3 perspectives on post-Osama Obama

President Obama and his national security team watch updates on the mission to capture Osama bin Laden on Sunday.

Since the death of Osama bin Laden, there's been a firehose of commentary and analysis of President Obama. Nearly all of it has been positive -- in sharp contrast to the months before, when even some of his staunchest supporters wondered when he would get a spine and stand up to the GOP with some passion on the issues of federal budget cuts and debt reduction.

Here are three particularly good takes that caught my eye this week.

Leonard Pitts Jr. of The Miami Herald calls out as racist those who questioned Obama's citizenship. Check out his column, "Obama guilty of 'presidenting while black'"

(L)et us not dismiss the birther imbroglio without calling out the bigotry at its core. Yes, that word will bring howls of protest from people who will declare that race had nothing to do with their demands for Obama’s original birth certificate. 

And I believe them. Or at least, I believe they believe what they are saying.

E.J. Dionne Jr. of The Washington Post tries to get at the contradictions that have defined our president in his column "Obama the old? Now we know." 

Barack Obama is not the man many Americans thought he was. This sudden realization has transformed American politics. 

The sheer audacity of the successful operation against Osama bin Laden has forced Obama’s friends and foes alike to reassess what they make of a chief executive who defies easy categorization and reveals less about himself than politicians are typically drawn to do.Obama is hard to understand because he is many things and not just one thing. He has now proved that he can be bold at an operational level, even as he remains cautious at a philosophical level. 

John Blake of CNN offers a thoughtful piece exploring the meaning of an iconic photo in "What 'Situation Room Photo' reveals about us" 

Most commentators have focused on the historic nature of the photo: Obama staring at the screen with a grim intensity; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, covering her mouth to repress her reaction -- the epicenter of U.S. military power hunting down its most hated foe. 

But look deeper and that photo becomes historic in a more subtle way. It's a snapshot of how much this nation's attitudes about race, women and presidential swagger are changing, several scholars and historians say.

Some good reading here. 

After bin Laden's death, what next?

Crowds celebrate outside the White House early Monday.

There's no way I can avoid addressing the topic that's on the minds and lips of people everywhere  President Obama's dignified announcement Sunday night that U.S. special forces had hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 slaughter and the inspiration for other deadly attacks and foiled plots around the world.

After ten years of trying, the news that we'd finally caught up to him and taken him out seemed surrealistic, almost too good to be true. I say that not in a bloodthirsty tone but from the perspective of appreciating the precision, the discipline, the astounding intelligence and execution required to pull it off -- all without the loss of an American life.

A few thoughts:

Will 5/1 be remembered in the same way as 9/11?
I doubt it, though I imagine millions of Americans will remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they learned of Osama's demise on May 1, 2011.

Will we see retaliation in one form or another?
No surprise that U.S. embassies were put on high alert and U.S. airport security tightened yet again in the aftermath. I don't expect we'll see attempts at revenge in the next days or even months. My sense is that al-Qaida is patient enough to take a longer view. The question now is do they have the capability after the loss of their leader?

Will we seize on this extraordinary development to come together again as Americans, the way we did after the carnage 10 years ago?
The spontaneous celebrations in Washington and New York were encouraging, as was the news that President Bush had congratulated Obama on the successful mission. But it remains to be seen whether we take this moment to find a unified purpose in addressing our lingering economic problems and deep political divisions.

Partisan fights over proposed federal budget cuts and deficit reductions are no less important today than they were yesterday. Our entanglements in Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East are as complicated as ever. Widespread ignorance and distrust of Islam is still an issue.

I'd like to think we can rally around our president and find solutions to our domestic and international problems that make us stronger. Likewise, I hope more Americans will be able to see that Islam was never the enemy -- it was bin Laden. I'm probably being naive, but for today at least I'd think it's possible.

How will this play out politically?
Yesterday's operation can only help Obama at home and America abroad. To pull this off in the midst of the Arab Spring still roiling across the Middle East, with people in Japan, Haiti and the American South still recovering from natural disasters, with the U.S. economy still teetering, was an amazing development. Euphoric, almost. Can you imagine the blistering criticism the president would have taken had this mission failed in any way?

