being too theoretical or idealistic about how things are elsewhere. But I certainly agree with these points of his:

1] The world's biggest single problem is the failure of people or groups to look at things from the point of view of other people or groups--i.e. to put themselves in the shoes of "the other." ... For Americans, that might mean grasping that if you lived in a country occupied by American troops, or visited by American drone strikes, you might not share the assumption of many Americans that these deployments of force are well-intentioned and for the greater good. You might even get bitterly resentful. You might even start hating America. [JF: I would say "inability" to look at things from the other's perspective, rather than "failure" to do so. But that's a detail.]

[2] Grass-roots hatred is a much greater threat to the United States--and to nations in general, and hence to world peace and stability--than it used to be... [P]ublic sentiment toward America abroad matters much more (to America's national security) than it did a few decades ago. [JF: This also applies to China, and is a big failure of Chinese "soft power," FWIW.]

[3] If the United States doesn't use its inevitably fading dominance to build a world in which the rule of law is respected, and in which global norms are strong, the United States (and the world) will suffer for it. [JF: Amen!] So when, for example, we do things to other nations that we ourselves have defined as acts of war (like cybersabotage), that is not, in the long run, making us or our allies safer...  

The other point that caught my eye in Bob Wright's post was this:

To be honest, I'm looking forward to getting up in the morning without feeling I have to develop an opinion about something and then publicize it.

I avoid the mon semblable, mon frère! reaction here by telling myself that the web life is still not part of my "official" job at the magazine but just on the side. If I weren't doing other things, there are so many interesting topics I'd love to spend more time going into on line. (Not looking for sympathy, but I manage to feel simultaneously behind-the-curve in sharing reader reaction and news updates on the aviation front, and the beer front, and the boiled-frog front, and China, and filibuster, and the Atlas Shrugged guy, and so on.) Still, I know what he is talking about.

It may be better for the world that Bob Wright will finish this next book. Certainly it will be better for his Princeton students. I am sorry that he won't be writing here as often, but I am glad that he has given us all this past year.

We're looking for another developer. Details here:

Two of the people who were most generous to me in journalism and writing died in the past two days.

Robert Manning was the editor of the Atlantic when I first started here, in 1979. Which is to say, he is the person who hired me. This is a photo of him in that same year, from Mark Feeney's obit today in the Boston Globe. He is in the middle, between John Updike and Justin Kaplan.

In keeping with my Big Tent theory of our publication, I figure that it's usually not my business to weigh in, pro or con, on items by other people in our magazine or online. Except, of course, to urge everyone to Subscribe! The current issue, most famous for Anne-Marie Slaughter's cover article, is in fact wall-to-wall with interesting and extremely well-crafted features. Check it out and then, ahem, subscribe!

Two recent exceptions I want to note, on our web site. First, I agree with Alexis Madrigal's item yesterday hailing Marissa Mayer's selection as Yahoo's CEO, and offering some ideas for her. It will be better for the tech industry, the country, the world, and probably even for Mayer's employer-until-yesterday Google if Yahoo returns to competitive health. I can't think of a better choice than Mayer to give it that chance.

Second, I agree with Robert Wright's objections to an item we ran during the weekend. That item criticized Peter Beinart and his Open Zion site for publishing an article by a writer for Mondoweiss. If you are going to argue that a certain organization, in this case Mondoweiss, is so noxious that anyone associated with it must be barred from mainstream conversation, even if (as in this case) you acknowledge that the specific person you want to bar has not written or said anything you object to, then go ahead and argue it. For me, this is an extremely stiff test, which needs to be taken on directly if you want to assert that a particular person should not be heard. I don't think our item came anywhere close to meeting the necessary standard or making the case.

The Atlantic is hosting an "Innovation Summit," next Tuesday, May 8, at the architecturally interesting old Terminal A of DC National Airport. Full details are available on our site.

