James Fallows

As the Netanyahu visit impends and the bomb-Iran drumbeat continues, here is another item worth considering. (Apart from Robert Wright's latest dispatch, with its reminder that a "clean" and "surgical" air raid is likely to be as messy as other Middle Eastern wars. Or this, from Paul Pillar, on mainstream Israeli skepticism about the consequences of a strike on Iran. Plus one that I understand Jeffrey Goldberg has in store very soon -- I will be offline for the next 12 hours and won't see what he has until this evening US time.)

Beyond those I point you toward an essay on the Oxford University Press site, called Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour. My endorsement is the more sincere given that the essay's  authors, Louis René Beres of Purdue and retired Air Force general John Chain, are people with whom I've disagreed. Chain, then a big figure in the Pentagon, was not a fan of my book National Defense back in the 1980s. Beres is generally much more hawkish than I am, for instance as chair of Israel's "Project Daniel" a few years ago.

The value of this essay is that it deals with some of the factors that complicate and often distort the current discussion about Iran. One is whether Iran's leadership should be considered either "crazy" or "irrational" (they explain the difference). Another, related question is whether a nuclear-armed Iran could in fact be "deterred." They argue that it may have to be:

Perhaps a nuclear Iran can still be prevented by preemption. But in the more likely absence of any remaining options for "anticipatory self-defense," Israel's best available stance will be to effectively deter an already-nuclear Iran.

The most valuable part of the essay may be discussing the tangled web of posturing and deception that goes into all parties' approach to this issue. Decades ago Richard Nixon popularized the "madman theory" of negotiations. If your adversary thought that, in a pinch, you really might do something extreme and nutty and even self-destructive, then you got much of the negotiating power of an extreme stand, even if you were too rational ever to actually carry out the threat.This kind of bluff is part of any negotiation, but it seems to matter most in international relations -- versus, say, finding the right level for Medicare premiums or the estate tax.

The ramifications of bluff need to be factored into all sides' approach on the "bomb-Iran" issue:
  - the Israelis', in seeming on the verge of a preemptive strike for quite a while now;
  - the Americans', in convincing the Netanyahu government that the U.S. would act if need be, so they shouldn't (even if the Administration concluded, as I think it should, that actually carrying out that threat would be disastrous);
  - and of course the Iranians', since they are far too sophisticated not to recognize the leverage they are getting in remaining on the verge of weaponization.

Read, decide for yourself, and follow the news. I will say that only twice before in my memory, and maybe thrice in American history, has there been as much carefree talk about war and unprovoked strikes as we've had concerning Iran in recent months, including from candidates other than Ron Paul in the GOP race. The twice in my experience were: during the runup to the invasion of Iraq in 2002, and in the "bomb 'em back to the stone age" moments of the early Vietnam era. The time that even I don't remember was the "you furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war" yellow journalism drumbeat before the war with Spain in 1898. This is not good company for today's fevered discussion to join.

Through the years I've written about the media's difficulties with "false equivalence" -- the strong tendency to give equal time and credence to varying "sides" of a story, even if one of the sides is objectively true and the other is just made up. Eg: "The governor contends that the state legislature has no legal power to declare war on Iran, but critics say that he is being weak in the face of this mounting threat."

Congratulations to NPR*, for a recent, serious attempt to grapple with this issue. Its new guidelines say that its reporters and analysts should give a higher priority to listeners' interests in understanding the "truth" of complex questions than to partisans' attempts to make sure that even bogus contentions are heard. As Jay Rosen, of PressThink, says about NPR's new "Ethics Handbook" (emphasis added by me):

In my view the most important changes are these passages:

"In all our stories, especially matters of controversy, we strive to consider the strongest arguments we can find on all sides, seeking to deliver both nuance and clarity. Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth."

and....

"At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly."

With these words, NPR commits itself as an organization to avoid the worst excesses of "he said, she said" journalism. It says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report. It introduces a new and potentially powerful concept of fairness: being "fair to the truth," which as we know is not always evenly distributed among the sides in a public dispute.

Good for NPR! On the other hand: a reader sends this illustration of the challenge still to be overcome:

I think I've found a new low in egregious fairness and balance at the expense of truth and fact. [A NY Times story says, with emphasis added by the reader]:

"This week that narrative hit a bump when a furor erupted over a bill before the Virginia legislature that required women to undergo a vaginal ultrasound before having an abortion. Mr. McDonnell watched as left-leaning television show hosts mocked it and -- though vaginal ultrasounds are standard practice for viewing a first-trimester fetus -- some opponents denounced it as a "rape bill."

So if I understand [the story] correctly, it's wrong to call this law requiring that machinery being forced into women's bodies against their will analogous to rape because sometimes women choose to have this procedure of their own consenting accord. I'm blessedly sheltered when it comes to this topic but I'm almost certain a physical act doesn't have to be something no woman ever willingly participates in for it to qualify as rape when forced on her against her will.

If by chance you don't get the point of the closing sentence on first reading, look at it again. Nicely put.
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* Standard disclosure: I have never been an NPR employee but have contributed to NPR programs often over the years, most recently as an analyst on Weekend All Things Considered.