As the father of a young serviceman, a 23-year-old Army specialist, it goes without saying that I'd welcome any momentum this adds to a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Though I understand his desire to put his military training to use, and I admire his courage his resolve, I remain reluctant to embrace the thought of seeing him deployed to what remains a very dangerous place.


Photograph by Drew Angerer, The Washington Times

Still got hope?

Two weeks from today, voters across the nation will deliver their verdict in the mid-term elections. Will they, in their righteous and misguided indignation, refudiate (er, repudiate) what President Obama and the Congress have done to try to haul this country out of the ditch that Bush & Co. drove us into? Or will they show they have come to their senses?

Too many Americans either don't understand or don't want to admit that it was the previous administration that started two wars and mismanaged the economy -- and that you can't fix everything in less than two years.

The conventional wisdom says Republicans are poised to make net gains in both the House and Senate. I suppose that's inevitable, and I won't get into the specifics here. But I can hope (can't I?) that at least some voters will take notice of an important story by The Associated Press that contradicts the notion that partisan gridlock has resulted in a do-nothing Congress.

In the piece "A productive Congress gets no respect from voters," reporter Jim Abrams notes that this Congress was actually the most productive in nearly half a century, having passed significant legislation on everything from the stimulus, health care reform and Wall Street regulation to making college loans more affordable and enacting new consumer protections for credit card users and tax credits for first-time homeowners.

Yet recent polls show as many as three-fourths of Americans disapprove of Congress. What's amazing is how today's backlash mirrors that of nearly 50 years ago. "In 1966," the AP reports, "after Democrats created Medicare and Medicaid and passed civil rights laws, they got hammered in the [mid-term] election, losing 48 seats in the House and four in the Senate." 

Things are heating up in the Northwest this week, with the big guns coming out to support Democrats in important races. Bill Clinton was in the Seattle area yesterday, on behalf of Washington Sen. Patty Murray, and Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are all scheduled to stump for her in the next few days. The president will be in Oregon tomorrow to boost the campaign of John Kitzhaber, the former Democratic governor now seeking a third term.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin was in Reno yesterday kicking off a 15-day national tour in support of Tea Party candidates, including Nevada's Sharron Angle, who's perhaps the daffiest of them all.

At times, I despair. But then I take heart when I read Obama's call to action ("Obama Fights Back") in Rolling Stone's Oct. 15 issue:

"It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we've got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.

"The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.

"Everybody out there has to be thinking about what's at stake in this election and if they want to move forward over the next two years or six years or 10 years on key issues like climate change, key issues like how we restore a sense of equity and optimism to middle-class families who have seen their incomes decline by five percent over the last decade. If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election."

Too harsh on Obama?

A week ago, I was part of a small gathering of Portlanders who turned out for an open-air discussion of politics, encouraged by a Huffington Post meetup program. The first, and most passionately discussed, topic was whether Barack Obama has been a disappointment as president. Consensus came rather quickly: Yes.

An op-ed column by Maureen Dowd in Sunday's New York Times stirred up many of the same arguments and caused me to revisit my thinking.

On the one hand, Obama swept into office with a huge electoral victory and commanding majorities in both the Senate and House. If the country really was saying it was ready for change, shouldn't he have delivered swiftly and decisively on health care and financial services reform, not to mention climate-change legislation and comprehensive immigration reform? Shouldn't he have pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan?

On the other hand, we probably expected too much, too soon given the euphoria of election night, the giddiness that came with his inauguration and, not least, the knowledge that campaigning is way different from governing. You say what you must to shore up your base; you move toward the middle -- away from extremes on both ends -- if you want to successfully practice politics.

Into this fray steps Dowd. In a column aptly titled "No Love From The Lefties" she calls on Obama to dump Robert Gibbs as press secretary and make him what he yearns to be: an inside counselor to the president, a position that relieves him of sparring with the press, often to his boss' detriment. I don't have an opinion on Dowd's suggestion or Gibbs himself, but I do have to say she absolutely nailed it when she analyzed the Democrats' current state of dysfunction. They were united by their hatred of George W. Bush, but Obama's election has revealed they are splintered according to how far left they lean. Liberal? Radical? Progressive?

Whatever they call themselves, they're disappointed to find Obama is on their right, trying to find traction in the political center. And, Dowd notes, the situation isn't helped any by the president himself.

President Obama is testing how elastic he can be, how much realism he can have before he betrays his idealism. For better and worse, he is an elitist and a situationist. But the professional left — like the professional right — often considers pragmatism a moral compromise. 

