James Fallows

(Updated, below.) A week ago I voted absentee in Washington, just before getting on the plane for Beijing. I had an "I voted!" sticker on my sweater when I stepped into a cab downtown. The driver did a double-take when he saw it, so I explained and asked him if he was planning to vote on the normal election day. He appeared to be in his 70s, a black man who said he'd been born in Washington and never lived anywhere else. He said he probably would vote, and was leaning Democratic. "But I'm kind of undecided between Mrs. Hillary and this new guy -- what do they call him, 'Bama?" As in someone from Selma or Mobile. On balance, he said, he would probably go Clinton. "You can say what you want, but you know that he is going to be back here running things," referring to Mrs. Clinton's husband. "Those times were good!" Ah, the pageant of democracy. Get out and vote! (I write this from a country where people aren't given the opportunity. Also: having gone this many decades in journalism without using a "the taxi driver told me" chestnut -- at least that I can remember -- I figure I can get by with one, on an election-day theme.) Update: Reader Edward Goldstick points out that if I really wanted to get a double-take from the next taxi driver or passers-by in general, I should have kept the "I voted" sticker on and worn it around Beijing.

In response to this account of a Seattle-area caucus in which the vaunted Obama "organization" turned out to be hordes of enthusiasts showing up on their own, a large amount of email containing other first-hand reports from caucuses in Nebraska, Maine, and Washington state -- all won by Obama of course. Accounts fall 75:25 into these categories: 75%: It was exactly the same in the caucus I saw in Maine/Nebraska/Washington! (Spontaneous huge crowds for Obama; small and disspirited groups of Hillary Clinton supporters; outpouring rather than "organization.") 25%: It wasn't that way at all in the caucus I saw! (Light turnout, narrow margin for Obama, and anyway caucuses are idiotic ways to make these decisions.) Accounts from Washington state emphasize the oddity of the Democrats having both a caucus day and a "normal" primary election, but counting only the caucuses for choosing delegates. I agree that caucuses are basically an idiotic practice, given that the nominee finally has to run in a "normal" election ("normal," except for the out-of-date wackiness of the Electoral College). In any case, I pass this along just for the record.

Noise you are not yourself hearing, like pain you are not feeling or cold you are not shivering through, is hard to take seriously. So unless you yourself are sitting right now in Beijing, Shanghai, or some similar venue, I expect your eye to skid past the assertion that I will have heard hundreds of thousands of loud explosions before this night is through. (Math below.) But my God! This Fifth Night of China's "Spring Festival," when the God of Wealth is welcomed in -- with explosions!! -- for the year ahead, is one of those moments when the noise is so relentless and inescapable that you can barely think of anything else. The last such time that comes to mind for me: being on the deck of an aircraft carrier, on a reporting trip years ago, with the jets screamingly preparing for takeoff and everyone with a set of protective headsets except for the visitor, me. Right now, in my Beijing apartment, my noise-canceling headset, over a normal set of foam ear plugs, has never seemed so useful. A year ago, in Shanghai, my wife and I were far enough away from the center of Fifth Night detonations to be able to think: how folkloric! This year, with strings of firecrackers being set off, continuously, just across the street from our building, and fireworks being sent up from the building's driveway and exploding at eye level outside our (21st floor) window, we're reduced to telling ourselves: at some point, this night will end. In the meantime, where are more of those earplugs? (Math: a string of 1000 firecrackers takes about 20 seconds to detonate -- and we've seen such strings fired off nonstop today. That's 50 per second. Let's generously assume that through the course of an hour the average rate is much lower, say 10 per second. That would be 600 per minute, 36,000 per hour, more than 100,000 every three hours. Or even if it's half that much -- it's a lot. And the night is young.)

A reader who lives in Washington state and strongly supports Obama sends this report about the caucus activity two days ago, which of course led to a landslide Obama win.

As Clinton loses caucus states, she keeps saying they favor Obama, and so does the press. The press in particular says that the caucuses reward greater organization. Whether or not that is so, and whether or not Obama is better organized than Clinton, the fact is that NEITHER candidate was that well organized for the WA caucuses (see my note below), and I suspect Obama was not for Maine.