I mentioned yesterday the "demographic suicide" analysis of the modern Republican predicament: that in its increasing fealty to an older-white-male-Southern base, the party has moved itself toward structural-minority status. Can it really happen? Look at the predicament of Republicans in California, after Pete Wilson led them over the anti-immigrant cliff a generation ago. Four readers weigh in to augment and challenge this theory.

What George W. Bush Knew. A long-time observer and participant in Democratic politics, from the West Coast, writes:

I've always maintained that George W. Bush's greatest failure has gone largely unremarked:  He quite clearly foresaw that the GOP would die if it became the party of white guys alone, and he specifically wanted to broaden it to include Hispanics/Latinos at the very least. 

Part way through his Presidency, however, perhaps as a result of what was observed in Florida in 2000, at some klatch among GOP strategists (which, if it was a single event, would seem to merit a footnote in history), it was decided by people more powerful in the GOP that, rather than accept the changing demographic, the better approach was simply to deny non-whites and other marginalized people the right to vote, to the extent this could be arranged.  That effort went into gear quickly, and broadly, and remains in gear to date.  (A variant is the GOP facilitating creation of "minority majority" Congressional districts.)  Of course, this merely buys time.  But it has bought a lot of time.

The long arc from Eisenhower. Mike Lofgren, who is a long-time observer and participant in Republican politics on the East Coast, writes:

We may have come to the endpoint of a 50-year political arc for the Republicans on the subject of anti-intellectualism. After Sputnik, we had Eisenhower's initiative to aid science education. Note that Ike said that the need to educate a large pool of scientific and engineering brainpower was of vital national interest - far beyond the need for weapon systems themselves. And that same year (1958) Vice President Nixon (yes, Nixon) gave a speech extolling higher education in the humanities.
 
The first real break in this attitude toward learning by any major political figure came from George Wallace's sneers against "pseudo-intellectuals." A couple of years later, in executing Nixon's Southern/hardhat strategy Spiro Agnew condemned an "effete corps of impudent snobs."
 
But it has now degenerated to the point where Romney, a Harvard JD himself, has to inveigh against the "Harvard faculty lounge," and the message of Santorum campaign can pretty much be summarized as "ignorance is strength." And even back when Agnew was excoriating the nattering nabobs of negativism, he did not have the vast echo chamber afforded by a national multimedia conglomerate which expressly appeals to an uneducated and/or low-IQ demographic, and the viewing of whose "news" programs, as polls have shown, makes the viewer less informed than if he had not seen anything.

The law that really changed history. A child of immigrant parents writes about the under-appreciated force behind the new demographic laws of politics: the 1965 immigration reform act. That law is not under-appreciated by me, since I've written about it several times in the magazine and in books. But the reader is correct about the disproportion between how much it changed America and how often it's discussed.

Reading the excellent NY Mag Article you linked to about the demographically dwindling Republican base lead me to think about one of the most overlooked acts of our time - the 1965 Immigration Reform Act.
 
Now when most people think of landmark 1965 legislation, they rightly think of the Voting Rights Act. But demographically speaking, the Republican "Southern Strategy" would not have been stopped just because ten percent of the population had their voting rights guaranteed. No, the reason for Republicanism's decline is the influx of immigrants from all over the world who don't take kindly to the racism the Republicans now seem to openly sell.
 
Case in point - my parents came from Asia in the mid-1970s. They tend to be, my father especially, socially conservative. But they would never vote Republican on a national level - especially with the turn the Republican party has taken since September 11th.
 
The 1965 act was actually an afterthought at the time, just made to get rid of an embarrassment of a system that prevented any Asians and Africans from coming. Nobody expected that we'd come in droves, and change the face of America in the process. In 1960, the population of America was ~ 90% White, 10% Black. In 2010, it was 72.4% White and 12.4% Black - and a strong 15% "other," a number which is projected to grow.
 
Now without the Voting Rights Act, I'm sure much of that 15% would also be disenfranchised, or at least less free. But it's interesting that the greatest conservative fears about the Voting Rights Act - that of losing white power - were amplified by the afterthough Immigration Act. I wonder now, when President Obama has overseen landmark legislation in consumer protection for finances and health care, what afterthought of a bill we're overlooking.

The real cost of the anti-"snob" speech.  A reader responds to my assertion that Rick Santorum's "college is for snob" speech was mainly offensive to the college-boy crowd:

It's no insult to the "creative class," who weren't going to vote for Santorum under any circumstances anyway and don't consider him worth resenting or being insulted by.

What's devastating about it is he's saying it to audiences full of working-class people who've been struggling and saving up their whole adult lives so their kids can be the first in their family ever to go to college and have a hope for a better life.

I know how my conservative grandfather, a carpenter, would have reacted to that idea when he was finally able to send my father, his second son, to the local college on a scholarship as the first in the family ever to be able to get that education.

(What really gets me is that the conventional wisdom among the punditry is that Rick Santorum is "likable.")

If you've been using any Google product these past few weeks  -- Gmail, YouTube, Picasa, Docs, Maps, even plain search -- you've seen the warnings: big privacy changes ahead! Here is how the warning looks on YouTube just now:



And this is what I saw on, I think, my Google calendar yesterday:

It looks as if Rick Santorum will come up short tonight, despite the panache of his Apple-themed ad. Readers have written in to emend and expand on my earlier dispatch on that ad.