The lefties came to the defense of the centrist Clinton during impeachment. Now that Obama is under attack, however, they are not coming to his defense, even though he has given more to the liberal cause than the scandal-stunted Clinton ultimately achieved. 

He has shepherded the biggest expansion of social programs since the Great Society and spearheaded the biggest spending program with the stimulus. But for the left (and for some economists), it was not as big as it ought to have been. 

Obama got elected because of the clarity of his campaign and his speeches. But, surprisingly, he’s in some ways an incoherent president. He’s with the banks, he’s against the banks. He’s leaving Afghanistan, he’s staying in Afghanistan. He strains at being a populist, but his head is in the clouds.

There's a lot of truth in Dowd's analysis. Obama has been wounded politically by some of his own backers who expected home runs and got singles and doubles instead. At the same time, count me among those who wish Obama could reclaim some of his campaign magic and put it to good use in talking honestly -- and passionately -- to the American people.


Photo by Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times

Madame Secretary

On the cover of Esquire's May issue on women: Christina Hendricks, the curvy redhead from "Mad Men." Inside, photos of half-dressed actresses and models; the usual features on fashion and food, music and movies; an eclectic assortment of "personality profiles," this time including Lady Gaga (gah!) and Paris Hilton (double gah!); and a Q&A interview with Carol Bartz, the unapologetically hard-ass CEO of Yahoo!.

What might sound like fluff is saved, however, by a brilliant piece on Hillary Clinton, crafted by Tom Junod, one of the magazine's stable of very talented writers.

The headline and subhead capture the essence of the piece, as they should:
"Hillary. Happy."
She has lived the most extraordinary American life. Now she lives in extraordinary exile -- from the two men she is most loyal to, from politics, from controversy. And it has freed her.

At the start of what became a seemingly endless 2008 presidential campaign, I was inclined to vote for Hillary. Sure, she was a wooden, painfully scripted speaker but she brought tremendous intellect and insider experience from eight years in the White House and six years in the U.S. Senate.

But when the charismatic and inspiring Barack Obama came along, touting a new approach to national politics (one that would emphasize bipartisanship) and foreign policy (one that would have America re-engage in international diplomacy after the bellicose Bush years), my vote went to the senator from Illinois.

I don't regret changing loyalties and I'm glad Hillary accepted Barack's invitation to serve as secretary of state. (See how well I know them? I'm on a first-name basis...Actually, Junod points out that these two are the only American political celebrities known globally by their first names. Not Bill.)

But, like a lot of Americans, I've wondered what it's really been like for Hillary in her new job, immersed in the world of obtuse dialogue and ceremony, far from the heat and blinding lights of Beltway politics and insipid partisan politics that have infused nastiness and ignorance into national debates about health care, immigration reform and judicial appointments.

Wonder no more. Junod does a brilliant job of taking us through Hillary's history -- as the ambitious "co-president" when Bill was in office, as the humiliated partner in the world's most scrutinized marriage, as the well-respected senator from New York, as the reluctant candidate whose inevitable nomination to the presidency was thwarted by Obama.

And now? She is undeniably one of the president's greatest assets, Junod writes. Polls show that Americans rate Obama more favorably on her foreign policy than domestic policy. And, Junod notes, her global celebrity makes her indispensable to the administration even as it exiles her to endless touring, trying to rebuild fences where Bush-Cheney knocked them down. At age 62, Hillary traveled a quarter of a million miles in her first year as secretary of state, which means she has lived separately from her husband and gained an ironic respite from speculation about her personal life --- because she has no time for a personal life.

There's much to like in this piece, which is clearly sympathetic to Hillary and leaves you wondering what if.

"We will never know if Hillary Clinton would have made a great president," Junod writes. "What we do know, based on the way she's done her job as secretary of state — with her loyalty feeding her capacity for self-sacrifice and self-sacrifice awakening her genius for competence — is that she'd probably make a great president now, having lost her chance forever."

There are several great scenes in this profile, but I choose this one as emblematic of the intellect, loyalty and inner strength that Clinton brings to her job as well as a neat segue to the human qualities -- physical and personal -- that come to light in the piece.