I have day-job reasons for being at the conference, including doing a Q-and-A with Michael T. Jones, the "Chief Technology Advocate" at Google and a crucial figure in the technology that gave rise to Google Earth. He was also a starring player in my story last year called "Hacked!", about the attack that erased six years' worth of my wife's Gmail archives and what happened next.* After that I'll be moderating a discussion among several smart-grid / clean-energy innovators. And there is a full day of other discussions in store.

But even if I didn't have that motivation, I'd be there for the guided tours of Boeing's new 787 "Dreamliner." Artist's conception of the Dreamliner in action below.



There's lots more on the agenda, examining the real-world prospects for breakthrough innovation in a variety of areas. So if you're interested and in the vicinity, please come by. (Signup info is on the event's web site. ....

... aaannnnd as I look at it just now, I see that space for walk-through tours of the Dreamliner tours has been fully booked. A life lesson on the act-early-and-often front. But you'll still be close to them -- and, no joke, the discussions should be worthwhile.)


While we're on the subject, and to buffer the sadness of the already-booked Dreamliner tours, here's Boeing's idea of the sort of thing that might come next:



Hmmm, if only there were some book that explained how Boeing, Airbus, and their aspiring competitors in China were trying to match these new designs to ever-increasing environmental constraints, and what that means for their overall technological potential .... well, that's a subject for a week or two from now. See you at Terminal A of National Airport.

For a little more on aircraft innovations, check this out:



__
* I am long overdue for an update on how Gmail and Hotmail are coping with the hacking epidemic, and what users can do (a) to protect themselves in the first place and (b) to recover if they get attacked. That is pending as soon as I can get to it. Thanks to many, many people who have written in with their horror stories, and sometimes their horror-and-salvation tales.

My colleague Jeffrey Goldberg's reporting about Iran's nuclear ambitions, and what Israel and the United States might do in response, has drawn tremendous attention over the past two years, most recently after his interview with President Obama on this topic. It has also generated controversy, especially after his latest reporting trip to Israel with its updated assessments of the Netanyahu government's possible intention to attack.

Jeff Goldberg's office is right next to to mine at The Atlantic, and in normal circumstances we would talk in person about what he has reported, how his views have changed, and how his reports have been received. But we're both out of Washington at the moment -- he is on the road in the US; I have, improbably, arrived just now in Tasmania -- and he has agreed to (in fact, suggested) a public Q-and-A email exchange with me about what he has written and how he has come to the conclusions he has drawn.

I sent him a very long opening "question" a few hours ago, and he has now sent back his first-round reply. With his approval, I'm putting this round up now. Tomorrow I will follow up with more questions, and I'll post those and his reply when they're ready. For now, here is the initial round.
___
Dear Jeff:

Thanks for being willing to discuss the background and circumstances of your reporting on the Iran-Israel-United States showdowns of the past two years.

You are in a very important position to talk about this story, because your reporting, mainly for The Atlantic, has had significant international effects. Two years ago, you did a famous cover story saying that Israel was deadly earnest about striking Iran's nuclear facilities -- unless it was sure the United States would do the job on its own. Last month, President Obama called you to the White House for an interview in which, among other things, he signaled a tough line against Iranian nuclear ambitions as well.

Then this month, during a trip to Israel, you reported for Bloomberg that maybe Netanyahu had been bluffing all along! Maybe "he has never had any intention of launching air and missile strikes against Iran's nuclear program, and is working behind the scenes with Obama to stop Iran through sanctions." And finally, just two days ago, you reported also for Bloomberg that -- on the contrary -- some Israeli officials had started to believe their own "best-case" scenarios and were back to planning an attack.

My first question is, very simply: can you put these stories together for us? We reporters operate in real time, making the best of what is always imperfect information. As you have said recently on our site, when the facts change, we do our best to adjust our reporting to the new realities. But as you look back over these two-plus years, can you give us some narrative of how you think facts have changed? Or your assessment of them? Has the degree of "existential" concern -- and therefore determination to attack -- changed in Israel? Has its assessment of US intentions changed? Has the group of people you've talked with in the US or Israeli governments -- or who have made themselves available or unavailable -- changed? We've seen each of your reports, but they have more or less stood alone. Can you give us an idea of whether you think these changed assessments reflect real changes in Israeli (or US) policies, or different emphases you heard, or changes in your own gut instinct about who is telling the truth?