1) Several people have pointed out another Apple progenitor of Santorum's "Rebellion" spot: not so much the (hugely successful) "1984" ad, from the 1984 Superbowl, but instead the (widely panned) "Lemmings" ad from the Superbowl a year later. Here's the Lemmings original, below, to compare with Santorum's version.




2) Many, many people have written in astonishment that the Santorum ad contains only white faces -- "not even an Asian!" as one person wryly noted. Some other time, we'll look at the larger point about the GOP base that this ad illustrates. Over time the party is willfully shouldering aside:
  -- young people generally ("Same-sex marriage? Never!" "Climate change? A big fraud!")
  -- Latinos ("build a fence!")
  -- Asians ("yellow girl")
  -- blacks (former editor of the Harvard Law Review is the "food stamp president")
  -- gays (see above)
  -- women generally (drawing the rhetorical line not at abortion, a genuine first-order moral question, but contraception -- seemingly settled law and social practice since 1965)
  -- the "creative class" ("college is for snobs!")

Given the gerrymandered nature of our national legislative system, this approach -- a base of older, white, largely Southern males -- can lead to outsized power in the Senate in the long run. But it's not a formula for winning the presidency. The GOP discovered this at the statewide level with its problems in California since the Pete Wilson "Prop 187" anti-immigrant era. This is the point of Jonathan Chait's excellent analysis in New York magazine about the Republicans' embrace of demographic decline.

3) If you haven't watched to the end of the Santorum ad -- conveniently re-embedded below -- you might not have seen the touching episode starting at time 1:22, when a man strips off his sweater to reveal... well, see it for yourself. And about the shot starting at 1:30, a reader writes:

Is that a Down's Syndrome child that Rick Santorum is holding at the very end of the ad? If so, that strikes me as an absolutely fascinating aspect of contemporary conservative identity politics.

[Update: As several readers have pointed out, Santorum appears to be holding his own daughter Bella.] On that point, about conservative-vs-liberal compassion for the disabled, please take this opportunity to read the extraordinarily eloquent personal dispatches by Harold Pollack and Emily Rapp.

(Please see updates below.) Arguably the most influential TV commercial ever is the minute-long "1984" video that introduced the Macintosh computer during the third quarter of the Raiders-Redskins Superbowl on January 22, 1984. On the remote chance that you haven't seen it, it's the second video embedded below. (And, yes, I say "arguably" because people can make the case for some others, but let's forget that for now.)

Through the years that ad has spawned countless imitations, parodies, homages, and adaptations. I do have to wonder what Steve Jobs would have thought if he had lived long enough to see the latest of them: the video below, which is Rick Santorum's application of the 1984 motif in his campaign.



I am not about to vote for Santorum, but you have to say that he knows something about campaigning and issue/emotion-framing that still eludes the Romney team. I am struggling to think of a national-level candidate who has blundered more frequently, and more self-destructively, than Romney continues to do. [Update. Thanks to Christopher Orr for help with my struggles: Rick Perry. How quickly we forget.]

For your amusement and reference, here is the original.



Thanks to SB for the tip and the Atlantic's politics team for vetting.
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UPDATES: The creator of Santorum's recent ads is John Brabender, whom the Atlantic's own Joshua Green (now of Bloomberg BusinessWeek) profiled for us eight years ago. Ben Jacobs has a new story about him here.

Also, I have received a bunch of emails making a point similar to the one below -- all starting from the fact that the Santorum ad appears doesn't even pretend to be interested in "diversity." This message comes from a reader in Illinois:

I appreciate your reference to the Santorum 'homage' video.  Obviously, it also harkens back to Citizen Kane.  

Like you, I would never vote for Santorum.  But I think it is worth unpacking just how noxious this video really is and what is says about the state of our country. It seems to me that is the kind of 'text' with which an academic could have a field day, for all of the sublimated tendencies it reveals among those who made it and consume it.

First off, I don't think that I saw a single non-white face in the crowd of lemmings being led off the cliff.  Maybe there is one buried in there somewhere.  I suppose it goes without saying that Santorum does not expect to get votes from other ethnic groups, but does his team they really need to be that overt in their play for white votes? Couldn't they at least throw in a few minorities out of a recognition that other groups, exist, even if they were doing so cynically?  Or perhaps they couldn't find one to sign up after the 'yellowgirl' incident. 

Secondly, and let's be honest here, the crowd that is represented there is the typical Ailes/Limbaugh/Hannity media consumer.  I know that those outlets are hardly friends of Romney, but I think any impartial observer would have to admit that each of those outfits are pushing propaganda much more actively than the 'Republican Establishment,' bogeyman, whatever that may consist of.  Is this just another case of inventing an alternate reality, or is some deeper psychological issue at work here--specifically the need to the self assert against the truly pernicious influence of the conservative media, which is displaced onto the vague 'Republican Establishment'? 