You don't know how she does what she does. You don't know how anyone possibly could. You see her use her hands to push herself up when it's time to stand up from the day's work at the dais; you see her use the banister when she's climbing the steep steps from the runway to the waiting plane. You see her so tired that her face looks almost punctured. You see her emerging from one closed-door conference after another, standing next to one ceremonial man after another, speaking in the same dead diplomatic tongue, staring at him and nodding as he speaks in a language she doesn't understand, and you wonder if the job she has taken is a parodic reiteration of the poses she mastered as a political wife.

You wonder, as you have always wondered, what goes on in her mind while her face sets itself into its unruffled mask. And you wonder, mainly, when she is going to yawn. She never does. Her job seems to dare her to yawn, and yet she never does, while you, you who worry about her as you follow her, you who wonder where she gets her strength from ..."Well, I appreciate your coming on the trips and following us around," Hillary Clinton says when you get the chance to visit her at the State Department. She gives you her hand, and it is small and lightly freckled.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/women/women-issue/hillary-clinton-0510-5#ixzz0oOK4bhC9

Photo of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden by Pete Souza, White House photographer

Photo gallery: Getty Images

A bridge to the 21st century *

Writing in The New York Times this week, Thomas Friedman shed new light on some familiar themes and introduced me to a new constituency that could play a huge role in U.S. politics and economic affairs in the next few years.

"Who's Up For Building Bridges?" he asks, referring to the question of which political party is going to strengthen America's ability to compete in the global marketplace while practicing greater fiscal discipline. Based on the quagmire that currently passes for national politics, it's certainly not going to be the Republicans, who've become the Party of No. But it won't necessarily be the Democrats, either, if they can't get beyond a decades-long agenda of major entitlement programs.

Friedman argues that both major parties have essentially come to the end of the road of the divergent paths they've pursued during the 20th century. The GOP embraced the Reagan Revolution perhaps too much, with an incessant call for tax cuts, deregulation and a government-is-the-problem mantra. Meanwhile, with the passage of health care reform, the Democrats essentially brought the New Deal-FDR Revolution to its logical conclusion.

So, who's looking ahead to the 21st century to push us toward the creation of new jobs in a greatly changed environment -- both literal and figurative? President Obama is at least trying, Friedman says.

"Obama-ism posits that we are now in a hypercompetitive global economy, where the country that thrives will be the one that brings together the most educated, creative and diverse work force with the best infrastructure -- bandwidth, ports, airports, high-speed rail and good governance."

In a world with a warming climate and a steadily growing population -- projected to hit 9.2 billion by 2050 -- demand for clean energy is going to expand mightly. And so we should expect energy technology to be the next great global industry.

Anyone who thinks that can be achieved without government involvement -- whether offering incentives or setting high national education standards -- is delusional. Globalization has weakened both parties, Friedman argues -- and I'll suggest interested readers check out his column rather than take up more space here explaining why.

He concludes by pointing to the emergence of so-called "Newocrats," a new constituency created by globalization "which combines the multinational corporate manager, the technology enterprepreneur and engineer, and the aspirational members of the meritocracy." Such people would have leaned Republican in the past but now many lean toward Obama.

"They don't agree with everything he's proposing," Friedman concludes, "but they sense that he is working on that bridge to the 21st century, while today's GOP/Tea Party is just not in the game."

If he's right, that gives me some encouragement in the short run, for the 2010 mid-term elections, and for the long run, if our president can bring together enough level-headed people in business, labor, education and government to pull their oars in the same direction.

Photograph: Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times

* This column marks my 301st post since I started this blog a little over 15 months ago. Thanks to one and all who've been along for some or most of the ride.

Dinner with the Obamas

Obamas' Valentine's getaway

It was date night for President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama on Saturday at they dined out at the exclusive Chicago restaurant Table Fifty-Two, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. The eatery's executive chef is Art Smith, formerly Oprah Winfrey's personal chef. Table Fifty-Two offers Southern-style food, including grits, jambalaya and maple sugar short ribs.

The tidbit you just read was part of a gossipy roundup of how politicians spent their Valentine's Day. It caught my attention for two reasons:

1. When Lori and I were in Chicago in August 2008 for a journalism convention that morphed into a long weekend/mini-vacation, we ate at this very restaurant. And I think we would agree that of four very nice restaurants we tried that week, Table Fifty-Two topped the list in terms of quality of the food and overall dining experience.