Second, I'll ask what I call my "Usual Suspects" question. I'm thinking of the last few minutes of that famous Kevin Spacey / all-star-cast movie, in which the Chazz Palminteri character finally understands what has really been going on. He then replays all the preceding events of the movie in an entirely different light, seeing with the benefit of hindsight connections he had not recognized before.

You've raised, in your recent reports, the possibility that the Netanyahu government has actually been carrying out an elaborate high-stakes bluff. Eg, "How has Obama convinced the world that these sanctions [on Iran] are necessary? By pointing to Netanyahu and saying, 'If you don't cooperate with me on sanctions, this guy is going to blow up the Middle East.' Obama's good-cop routine is then aided immeasurably by the world's willingness to believe that Netanyahu is the bad cop."

If it was a bluff, it's one you've had a unique opportunity to see and assess. If they really were bluffing, presenting you with the evidence and data for your 2010 cover story would have been a very important step. As you think back, Chazz Palminteri style, on what you heard and saw in 2010, knowing what you now know -- about two years with no attack, and about the "bluff" hypothesis you've now raised -- is there anything that seems different to you in retrospect? Anything that now increases your suspicions that they were bluffing at the time? We report what we know in real time -- but every so often there is a chance to look back and see how it worked out. I would be fascinated to know how your notes and instincts from 2010 look to you, as you review them in light of developments since then.

Thanks, Jim
____

Here is his reply:

Dear Jim,

Thank you for doing this. I'm glad you're interested in understanding the development of my reporting over the past couple of years. First, a correction: You write: "During a trip to Israel, you reported for Bloomberg that maybe Netanyahu had been bluffing all along." First, in that column, I wrote that I still suspected Netanyahu wasn't, in fact, bluffing, but then I explained why it was a plausible scenario. I promise never to think out loud in that way again -- it seems to offend Andrew Sullivan when I do. Also, I wrote that column before I went to Israel, not when I was in Israel. I went to Israel to update my reporting in part because I wanted to test out this notion. After a week in Israel, I came to the conclusion that there is nothing much to the idea that Netanyahu is bluffing, and this is what I wrote in my column this week.

In any case, I've always believed that the Israeli leadership is sincere about contemplating a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. This is why I wrote that cover story in 2010. As you know, I wrote in that story that if current conditions at the time of writing pertained, there was a better than 50 percent chance that Israel would strike by the fall of 2011.

After the story appeared, I spoke, as I often do, with figures in the American national security establishment, who told me -- not to a person, certainly -- that they thought Israel was serious about its intentions, but they were unsure of the timeline I suggested. Then, about six to nine months after the story appeared, I began hearing from American officials that they believed Israel was ramping-up its plans, and accelerating its timeline. Of course, by late 2011, and certainly early 2012, the Obama Administration was seized by the fear that Israel would strike Iran sometime this spring. Leon Panetta, of course, said that he believed an Israeli attack would come by June of this year. One thing people misunderstand about my reporting is that they think I'm making my judgments based only on what Israeli officials tell me. On the contrary, I test everything I hear in Israel with American officials, and non-governmental experts, and I ask them to judge the sincerity of Israeli intentions. Panetta's answer -- first reported by David Ignatius -- is one of the main reasons I also judge the Israelis to be sincere.

You ask if my interpretation of the facts have changed over the past two years. Actually, no, not that much. I think the crisis has intensified, but I think we're on a kind-of straight line here. Sometimes I try to second-guess myself, as I did with the column last week, but obviously there's a danger in doing that because ideologically driven readers expect consistency. I'll probably still do it, however.

One thing that has changed for me is that I more firmly believe now that an Israeli strike, especially this year, would be a mistake. I've written that repeatedly, of course. I understand Israeli motivations, and I take the fear of an Iran with nuclear weapons seriously. But let me put it this way: I didn't disagree with very much at all of what President Obama told me when I interviewed him on February 29th. The White House position on this seems like a sound one.