Perhaps the Fox New crowd will eventually catch on to the deeply insulting way that all of their candidates try to manipulate them. At least I hope that is the case.  But by any measure, this video presents a deeply disturbing look at the people we have become as a result of propaganda. (Maybe it is time I picked my Marshall MacLuhan and Richard Hofstadter books up off the shelf).

Two powerful forces. When they collide, which will prevail?

As it turns out, it's no contest. A reader writes about what played out at this year's Carnaval:

This video touches on two of your themes: airport security and cross-cultural differences. It's a bloco, or parade dance party, at Santos Dumont the city airport for Rio de Janeiro. Minute 1:30 to 2:00 has the best sambaing. [JF: Yes, by all means see at least that part. And here is more on the namesake Alberto Santos-Dumont.]

I doubt that the same joie de vivre is possible in a TSA-sanctioned environment.

I share such doubts. On a more positive note, soon I will offer a declaration of peace, at least on one front, between my own personal preferences and the rules of the modern TSA. Meanwhile, Viva Brasil!
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Update. A reader who travels very frequently in and out of China's main airports was in Beijing Capital airport today. He sends a shot of the security line a few hours ago at what is now the second-busiest airport in the world.

It's time to dig into the mailbag of responses about my current article on Barack Obama's strengths and weaknesses.

On the theory of Obama's "cold" personality, a reader in California writes:

For better or worse, he's not Clinton or Bush, who recharge their energy around other people. Being with him is electric, but I have the feeling that generating that electricity leaves him drained. But the question is not whether he is the best president we could have hoped for; he is obviously a better president than McCain would have been.

On two related temperamental issues: again the coolness, and whether has surrounded himself with a team of advisers too comfortable for his own good. (Plus, whether I am right in saying that George W. Bush was better as a second-term president than in his first.)

My recollection about the Bush Administration is that the first part of his second term was disastrous -- Katrina, Iraq completely falling apart in civil war, the Social Security privatization failure. He was still a cocky bastard during '05 and '06. It wasn't until Rove and Rumsfeld left, and most importantly (IMHO), Andrew Card left and Josh Bolten became Chief of Staff, that he finally gained control over his presidency...

I mention it because I'm in agreement with your assessment of Obama's mediocre appointments. I remember the relief initially that, at last, there would be sane,
competent people in important positions -- Geithner, Rahm Emmanuel, people who I thought knew what they were doing. What a disappointment! I'm glad you examined that part of the Obama Presidency.

Secondly, to the question of Obama Cool.  I'm sure that many of your correspondents are correct in their assessment. But what I see and no one has mentioned is Stanley Ann Dunham. His mother's influence.  If one reads the NY Times pieces on A Singular Woman, about Obama's time as a child in Indonesia with his mother, and the cultural emphasis onbeing "refined" one sees that influence, I think, in President Obama. The pieces detail how he was ridiculed and bullied for being black, and his mother saying "No, he's O.K. He's used to it." The cultural importance of being refined and under self-control at all times, to the extent of not sneezing in public. In adult Barack Obama I see that refined self-control, and the exquisite, even courtly, manners as his mother's influence. Just another piece of the puzzle.

From a long-time veteran of Congressional and defense politics:

I was most disappointed [to read] the Daley story about Obama's preference for comfortable advisers despite their mediocrity.

I liked your use of the Jim Rowe memo, which I think was probably more significant than the better known Clark Clifford memo.

You are also right to point out the media's a-historical or myopic approach to campaign and presidential history. Are they all just too young?

I would offer a different take on a couple of points:

1. Rather than being naive [or maybe in addition to], I think Obama was a prisoner of his above-partisanship rhetoric. He couldn't just switch course when McConnell talked about making him a one-term president; he had to wait until every story out of Washington reinforced the "GOP won't deal" theme.

2. I think he followed the Democratic congressional leadership on healthcare. They didn't want to be saddled with another "Hillarycare" and Baucus thought the gang of six would work -- as such efforts had worked in the past. Obama suffered by being deferential to Congress, but I think he would have been in worse shape, and no more successful, if he had tried to push through his own bills on health and other topics.

3. I remain impressed by his strategic patience on a whole range of policy matters. He doesn't seem (at least until recently) particularly responsive to the 24/7 news cycle -- a rarity among politicians, as you know.

Still to be covered, in your next piece: Why has the WH personnel shop been so bad about filling vacancies -- not just the courts, but the Fed, and numerous other Exec Branch posts?  Are they spooked by the threat of controversy? Or are their criteria too rigid?

Foreign policy: Compare Jim Jones to Tom Donilon. Why did Jones fail and what are Donilon's strengths? Where does Denis McDonough (one of those Senate-staff "comfortables") fit into the system?  How does the system work now with Panetta instead of Gates?

From  a reader in Florida:

I commend you for highlighting Valerie Jarret's role in a relatively understated fashion. My belief is that, while she may be a talented close personal friend and advisor to the Obamas, nothing has prepared her for a role as White House advisor. If I were to have Presdient Obama's ear for five minutes, I would suggest that in his (presumed) second term he pivot to...well, a John Podesta type. Someone whose policy chops, political skills, and loyalty/discretion are beyond question.