2. Turns out the Obamas weren't there this past weekend. The schlep that put together the Names & Faces roundup for The Washington Post (a lowly news aide) pulled the information from the Internet and got the date wrong. The Obamas dined there on Valentine's Day in 2009. Ouch. The Post's ombudsman called attention to the error on his blog.

This year, the Obamas spent Valentine's Day at Camp David with Sasha and Malia. Lori and George, meanwhile, had a wonderful seafood paella dinner at Petisco on Northeast Broadway.

We'll have to check our 2011 calendar. Might be nice to meet up with Barack and Michelle next year.

Photo: Table 52

Barack Obama and positive discipline

This month's Esquire arrived the other day and, as usual, there's some fine material in it.

Forget the profile of cover girl Blake Lively, the "Gossip Girl" who strikes me as yet another one of the many interchangeable Next Big Stars in Hollywood who doesn't become one.

Instead go to the intriguing piece, "Barack Obama: Papa in Chief," and wrap your mind around this theory put out there by writer Tom Junod: To understand Obama, you need to understand the "positive discipline" movement, a philosophy of discipline that rests on the principle that children should never be punished but, rather, should be taught mutual respect through the parent's example.

"Positive discipline does not mean no discipline; it means that discipline is a matter of teaching mutual respect, rather than making your child suffer," Junod writes. "... and so when faced with intransigence, parents have to respond by stating their expectations, repeating the rules, and then giving their children the love and support they need to follow them. Always try to include, rather than isolate; avoid labels; don't negotiate, but don't escalate, either. If your children are not doing well, either take them out of the situation or remove yourself. You — and they — can always try again."

If you imagine Obama as the patient father, never raising his voice, never punishing his opponents, you can begin to see the consistency with which he's dealt with Congressman Joe ("You lie") Wilson of South Carolina, the intransigent Republicans seeking to block health care reform, Sgt. James Crowley (the cop who arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home) -- even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ("One could almost hear Obama saying, 'Use your words, Mahmoud. Use your words.' ")

Junod continues:

"The things we liked about him have turned out to be the things that drive us crazy about him. After eight years of the Decider, we elected the Deliberator ... and now we've decided that he's too deliberative, too methodical, too cool, too unemotional, too even-tempered, too undemonstrative, too rational, too conciliatory, too compromising."

Obama's style is so contrary to what we've become to expect from a president that we don't know what to make of him -- or ourselves. We liked it when he said he wanted to change Beltway politics-as-usual, but he frustrated the Left by not asserting himself more strongly in the health care debate and he drove the Right crazy by seeming, in their eyes, way too accommodating with foreign leaders and apologetic for past American actions and attitudes.
Is it him? Or is it us that doesn't get it?

"Most Americans respond to strength and decisiveness in a president the same way they do in a father," Junod writes. "It has been unsettling to have a president whose agenda for change includes changing our very notions of strength and weakness, and whose idea of decisiveness seems to involve mostly making good choices, which is not necessarily leadership. He has been able to lead by inspiration but unable to simply lean on people, and unwilling to try on the world stage. His uncertainty as an authority figure may or may not have encouraged our foreign enemies, but it has certainly emboldened his domestic ones, who seemed confused about whether to call him a tyrant or a weakling until they realized, like schoolboys, that they weren't going to be punished and started calling him whatever they damn well pleased."

If you buy Junod's thesis, then Obama's seeming indecisiveness appears to have a logical context. Consider:

"The biggest difficulty with all nonauthoritative approaches to authority is that, even when they work, they often don't work right away. Spanking a child, threatening a child, taking a child's toys away — they might not be the best thing for a child, but they generally get a child's attention. ... There are no orders in positive parenting, as there are no orders in the Obama administration. There are, instead, reasonable goals and clearly stated expectations. The approach is evolutionary, and on the most important domestic issue of his presidency — health-care reform — so is the Paleolithic progress of the debate."

So, is Obama outfoxing us all by sticking to a philosophy of positive discipline in the face of unruly opponents and an easily spooked, easily manipulated American public? Or is he following this approach to the political graveyard?

Read the piece here and decide for yourself.

Image: President Obama, by Adam Beane. Clay-and-wax-based composite material, 18 inches high. Commissioned for Esquire, December 2009.