The dispatch goes on to say that the point is not at all to belittle Obama's organizers. Rather, it's this: that at least in Washington, the contest appeared to have moved beyond the strict get-out-the-vote, nuts-and-bolts marshaling of resources, attrition-style warfare and onto some different level. (I have removed a few personally identifying details from the note):

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I believe that the Atlantic's March 2008 issue is already in subscribers' hands. The link on our main web site will be available in a little while. (Another illustration of the "Better than Free" principle laid out by Kevin Kelly!) In the new issue I have an article about the "Great Firewall of China" -- the government's means of regulating the internet, or trying to. When that article comes out, you'll see why I was so interested in this recent AFP/Yahoo news story, about the government's deliberations over what to do with the GFW when Beijing is crawling with foreigners during the Olympic games. Basically: I have some inside details that complement what the Olympic organizers are now saying in public. Stay tuned. (Thanks to Daniel Lippman for tip.)

Six months from this morning, the first Olympic competitions will start in Beijing. Opening ceremonies: 8/8/08 at 8:08pm. The next day, August 9, let the games begin! At 9am this morning, February 9, with the city practically shut down for Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year), and with the atmosphere cleaned out by an arctic blast from Siberia or somewhere, it looks pretty nice outside! (For past comparisons, including the same out-the-window view on other days, go here.) Because of the glare, it's slightly hard to see in this picture, but roads that are ordinarily jammed have virtually no cars: An omen that this new Year of the Rat will bring clearer skies, if not fewer cars? And an environmentally-successful Olympic games? Let's hope.

Yesterday the New America Foundation announced that Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, would become the new chairman of its board. He replaces the person who has been in that job in the nine-plus years since New America was founded, ie me. In 1998, during a brief spell when I was not working for the Atlantic, I heard from a group of people who had been cooking up plans for a new, non-partisan, non-crony-ridden think tank that could help young journalists and policy people get started in their careers. These were Ted Halstead, Walter Russell Mead, Sherle Schwenninger, and Michael Lind -- people all known by that point for their writing and editing achievements who were hoping to create a new institution. Their appeal to join this effort was persuasive. Over the next year, Halstead (who became New America's president, and who by that time had cowritten a cover story for the Atlantic) and I spent a lot of time raising money to get the institution started -- I mean, mainly he did. Mead (who has an article in the Atlantic's upcoming issue) has been on New America's board since that time; Schwenninger and Lind (lots of good articles too!) have been important figures in its operation. If we were honest all of us would have to admit we are amazed at the scale, importance, and standard New America has attained. Last fall, Ted Halstead, still in his 30s, stepped down as president after nine years of non-stop effort, to be succeeded by the highly accomplished Steve Coll. In a complementary move toward new blood, Eric Schmidt has agreed to become the new chairman of the board. Given the gazillion-dollar enterprise that Schmidt oversees at Google, versus the tiny, ramshackle enterprise of my own writing life that I "manage," this is a preposterously out-of-scale transition. But it is evidence of Schmidt's public-mindedness that he would take it on. (Steve Clemons, whom I met while living in Japan twenty years ago and who is now a New America comrade, has a separated-at-birth hypothesis about the Coll-Schmidt working relationship.) Congratulations to all. Not being by nature an organization guy, I'm actually very proud of what this organization has become -- and has ahead of it.

In my kind of journalism, I don't think I have any business "endorsing" candidates. I have strong and unconcealed views about certain issues -- that it was a gigantic and foreseeable mistake to have invaded Iraq (let alone to have done it so badly), that it would be just about as wrong to attack Iran, that we need to be more rather than less open to immigrant talent, that the economic growth of the last decade has been dangerously and shamelessly unbalanced, that we don't need to be terrified of China but that we have to take it seriously, etc. While certain preferences for parties and candidates naturally flow from those views, actual "endorsement" is for organizations or public figures who feel their backing might sway others. Here instead is an account of what I would be thinking if I were voting in the Democratic primary in my original home state of California tomorrow: - On domestic and economic and environmental policy, it’s a wash. The Clinton and Obama positions are similar to each other and different from any Republican's. Some people think there is a huge difference in their health-care proposals. Having seen administrations come and go, I am absolutely certain that the difference between Clinton's and Obama's stated objectives in 2008 matters much, much less than what either of them will be able to get through the Congress in 2009 and afterward. Thus: an important distinction in domestic policy is which candidate will bring in a larger bloc in Congress to work with. - On foreign policy, Clinton and Obama actually do differ, and I agree with him more than with her. He (like Al Gore) was against invading Iraq before it happened; she was for it. He (like Jim Webb) opposed the infamous Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which at the time was undeniably an attempt to legitimize military action against Iran; she voted for it. (Obama, to his discredit, failed to show up to cast his No vote, but his position was not in doubt.) He has criticized the current flat-earth idiotic US policy toward Cuba; she has defended it (as Fareed Zakaria has pointed out in a strong recent essay). I understand the argument that Sen. Clinton has to take these positions to maintain her "credibility" and appearance of strength. To me that matters less than that she keeps voting in what I consider the wrong way. Thus: the positions and “mindsets” differ, and and I like his better. - On style and governing philosophy, she is for incremental policies and incremental politics -- "experience" and "competence" – based on the underlying belief that Republican obstructionism makes nothing else possible. Not even for a dreamer like Obama. He obviously is trying for something more -- as Bill Clinton was in 1992, when I preferred him to an incomparably more experienced and time-tested President. - On straight electability, just unknowable. Given that everyone in the country already knows her and a large minority say they don't like her, a narrow victory seems the most that is within Hillary Clinton's grasp. People can argue that Obama would be capable of much more -- or, on the contrary, even less, and that not even a narrow win would be possible once the smear machine got through with him. There is simply no way to be sure now, when it's time to vote. Thus: also a wash. - On diversity and opportunity, a breakthrough either way. But on a deeper level of “diversity,” we have the prospect of returning a husband-and-wife team – Bill Clinton’s emergence has made this unignorable -- already in the White House for eight years, versus fresh blood. Any vote for anybody is a gamble. Who imagined that the George Bush of 2000, with his “compassionate conservatism” and critiques of “nation building,” would become the man we’ve known in office? We have no idea what surprises will confront a President Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Romney, or McCain, or how they might respond. We have to place bets -- roll the dice, if you will -- based on what we do know, which for me is the elements above.

The previous item, about how organizations might be able to sell the same information they are giving away via the internet, had the wrong link to Kevin Kelly's valuable "Better than Free" essay. Here is the right link -- also now fixed in original item.

(Updated to fix bad link.) The Atlantic -- which was early to the idea of making its content available free on the internet, then went to a subscriber-only model, and now has come back -- is one of many publications wrestling with the question of how, exactly, you sell something you are simultaneously giving away. One of the best accounts I've seen of why our current approach might make sense -- and more generally, of why individuals and organizations may still be able to do well selling information they're also offering free -- is this one, from Kevin Kelly, on his "The Technium" blog. His analysis does ring true to me, and it clarifies some possibilities I've heard discussed mainly in hazy terms. Everyone knows that the world demand for sophisticated, rapid, reliable information and analysis can only keep rising -- and everyone also knows that the traditional models of paying for such information are in trouble, with newspapers being the most obvious case. Ten years from now, or twenty, or some time, a new way of paying for the information will have evolved. I found this essay useful in pointing toward some potential paths of evolution. (Thanks to Paul Holbrook, of the Zoot users' forum on Yahoo, for this tip.)

...where I have (intentionally) spent very little of my previous life but where I have been, for oddball reporting reasons, these last couple of days: Being in the San Francisco Bay area makes me feel old, since everyone else is 25. Being in the Boca Raton area makes me feel young, since... Pretty soon I'll be back in Beijing, where I'll have no time to fritter away on such thoughts, since like everyone else I'll mainly be concentrating on surviving the next traffic jam or "mist" event that would be called deathly smog elsewhere. I am weirdly beginning to miss the focus-on-the-now such daily challenges educe. Rather than "old" or "young," it makes me feel... engaged.

(Update below) Traveling during the Barack-Hillary debate, so no thoughts on that until I see a replay. But this passage from today's NYT, perused during an endless session on US Air, certainly caught my eye:

REDLANDS, Calif. — The most trenchant symbol of the California presidential primary can be found on an isolated stretch of Interstate 15, smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. There, affixed to an old trailer, is possibly the largest candidate billboard in the entire state, and it is for the Republican fringe candidate, Ron Paul.

Why did I notice?

1) Redlands is where I grew up and where my dad still lives, and it doesn't get that much national ink. So, great!

2) Redlands is not "smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert." To put this in terms that might resonate with the NYT copy desk, this would be like saying: White Plains is smack in the middle of the Adirondacks. More or less in the same part of the country? Yes. In the middle of? Not hardly.

3) Interstate 10 passes through Redlands. Interstate 15? Unt-uh -- at its closest point 15 or 20 miles away.

Maybe the writer was talking about some other place? Fine. But (not that I want to look a hometown gifthorse in the mouth), why this dateline? On to weighter matters another time. Update: Fellow son-of-Redlands Brian Beutler observed the same phenomenon on his blog. Seriously, wasn't sloppiness about datelines one of the complaints about the NYT during the wild and woolly days of Howell Raines? I'm sure what happened in this case was the following: the Ron Paul sign in question was probably someplace on I-15 en route to Barstow, which is in the middle of the Mojave Desert and which is the heartland of Paul-type libertarian/survivalist sentiment. And for the Times's purposes, it was no doubt all close enough to fit under a 40-miles-away dateline. On the other hand: Bill Keller, the NYT's editor, went to college right in this same area and presumably would have known better if he had seen the story. That's all on this subject.

For the fifth exciting year in a row, line-by-line commentary on President Bush's State of the Union speech here. Previous installments: 2004 2005 2006 2007 Last year, Dikembe Mutumbo. This year, Gouverneur Morris! All the details, including why this speech ended with the three most dreaded words in presidential rhetoric, here.

From yesterday's (Jan 29) All Things Considered, my interview with Robert Siegel about China's vast dollar holdings here. Original story here -- free! like all our content! -- and update here.

Bush's 2008 State of the Union address, annotated by The Atlantic's James Fallows

In the fall of 2002 I flew from Washington to Little Rock and then Fayetteville, Arkansas -- in my own little propeller airplane, it was a blast -- to spend time interviewing Bill Clinton. He was just settling into his post-presidential life. Raising funds for his foundation (now a source of controversy on its own, then still a goal). Laying out plans for his presidential library, then still under construction. Working on his book -- already behind schedule, but of course it turned out well. And theorizing about how, as a young and vigorous former two-term president, he should deal with the next crop of Democratic candidates then on the rise. Ah, if only he'd listened to his own advice five-plus years later. Sample: "Look," he told me back then. "I can't run." As I said in the article, "In his tone he reminded me again of a champion athlete whose career had come to an unnaturally early end."

"If somebody needs me to go do something [for the party], and nobody else can do it, I'll go do it." He pointed out that he had appeared at more than a hundred fundraising events for the party and its candidates in 2002. 'I'd like for my direct political involvement to go way down ..."

Full transcript of the interview is here. Passages from the resulting cover story, "Post President for Life," come after the jump.

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As soon as this evening's Florida debate ended, the MSNBC TV commentators were wondering how it would have looked to "someone who was seeing these candidates for the first time." Why didn't they just ask me? This is the first debate among the Republicans that I've seen at full length and in real time.* So factoring in all the expectations I'd gathered from coverage (Romney too weaselly, McCain really the strongest one, Huckabee a charmer, etc), how did it look? Romney by a mile. More precisely, the only candidate you could imagine putting up a plausible general-election fight. Again, I'm not handicapping the GOP race, which I know nothing about. I'm not saying how each candidate did relative to previous appearances. I am telling you how this one debate looked if you had never seen these guys on the same stage before. McCain, Giuliani, and Huckabee all notably ill at ease when asked to say anything about the economy. (Huckabee: building two new lanes on I-95, Maine to Florida, as an energy saving measure???) When Romney asked Giuliani a specific question about how to deal with China, the answer reminded me of the way I would sound if asked to fill 90 seconds discussing my favorite fashion designers. McCain attempting to describe his economy policy by listing his advisors. (Jack Kemp?) The more the economy matters as The general election issue, the less this will cut it -- and the more Romney can use at least the veneer of his being able to discuss the issue. Two other random points: - Boy, do these people hate Hillary Clinton! Her name was mentioned at least ten times as often as George Bush's (and all Bush mentions, that I heard, were from Romney). - The intrusiveness and badgering nature of Tim Russert's questions! I wonder whether the two parties will subject themselves to another presidential cycle of "debating" on these demeaning terms. Here endeth the report from outer space. ___ * (Amazingly enough, they're not carried on TV in China. Real-time webcasts are not that easy to find, and the connections are too slow any way.)