If a second term is to be a bold, consolidating vision that truly makes Obama a transformative president (even with an oppositional Congress), he must move beyond what I assume is Jarret's overly protective advice. I don't know the cast of progressive experts well, but surely Obama should shake things up and let Jarret oversee the "softer" sides of presidential politics (I'm not being sexist here; it would be great if a Hillary Clinton or Susan Rice filled a senior advisor role)

From a veteran of two Democratic administrations:

From my personal experience I want to concur with your assessment of many top Obama staff. In the Nineties during the Clinton administration I worked in a White House office that, while often chaotic, made impressive progress and was staffed by bright, idealistic, and largely competent individuals who understood teamwork and modern management principles. 

When I was recruited to work in the Obama administration in a similar crow's-nest capacity, I saw quite the opposite.  Many of the top-level operatives I observed were way out of their depth, with poor to nonexistent management skills, unbalanced personalities and vast overconfidence.  Further, there is gross abuse of the growing system of contracting, with highly paid ex-military personnel providing precious little value and being "managed" by staff people who could be doing the work themselves. Taxpayer money is being squandered with far too little to show for it, and there is a dire need for a personnel housecleaning in the top echelons of the government.  The contrast with the Clinton years is painful to watch, and it has damaging consequences for the nation. It is puzzling to me that a leader of Obama's caliber could have assembled such a mediocre crew, and I sincerely hope he has a second term to afford him time to correct the problem.

Many of these letters began with "great article! I learned X and Y and Z," for which I'm grateful to the readers. I always strip that part out not because of Uriah Heepish faux modesty but because inevitably it looks odd. Still, I appreciate it.

(Please see updates below.) David Hobby, the photographer who runs the popular Strobist site and photostream, has a sobering account today of how he got in trouble with the police for taking this picture of a tree.



Sample of what he describes:

'If You See Something, Say Something'
That's the slogan. But it is, of course, overly broad and simplistic. Which means that your average mouth breather can interpret it however he or she wants. And the einstein who reported me as a "suspicious person" called me in while I was making this benign photo as part of a multimedia time-lapse on autumn:

I was called in as, and I quote, "Somebody suspicious and lots of flashes of light going off."

At least that is how the cop described it when she pulled up to me, bubble gum lights blazing, to ask me what I was doing. And anyone who knows me knows that my immediate reaction was to resort to humor laced with sarcasm.

"Well, I am either a photographer taking an innocuous photo of a maple tree," I said, "or I'm al Qaida, casing our critical deciduous infrastructure."

This did not go over well.

Meta-point reminder: the challenge in dealing with any threat, from international terrorism to domestic crime to infectious diseases to mayhem of any sort, is to maintain a balance between the steps you take in the name of security, and the steps you deliberately don't take, in the name of preserving liberty and some kind of normal unmonitored life. Over the past ten years, "security" measures have too often worked like a ratchet, being added in the name of thwarting some new threat ("no liquids or gels") and very rarely being removed. As a matter of practical politics, this is easy to understand. A politician runs practically zero risk in urging new "protective" measures, but faces tremendous risk in urging that we lighten up (since the politician will be blamed for whatever accident / crime / attack later occurs).

Thus it's worth continuing pressure against further movement of the ratchet. American society is becoming steadily more policed, monitored, and suspicious, which will continue unless we resist. Thanks to JZ for the tip.
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Update 1: As Michael Cohen and Micah Zenko point out in a Foreign Affairs article "Clear and Present Safety," the United States is in fact less threatened by enemies foreign and domestic than it has been in a long time, and certainly less than much political rhetoric suggests.

Update 2: As Michael Ham points out on his "Later On" site, the latest horrific schoolyard shooting, today's in Ohio, is somehow exempted from the category of "threat" that urgent action is required to prevent. As he says:

The slightest effort to make firearms less readily accessible--particularly to those we least want to get them--is shot down (as it were) by the National Rifle Association and their paid Congressional hirelings.

Does anyone else find this juxtaposition odd? Timorous about flying, but willing to be shot to death in malls and schools. Strangely fearful on the one hand, fatalistically accepting frequent stupid deaths on the other. Going to any lengths--regardless of privacy, humiliation, intrusive searches--when around airplanes, but rejecting any hint of control of firearms.

Last year I revealed the secret to affordable stylishness when it came to personal accessories. That secret was: the Timex Easy-Reader Indiglo watch, which costs somewhere between $25 and $40 depending on model variations and where you shop. It is shown not just in the photo at right but also, proudly, on the wrists of such fashion leaders as Harvard's Lawrence Lessig, NPR's Matt Martinez, Andrew Sprung of Xpostfactoid, Eliza Schmidkunz of GNSS, the Atlantic's Scott Stossel, and others including me.

During the holiday shopping stampede, Timex blessed style-conscious purchasers with a Cyber Monday special on the watch. And now Esquire has chosen this fine timepiece as #1 on its list of "Best New Watches for Spring," offering the following impressive rationale for the Easy Reader's preeminence: "Because it works just as well from the workday to the weekend. Not to mention the simple retro face looks cooler than some watches that cost six times as much."
 