Veterans Day 2009

This year was our first as parents of a soldier. Ask me what I felt today on Veterans Day and I'd tell you it was mixture of pride, appreciation and a dash of apprehension.

There's a strong feeling of pride at having a member of the family serving in the armed forces. I wasn't thrilled at first about Jordan enlisting in the Army (I favored the Navy, reasoning that if were on a boat perhaps he'd be far, far away from the action in the Iraq and Afghanistan), but I've since come around to understanding his reasons for joining and supporting his decision as the right one for him.

On a day like this it's easy to appreciate the individual servicemen and servicewomen who have answered the call throughout our nation's history. Our troops have taken on big, dangerous missions and as well as smaller, tedious tasks in service to our country's varying objectives over the years.

But it is the fact that we are enmeshed in two wars with uncertain outcomes that gives me pause, that makes me feel apprehensive about the short- and long-term future. Invading Iraq, despite the lack of WMDs, proved to be an unwelcome intrusion into a civil war, with Sunnis and Shiites alternately fighting themselves and us. Invading Afghanistan and failing to pursue our stated objective -- the hunt for Osama bin Laden -- to a successful conclusion has left us in a real mess eight years later.

I pray that President Obama and his advisers can come up with a strategy that makes sense for Afghanistan. I find myself wavering again lately, asking myself if any increase in troops will secure the country, keep the Taliban and al-Qaida at bay, and create an environment where democracy can take hold. It's been such a costly war, both in terms of lives and cost.

Obama paid a visit to Arlington National Cemetery today but it was his appearance at Fort Hood a day earlier that really moved me. He paid tribute, by name, to each of the 13 people killed at the Army base a few days earlier.

"Neither this country — nor the values that we were founded upon — could exist without men and women like these 13 Americans," Obama said. "Their life's work is our security and the freedom that we too often take for granted. Every evening that the sun sets on a tranquil town; every dawn that a flag is unfurled; every moment that an American enjoys life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — that is their legacy."

Later, he added:

"As we face these challenges, the stories of those at Fort Hood reaffirm the core values that we are fighting for, and the strength that we must draw upon. Theirs are the tales of American men and women answering an extraordinary call -- the call to serve their comrades, their communities, and their country. In an age of selfishness, they embody responsibility. In an era of division, they call upon us to come together. In a time of cynicism, they remind us of who we are as Americans."

For a day, at least, I could hope we could overcome our differences and honor the men and women who wear the uniform for all of us.

Photo: John Raedle/Getty Images.

Quick Takes

So...I've been at this now for six months. Yesterday's post was No. 150. And, as has become my custom, it's time to start or finish a month with some random tidbits lumped under the umbrella of Quick Takes. Before I begin, thanks to everyone for reading this blog, even if sporadically, and especially so to anyone who's taken time to post a comment.

-- A shout-out for National Geographic. Some people may make fun of N.G. as boring and old school. Not me. Every month that it arrives, it offers spectacular photography and superb writing, which together illuminate issues and cultures around the world and transport me to unfamilar, unreachable places.

In this month's issue alone, for instance, there's a great feature about king penguins on Possession Island, north of Antarctica ("Every Bird a King"), and a gripping a story about the failed state of Somalia ("Shattered Somalia"). See if these excerpts pull you in:

First comes the Noise, the turbulent din of king penguins calling, fighting, courting, like the ultimate schoolyard uproar. Then the smell hits, a choking reek of fish and ammonia from the birds' guano. But the assault on ear and nose is only a teaser for what awaits the eye. When photographer Stefano Unterthiner climbed a volcanic ridge on Possession Island—a wet, wind-blasted speck in the Crozet archipelago some 1,400 miles north of Antarctica—he found himself staring into a valley filled wall-to-wall with king penguins, tens of thousands of them, all standing as if gathered for a mass rally. The occasion was summer in the Southern Hemisphere—egg-laying season, the time when penguins, so agile and quick in the water, clumsily come ashore to molt, find a partner, and with luck produce a new crop of chicks.

And this...

