James Fallows

I was around guns much of my life. Grew up in the Congo, hunting.  Marine Corps recon, professional training and use. CIA paramilitary, more training and use. Three wars: upcountry in Vietnam I had a bunker full of exotic weapons that had been collected over a ten-year period but were not on the inventory and could not be taken home by our military when they left -- we'd take them out and fire them every week; we carried guns everywhere we went, again upcountry just a few miles from the enemy's battalions; then in the Angola War I hired and organized three bands of professional mercenaries, killers by definition. 

In the consulate in the Katanga I had an impressive collection, bought out the weapons of the retiring elephant hunter. And I hunted. And at the family ranch in South Texas I hunted deer and javelinas.  

Then I lost all interest in hunting. I killed a beautiful animal and looked at the carcass thinking how much more beautiful it had been alive. I shot a bird and had the same feeling. Both dead so I could have the dubious Freudian pleasure of pulling a trigger and killing them.

The Katanga had been flush beautiful wildlife; it had been alive, the hills crawling with beautiful animals.  Then came independence and arms turned over to the new armies.  And our war in the Katanga (JFK/CIA), thousands of modern semiautomatic and automatic weapons left in the hands of our disbanded army, and the animals were broadly exterminated, the rolling plains were lifeless--we could drive all day and not see an animal.

In Burundi, where I served, President Micombero got himself a helicopter. Began flying around the shores of Lake Tanganyika machine-gunning hippopotamuses in the water.

 Recalling as a boy in the Congo driving with my father in a truck across the plains area.  We came on a Belgian who had been hunting all day, had a camera, wanted my father to take a picture of him with his trophies. He stood with his gun and his foot on a pile of 26 heads of little gazelles he had killed. In later years we drove through the same plains, and never ever saw another antelope.

 Even here in Austin, we are retired across the street from a lovely quiet park on the river. I walk my dog. Talk to the squirrels - - they sit on limbs not far above my head. Then one morning I found my neighbor down in the park with his son and a 22, killing the squirrels to "teach his son how to hunt." I pleasantly explained to him that he could teach his son how to enjoy live animals, that the squirrels he had killed were gone, dead. (He won-- the park no longer has any squirrels.)

In school many students have been exposed to Daniel Keyes's book Flowers for Algernon. It came out in 1966, when the author was in his late 30s; it has sold millions of copies and remains in print; and Keyes himself is still active in his mid 80s.

Two years ago I was holed up for a few months in Beijing, finishing the writing of China Airborne. For a ten-week stretch I was fortunate to turn this space over to a series of guest bloggers, who appeared in squadrons of three or four each for week-long stints.

Relevant to the recent focus on paid and unpaid web contributions, my pitch to each of them was this: I have admired and been interested in the issues you explore and the ways you discuss them. I'm going on a several-month leave from the magazine and won't be running a blog during that time. I can't offer to pay you for what I'm about to suggest, but: if it would be fun or valuable to you to be part of what is shaping up as a stellar guest team, and to to present your views and sensibility to the audience of what was then the Atlantic's "Voices" section, I hope you'll consider this opportunity. 

Not everyone was interested, and one or two people who thought they could do it ended up not having the time. But an amazingly high-end group of people joined in. The full list, which I can hardly believe in retrospect, is here.

This is build-up to noting a landmark for one of those contributors. In those days he wrote as Tony Comstock. The name was a sarcastic homage to Anthony Comstock, the 19th-century postal inspector and anti-indecency crusader. This Tony Comstock made his living producing sexually explicit documentary films. In the last of his posts here, he said that he was getting ready for a change. As he put it then:

Faced with mounting evidence that my films were born of a time and circumstances that had passed, I resolved that Brett and Melanie: Boi Meets Girl would be the last film, and that it was time to move on to something else.

So what did I decide to do?

I decided to start a sustainable energy eco-tourism project in the community where I live. This project has a educational component for local school children which I hope we'll be able to provide at little or no cost. That's my attempt to skip as much of that "flinty middle stage" of life as possible and get on with the giving back part of my life while my heart still beats strong and true.

Now he writes and works under his real name, David Ryan; and this week he reached a milestone in the project announced two years ago. His Polynesian-inspired catamaran Mon Tiki,  whose building he chronicles here, passed an important Coast Guard safety-certification test despite several unconventional environmentally-friendly design approaches. You can read all the details here, and see the boat below. Congratulations to him and his family.

Two years ago, Mark Bernstein was part of the stellar guest-blogger team in this space, when I was holed up in China in a fever of book-writing. In his day job, Mark Bernstein is the head of Eastgate software and the creator of a program I use every day, Tinderbox.