Never mind all this Pol-MIl stuff, or economics or technology. Just come to me when you want to know how to accessorize. Thanks to Stu Cohen for spotting the Esquire item. 

Everyone has heard about the airport at St. Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles, where planes come in right over vacationers' heads on the beach.

I was always sort of skeptical that it could work the way people said (and YouTube videos showed), but here is how it looked while we were having lunch next to the approach path this afternoon.

Anyone following the news already knows this, but for the record: it's very good to see the NYT running, on page one and above the fold*, an analysis of the reckless agitation for a preemptive military strike on Iran, and of the risks this talk holds for all involved. Lots of people wrote these analyses, after the fact, about the panicky rush-toward-war mentality that preceded the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is certainly better to start talking about the problem now, when "hey, wait a minute" thoughts can make a difference.

Peter Beinart, in the Daily Beast, weighs in to the same effect.

I am only in internet range for a moment, so no opportunity to lard this up with references, links, and sub-arguments. Therefore I'll make just this blunt point: this war talk is dangerous, it can lead to "Guns of August" consequences, and it is particularly dangerous to have Republican candidates decide that outdoing one another in warlike talk about Iran is good for them or the country.**
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* This is a quaint allusion to the days when news came via "papers," which had a fold across the middle of their front page.

** The Times says about the politics of the issue:

Israel... [JF: more accurately, the most hawkish voices in the Netanyahu administration] views the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon as a threat to its very existence and has warned that Iran's nuclear facilities may soon be buried too deep for foreign bombers to reach.

Israel's [JF: Netanyahu's] stance has played out politically in the United States. With the notable exception of Representative Ron Paul of Texas, Republican presidential candidates have kept up a competition in threatening Iran and portraying themselves as protectors of Israel.

This is a trifecta! I'm able to knit together three previous contacts and/or themes.

#1: Patrick Anderson, who was long ago my mentor/boss on the Carter '76 campaign team, and who since then has been a book writer and regular book reviewer for the Washington Post.

#2: The late Donald Westlake, a master of the comedic crime novel who was so prolific that he adopted a whole slew of pen names, much as Michael Crichton did, to avoid possible recoil at the sheer quantity of his (nonetheless very good) work. Previous mention here.

#3: Charles Ardai, whose wonderful Hard Case crime-novel series I've raved about before.

#1 -> #2 -> #3 harmonic convergence triple play: Two days ago in the Washington Post,  Anderson reviewed The Comedy is Finished, a recently discovered book by Westlake, that is coming out under Ardai's Hard Case imprint. (The book also has one of Hard Case's trademark 1950s pulp-look covers, at right. Another example is below -- from a book by Ardai himself under his alias, Aleas.) I would be a fool to ignore this combination of auguries, so I've ordered the book. Will check in with results.

... but then he gets a chance to sing at the White House tonight, doing Sweet Home Chicago with Mick Jagger and also B.B. King?? Jeesh, talk about being the most powerful man in the world.

And about the chance to present himself as the coolest. As a gutsy vocal performance, this was not quite in the league with his a capella Al Green rendition at the Apollo last month. Among other things, the microphone wasn't working right early on. But still!



The guy does have a charm that is hard to imagine the Santorums or Romneys ever matching -- no, not even with Romney's earnest stylings of America the Beautiful. I know that there are different demographics being appealed to here: Jagger + BB King + Blues + Obama, versus America the Beautiful + Romney or Santorum. In today's America there is just more company on Obama's side of that divide, and even more who would like to think of themselves there.

One upshot of my current article is that in a second term, Obama might have a chance to become more the person we imagined the first time around. This is a start! (And for extra enjoyment check out the shots of White House chief of staff Jacob Lew bopping in the background. A real hep cat, for sure!)

Some day people will look back in puzzlement at the prevailing U.S. mood of 2011, when in the face of the biggest job-loss collapse in two generations the prevailing rhetoric from Democrats and Republicans alike emphasized the need to cut public spending, now. (And, yes, it should have been seen as puzzling and self-destructive at the time.)

Much as we now look back in puzzlement at the prevailing U.S. rhetoric of 2002, with its gung-ho emphasis on the need to invade Iraq now. And the rhetoric of 2012, going on around us, with its off-hand discussion of the need to attack Iran any day now. Good for the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, for saying in public what National Security Advisor Tom Donilon has apparently been saying in private on his trip to Israel: that bombing Iran is in fact a risky, bad, and self-defeating idea, and that the Netanyahu team should not be under the illusion that the U.S. would welcome their doing so.

Austerity measures, in the middle of a collapsing private economy, make things worse, not better. This observation would be akin to "gravity pulls you down, not up" except that so many people seemed not to remember or believe it last year. (Viz: the whole debt ceiling train-wreck.)

Here's a visual aid, in keeping with repeated posts that the Atlantic's Derek Thompson has been doing on the subject. It comes from the Rockefeller Institute, which has documented trends in employment over the past few years. These lines show the changes in public and private employment since the collapse that began four years ago:

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.

In response to my nomination of Jim Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company and creator of the Samuel Adams line of brews, for craft-beer canonization, three main trends in reader response:

1) What about Fritz Maytag? Many people wrote to say that the founder of the Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco deserved first-tier credit. For instance:

Don't forget Fritz Maytag on your list of heroes! He single-handedly saved a  classic beer style from extinction, and was the first to introduce what we now think of as American Pale Ale. A great modern-brewing pioneer!