This land is bred for trouble. Its nearly 250,000 square miles are, for the most part, deadly dry. Somalia's inhabitants have engaged in a constant competition for its scarce resources—water and pasturage—since antiquity. According to the great Somali ethnographer, I. M. Lewis, Somalia's occupants "form one of the largest single ethnic blocks in Africa." By tradition they are herders of goats and camels and cattle who share the same Islamic faith and the Somali language, and until the colonial era in the late 19th century they continuously occupied much of the Horn of Africa—including what is today Djibouti, northeastern Kenya, and the eastern portion of Ethiopia. In the Somali psyche, fierce nationalism coexists with equally fierce pastoral individualism. It is not their way to look to government for solutions. What held Somalia together—and sometimes drove it apart—was its elaborate clan system.

-- Putting a face on the president's critics. A thoughtful piece in the Aug. 30 New York Times Magazine by Matt Bai ("The New Old Guard") reminds us of the difficulty Barack Obama had connecting with older voters in last year's Democratic primaries and suggests what lies behind the "generational unrest.

For all the shouting that has dominated these town hall meetings on health care lately, they have yielded a few important insights. The first is that the town hall itself has probably reached the end of its usefulness in the Internet age; if you’re looking for thoughtful dialogue, you might as well hold your next meeting on the stern of a Somali pirate ship. The second is that we now have a visual sense of the kind of voter who is militantly opposed to Obama’s health care agenda and, more broadly, to the president himself.

The typical anti-Obama activist tends to be white, male and — perhaps most significant — advanced in age. A poll conducted earlier this month by CNN and Opinion Research showed a rather stark age divide when it came to health care: 57 percent of voters under 50 said they favored the outlines of a Democratic plan, but that number was a full 20 points lower among voters over 65. In three Pew Research Center polls going back to April, senior citizens consistently gave Obama’s job performance lower approval ratings than did than any other age group.

Photograph of Mogadishu, Somalia by Pascal Maitre

A good day in cyberspace

A fellow blogger once told me:

Blogging can feel like such a private activity, words I'm shouting to no one in particular, and it's encouraging to know there are real and actual readers.

I agree completely. So it was gratifying yesterday to see signs that Rough and Rede is being read and appreciated by a few more people than is evident on a daily basis. (Sorry if this sounds self-indulgent, but I think any journalist is curious to know who's reading his or her work and how they're reacting to it.)

Anyway, Obama's Blackberry drew a first-time commenter. The Joni Mitchell video posted under Quick Takes prompted a lovely reminiscence about the part Joni played in bringing a couple together 30 years ago. I picked up a new follower, bringing me to 20. (Yay!)

And...three fellow journalists, ranging from Portland and Vancouver to Washington, D.C., let me know through regular e-mail or Facebook messages that they read the blog regularly. (Yay, again!)

Part of me feels silly sharing this. Does it do anything besides draw attention to a writer's insecurities? I'd like to think so. The positive feedback gives me incentive to keep at this, knowing that somehow, someway people are getting something out of this.

Thanks, readers.

Obama's Blackberry

A delightful little book landed in my "in" box at work the other day: a review copy of "Obama's Blackberry." Not much bigger than an actual Blackberry and written in txt msg style, it's 135 pages of sheer delight -- nothing but a series of fictitious e-mails between the president and various world and political leaders, plus a few other notables.

For instance:

Text message from:
Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice

JustClarence: hey
BarackO: hey
JustClarence: u wanna hang out?

BarackO: no

This witty little volume is the brainchild of Kasper Hauser, a San Francisco-based comedy troupe of four days who've also done parodies of The New York Times wedding pages and "Skymaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy from a Plane."

With e-mail exchanges from the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, it's the kind of humor that makes you laugh out loud.

For instance:

Text message from:
Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State

Hbomb: meeting w/china's premiere 2day on trade issues
BarackO: whats your strategy?
Hbomb: not sure, uphill battle
BarackO: just do what u did in campaign
Hbomb: ??
BarackO: drag it out like a Grateful Dead encore

And this:

Text message from:
Joe Biden, Vice President

BidenMyTime: hey u, whatcha doin?
BarackO: m really busy. w/joint chiefs
BidenMyTime: need me?
BarackO: got it covered. keep working on yr pet project
BidenMyTime: puppy?
BarackO: universl healthcare
BidenMyTime: right :( can i leave at 4:45?
BarackO: don't care.
BidenMyTime: how does MySpace work?
BarackO: not now. ask malia.

Get the idea? Get the book. It's $13.99 in hardcover. Hopefully, it'll go to paperback soon with a corresponding price drop.