You've packed a lot of questions into one question, so I'm sure I've missed something, so maybe we can revisit in later questions, but to answer your Chazz Palminteri question, I don't think I've been bluffed, and I don't the U.S. government has been bluffed. Certainly, no one in the Administration or the Pentagon is acting as if Israel is bluffing.
___

More to come.

For the record, Media Bistro has run a Q-and-A with me on "tricks of the trade," including what to do if an interview is going nowhere. Results are here.

Also, I was part of a panel about the presidency on the Charlie Rose show this evening (with Robert Caro, Jon Meacham, Michael Beschloss, and Doris Kearns Goodwin). Will put up a link when available. (Update: the show is here.) Last week the Atlantic's editor James Bennet and I were on Morning Joe, here. And when I can find a link to yesterday's Fareed Zakaria GPS panel about China, I will put that up too. (Audio is available.) Here endeth the in-house news.

Here's one good reason to Subscribe!™: it keeps us in business. Another: for our current issue, which really is good*, many subscribers got their in-the-mail issues a few days before the magazine went online or appeared on newsstands. As a rule it's nicer to read long articles on a page than on a computer screen. And, the clinching argument, in this month's physical magazine (or iPad subscriber version) you get to see the unusual photo below, on page 67.

It was taken a year ago, at the White House, and it shows President Obama next to President Hu Jintao of China. I invite your attention to the side of President Obama's neck.


* If you don't want to dig into one of the long articles or essays in this issue, by all means start with Tim Heffernan's "Iron Giant," a wonderful brief evocation of one of the biggest machines in the world.

Much of this past fall I was interviewing political figures to get their judgments on what-we-know, and how-we-know it, about President Obama's successes and failures in office so far.

The results are now online here (but of course it's always best read on paper!) plus a short video q-and-a with Corby Kummer, who was my editor on this piece as he has been for nearly all other Atlantic articles I've done since the early Reagan years.

Will have more to say about the background of this article, implications, cutting-room-floor info (yes, even with a 12,000-word piece, there's a lot left out!), and so on in the days ahead.
__
Also, for the record, the Reddit AMA session I did yesterday was interesting, at least to me, and the results are here.

Frequently as I exhort readers to "Subscribe!" to our print edition, that being the center of our evolving print/online/"live" business and the heart of our journalism, I really should be talking up print articles even more than I do. The latest Jan-Feb issue is an illustration. Adam Davidson's cover story, on the realities of what it would take to re-create a "middle class" society, has been cited by half the op-ed writers in the world and could have been the background briefing to the President's State of the Union address last week. (Here is the background "enhanced" briefing the White House actually put out, but it dovetails with the article.) Cullen Murphy, for 20 years an editor here, explains how the original Inquisition prefigures the current one. Lane Wallace talks about the perils and appeal of air races; Megan McArdle, about the perils and appeal of business school; Gregg Easterbrook, about the perils and appeal of the sun; and on through a long list of strong stories (on REM, Joan Didion, Mike Ditka, etc). Seriously: read the series of short "Dispatches" that start the issue, at one sitting, and you'll be impressed and will go on to the rest.

Now, about a feature article that deserves more attention than it seems to have received so far: Robert Kaplan's profile of John Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago. Kaplan devotes half of his article to the subject for which Mearsheimer has been best known and most controversial in the past five years: his book, with Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. If for some reason you were asleep recently, the controversy was because, as Kaplan puts it, the book "alleges that groups supportive of Israel have pivotally undermined American foreign-policy interests, especially in the run-up to the Iraq War." Kaplan engages the merits of the Mearsheimer-Walt argument more deeply, and in a fairer and calmer frame of mind, than most other treatments of the book. He doesn't agree with all of it, but he comes down thus:

[Mearsheimer and Walt argue that] the reason the Israelis are not more cooperative is that in the final analysis, they don't have to be--which, in turn, is because of the pro-Israel lobby.... I see nothing wrong or illegitimate about this core argument. And no amount of nitpicking by their critics of The Israel Lobby's 100 pages of endnotes can detract from it. I say this as someone who is a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces and who supported the Iraq War (a position I have come to deeply regret).

The other half of the article explores the Mearsheimer world view that, in Kaplan's view, has been unfairly slighted because of the "Israel lobby" furore. That is his doctrine of "offensive realism," especially as it indicates that the U.S. should be girding for an inevitable showdown with a rising, ambitious, and expansionist China. The article begins with these words, a quote from one of Mearsheimer's classroom lectures:

"I--China--want to be the Godzilla of Asia, because that's the only way for me--China--to survive! I don't want the Japanese violating my sovereignty the way they did in the 20th century. I can't trust the United States, since states can never be certain about other states' intentions. And as good realists, we--the Chinese--want to dominate Asia the way the Americans have dominated the Western Hemisphere."

Kaplan makes clear that Mearsheimer is overstating for effect. But he also explains why Mearsheimer believes a strategic/military confrontation between the US and China truly is inevitable -- and why he, Kaplan, mainly shares this view. I mainly disagree with both of them, and the basis of our disagreement touches on another important theme of the article.

In an article of my own in next month's issue, and in my forthcoming book, I argue that China has too many things going on, and going wrong, within its own borders to have the time, energy, skill, or ambition for much of an "expansionist" world effort. From the outside, it looks like an unstoppable juggernaut. From inside, especially from the perspective of those trying to run it, it looks like a rambling wreck that narrowly avoids one disaster after another. The thrust of Mearsheimer's argument is that such internal complications simply don't matter: the sheer increase in China's power will bring disruption with it. I am saying: if you knew more about China, you would be less worried, especially about military confrontations. He is saying: "knowing" about China is a distraction. What matters are the implacable forces.

Naturally, I think this view is wrong, or at least too mechanistic; and that while we need to think constantly and seriously about China, a "showdown" would be a result of miscalculation or recklessness on either side, rather than of unstoppable tectonic pressures. On the other hand, I completely endorse Mearsheimer's (and Kaplan's) view that we should have been paying more attention to China, and been less bogged down in the Middle East, through the past decade. But his case is certainly worth considering, and Bob Kaplan lays it out very well. I expect that we'll also hear from Jeffrey Goldberg soon about the other part of the article, about the Mearsheimer-Walt book.

I am busy juggling quaintly "non-online" deadlines and obligations -- long and overdue magazine article, edits for a book. Here is a list of topics that many people have (graciously) written about, at least one of which I'll try to address this evening and then move down the list:

1) Latest allegation of gross pilot error in the Air France 447 crash. Much more (informed) commentary has arrived than I have posted or shared, including some interesting dispatches from Airbus and Boeing pilots, and I'll circulate as much and as soon as I can.

1A) Latest TSA scanner reasons-for-despair.

2) Latest Alec Baldwin eruption and what it means on the "any device with an on-off switch must be switched OFF" rule.

3) The granddaddy of all "false equivalence" stories, and what the past few years' abuse of the filibuster will mean when the Republicans are back in control of the Senate.

4) The latest issue of the Atlantic, now on newsstands (remember those?) which features writers from Walt Whitman to Barack Obama and is one of the best in our 150+ years.

5) More on the latest atmospheric hell -- not just in China but for us all.

6) Great beer!

7) Great software.

8) How to create a good password.

9) More on the evils of leaf blowers.

And some other stuff. As a one-man operation I work out triage day-by-day. In some other life I would devise a system for delegating the re-posting of very interesting reader mail. For now, I leave this marker and return to my other chores.   

The new issue of the Atlantic (a subscription is the perfect gift!) is making its debut, and its cover story is again very much worth reading. It is by Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder, and it gets into alarming and previously unpublished detail about the complex perfidy of America's dealings with its crucial anti-terrorist "ally," the barely governed, nuclear-armed Pakistan.

For more, please go to the story itself, or this summary-preview from Goldberg today.