And:

[You should honor] Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewery, who instead of choosing to be a bored member of the rentier class took his inheritance and started craft-brewing before Messrs. Koch and Grossman.... When I started home-brewing in 1984, it seemed that the only craft beer around was Anchor's, not Sam Adams (which I do like) or Sierra Nevada's. Praise is free; please spread it around.

2) What about Jimmy Carter? The post-incumbency rise in esteem for our 39th president continues, in this case because of what he did for the the home-brew and craft-brew industries:

I have to note that you left out Jimmy Carter from your list people who deserve credit for leading America into its current Golden Age of Beer.

I personally know of 3 people who began home brewing when he sparked the legislation that made home brew legal. One of these people ... is a commercial brewing concern now! One of several here in the greater Springfield, MA area.

3) What about (in a different sense) Jim Koch? Paul Rickter, a home brewer in Massachusetts, thinks praise of the Sam Adams line and its founder is overdone:

Your hagiography on Jim Koch touched a nerve with me.

You state up front your "bias" in favor of Jim Koch, and that's helpful. As a longtime Boston-area homebrewer, I'm happy to admit being biased against Koch, for a variety of reasons... He makes some good beers (the niche specialty varieties, not the mass-market stuff that is contract-brewed for him), though his real talent is in marketing himself everywhere as the man who single-handedly saved American beer.  He's certainly played a key role in the resurgence of American craft beer, but he's been a little too eager to grab that spotlight and has been loathe to lose the "craft" label, even though his company has grown way beyond that status.

I have one major quibble in what you wrote about the list of "craft" brewers: "Koch's Boston Brewing is #1, and Grossman's Sierra Nevada is right behind him" Look at the 2011 numbers (displayed in the slideshow) -- Sierra Nevada is #2 at 858,000 barrels and Boston Beer Company is #1 at 2.44 million, almost 3 times the size of Sierra Nevada. The only reason that Boston Beer Company is even on this list anymore is that the rules of the Brewers Association were changed a year ago, increasing the "craft" limit from 2 million barrels to 6 million barrels. In other words, when the sales of Boston Beer Company were about to exceed the craft limit, the rules were changed to accommodate Jim Koch, allowing him to maintain his reputation as a small craft brewer.

Jim Koch: great salesman and decent brewer, but NOT a craft brewer and he should stop pretending to be.

Even our greatest heroes: feet of clay. Still these are all figures worthy of respect and credit.

I've long been biased in favor of Jim Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company, at right in a picture from today's NYT.

  -- Two percent of the reason: he was a college classmate of my wife's -- along with Frank Rich, Chuck Schumer, Bonnie Raitt, Katha Pollitt, and other worthies. Those were the days (although I didn't meet Koch then and haven't since).

  -- Ninety-eight percent of the reason: founder of the Boston Beer Company, and as such not just the creator of the Samuel Adams line but also the man who, as much as any other one person, deserves credit for leading America into its current Golden Age of Beer. When a Beer Mt. Rushmore is built, he'll certainly be there, along with Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada. Some other time I'll fill out the full Beer Rushmore lineup, or maybe instead a Hall of Beer Heroes. For now, here's Grossman, below, in a pose nicely similar to Koch's. Come to think of it, all pictures of happy brewers tend to be posed this way.

Today I learn of a new reason to hold Koch in high esteem. In the NYT's Sunday business section, Jeff Sommer explains how Koch went out of his way in the mid-1990s to structure the Boston Beer Company's IPO so that it advanced the interests he cared about in the long run, rather than wringing out absolutely maximum capital or returning most of its riches to those with the most extensive inside connections.

The heart of his idea was giving actual customers -- people who loved his beer -- a favored place in line for IPO shares, and a bargain price. The story says:

As Mr. Koch saw it, when an I.P.O. is controlled by investment banks, it is structured "to reward the banks and their favored institutional investors" and not the fledgling business or its customers. He realized that he "wasn't comfortable letting Wall Street underwriters control the process, set the price and allocate the shares to their favored clients at a favorable price."

Instead, he said: "I wanted to take care of my Sam Adams drinkers. They were the people who were really important to me and who were going to continue to be."...

"The laws and regulations were set up to make this kind of thing very difficult," he says. "But I had a strong feeling that we should do this." 

The story goes on to explain how he did so, what he learned, and how some companies -- though not enough, and notably not including Facebook with its splashy new IPO -- have followed his example. The most depressing aspect of today's globalized, maxi-connected, financially-minded market-industrial system is the way that short-term profit is pushed to the absolute maximum, at the expense not just of unpriced "externalities" (pollution, community dislocation, inequalities, and so on) but also of the long-term welfare of the firm itself. Very nice to see this real-world example of someone putting his own company's money behind a different approach.

BONUS: For a view of the world that Jim Koch helped create, you can see this slideshow on the top-selling 20 craft brands during the current Golden Age of Beer. Yes, I hate slideshows too, but this is interesting. Koch's Boston Brewing is #1, and Grossman's Sierra Nevada is right behind him; I recognize, fondly, the others on the list, with a sole exception I have not yet tried.