He is in his own own fever of composition now, preparing a new version of Tinderbox. On his site he has a fascinating account of how he went about adding a particular feature to this new release. Here's the headline:



If you have any interest in software, I think you'll find this worth reading. It reminded me in many ways of the months I once spent on a Microsoft program-design team. But much more broadly it is part of the endlessly engrossing category of "how things work" in the world.

I won't give my full speech on that topic right now, but I will say that for me one of the big appeals of journalism is the opportunity and excuse to meet people in far-flung roles and ask: OK, can you tell me exactly, step by step by step, how you [decide on questions for the SAT / figure out how much weight you can take out of a car's design so it uses less gas / decide when software is "bug-free enough" to be released / create an airplane with a parachute / teach a computer to "understand" speech or automatically group related news articles / set up a factory that employs 250,000 people / decide what to put into a half-hour news broadcast, back when those existed / anything else.]

Almost any organized human activity is much more complicated and interesting than you would expect, once you examine it in its particularity. For instance: I have never taken mail delivery for granted after my earliest paying jobs as a parcel-post sorter and then letter carrier at the local Post Office. People scoff at the USPS, but it pulls off some amazing feats of volume management -- even as today's volume sadly goes down.

This brings me back to Mark Bernstein's chronicle. The next time you grumble at some aspect of the tech world -- "wow, this is ugly UI!" "why won't this damned program do what I want?" -- reflect on the long series of choices and trade-offs that go into even the simplest-seeming feature of program. As a reminder, here is where you can read more.

I've been watching lots of football this weekend -- yes, it's a violent and damaging sport maybe on its way out, but these games have been great -- and have been fascinated by a very arresting series of ads. Here's one sample, of which I encourage you to watch at least the first 10 or 15 seconds:



Two things immediately drew my attention to the ads. One is that until the end I couldn't figure out what company they were for. My first guess was IBM, and in fact they would work perfectly as an IBM campaign. Second was GE, or possibly Intel or Cisco. Maybe some insurance or financial firm? In fact they're for Verizon, as you've already seen on the labeling above.

The other surprise was that music. Distinctive, and instantly recognizable. With the very first bars it was clear that this had to be either Philip Glass, or someone the ad producers had hired to sound (within copyright limits) just like Philip Glass. As I listened a little more, I realized: Yes, this is the actual Philip Glass. And I know that because of the very powerful political and cultural connotations that go with this piece of music.

What Verizon is using, to illustrate an ad about a house burning down with people trapped inside, is Glass's "67 Cities." This was the music for the parts of Errol Morris's film The Fog of War in which Robert McNamara describes the U.S. firebombing campaign at the end of World War II that  incinerated between 50% and 90% of the population of 67 Japanese cities. If you don't happen to have Fog of War on hand, here's how the music was originally used:



It's great music, but ... wow! A company is using a very famous composer's relatively famous music about a firebombing campaign to illustrate a house burning down! This is either impressively brassy or amazingly oblivious.

Glass's music goes with some of the other ads in the series too, as you'll see below. Again, wow.

Fog of War came out ten years ago. I hope Verizon's explanation is: Yes, we assumed everyone would get the references, and would appreciate the extra, humane power of showing people being rescued from an inferno, rather than dying inside in the events that originally inspired the music. I hope their answer is not, "Fog of what??"   



 

From an appearance at Dell World in (manifestly) Texas:

There are other topics to catch up on, but by serendipity three similar-themed responses on the UCal Logo Wars arrived at practically the same moment.

What this logo made me think, immediately, is that U Cal is prepping for (or leaping into) a future where more of its students relate to it as a web site than a physical place.

I think this is indicative of where higher ed is going.  It doesn't surprise me that people whose memories of the university are based on all-nighters in the dorm, hanging out in the student union or tailgating at football game would find this unrepresentative of their feelings about their college experience.  I bet someone who is 12 year old right now will find this design (when they are investigating colleges 5 years from now) spot on.

[Re] the execrable new logo from my alma mater. I wanted to add something which I haven't seen articulated elsewhere, regarding what I see as the ideological implications of the logo -- or perhaps better, the mission vision that the logo speaks to. 

(I should add that I have no knowledge whatsoever about the conversations that went into the logo, or even about who was involved in the process. So this is pure speculation.)

My first thought when I saw the new logo was "UC: there's an app for that!" Which seemed like a joke, until I realized that there might be a subtle truth behind it. What I'd like to suggest is that the logo's dot-commish quality is no bug, but rather a very intentional feature.

Some context: Arguably biggest story among the technorati this fall has been the explosive rise of massively open online courses (MOOCs). The hype began when over 160,000 people worldwide took Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun's introductory Artificial Intelligence course in the Fall of 2011. The stunning popularity of the course spurred Thrun to start the company Udacity, which is working with a number of different elite universities to help them put their courses online so that they can be taken by people anywhere in the world. Since then, several other similar venture have started, notably Coursera and edX, each of which is looking to make star professors' courses at elite universities available to anyone.

There's been a vigorous debate going on concerning the implications for higher education of the MOOC phenomenon. While the entrepreneurs behind the MOOC companies have been telling a noble story about the democratization of higher education, people like Clay Shirky have been claiming it represents the first step in the "Napsterization" of higher ed. Clay's basic idea is that once MOOCs figure out a way to accredit the students who take their courses, they may rapidly displace the traditional four year college education -- the price tag for which can now run to quarter of a million dollars. All of this is taking place in the shadow of the "don't go to college, just be an entrepreneur" noise that has also been coming out of Silicon Valley over the last three years, spearheaded by venture capitalist Peter Theil, who has been telling kids to stake their single chance to go to college for the opportunity to enter the entrepreneurial game at eighteen.

Until recently, Berkeley had not been opening itself up to the MOOC phenomenon, but in July they announced they were signing on with edX. This takes place in the wake of what has been a very tough few years for Berkeley, as the state of California's budget woes have dramatically cut into taxpayer funding of public higher education. Tuition rates have risen dramatically, leading to lamentations that the famed multiversity -- with its mission to provide the highest quality education to talented youth regardless of background and thus prime the pump for the California economy -- was coming apart at the seams. Some have claimed that the University faced a choice between abandoning its mission to serve the California economy by providing the highest quality education, and its role as an engine of social mobility by providing access at a price anyone in the state could afford. That was always a false dichotomy, but insofar as it was a choice, the University has been pretty decisive: raising prices in order to preserve funding and thus quality, even if this has undermined the accessibility of the institution to the state's poor.

This is the context in which we need to see the new logo -- when Berkeley's logo declares "Cal: there's an app for that," it's a way to square the circle between maintaining the quality and reputation of the institution, and maintaining the democratic access to the institution. Berkeley's logo symbolizes the view that education, at least in its mass form, can be treated as an "app." 

If the dichotomy between quality and access was always a bit false, however, then this solution is equally disingenuous. Because the silliest thing about the MOOC phenomenon is the notion that it is a substitute for an elite education. Yes, MOOCs pose a mortal threat to lousy colleges: once the accreditation element of MOOCs gets solved, one will be able to make an excellent case that you can learn more from taking the online computer science course from the smartest profs in the world at Berkeley or Stanford, as opposed to taking the same classes from the dead wood at Whatsamatta U. 

At the same time, the MOOCs in my view present little threat to elite college education, because such an education is about so much more than just what one learns in class: elite social networks, signaling value to employers, intense intellectual engagement outside of class, participation in school clubs which are career launchpads (Hasty Pudding, Crimson, etc.), to say nothing of a great deal of coming-of-age fun. Whether those latter features can support the current price tag that most universities charge is another question -- anywhere outside the top 50 (or maybe top 20) universities, the answer is probably no. But for elite universities, MOOCs represent a way to increase their market share at the expense of the lower tier institutions. Indeed, depending on how the pricing and cost structures shake out, it may be the MOOC students (who will get a relatively low-value degree) end up sponsoring the on-campus students (who will continue to get an elite degree, not to mention a lot more fun).

Speaking personally, I'm not sure that's the mission that Berkeley should be engaged in. 

It's time to revive the idea I sent you a few months back during the Penn State scandals:

College and university image problems would immediately be solved if these "educational" institutions simply renamed themselves after the one brand identity their entire community already loves the most:  the name of their sports teams. 

Thus UC Berkeley (in the city where I live) could simply become Golden Bear University.  One inspiring version of the requisite ursine logo prominently portraying vivid claws already adorns many sweatshirts around town, so no major new design effort would be required.  Result: an instant image upgrade with no iconic connection to the failing statewide system.

This would have the great benefit of ending the common pretense that it's the academics that matter most on campus, when that's true only for the minority of students who actually show up to be educated.  In fact, this cohort and their alumni fellow-travelers actually function most effectively as support for the football and basketball teams and other mass-entertainment athletic efforts, helping to garner income and free publicity from widespread TV exposure.

Once implemented at Berkeley -- ever the trend-setter -- a wave of change could swiftly spread to the rest of the UC system, soon creating Trojan University instead of boring old UCLA, etc. [JF note: Ahem, I think we mean Bruin University, as opposed to Trojan University nee USC. But still] , and culminating perhaps with the best UC rebranding of all: Anteater University instead of UC Irvine.  

Elsewhere, what schools could resist the popular demands to rename in order to align their image with their actual priorities?  Who wouldn't rather attend Wolverine University than the U of Wisconsin [JF: Or 'U of Michigan,' but we take the point], say, or Nittany Lions U instead of Penn State?  Admittedly schools with more abstract team names would have some difficulty -- Crimson University doesn't really improve on Harvard -- but clever marketing departments everywhere would be inspired to take up the challenge.

I think that's it for a while.

You can try this at home, using various iterations of the University of California seal and logo.

I will work through this as systematically as I can. You can see many past Atlas Shrugged Guy entries here. For some reason, our "categories" function isn't working now, so some are missing, like this and this. But prowl around and you'll get the idea.

1) From the guy himself. I have had an ongoing exchange with our original correspondent -- the one who promised to close down his business, with its $500,000 annual payroll, if Obama won. Just after the election he wrote:

A litany of layoffs today. Entire industries slated for elimination. It is a brave new world you have created. Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven?

I was used as red meat to the wolves yet my predictions are manifesting right before your eyes.  None are so blind as those who refuse to see...

Then, after some criticism from readers:

I appreciate your posting my thoughts. I am not afraid to stand my position in matters I strongly believe in. It is rare I get a response. I am passionate in my beliefs and relish debate. To bad honest debate is so rare and I did resent a tad being more meat to the wolves than a honest dissenter.

And yesterday:

Perhaps the best analogy i have heard on voting for Obama is like chickens voting for Col. Sanders...

Not that I have anything against chickens...

And today:

It gets better evey day. Do me a favor and give me a heads up when  to pop my corks?

To bad though about Hostess , deep fried Twinkies and Dom are decent together. Sort of like a blend of Elvis and Voltaire? ...

I  confess, I like marshmallows and Rome presents a nice set of glowing embers in which to obtain the perfect brownness and crust.

If I was a Hollywood movie star or perhaps capable of a Manhattan apartment I might enjoy the view. Instead I get to see my life's work dissolve like sugar in a cup of hot water....

Fun stuff, huh?  Perhaps my extremist position of survival and self reliance can produce a repeat burn in effigy?

Cheers, it is a brave new world?

2) For a sampling from the other side, see the installment that begins after the jump.

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Getting us back to politics-and-sociology, and as a segue to more from and about the Atlas Shrugged Guy and his California quasi-sympathizer, here is a note from a reader in the northeast. Context is the general phenomenon of people seeing, and not seeing, selective versions of reality.

One of my three jobs is for a catering company.  It allows me to see various denizens of different bubbles in their most comfortable habitats.  Among the events I worked this year were ones for Romney and one for Obama.  Ironically, both were hosted by extremely wealthy donors at private homes not far from each other in Brookline, Massachusetts.

When you deal with them, the guests are pretty much the same.  But they are all in their own bubble.  Obama got a question as to why he had tried to deal with Republicans, Romney talked in part about how "they" don't get the US is an exceptional country, to the applause of the crowd.  (That is all I heard, I left the tent where he was speaking because it was insufferably insipid.)

The elite on both sides should talk to people who are completely outside their income brackets.  When I tell my liberal professional friends that most of the people I work with hate the Mass. Health law, they are shocked.  When I explain why, that they are happy taking their chances with clinics and emergency room, I get what I call the "Liberal Lecture."  "Someday they will get really sick, everyone should contribute, they will benefit...."  Nice argument to make if you get an employer-subsidized plan, not so persuasive if you don't and rely on seasonal and/or hourly wages.  And the right, well, please think about how the people who work for you get by.  The minimum wage matters in ways you cannot imagine to people who earn it.

I could add more stories about what I have listened to among the detached and opinionated, but that is enough for now.

I recognize that this could be read as a version of "false equivalence": everyone's biased, it all evens out, etc. Which would be at odds with dawning consciousness on the right that the Romney campaign and conservatism in general were disproportionately weakened/blinded/blind-sided by the reality-distortion field created by partisan right-wing media. But I think the reader is mainly talking about the blind spots created by class difference, which are real and, in different ways, transcend party. More on political perception and mis-perception ahead.

Here we go:

1. The "Atlas Shrugged Guy" made his first appearance in this item. In it, I quoted two self-identified small-business owners, one a tech-world person whom I actually knew, the other someone who wrote in over the transom, on what would happen if Barack Obama were re-elected.
2. Much back-and-forth ensued. See here and here, with related links. 
3. Then we had his stream-of-consciousness election-night posts as it became clear that his nightmare was coming true and Barack Obama would be returned to office.
4. I have received 16 metric tons of response on this, virtually all of it hostile to the original writer. (Here is one exception.) Additional points before we go to sample messages after the jump:
5. Is this a real person? Yes. I know his name, location, and that he has a business.
6. Is he "trolling" or sending a deliberate parody of right-wing talk points? No. I have sufficient reason to believe these are actual his actual views. I'll mention more at the very end.
7. Is he actually going to shut down his business? More on this later on too.
8. What's the point here? I offer this -- and some of the guy's very latest reaction -- to illustrate the phenomenon discussed in Conor Friedersdorf's item: Members of the right-wing info bubble seem genuinely caught by surprise that their views seem extreme, unreasonable, or deluded, or unreasonable when removed from their hothouse environment. That may be the most important cultural-political effect of the election two days after: the right wing's version of what is (unjustly) known as the "Pauline Kael problem" -- the astonishment that Barack Obama could actually have won, when everyone they know and talk to shares the view that he's an utter-failure, different-from-us, business-hating socialist.
9. How many am I using here? I got about 2,000 messages in this vein -- that's a very high response. I'll quote enough to illustrate a range of views. They are all AFTER THE JUMP, so stop now if you think this theme is overdone (as some correspondents did.) Otherwise, proceed at your own risk.

More »

My bias here is obvious enough that I barely need to disclose it. I'll just say that I hope you will read a new item up today, in our National Channel, on how this era's "having it all" debate is different from the one that raged a generation ago.

It's by Deborah Fallows, shown here, and it describes what she has learned from interactions like this one, compared with the discussions, tensions, and decisions she was part of when her own children were small.

"Our" children, of course; we're married, though I had nothing to do with this item. I do think it's very good, and I hope you will read it. She explains why there is nothing new, but also some significant things new, in today's debates.
___
Also this interesting part, based on the author's working life:

One of the things I love about my academic training in linguistics is that knowing about language often pops up as something useful or revealing. Here's what took me by surprise in this case as I strolled around our neighborhood:

Moms and babysitters and nannies, who used to push strollers in pairs and chat between themselves, now push strollers alone and talk into mid-air. Cell phone conversations are prevalent in the stroller-pushing set, and they change the nature of the language and linguistic interaction that babies hear and experience. Just listen to normal "parentese" and you hear slow talk, long drawn-out vowels, repetition, high pitch, simple grammar, and lots of inflection. Many of these elements help babies learn language.

For the past few weeks Frontline has been running a series of online discussions, based on "artifacts" it has uncovered from the pasts of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. You can read the first week's discussion here, the second here, and the now-ongoing third round here.

I highly endorse checking out the series as a whole and all of the twelve artifacts offered so far. At the moment I find myself particularly struck by the contrast between two letters, one from Young Barack Obama and one from Young Mitt Romney.

Obama's, which you see below and can read more about here, is hand-written and conveys his initial impressions of the communities in which he has begun his organizing work in Chicago. Romney's, shown below it and described here, is about his his initial impressions during his LDS mission work in France.

There were minor differences in the two men's situations. Obama was in his mid-20s, with both his Occidental and his Columbia years behind him. Romney was barely into his twenties, and had left for his mission service after only one year at Stanford.

But the gulf between their sensibilities is enormous -- and startling, even given all we know about each of them. Please click on each of the letters to read them through. I promise it's worthwhile.

First, Obama's:

Now, Romney's:

Judge for yourself, but here is what I typed out in real time as my part of the discussion. It is run as a series of roughly 120-word bursts:

Now, as for the artifacts, these are again absolutely fascinating.... Every difference in sensibility, self-image, concept of how the world works, layers of thought that we see in this campaign is contained in these documents.

I will say: these letters help explain what anti-Obama people mean when they say he is not 'American.' Romney has a straight-ahead, can-do, let's-fix-this attitude we associated with heartland America in its go-getter aspects. And Obama has all the doubt and shading, the fatalism about how much we know and what we can control, the wonder of range of motivations and interests, that we think of as ... well, "worldly," in a way that distinguishes it from 'Oklahoma!' style upbeat mid-Americanism.

When I thought about what other public figures might write this way, I started with Adlai Stevenson -- with differences of his more blueblood upbringing. But of course he was famously disastrous as a national politician. To add one more item to the mysteries of Obama: that as inward-looking a figure as he has been as successful as he has been in public projection is ... interesting.

As I say in that online discussion, I am now in the "doors are closing" mode of a flight. I just want to pass this along as a tip worth your attention. Also sheds light on the way each of these men has performed throughout the campaign, including two days ago at the debate. I'll rejoin the online discussion in a couple of hours, from San Francisco.

I have known, respected, and come very much to like Jim Webb over the course of more than 30 years. We originally met because of deep disagreements about the Vietnam War. He went to Annapolis, served with distinction and bravery as Marine officer, was badly wounded, and then in his novels, movies, essays, and public-affairs work championed the memories and the futures of the people he had served with. I was in college while he was in combat, opposed the war, and deliberately avoided being drafted to serve in it.

Over the years we have come to share similar views about many of America's biggest challenges, from the pernicious new culture of permanent undeclared war to the increasing polarization of the country on many fronts but especially including economic class. I was living in China six years ago when Webb made his surprising but welcome decision to challenge George Allen for the U.S. Senate seat from Virginia. I wrote then that

From a partisan perspective, Webb (who served in Ronald Reagan's administration) is just the kind of candidate the Democrats need: a culturally-conservative populist whose personal and policy toughness no one can possibly doubt. More broadly I think he is the kind of politician the country needs more of: someone getting into politics because he feels so strongly about the issues of the day.

Via Andrew Sullivan, I have just seen (while still out of the country) the video of Webb at a Democratic rally in Virginia talking about the idea that 47% of Americans are "takers." It is no secret that Webb has disagreed frequently with the Obama administration and in many ways is an awkward cultural fit with today's Democratic party. But in speaking for the president and the party, in a crucial swing state, Webb displays the unconcealed moral indignation that, in a good way, has distinguished him through his political and literary career.
 


Passages like the one below might look biting enough on the screen, but you should listen to the way Webb delivers them. This part begins two minutes in and is worth hearing in Webb's own voice:

Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They've lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans' benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: "All gave some, some gave all." This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.
 
And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party's nomination to be commander-in-chief.

This is a theme straight out of Webb's heart and brain and soul. I remember hearing almost exactly the same views from him when we first met in the late 1970s. We sometimes think about campaigns as if they're all about positioning and micro-strategy and all the rest. But every now and then we see the genuine passions and principles that are at stake.

To my no doubt biased mind -- biased as a friend of Webb's, biased as someone who likes very little of what the current GOP represents -- the passage of Webb's is as powerful a response to the "47 percent" video as this also extremely powerful Obama ad.
 


Again, election campaigns are ludicrous spectacles but occasionally more than that.

Have I mentioned recently that Samuel Popkin's book The Candidate is a very useful guide as the presidential debates draw near and as the campaign enters its final stage? Yes I have, and yes it is. And no, although we're friends, he hasn't actually been paying me royalties. Yet.

I bring it up now because the book touches on the underpublicized reality of presidential politics I described recently in response to Ann Romney's "this is hard" remark. The reality is that in national politics everyone, all the time, is tired and running on fumes. Popkin gives us this scene of candidate Jimmy Carter, who had just turned 52 years old (a year older than Barack Obama is now), in October 1976, a few days before his election victory over Gerald Ford:

"Carter was so exhausted from nonstop campaigning that he read memos and speech drafts lying on his side, with the pages on the floor so he could read them without moving."*

Four years later, Popkin was chosen to play the surrogate Ronald Reagan in Carter's preparations for the 1980 presidential debate. He reminded me recently in an email that he was struck

how people do not ever chit chat when going to Oval Office. When POTUS looks up you say the subject and he either answers or says when to return. When done he looks down and you leave. No wasted emotional energy.

Another reader writes in to say there is an angle of the presidential fatigue story that I missed. I had said that one of Michael Lewis's quotes from Barack Obama, in which Obama said he had to make time for exercise if he hoped to survive, and that he always wore either a gray or a blue suit so as to spare himself needless decision making, rang completely true to me. This reader, a woman who is a lawyer, says:

Clearly true on the incredible physical demands of running for President and serving if elected.  I also remember a great guys-on-the-bus story about Hilary Clinton from the 2008 campaign attesting to her cast-iron constitution.  She was giving a massively fact-filled, one-on-one interview in the campaign plane as it approached a landing, and just kept right on talking, standing up, no friggin' seatbelt for her, as she had been for the previous 20 hours or something.  The reporter was in awe. 

On that note, as to the Obama quote -- Obama, and probably Lewis, pretty clearly don't remember what Hilary said during the 2007-08 nomination race, when he [Obama] made similar remarks about having to exercise.  She said: he has time to exercise, because he doesn't have to spend two hours, every single day, getting his make-up and hair done. 

Backwards and in high heels, indeed.   A female candidate -- even one who would clearly personally prefer to go sans make-up -- will not be accepted without super-careful, professional appearance grooming.  Same with the clothes.  Hilary must dream of just being able to roll into a blue or gray suit.  Instead, she's obliged to have a constantly-rotating wardrobe, with accessories, purely because she's a woman.  In addition, it took her a long time to find a sort of uniform -- those pantsuits -- that would conceal her figure appropriately but also look "fashionable," which no man has to do.  She learned very early, the hard way, that bucking these conventions would get her nowhere-- the no make-up, hippie-glasses, frumpy Wellesley head-of-class look got her called a lesbian, communist, you name it.

Men don't understand that a huge reason professional women rallied to Hilary is that WE get it, and, I really believe, Obama does not.  He truly does not comprehend how much harder it is for a woman in so many ways, let alone just on this one physical issue.  If he did, he wouldn't have approved the quote about exercise and wardrobe.  (All Lewis article quotes were approved.) 

Of course it rings true to you.  Rings true to me, also, but very differently.  I see it as callous, unless he went on to say that's one reason he has it easier than any woman facing similar challenges in her job.  I mean, heck, didn't he see Michelle struggle with this when she was working?  Is he so selfish he missed that?  It may seem trivial, but anything which takes even 30 extra minutes out of every day adds up to a major disadvantage. 

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* Forgive me for quoting the very next sentence in Popkin's book:

"The speechwriters were so close to the breaking point that James Fallows said sardonically that the real threat for their Secret Service detail was not assassins but the possibility a crazed speechwriter would throw Carter out a window."

For anyone who might not yet have seen this: Mike Shannon and Will Feltus, at the Atlantic Media's Hotline site, have provided a psycho-graphic/beer-o-graphic post matching beer preference to political outlook and behavior. Read their post for elaboration, and this related story, but this is the crucial graph:


My no-contest clear favorite among all the beers listed turns out to be the reddest of red-state, high-turnout-Republican preference. And the most purely Democratic beer is one I avoid -- although to be fair, I would take it over most of the other weak-tea alternatives displayed here. And, not to be too catty or snooty about it, but how exactly does anyone tell most of these other beers apart?

To me it is interesting (a) that the winning red-state beer has almost nothing in common with the other beers in its same high-turnout Republican-leaning quadrant, and (b) that another beer from the reportedly right-leaning Sam Adams family was the one chosen by Henry Louis Gates at the famous White House beer summit back in 2009. You do have to wonder how this chart would look if it included any craft or micro-brew products other than Sam Adams, the biggest "micro" brewer of them all. Sierra Nevada? New Belgium? Lagunitas? Flying Dog, and Heavy Seas? Victory or Boulevard or Dogfish Head or Summit? Without going down the long list, it is interesting to speculate on the correlations.

But instead of quibbling over methodology, I will say thank you to the creators of this chart (and to our friends at Hotline) and stick to the "I encompass multitudes" interpretation of the results. Democratic in economic outlook, Republican in beer preference, all-American in loyalties, I take this as new evidence that we can indeed all get along.

It's clear now that Mitt Romney was being funny when he made his crack about rolling down an airplane's windows to let some fresh air in. But in response to that episode, plus my mention that Romney is said to be an uneasy flyer, a reader highlights what I consider the most underappreciated reality of political life. That is simply how exhausting it is, and how important sheer physical stamina turns out to be in having a successful political career.

I was in my mid-20s when I worked and traveled in Jimmy Carter's campaign, and I remember joking bitterly that I felt like I was getting a year older, in a bad way, with every passing day. That was because of the endless sequence of midnight hotel check-ins, wee-hours meetings and deadlines, 5:15am musters for the next stop, and bad food and motorcade bus rides in between. This note, from a reader who is a professor at one of the U.S. military's war colleges, goes on to explain the point:

Part of the job of President is to spend a LOT of time on aircraft, both airplanes and helicopters.  There's no way to avoid doing so, and the rigors of the job mean that you need to able to use the time productively for sleep and getting work done.  You often talk to the press while onboard or immediately after landing.  And you need to look, well, "Presidential" the moment you walk off an aircraft, often to immediately engage in a highly visible public event.

Clearly flying is not such big issue that it significantly impairs Romney, but if flying knocks you down even a little, or just gives you an unhappy day, that's not a small thing for a U.S. President.

This highlights how important the basic physiological demands of the job are.  I'm a small cog in the national security machine, and as a middle-aged cog I've come to peace with it being very unlikely I'll move up from cog to prime mover.  I just couldn't handle it physically.

I need 6 hours of sleep or I get ill pretty quickly; my sleep is easily interrupted by noise, motion, or stress; several weeks a year I'm sneezing, dripping, and hoarse from allergies; my immune system and my gut are only average at fighting off challenges; etc.   In short I'm pretty normal, but a "normal" person can't be on -- looking, sounding, thinking, feeling great -- almost every day, busy 16 hours a day, travelling frequently, meeting vast numbers of strangers, not necessarily having much control over meals and bathroom breaks, all while making stressful decisions, without just falling apart. 

About the best argument I see for the crazy long campaigns we have is to see if the candidate's body is up to the job.

I hadn't thought about it that way, but having been prompted to think about it, I agree. To be clear: this is not a partisan but a human observation. It is amazing that the four people left on the national stage -- Romney, Obama, Ryan, Biden -- bear up as well as they do. Normal people could not stand the strain.

UPDATE: A reader sends in this paragraph from Michael Lewis's profile of Barack Obama in Vanity Fair. No joke, I was thinking of exactly this passage when posting the original item, but at that moment couldn't find it. What Lewis quotes Obama as saying rings absolutely true to me:

This time he covered a lot more ground and was willing to talk about the mundane details of presidential existence. "You have to exercise," he said, for instance. "Or at some point you'll just break down." You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. "You'll see I wear only gray or blue suits," he said. "I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make." He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one's ability to make further decisions. It's why shopping is so exhausting. "You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia."

I still haven't seen Red Tails, and the head-to-head conflict this evening is not just the latest GOP slugfest in Florida but also (if you're in DC) a live book event at Politics & Prose with my friend and the Atlantic's longtime stalwart Cullen Murphy, on his wonderful new book God's Jury. But there's always tomorrow.

For now, some reactions from aviators who have seen the film. First from long-time flyer and aviation-writer Stephan Wilkinson:

As a pilot since 1967, former executive editor of Flying, and a member of and youth mentor for the Tuskegee Airmen local chapter (Newburgh, NY), I'm delighted to read your encouragement of people to go see the film. 

I frequent a number of aviation and warbird forums in my current work as an aviation-history freelancer, and it's dismaying to read the many comments from anoraks condemning the film for its "historical inaccuracy," by which they mean wrong-era insignia or the use of CGI airplanes.  Assumedly, they'd have preferred that Lucas lease dozens of P-51s and B-17s for aerial filming, probably killing several pilots in the process, and none of them seem to understand that the film is for an audience of teenage boys--particularly African-American boys--and not 60-year-old rivet-counters.

And from a former Blue Angels commander:

Back in 1997-1998 I had the unique privilege to be the commanding officer and flight leader of the Blue Angels.  On MLK day I watched a trailer regarding "Red Tails" and it drew me back to a memorable experience from those days.......

We were in Winter Training evaluating who we should invite for media rides in our 2-seat FA-18B to gain national media exposure for USN and USMC.  We reviewed a letter from an airline pilot nominating his father, a Tuskegee Airman, for a media flight to highlight the 50th anniversary of the Tuskegee Airmen.  As he was in his 70's we were easily inclined to file it under "nice idea, but unable" except that was the timeframe when John Glenn was preparing to fly in the space shuttle, also in his 70's.  I recommended we do two things -- 1) ask the national TA HQ who they would like us to fly to represent them and 2) evaluate the risks of flying that person.  TA HQ concurred with the son's nomination and a health screen indicated no undue risk if maneuvers were limited within reason/comfort.

The gentleman came to El Centro and had a wonderful flight in the #7-jet.  Afterward he returned to the BOQ to change into TA presentation clothes (maroon blazer with TA crest, gray slacks, tie) and we assembled all 125 members of the squadron to hear him tell his story of overcoming significant discrimination and racism in order to serve his country in aerial combat in Europe.  He didn't dwell on the racism part, but he didn't sugarcoat it either. The big takeaway was hearing from him the same values we held dear: Honor, Courage, Commitment.  And 50 years later he and his TA brothers are still serving, speaking in public, visiting schools and youth groups to inspire young people to make a difference.  Wow.

About the same time, we held quarters the workday before MLK weekend.  I started the meeting by setting the stage for most too young to remember the 60's by highlighting the context of those times and the Civil Rights movement.  A couple days before I had asked six members of the squadron to read portions of MLK's "I have a dream speech" and assigned them sections to prepare and practice.   It was powerful that day to hear them take turns read his memorable words loud and clear as we all reflected on those challenging days.

After a pause to let what we just heard sink in, I ended the meeting by simply saying, "The Blue Angels only have two colors -- blue and gold."

Here's hoping George Lucas makes that trilogy.

One more:

I saw it Saturday night for my birthday in Atlanta. It was a full-house. It's not 'Saving Private Ryan', but I enjoyed it enormously, as did my wife and my best friend, whose African-American father fought in WW2 on the ground in the Pacific Theatre (New Guinea), and judging by the raucous applaud at the end, the overwhelmingly African-American crowd in attendance. See it, enjoy it!
 
The father of one of my High School friends, was a B-24 pilot in WW2. He flew out of Libya and later Italy. He participated in the Ploesti raids. I imagine that at some point his bomber group was escorted by the 'Red Tails'. I'd like to think that, and I regret that I never asked him if it was so.

I'll be there soon.