A reader sends in a positive example of a paper moving past the "false equivalence" trap. It's a New York Times story this past week on the "Heartland" controversy. The story says, with emphasis added:

Heartland's latest idea, the documents say, is a plan to create a curriculum for public schools intended to cast doubt on mainstream climate science and budgeted at $200,000 this year. The curriculum would claim, for instance, that "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy."

It is in fact not a scientific controversy. The vast majority of climate scientists say that emissions generated by humans are changing the climate and putting the planet at long-term risk, although they are uncertain about the exact magnitude of that risk. Whether and how to rein in emissions of greenhouse gases has become a major political controversy in the United States, however.

Let's stipulate that a controversy has subsequently arisen about the authenticity of these Heartland "documents" -- and that papers should be careful to spell that out too. But this is an example of two reporters, Justin Gillis and Leslie Kaufman, plus their editors being willing to plainly state the facts about a case, without being buffaloed into giving "equal" credence to all claims.

On the less cheering side, a reader writes to note a veteran Congressional correspondent saying two days ago on public radio that 60 votes is what it takes to "pass" a bill in the Senate. The discussion is about the extension of the payroll tax-cut this week, by a 60-to-36 vote in the Senate. The correspondent, Gail Russell Chaddock of the Christian Science Monitor, says on Here and Now, "Sixty is the outer limit for passing a bill in the Senate. Had one Senator changed their mind, we wouldn't be having this discussion." From the reader:

The host replies, "What does this say about Republican leaderships, because..."

The conversation goes on, and the reporter returns to the 60 number as being the minimum, but no reference is made to this being a procedural/filibuster issue. If the listener doesn't already know this, the impression is that the 60 vote margin is a constitutional
requirement in the Senate.

To be clear, I know you have affection for NPR [JF: and for this show in particular, which I like and have recently been on]. I do too. It's what I listen to and where I get most of my news (after TheAtlantic.com) This is not a pick on NPR, but a note of how things that are untrue become "facts".

Of course that correspondent realizes that 60 votes is the threshold for breaking a filibuster in the Senate, not for passing a bill. (With a few narrowly stated exceptions, like treaties and impeachment, the Constitution says that the Senate will work on a simple-majority basis, with the Vice President breaking a tie if need be.) But a major goal of the legislative-obstruction campaign of the past six years has been to make people forget that there is a difference between breaking a filibuster -- which historically had been a rare situation -- and getting any routine business done. So every time a major news source says that it takes 60 votes to "pass" a bill or confirm a nominee, an incorrect and damaging impression sinks in more deeply. We move that much further away from reality and toward dysfunctionally obstructed government. More on what that's a problem in the posts collected here. For now, thanks to readers for these leads.

UPDATE: Back on the bright side, check out the bravely unconventional long piece by Dylan Matthews, in today's Washington Post, about the "Modern Monetarist" school among economists. This is a perspective you didn't often get during the "deficit crisis" panic of last year, and congrats to the Post for giving it this much attention.

Over the years I've written several times about the Icon A5 "amphibious airplane," or what I like to think of as a personal-scale flying boat. Back in 2009 I officially put it on my Christmas Wish List, but did anyone listen? There's always next year -- and, to be fair, the plane's not yet actually on the market.

This week Jason Paur of Wired had a very nice item about the next step in Icon's evolution. This is its certification as a "spin-resistant" aircraft, one built to minimize (though not absolutely eliminate) the chance of the pilot getting into the very perilous flight condition known as a "stall-spin."

Paur does a great job of explaining exactly how stalls and spins develop; why they are so dangerous; and what it took for Icon to win certification as "spin-resistant." The kind of airplane that I have owned and flown since 2000, the Cirrus SR20 and SR22, had many more safeguards against stall-spins than most previous models, but the Icon is the first to be certified as "spin-resistant." Lots more background, linkage, and explanation at Wired.

That same item includes a video that does the clearest job I've seen  showing what a stall-spin looks like. The first part of the video shows how it looks from outside the plane. This is obviously a training exercise, and a trail plane captures the other plane's intentional spin and recovery. The last 30 seconds show how a spin looks from inside the cockpit. The wailing you hear is the "stall warning" horn going off, as the pilot keeps pulling the plane's nose up and increases the "angle of attack" beyond what will keep the plane flying. When it stops flying, the plane starts falling out of the sky, with a spinning rotation to the left. You'll quickly see why spins are so dangerous if they happen close to the ground, as when a pilot mishandles an approach to landing (usually on the "base to final" turn, as explained here).
 


Over the years I've done a number of these practice spin-recovery drills, on the theory that familiarity with unusual situations makes you safer in normal conditions. You do it in specially spin-certified planes; you climb many thousands of feet above ground level for a margin of safety; and often you're required to be wearing a parachute just in case. I don't enjoy this sort of "unusual attitude" flying, but I'm glad to know what a spin and recovery feel like -- as an extra incentive to stay out of these circumstances in normal flying. Glad that Icon has won this new distinction.

One more "flying boat" shot before I go: