The only two Westerners living on their own in Kandahar reveal what they've learned about the war in Afghanistan - Foreign Policy

The only two Westerners living on their own in Kandahar have been bombed, ambushed, and nearly sold to kidnappers. Here's what they've learned about the country where war just won't end.

BY ALEX STRICK VAN LINSCHOTEN, FELIX KUEHN | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

For a split second the room seems to vibrate under the pressure of the shock wave. Ears ring, heads retract, and muscles contract. Your mind jump-starts: Did the explosion sound big or small? Where did it come from? You hesitate, wait for another sound, but hear nothing. You jump to your feet, grabbing a camera on the way to the terrace.

Barely a half-mile away, the cloud of debris billows into the sky. The air fills with sirens, and people pour into the street, climbing on top of otherwise never-used pedestrian bridges, craning to make out something in the distance. A pickup truck piled with bloody bodies passes by from the site of the explosion as the cloud slowly descends, losing its shape and covering the city with a new layer of dust and sand.

This is Kandahar, and no one is surprised anymore. Seven times during the past year, blast waves from huge car bombs have ripped through town, shattering windows and throwing up similar clouds of debris. A few weeks ago, a bomb targeting a police convoy tore a huge crater into the street just outside our door. Not long after that, a massive car explosion devastated downtown Kandahar, killing more than 40 and wounding dozens. It was 20 minutes after the call to prayer, when everyone in Kandahar was sitting down to break the Ramadan fast. The blast blew out our windows, shaking plaster from the ceiling and sending glass flying through the room in thousands of pieces. Gunfire ensued. Once the dust settled, you could see the bomb site, just three blocks from our house, streaks of flames shooting into the night sky.

This is our life, and as the only two Westerners living permanently in Kandahar without blast walls and intrusive security restrictions to protect us, it has been a mix of isolation, boredom, disarmingly potent realizations, and outright depression in the face of what is happening. In our 18 months here, we have witnessed up close the ruinous consequences of a conflict in which no party has clean hands. We have spent countless hours talking with people of all persuasions in Kandahar, from mujahedeen who fought against the Soviets in the 1980s, to guerrillas who fought alongside the Taliban in the 1990s, to Afghans who fight against the Kabul government and foreign forces today. And we have learned that Kandahar defies simple categorization; far more understanding is necessary before we can appreciate how (and how many) mistakes have been made by the Western countries waging war here, let alone begin crafting a vision for the future.

Our Kandahar has many faces, though, not all branded by conflict. Life here is also about swimming in the nearby Arghandab River, enjoying the cool caramel taste of sheer yakh, and sitting among the branches of a friend's pomegranate orchard. It's listening to tales of the past 30 years told by those who directly influenced the course of history, and it's watching the traditional atan dance at wedding celebrations.

Still, violence affects most aspects of life in Kandahar now, and the city has become used to the bombings. For smaller attacks it takes less than an hour for things to return to normal; the people absorb violence like a sponge. After the recent blast that blew out our windows, one of our Afghan friends turned to us and said, "There are those Afghans who migrated to the West who say they miss Afghanistan." He burst into laughter. "This is what they are missing!"

On our first trip to Kandahar together, back in 2004, a friend took us to meet Akhtar Mohammad. Slightly taller than most, with a scruffy beard, a turban, and dark-rimmed eyes, he was in charge of a small police post in one of the city's dicier districts. Over tea, Mohammad offered $50,000 to our friend for the two of us. This was more than five years ago. Today, he could easily pay four times this amount and still make a more than reasonable return on his investment in ransom money.

Over the following years we made many trips around Afghanistan, but Kandahar had become the place we were most interested in: a seemingly insular and ancient society trying to come to terms with a foreign military presence and the perceived corruptions of a globalized culture.

So in the spring of 2008 we set up residence here full-time. Looking back, moving to Kandahar was actually our real arrival in Afghanistan. Away from the isolation and dislocation of the "Kabul bubble," where expats tend to congregate in heavily secured compounds, we started to live among friends, conducting our own research and editing the memoirs of Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan.

There is a sense of timelessness about Kandahar, not just with its look and feel but its importance. The city straddles Afghanistan's southern trade route to Pakistan and Iran and is considered the heartland of Afghanistan's millions of ethnic Pashtuns. The Afghan state was founded here in the mid-18th century, and the country's leaders have invariably been drawn from the tribal stock of the south. By the 1970s, Kandahar was known among foreigners as a peaceful oasis stop on the hippie trail to Kabul, and many residents still remember the music parties hosted in nearby villages, where Afghans, Europeans, and Americans would congregate for days at a time.

During the 1980s war against the Soviets, southern Afghanistan saw some of the worst fighting, and it was among the resistance groups there that the seeds of the Taliban were sown. Although Kandahar had become the de facto capital of the country by the late 1990s, it was still an isolated backwater very much removed from anything going on around it. That changed after America ousted the Taliban eight years ago, and since then, Kandahar has grown into a bustling city of nearly 1 million. Nonetheless, it still has the feel of a big village, where everyone knows everyone else's secrets and rumors spread within hours.

As foreigners, our only option is to live in downtown Kandahar, which is still relatively safe -- that is, if you discount the bomb blasts, assassinations, and occasional rocket attacks. Even so, sharing an apartment with Afghan friends and living among the local community -- we don't know any other foreigners in town -- is what allows us a measure of safety. We spend a lot of our time talking with the Pashtun tribal elders who are still left here, and there's also a certain amount of protection for us in that. We don't pay anyone anything to guard our lives.

When we first came to Kandahar, the city's violent underbelly was mostly out of sight. Now, violence is so common that it's somehow less shocking for its frequency. One day you might sit with the victim of a roadside bombing; another day you'll talk to a construction company owner who muses that he wants to hire a contract killer to eliminate his competition.

The fallout from the war in the south -- and it is very much a war -- is never far away. We rarely venture beyond city limits these days, for a trip to most of Kandahar's surrounding districts holds the real possibility of never coming back. Most people you meet are subject to some tragedy or other: The little girl who used to work as a cleaner in our building lost her father and sister in an IED attack on Canadian forces in the city; our office assistant's brother was kidnapped more than a year ago; the father of another young friend was killed by a bomb attack in a Lashkar Gah mosque last year; the list goes on and on.

The social effects of this constant bombardment -- literal and figurative -- are deeply corrosive. A common saying on parting company these days is, "I'll see you soon, if we're still alive." The assumption that you might be killed at any moment is one of the most pervasive and disruptive of mentalities. It means that you cannot think forward more than a day or two. The biggest gain in the shortest amount of time is the usual attitude to most things. With this mindset, it is almost impossible to work, let alone try to build any sort of political consensus.

The nature of the security threat means it is best to keep most activities unplanned. The same goes for extended trips outside the city. The threat from kidnapping gangs -- many of whom work in cooperation with (or from within) the police -- is very real, and to walk around the city two or three times in a row would almost certainly invite that possibility. For that reason we bought, with much hesitation and regret, a treadmill and a weight bench. For just over $1,000, we chose a middle-of-the-line new Japanese model from the 20-odd machines on display at one sports shop. Occasionally, five days will pass in which neither of us can leave the house. A treadmill is a completely unnatural proposition, but Kandahar has forced us to appreciate the value of a long run leading nowhere.

Security permitting, swimming is also a nice break from it all. Somewhat surprisingly, given that relatively few people in Kandahar know how to swim, there are many opportunities here to do so. Various friends have pools in town, shallow ponds for the most part, or sometimes on a Friday afternoon we travel just outside the city, where thousands congregate to piknik, eating fruit and cooling themselves in the chilly streams and canals of the Arghandab River.

But everything in Kandahar is a trade-off. Whatever you do, wherever you go, there is always something you will have to give up for doing it. You trade your security for a good opportunity for firsthand research, or you trade several days of relatively safe seclusion at home for the restless frustration it breeds. Something of value always has to give. We could not remain living in the city without knowing that lesson. For a while we've been considering traveling to one of Kandahar province's western districts, perhaps the most dangerous place in the country, to find out what exactly is taking place between U.S. troops and Taliban fighters. The downside: We might be captured, beheaded, or worse.

As the west's political and military leaders are only now starting to realize, greater Kandahar is and has always been the key battlefield for Afghanistan's future. The international community paid little attention to the south during the first half-dozen years following the Taliban's fall, and that neglect is now being paid back with a vengeance.

Before moving to Kandahar in early 2008, we used to take the ring road, the main thoroughfare that circles Afghanistan's perimeter, when traveling to Kabul and back. Friends in Kabul, working from behind concrete blast walls, would often show us their security briefings saying that to take the ring road meant almost certain death. Twice, armed fighters stopped one of us on the road south at an improvised checkpoint. Thankfully, the same excuse worked both times as several years of university Arabic proved persuasive enough to convince them that a European researcher was really a Syrian doctor returning from a health program down south.

Another time we drove to the desert south of Kandahar city for a picnic with friends. Word spread that some musicians had come to perform at the shrine of a local saint. We sat next to the head of one of Kandahar's government departments, who received a call from a police checkpoint farther north.

"I have eight Taliban with weapons in a car who say that they want to come to the shrine. What should we do with them?" the policeman asked.

"Let them come!" the government official replied. "They're probably just coming to enjoy the music. Who are we to stop them?" So they came. And nobody sitting there in the desert seemed the least bit worried.

In Kandahar, the Taliban are a fact of life -- not necessarily liked, but present nonetheless. The traditional Pashtun recourse to healthy dollops of pragmatism means that a government official can enjoy live music with a Talib, even while each has full knowledge of who the other is. These lines are blurred and the tectonics shift constantly wherever you go in Kandahar. The government is apparently fighting "the Taliban," this amorphous force that everybody has so much trouble defining, but with whom, at an individual level, there seems to be plenty of room to sit and do business. Indeed, previous governors of Kandahar regularly called and conferred with their ostensible enemy, the Taliban "shadow governor." More than once, we have sat down to dinner with Afghans who had been fighting Canadians or Americans in neighboring districts earlier that afternoon.

The Taliban are a mixed bunch of characters, and most Afghans here have some link to them. Everyday fighters are drawn from the huge numbers of unemployed, uneducated young men who dominate the rural population, and commanders often are the same figures who fought against the Soviets in the 1980s. Some join the Taliban because they lack a better occupation or a forward-looking vision in their lives; others, out of revenge, religious nationalism, or the simple wish to be left alone. But whatever the motivation, their reasons should be heard.

And if there's one thing we spend a lot of our time in Kandahar doing, it's sitting in on Pashtun tribal meetings, listening. When we first arrived in town, speaking barely three words of Pashto, it was easy to be awed by the long speeches that elders would frequently make, sometimes lasting almost an hour uninterrupted. These old, white-bearded Pashtuns offer a mix of respect and strong opinions. Everyone is given a chance to speak, even on occasion the two foreigners sitting in the room. Decisions are made on the basis of a complex matrix of overlapping priorities -- survival to the next day being the most important, followed closely by tribal loyalties, professional affiliation, and religion.

These meetings offer an important window into how Pashtuns approach conflict in general, how they resolve it, and how the war affects their daily lives. And though in many ways we still feel we are on a crash course in Pashtun culture, a few important takeaways are starting to emerge. Perhaps most notably, we've seen that the Pashtun tribal system, still damaged from years of war and foreign interference, is again becoming the first point of call to settle disputes between locals and others -- be they the government or the Taliban. Honor is the cornerstone of Pashtunwali, the famed tribal code meant to govern all Pashtun conduct from land disputes to revenge, but so, it seems, is survival.

We've also learned that the Taliban transcend Pashtun culture, though they came from the midst of it; their ideology and goals are not formed by their tribal or ethnic identity. And we have worked hard to start to understand how the Taliban have shaped Kandahar's recent history, conducting dozens of interviews with Afghans who played key roles in the conflicts of the past 30 years and working with Mullah Zaeef to edit and explain his life story.

Indeed, Mullah Zaeef's life offers many examples of the searing effects of decades of war. At 15, he joined the jihad, leaving his family and the refugee camp back in Pakistan. In reality just a boy, he fought alongside many of those who would later become the founders of the Taliban. His life, since before he was born, has been inscribed with the lines of conflict and loss, betrayal and sacrifice. Today, he is unable to live in Kandahar on accounts of threats from all sides, and he spends much of his time in Kabul explaining and advocating the Taliban position.

When journalist friends come to Kandahar for a few days to report a story, many ask the same question: After all the bombings, in the face of so much personal risk, why on earth do we remain in Kandahar?

This place fascinates and frustrates in equal measure, but it often feels like watching history unfold. This is the fault line, and Pashtun lands have a seemingly disproportionate role to play in the modern world: How will NATO -- or U.S. President Barack Obama, for that matter -- survive its encounter with southern Afghanistan? If the international community fails in Afghanistan, what does that mean for potential future interventions and nation-building?

The way this grand drama plays out in front of us is both captivating and addictive, but it is increasingly difficult to remain here. More than once this year we have had long discussions about how much longer we can stay. Nothing has happened to us so far, but with people being snatched from the roads and assassinated in the light of day, with a growing number of IED attacks and suicide bombings within city limits, and with the Taliban openly fighting on the streets on the outskirts, a steep paranoia occasionally pounces. In those moments everything feels like a threat.

Charles Kenny on why TV, not Facebook or Twitter, is going to revolutionize the world - Foreign Policy

It's not Twitter or Facebook that's reinventing the planet. Eighty years after the first commercial broadcast crackled to life, television still rules our world. And let's hear it for the growing legions of couch potatoes: All those soap operas might be the ticket to a better future after all.

BY CHARLES KENNY | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

"The television," science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury lamented in 1953, is "that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little." Bradbury wasn't alone in his angst: Television has been as reviled as it has been welcomed since the first broadcasts began in 1928. Critics of television, from disgusted defenders of the politically correct to outraged conservative culture warriors, blame it for poor health, ignorance, and moral decline, among other assorted ills. Some go further: According to a recent fatwa in India, television is "nearly impossible to use … without a sin." Last year, a top Saudi cleric declared it permissible to kill the executives of television stations for spreading sedition and immorality.

So will the rapid, planetwide proliferation of television sets and digital and satellite channels, to corners of the world where the Internet is yet unheard of, be the cause of global decay such critics fear? Hardly. A world of couch potatoes in front of digital sets will have its downsides -- fewer bowling clubs, more Wii bowling. It may or may not be a world of greater obesity, depending on whom you ask. But it could also be a world more equal for women, healthier, better governed, more united in response to global tragedy, and more likely to vote for local versions of American Idol than shoot at people.

Indeed, television, that 1920s technology so many of us take for granted, is still coming to tens of millions with a transformative power -- for the good -- that the world is only now coming to understand. The potential scope of this transformation is enormous: By 2007, there was more than one television set for every four people on the planet, and 1.1 billion households had one. Another 150 million-plus households will be tuned in by 2013.

In our collective enthusiasm for whiz-bang new social-networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, the implications of this next television age -- from lower birthrates among poor women to decreased corruption to higher school enrollment rates -- have largely gone overlooked despite their much more sweeping impact. And it's not earnest educational programming that's reshaping the world on all those TV sets. The programs that so many dismiss as junk -- from song-and-dance shows to Desperate Housewives -- are being eagerly consumed by poor people everywhere who are just now getting access to television for the first time. That's a powerful force for spreading glitz and drama -- but also social change.

Television, it turns out, is the kudzu of consumer durables. It spreads across communities with incredible speed. Just look at the story of expanding TV access in the rural areas of one poor country, Indonesia: Within two years of village electrification, average television ownership rates reached 30 percent. Within seven years, 60 percent of households had TVs -- this in areas where average surveyed incomes were about $2 a day. Fewer than 5 percent of these same households owned refrigerators. Television is so beloved that in the vast swaths of the world where there is still no electricity network, people hook up their TVs to batteries -- indeed, in a number of poor countries, such as Peru, more homes have televisions than electricity.

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What They're Watching

Soaps, soaps, and more soaps. But not all of the dramas are created equal.

As a result, the television is fast approaching global ubiquity. About half of Indian households have a television, up from less than a third in 2001; the figure for Brazil is more than four-fifths. (In comparison, just 7 percent of Indians use the Internet, and about one-third of Brazilians do.) In places like Europe and North America, 90-plus percent of households have a TV. Even in countries as poor as Vietnam and Algeria, rates are above 80 percent. But the potential for real growth in access (and impact) is in the least-developed countries, like Nigeria and Bangladesh, where penetration rates are still well below 30 percent.

If an explosion of access is the first global television revolution, then an explosion of choice will be the second. By 2013, half of the world's televisions will be receiving digital signals, which means access to many more channels. Digital broadcast builds on considerably expanded viewing options delivered through cable or satellite. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of households in India with a TV already have a cable or satellite connection. And in the United States, a bellwether for global television trends, the spread of cable since 1970 has meant an increasing number of broadcast channels are sharing a declining proportion of the audience -- down from 80 percent to 40 percent over the last 35 years. The average American household now has access to 119 channels, and a similar phenomenon is spreading rapidly around the globe.

The explosion of choice is loosening the grip of bureaucrats the world over, who in many countries have either run or controlled programming directly, or heavily regulated the few stations available. A 97-country survey carried out a few years ago found that an average of 60 percent of the top five television stations in each country were owned by the state, with 32 percent in the hands of small family groupings. Programming in developing countries in particular has often been slanted toward decidedly practical topics -- rural TV in China, for example, frequently covers the latest advances in pig breeding. And coverage of politics has often strayed from the balanced. Think Hugo Chávez, who refused to renew the license of RCTV, Venezuela's most popular TV network, after it broadcast commentary critical of his government. He regularly appears on the state channel in his own TV show Aló Presidente -- episodes of which last anywhere from six to a record 96 hours.

But increasingly, the days when presidential speechmaking and pig breeding were must-see TV are behind us. As choices in what to watch expand, people will have access both to a wider range of voices and to a growing number of channels keen to give the audience what it really wants. And what it wants seems to be pretty much the same everywhere -- sports, reality shows, and, yes, soap operas. Some 715 million people worldwide watched the finals of the 2006 soccer World Cup, for example. More than a third of Afghanistan's population tunes into that country's version of American Idol -- Afghan Star. The biggest television series ever worldwide is Baywatch, an everyday tale of lifesaving folk based on and around the beaches of Santa Monica, Calif. The show has been broadcast in 142 countries, and at its peak it had an audience estimated north of 1 billion. (Today, the world's most popular TV show is the medical drama House, which according to media consulting firm Eurodata TV Worldwide was watched by 82 million people last year in 66 countries, edging out CSI and Desperate Housewives.)

Ghulam Nabi Azad, India's health and family welfare minister, has even taken to promoting TV as a form of birth control. "In olden days people had no other entertainment but sex, which is why they produced so many children," he mused publicly in July. "Today, TV is the biggest source of entertainment. Hence, it is important that there is electricity in every village so that people watch TV till late in the night. By the time the serials are over, they'll be too tired to have sex and will fall asleep." Azad is certainly right that television helps slow birthrates, though experience from his own country and elsewhere suggests that it is by example, not exhaustion, that TV programs manage such a dramatic effect.

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The World's Most Popular
TV Shows

What does the world love to watch?

Since the 1970s, Brazil's Rede Globo network has been providing a steady diet of locally produced soaps, some of which are watched by as many as 80 million people. The programs are no more tales of everyday life in Brazil than Desperate Housewives is an accurate representation of a typical U.S. suburb. In a country where divorce was only legalized in 1977, nearly a fifth of the main female characters were divorced (and about a quarter were unfaithful). What's more, 72 percent of the main female characters on the Globo soaps had no kids, and only 7 percent had more than one. In 1970, the average Brazilian woman, in contrast, had given birth nearly six times.

But the soaps clearly resonated with viewers. As the Globo network expanded to new areas in the 1970s and 1980s, according to researchers at the Inter-American Development Bank, parents began naming their kids after soap-opera characters. And women in those parts of the country -- especially poor women -- started having fewer babies. Being in an area covered by the Globo network had the same effect on a woman's fertility as two additional years of education. This wasn't the result of what was shown during commercial breaks -- for most of the time, contraceptive advertising was banned, and there was no government population-control policy at all. The portrayal of plausible female characters with few children, apparently, was an important social cue.

Cable and satellite television may be having an even bigger impact on fertility in rural India. As in Brazil, popular programming there includes soaps that focus on urban life. Many women on these serials work outside the home, run businesses, and control money. In addition, soap characters are typically well-educated and have few children. And they prove to be extraordinarily powerful role models: Simply giving a village access to cable TV, research by scholars Robert Jensen and Emily Oster has found, has the same effect on fertility rates as increasing by five years the length of time girls stay in school.

The soaps in Brazil and India provided images of women who were empowered to make decisions affecting not only childbirth, but a range of household activities. The introduction of cable or satellite services in a village, Jensen and Oster found, goes along with higher girls' school enrollment rates and increased female autonomy. Within two years of getting cable or satellite, between 45 and 70 percent of the difference between urban and rural areas on these measures disappears. In Brazil, it wasn't just birthrates that changed as Globo's signal spread -- divorce rates went up, too. There may be something to the boast of one of the directors of the company that owns Afghan Star. When a woman reached the final five this year, the director suggested it would "do more for women's rights than all the millions of dollars we have spent on public service announcements for women's rights on TV."

TV's salutary effects extend far beyond reproduction and gender equality. Kids who watch TV out of school, according to a World Bank survey of young people in the shantytowns of Fortaleza in Brazil, are considerably less likely to consume drugs (or, for that matter, get pregnant). TV's power to reduce youth drug use was two times larger than having a comparatively well-educated mother. And though they might not be as subtly persuasive as telenovelas or reality shows, well-designed broadcast campaigns can also make a difference. In Ghana, where as few as 4 percent of mothers were found to wash their hands with soap after defecating and less than 1 percent before feeding their children, reported hand-washing rates shot up in response to a broadcast campaign emphasizing that people eat "more than just rice" if preparers don't wash their hands properly before dinner.

Indeed, TV is its own kind of education -- and rather than clash with schooling, as years of parental nagging would suggest, it can even enhance it. U.S. kids with access to a TV signal in the 1950s, for instance -- think toddlers watching quality educational programming like I Love Lucy -- tended to have higher test scores in 1964, according to research by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago. Today, more than 700,000 secondary-school students in remote Mexican villages watch the Telesecundaria program of televised classes. Although students enter the program with below-average test scores in mathematics and language, by graduation they have caught up in math and halved the language-score deficit.

Similarly, evidence that television is responsible for the grim state of civic discourse is mixed, at best. Better television reception in Javanese villages in Indonesia, according to research by Ben Olken, comes with substantially lower levels of participation in social activities and with lower measures of trust in others. Villages with access to an extra TV channel see a decline of about 7 percent in the number of social groups. Similar outcomes have been found in the United States. But improved television reception did not appear to affect the level of discussion in village meetings or levels of corruption in a village road project undertaken during Olken's study. And an examination of the early history of television in the United States by Markus Prior suggests that regions that saw access to more channels in the 1950s and 1960s witnessed increases in political knowledge, interest, and turnout, especially among less-educated TV viewers.

What about television's broader impact on governance? Here, it's the level of competition that seems to matter -- a hopeful sign given that the future of global TV is likely to be considerably more competitive. If the only channel that viewers watch is biased in its coverage, then, unsurprisingly, they are likely to be swayed toward that viewpoint. Brazil's Globo channel, for all its positive impact on fertility rates, has played a less positive role in terms of bias-free reporting. It has long had a close relationship with government, as well as a dominant market share. In Brazil's 1989 election -- a race in which Globo was squarely behind right-leaning presidential candidate Fernando Collor de Mello -- the difference between people who never watched television and those who watched it frequently was a 13 percentage-point increase in the likelihood of voting for Collor, scholar Taylor Boas found. But with channels proliferating nearly everywhere, television controllers may have much less power to sway elections today. In the choice-rich United States, for example, there is no simple relation between hours watched and voting patterns, even if those who watch particular channels are more likely to vote Republican or Democrat.

Then there's corruption. Consider the bribes that Peruvian secret-police chief Vladimiro Montesinos had to pay to subvert competitive newsmaking during the 1990s. It cost only $300,000 per month for Montesinos to bribe most of the congressmen in Peru's government, and about $250,000 a month to bribe the judges -- a real bargain. But Montesinos had to spend about $3 million a month to subvert six of the seven available television channels to ensure friendly coverage for the government. The good news here is that competition in the electronic Fourth Estate can apparently make it more expensive to run a country corruptly.

Corruption is one thing, but could television help solve a problem we've had since before Sumer and Elam battled it out around Basra in 2700 B.C. -- keeping countries from fighting each other? Maybe.

U.S. researchers who study violence on TV battle viciously themselves over whether it translates into more aggressive behavior in real life. But at least from a broader perspective, television might play a role in stemming the global threat of war. It isn't that TV reporting of death and destruction necessarily reduces support for wars already begun -- that's an argument that has raged over conflicts from Vietnam to the Iraq war. It is more that, by fostering a growing global cosmopolitanism, television might make war less attractive to begin with. Indeed, the idea that communications are central to building cross-cultural goodwill is an old one. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels suggested in the 19th century that railways were vital in rapidly cementing the union of the working class: "that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years," they wrote in The Communist Manifesto. If the Amtraks of the world can have such an impact, surely the Hallmark Channel can do even better.

The fact that Kobe Bryant (born in Philadelphia, plays for the Los Angeles Lakers) sees his basketball shirt considerably outsell those of Yao Ming (born in Shanghai, plays for the Houston Rockets) in China suggests something of that growing global cosmopolitanism at work. The considerable response of global television viewers to images of famine in Ethiopia, or the tsunami in Asia, also shows how TV is a powerful force for shrinking the emotional distance between peoples within and between countries. In the United States, an additional minute of nightly news coverage of the Asian tsunami increased online donation levels to charities involved in relief efforts by 13 percent, according to research from the William Davidson Institute. And analysis of U.S. public opinion indicates that more coverage of a country on evening news shows is related to increased sympathy and support for that country.

Of course, the extent to which television helps foster cosmopolitanism depends on what people are watching. People in the Middle East who only watched Arab news channels were considerably less likely to agree that the September 11 attacks were carried out by Arab terrorists than those exposed to Western media coverage, researchers Gentzkow and Shapiro found, even after taking into account other characteristics likely to shape their views such as education, language, and age. Similarly, the tone and content of coverage of the ground invasion of Iraq was notably different on Al Jazeera than it was on U.S. and British network broadcasts in the spring of 2003 -- and surely this helped sustain notably different attitudes toward the war. But with the growing reach of BBC World News and CNN in the Middle East, and the growing reach of Al Jazeera in the West, there is at least a greater potential to understand how the other side thinks.

Just because soap operas and reality shows can help solve real-world problems doesn't mean the world's politicians should now embrace TV as the ultimate policy prescription. There are of course a few things governments could do to harness television's power for good, such as supporting well-designed public service announcements. But for the most part, politicians ought to be paying less attention to TV, not more. They shouldn't be limiting the number of channels or interfering in the news. A vibrant, competitive television market playing Days of Our Lives or Días de Nuestras Vidas on loop might have a bigger impact even than well-meaning educational programs. And competition is critical to ensuring that television helps inform voters, not just indoctrinate them.

In the not-too-distant future, it is quite possible that the world will be watching 24 billion hours of TV a day -- an average of close to four hours for each person in the world. Some of those hours could surely be better spent -- planting trees, helping old ladies cross the road, or playing cricket, perhaps. But watching TV exposes people to new ideas and different people. With that will come greater opportunity, growing equality, a better understanding of the world, and a new appreciation of the complexities of life for a wannabe Afghan woman pop star. Not bad for a siren Medusa supposedly giving so little.

Reality Check: The Hermit Kingdom by Christian Caryl - Foreign Policy

An unchanging, irrational Stalinist dictatorship? Not so much.

BY CHRISTIAN CARYL | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

Forget the hairdos and the funny suits. Kim Jong Il is no madman.

We don't have access to his shrink, of course, but there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that he's irrational. In terms of judging his own people and the international community, he seems to have done a remarkable job with what he has been given. One reason: cold-eyed awareness of the reality of his position. He has told at least one reliable source that his own regime's propaganda is all lies, and he surely knows -- given that he maintains constant access to the Internet and CNN -- that his economy is a basket case and his country is an international pariah.

He also knows that it's almost impossible for him to reform without putting his own government (and probably his life) at risk. While Chinese communist leader Deng Xiaoping was able to allow in investors from Taiwan and Hong Kong to jump-start his economy without having to worry that they would end up calling the shots, Kim faces an unhappy neighbor in South Korea whose economic strength means that any sort of perestroika-style economic modernization could quickly lead to loss of political control. Indeed, Kim is thought to have circulated videotapes of the execution of Romania's communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to North Korean communist party members, just to make sure they get the point.

Given such constraints, Kim's hysterical rhetoric, missile launches, and stentorian nuclear threats look like a cynical but logical strategy for blackmailing the world into handing over adequate food and money for him to keep his regime in business. Kim may be a dictator, but he's not deluded.

What's more, it's not just about Kim. No one should be expecting the regime to change even if Kim himself departs (a prospect much discussed since his recent bout of poor health). Although Kim has reportedly tapped his third son as his official heir, the day-to-day affairs of the country have been run for years by the Kim-headed National Defense Commission, and Kim's powerful brother-in-law, who recently joined it, is already positioned to act as regent should Kim Senior pass away. Even if 26-year-old Kim Jong Un actually becomes the putative new Great Dear Bright Amazing Leader, he's likely -- given his youth and inexperience -- to be a figurehead.

And even if this latest Kim is granted some measure of real power, you can forget all those hopeful news reports about the presumably liberalizing effect of his purported Swiss education. For Kim 3.0 will face the brutal reality that his father does: Any substantial opening will entail ceding control to the much more powerful South. For the moment, though, the North is gradually moving toward some form of collective leadership. Its aging members will be reluctant to vote for any sort of drastic reform, but they'll face the same sort of pressures that Kim does today.

Those pressures are only increasing as North Korea grows more open to the world than at any point in its 60-year history. Notwithstanding ritual media references to North Korea as "static" and "Orwellian," today's North Korea is a place where people make a living off private markets and international trade. In the mid-1990s the North's economic mismanagement compounded the damage from flooding, triggering an epochal famine that killed as many as 2 million people. The corresponding collapse of state-managed networks for the production and distribution of food forced many North Koreans -- including party members -- to look to their own devices to keep themselves fed (and the government increasingly looked away). In 2002 Kim's government tacitly acknowledged this when it pushed through a series of tentative economic reforms that essentially allowed this minimal market sector to continue existing.

Under the "sunshine policy" instituted by the late South Korean President Kim Dae Jung at the beginning of this century, the North and South dramatically boosted economic cooperation, spurring trade and travel and even creating two enclaves inside the North where Southern managers and tourists mingled with Northerners. The North did its best to restrict access, but knowledge and goods from both zones have spilled out -- perhaps one reason why Pyongyang has seen fit to crack down on both of them in recent months. One defector told Los Angeles Times correspondent Barbara Demick in 2005: "It is not the same old North Korea anymore except in name."

Lately, according to scholars such as Andrei Lankov at South Korea's Kookmin University, the government has been struggling to push back against the unwanted consequences of this reluctant liberalization. Not long ago a Japanese newspaper reported a new wave of raids by so-called "109 squads," special police units that sweep through villages in search of illicit videos and music from the South. As recently noted by members of parliament in Seoul, smuggled South Korean ramen noodles and whoopie pies are particularly prized by those in the North who can afford them. Kim Jong Il has reason to take such trifles seriously. The number of North Koreans who have voted with their feet over the past decade, leaving the country for economic and political reasons, is now probably in the hundreds of thousands.

Of course, North Korea still maintains a vast police state that includes a network of concentration camps spanning the country. And yet there are also intriguing signs that the government's power is no longer unlimited. As part of the campaign to reassert its authority, the central government has repeatedly tried to crack down on the grass-roots private markets that serve as the main source of sustenance for ordinary folk, but so far it has notably failed to make the measures stick. An attempt to close a key market in the city of Chongjin last year actually set off public protests. And a new set of tough regulations this year has proven mysteriously hard to implement -- perhaps because communist party officials now rely on the markets to stay alive themselves.

Yet the idea that the North has enclosed itself in an airtight seal remains a staple of international coverage. That may have been accurate in the past. But over the last 10 years the country's trade with China has mushroomed, and with the inflow of Chinese goods have also come video players, South Korean DVDs, and illicit Bibles. Defectors report the popularity of everything from South Korean boy bands to the movie Titanic. As a result, the regime's propaganda has largely lost its punch.

North Korea's growing dependence on cross-border trade also means that it's much more vulnerable to external pressure than is commonly recognized. Many North Korea watchers think that sanctions imposed by the administration of George W. Bush in 2005 played a crucial role in bringing Pyongyang back to the six-party talks a few months later; the sanctions proved effective because many Chinese banks shut down their business with the North for fear of losing access to the U.S. financial sector. And this year trade between China and North Korea has slipped perceptibly -- perhaps because a new round of U.N. sanctions, imposed after Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon last year, has also affected the North's financial dealings with Chinese partners. That could be one reason why Pyongyang has suddenly started making overtures to the international community again after months of saber rattling.

So let's try to forget the lazy assumption that Kim is simply unhinged. (For what it's worth, at least one of the U.S. officials to have dealt directly with him, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, has repeatedly insisted that "Kim is not a nut.") There's no question that the regime remains extremely dangerous to its own citizens -- and potentially to the outside world as well, through proliferation or desperate acts of aggression. And many experts warn that it's highly unlikely that Pyongyang will ever give up its nukes. The nuclear program is the only national success story that Kim Jong Il can really call his own, making it a key source of legitimacy at a time when his standing is weaker than ever. But that doesn't mean that outside powers should take off the pressure. Containing North Korea's threats to international security will continue to be a full-time job.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Pork! - BusinessWeek

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Boeing's C-17 cargo aircraft cost $250 million apiece. The Pentagon says it has plenty. But it's nearly impossible for Obama to kill a project that provides jobs in 43 states

By Ben Elgin and Keith Epstein

President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates want to leave the Cold War in the past—finally—and reshape the U.S. military into more of a counterinsurgency force. They have made reforming weapons acquisition a major priority, saying that some hardware designed for battling Soviet armies or other massive foes in vast open-field clashes ought to be replaced by lighter, less expensive gear. The Administration has pared billions from the budget for the Lockheed Martin (LMT) F-22 fighter, a super-sophisticated plane conceived in the 1980s for dogfights against Moscow's best. The Pentagon has also reined in a sprawling high-tech infantry project called Future Combat Systems that Boeing (BA) oversees. All told, a half-dozen major weapons systems have been eliminated for an estimated savings of more than $100 billion over coming decades.

But it's not like military spending is actually going down. At a projected $107 billion for 2010 alone—a 5% rise over this year—the Pentagon's base budget for planes, ships, missiles, and guns has grown more than 50% since 2000. Reforming and redirecting military procurement always riles members of Congress trying to protect jobs in their home districts. Lawmakers are teaming up with Lockheed, Boeing, and other defense contractors to push back fiercely on certain targeted programs, even when the Pentagon says it doesn't need the weaponry in question. In some areas, organized labor has joined the fight.

The C-17 Globemaster offers one illustration of successful opposition to the Obama-Gates push for control of weapons spending. C-17s are large cargo planes produced by Boeing that cost $250 million apiece. They have been used heavily since 1993 to transport troops, tanks, and supplies. Every year since 2006, the Pentagon has said that it has enough C-17s. And every year, Congress overrules the military and authorizes funds for additional planes. In October the Senate approved $2.5 billion in the 2010 budget for 10 more C-17s, which would bring the fleet to 215.

"It's about political engineering," says Mandy Smithberger, a national security staff member of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington nonprofit. "Companies design weapons systems to make them difficult to kill."

The C-17 by most accounts has served the Pentagon reliably and well. The cavernous Globemaster is flying in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But the real reason Congress wants more of them has little to do with military need. Boeing has built the C-17's industrial base for political survivability.

The company has spread manufacturing across no fewer than 43 states. C-17 production lines employ more than 30,000 workers, many of them relatively well paid by factory-wage standards. Many of those jobs would be at risk if C-17 work ground to a halt.

The White House understands the challenge. "The impulse in Washington is to protect jobs back home, building things we don't need at a cost we can't afford," President Obama said in August in a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Phoenix. "The special interests, contractors, and entrenched lobbyists—they're invested in the status quo, and they're putting up a fight."

Enthusiasm for the Globemaster crosses political lines. "We're fighting two wars and meeting humanitarian needs; we need these planes," says Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.). "It is a defense industrial-base issue, too. It produces jobs in 43 states. But that is secondary. We wouldn't push that unless there is a real need." Boeing's defense business has its headquarters in St. Louis.

Bond, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and 16 colleagues began circulating a letter in April urging members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to keep funding the plane despite clearly stated objections from the White House and Pentagon. In California, C-17 production employs 5,000 workers at a final assembly plant in Long Beach.

Bond's fellow Missourian, Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, however, evinced ambivalence in comments to the media earlier this year about earmarking money for more Globemasters. Boeing noted that she didn't sign the letter to the Appropriations Committee. So the company mobilized to change her mind.

The aircraft manufacturer convened a strategy meeting with local labor leaders in mid-spring at its St. Louis offices. George C. Roman, a Boeing vice-president for government operations, helped lead the discussion. A key challenge described by the Boeing side was the need to shore up wavering support from legislators, including McCaskill, according to Robert A. Soutier, president of the Greater St. Louis Labor Council, who attended the gathering.

Shortly after the meeting, Soutier criticized McCaskill in the St. Louis media, questioning her support for thousands of local jobs. McCaskill responded quickly. She defended her C-17 bona fides and in May announced she was sending a letter to Obama and Gates emphasizing her backing for the Boeing cargo aircraft.

Since then, she has showed up at machinist rallies, met Boeing officials, and spoken out forcefully on the plane's behalf. Adrianne Marsh, a spokeswoman for McCaskill, called the earlier discord "a misunderstanding" and says the senator has advocated the program all along. McCaskill "believes the C-17 can stand on its own and compete for these dollars based on its merits," says Marsh.

Soutier says that communication has improved between Boeing and McCaskill and that he's pleased with the senator's support for the C-17. A Boeing spokesman declined to discuss the company's lobbying but said in a prepared statement: "We routinely meet with our employees, their representatives, elected officials, and other key stakeholders to provide updates on our business operations." The spokesman added: "We greatly appreciate the support the C-17 continues to receive. We look forward to continuing to work with both our customer and the Congress to ensure this valuable airlifter is available to support our war fighters and our nation's future airlift requirements."

In late September, as Congress restored money for 10 additional C-17s, the Administration stated that "it strongly objects to" the funding. White House spokesman Thomas Victor told BusinessWeek: "The President never thought this was going to be easy, but he and Secretary Gates are committed to pushing for these reforms."

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prominent critic of Pentagon spending, went to the Senate floor on Oct. 5 to make a last-minute effort to strip funds from the defense budget for the new C-17s. "One would have expected the President and Secretary Gates to be outraged," he said. "However, we have heard barely a word of opposition from them." The next day, McCain's motion was defeated, 68 to 30.

John Murtha (D-Pa.), the powerful chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said on Oct. 21 that he expects the fiscal 2010 budget to provide for the 10 additional Globemasters. He urged Boeing to trim the price of the plane to about $200 million each, but it remains to be seen whether the manufacturer will lower its bill.

Business Exchange: Read, save, and add content on BW's new Web 2.0 topic network

Machinists Throw a Wrench

While it fights to preserve the Pentagon budget for more C-17 cargo planes, Boeing is struggling with International Assn. of Machinists leaders over a proposed no-strike agreement in connection with the 787 passenger liner. According to the Seattle Times, talks are "deadlocked and hindered by distrust on each side." The Machinists have said they would agree to a no-strike deal through 2020 if Boeing guarantees a second 787 assembly line in Everett, Wash., among other conditions, the Times reported.

For more on Boeing's labor situation, go to http://bx.businessweek.com/Boeing/reference/

Elgin is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau. Epstein is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau.

Gelato U. - Time

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By Nina Burleigh / Bologna

Some students arrive in Bologna, Italy, with just a secret indulgence — without shop locations, business plans or $70,000 on hand for must-have machinery. They head to Carpigiani Gelato University to learn how to turn sacks of sugar and crates of oranges, kiwis, lemons and persimmons into spoonfuls of earthly bliss.

Gelato is the ultimate refinement of a Mediterranean flavored-ice tradition that supposedly dates back to the ancient Egyptians. In the past half-century, Italians have designed machines — engineered and produced in the same region as Ferraris and Lamborghinis — that can produce ever tinier crystals of ice, allowing for less water, less air and more taste. (See pictures of Gelato University.)

For three weeks every month, 20 to 30 students from the world over gather in Bologna inside a tiered lecture room in a Jetsons-style building erected in the early 1960s for the brothers Carpigiani, who perfected the first electric gelato machine. There, a gelato maestro shows them how to transform lowly buckets of cream or bags of fruit into cold, concentrated flavor that often has half the fat of American ice cream.

Besides the secret of perfect gelato, many students are attracted by the sweet dream of self-employment. Gelato is a major growth business worldwide, a cheap luxury defying the recession as people turn to smaller pleasures. And despite the $1,052 tuition for a weeklong session, so far this year enrollment at Gelato U is up 87% compared with the same period in 2008. Who's signing up? "Mostly 40-year-olds looking for a new life," says Patrick Hopkins, director of the six-year-old educational offshoot of the Carpigiani company, which produces a majority of the world's gelato machines. (See gelato recipes from a Gelato University maestro.)

"About eight years ago, I got the idea" to become a gelato artisan, says a 45-year-old student, a European executive who asked not to be identified by name or even home country for fear of tipping off employers to a possible midcareer switch. "I figure I have about 15 years of energy left. Do I want to spend it climbing the corporate ladder? Or do I finally do this?"

Maestro Gianpaolo Valli whips such students into shape. "You need to know what makes a strawberry!" he shouts. His lively lectures, delivered in deliriously Italian-cadenced, non sequitur — studded English, cover such topics as how to identify a fruit's sugar content and how to do the surprisingly complicated math of balancing sugar (an antifreeze) and fat (the opposite): "You increase the fat content, but it freezes. So you need to compensate with sugar. You say, 'Maestro, not possible!' Yes, it is possible! I show you!"

Students attending Gelato U aim to build their gelaterias in far corners of the globe. They know that real gelato is a delicate thing that cannot survive being taken out and put back into a freezer, that it is best consumed where it is made. That's what Melissa Green, 36, an HR manager in Tampico, Ill., learned in September during her first trip to Italy, when she consumed her first gelato. After a few bites of green apple, a light went on, illuminating her future: "I tasted this, and I was like, We have got to bring this back home."

See pictures of Italian coffee.

See the top 10 food trends of 2008.

Skype and Job Interviews: Webcam Meetings on the Rise - Time

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By Barbara Kiviat

Get ready for a closeup: your next job interview might be on webcam. Looking to save time and money, companies are turning to video-chat software as a cheap, low-hassle way to vet job candidates. That means a growing number of people looking for work are meeting their prospective new bosses not at the office but in the comfort of their own home.

Naturally, the transition from in-person to online isn't without its hiccups. Fuzzy transmissions, dropped calls (especially on wireless networks) and unusual disruptions are all par for the course. Tip No. 1: Get your dog out of barking range before you start the interview. (We'll return to the pointers in a bit.) (See pictures of the history of the cell phone.)

What's the draw? Largely money. Last year, as executives at online retailer Zappos.com looked to cut expenses, they noticed how much the firm spent on travel. In HR alone, it easily cost $1,000 a pop to fly out job candidates and put them up for the night. The firm had used Skype internally, so about six months ago, recruiters started trying it for interviews. (Watch TIME's video "How to Ace a Job Interview on Skype.")

Their opinion: a video link does a pretty good job of replacing an in-person meeting — and in a way that a phone call can't. "If you see facial expressions and body language, you have a different sense of what a person is saying," says recruiting manager Christa Foley. Now, instead of flying out 20 finalists for a job, the company first screens with Skype and then brings in only the best two or three candidates. (See 10 ways Twitter will change American business.)

Job seekers are hopping on board too. Last spring, after Stephen Bhadran got laid off, he quickly realized there were more openings for computer programmers in Dallas, Atlanta and Los Angeles than in South Florida, where he lived. So he cast a wide net — and got a bite from the University of California, Los Angeles. The university wanted to interview him but wouldn't pay the airfare. "I was laid off and running out of funds," says Bhadran. "I couldn't fly on my own dime." He suggested interviewing by Skype. He got his request — and the job. (See the best social-networking applications.)

Things don't always run smoothly. Bobby Fitzgerald, a restaurateur who has been interviewing job candidates by Skype since March, has had his share of amusements. For instance: the candidate who leaned forward while he spoke, giving Fitzgerald an intimate view of his nose. Another, a college senior, didn't bother cleaning up his dorm room before the interview; the mess was painfully visible in the background.

And then there was the dog that wouldn't stop barking. Fitzgerald cut the interview short and said he'd have to reschedule. Did the disruption influence his decision? "Well," he says, "a big part of management is handling problems as they arise."

Still, webcam interviews are entirely worth it, he says. Fitzgerald runs restaurants in four states and likes to hire from the nation's top culinary and hospitality schools. It's rare that he, the job candidate and the job are all in the same time zone. And the benefit of video-interviewing for him isn't just saved money — it's also saved time. "More than once, I've flown someone in and within an hour, I realize it's not a fit," he says. "But I'm stuck with that person for six more hours." (See 25 must-have travel gadgets.)

So what should you do if you're asked to interview by Skype — or even brave enough to suggest it yourself?

First off, realize that we perceive people differently through a camera than we do in person. Bill McGowan, a former news anchor who now trains people to go on TV, starts his list of pointers with lighting: whether you're sitting in your kitchen or an office borrowed from a friend, make sure there's no bright light (like from a window) behind you. That will only darken your face. When your interviewer is talking, it's fine to look at his image on the screen, but when you answer, look at the camera. That's how to make "eye contact." Avoid wearing patterns and the color white, since we notice white spots on a screen first — you want your interviewer drawn to your teeth and eyes, not to your shirt. And don't forget that what's behind you is visible too. "It's best to put away the Mad Men bar," says McGowan.

Next, think about framing. Sitting flush with a plain white wall will make you look like you're in a police lineup, so angle your knees to the corner of your computer screen, and then turn your head slightly back to look at the camera. Sit tall in your chair, but not too close to the camera: the first three buttons of your shirt should be visible, or else you risk looking like a floating head, counsels Priscilla Shanks, a coach for broadcast journalists and public speakers. Most important, do a dry run with a friend to check your color, sound and facial expressions — neutral often comes off as glum onscreen. (See pictures of vintage computers.)

After all that, don't forget that this is still a job interview. Even though you're not meeting face to face, dress as though you are. When you "walk in," have your résumé ready — this time, as an e-mail attachment. And don't forget to do all the standard prep work. Are you ready to talk about your greatest weakness? "This adds another layer, but people will still expect you to be prepared to have a conversation with them," says career counselor Judith Gerberg.

Though that's not to say you can't acknowledge the medium. This past summer, Deanna Reed, principal of the Marie Murphy School in suburban Chicago, started doing Skype interviews and has already considered candidates from as far away as Asia. "The time difference was so great, it was like 1 in the morning for him," she says about a teacher in Japan. "I said, 'Oh, you had to get on your suit in the middle of the night?' And he said, 'No, I have my pajamas on the bottom.' He was fun — he had a real sense of humor." Even over video, it's possible to make a great first impression.

'Audacity to Win': Excerpt by Plouffe on Obama Campaign - Time

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In a new memoir, The Audacity to Win, David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama's 2008 race for the White House, provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse inside the campaign. Here's an excerpt:

Agony. Ecstasy.
The [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright story broke on a Wednesday and exploded across the media landscape the next day. We decided Obama had to take questions about [his former pastor's inflammatory sermons] head-on on Friday, in a series of lengthy national cable interviews.

There was one not-so-minor complication. He was already scheduled to do editorial boards that Friday afternoon with both Chicago papers about [real estate developer and political fundraiser] Tony Rezko, two hours each, no holds barred. Given no choice but to address Wright as soon as possible, we decided we would do a round of TV interviews on him directly after the Rezko boards. It shaped into quite a day, like having your legs amputated in the morning and your arms at night. The question was whether we would still have a heartbeat at the end of the day.

It was chaos and, quite frankly, frightening. I felt as if the wheels could easily spin off our whole venture. Still, Obama was the pillar of reassurance. "Don't worry, guys," he told us while making some notes on a stack of pages. "I can do more than one thing at a time. We are taking the trash out today. It won't be fun, but we'll be stronger for it." (See pictures of Barack Obama's convention-week journey.)

Obama handled everything with brilliance. The editorial boards, though grueling, went well. Obama called me after 11 that night, while my wife and son were sleeping. "So we survived. But it feels really unsatisfying — to me and I'm sure to voters ... I think I need to give a speech on race and how Wright fits into that. Whether people will accept it or not, I don't know. But I don't think we can move forward until I try."

Obama had raised giving a race speech back in the fall. At the time, [chief strategist David] Axelrod and I strenuously disagreed, believing that we should not inject into the campaign an issue that for the most part was not on voters' minds. Now we were in a much different situation. I agreed that a traditional political move — the damage-control interviews we had done that night — would not be enough. But a speech was fraught with peril. If it was off-key, it could compound our problems.

He said he was calling Axelrod and that after they spoke, he wanted me to call Ax and then conference him in; the three of us would make a decision. "I don't want a big meeting or conference call on this," he told me. "You and Ax and I will arbitrate this. But know this is what I think I need to do, so I'll need an awfully compelling argument not to give this speech. And I think it needs to be delivered in the early part of next week and I need to write most of it."

Axelrod and I spoke a few minutes later and quickly decided we were in uncharted waters. There was no playbook for how to handle something like this. It had never been done. "He really wants to give this speech," I concluded. "And I don't have a better idea. Do you?"

"Nope," said Ax. He began to fret about the real-world problems of constructing the most important speech of our candidacy largely on the fly, when I interrupted: "Look, let's call him and walk through it," I said. "We'll do the speech, but he has to own the reality of the time constraints." (See TIME's best pictures of Barack Obama.)

We conferenced Barack in. "So?" he asked. "What's the deal?" We told him we agreed with the speech but that it was going to be hard to put it together.

"Tonight is Friday — well, Saturday morning," I said. "We have to give this speech no later than Tuesday. You have a full schedule in Pennsylvania the next three days. It has already been publicized. If we start canceling events, it will fuel the impression that we're panicked and our candidacy is on the rocks."

From The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory by David Plouffe. ©2009 by Plouffe Strategies Ltd. To be published by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Watch a video of Barack Obama at the Inauguration.

Watch a video of Barack Obama's last days on the campaign trail.

"No, we can't cancel anything," Obama interjected. "But I already know what I want to say in this speech. I've been thinking about it for almost 30 years. I'll call [lead campaign speechwriter Jon Favreau] in the morning and give him some initial guidance. And I'll work on this during downtime in the hotel room each night. Don't worry. Even if I have to pull all-nighters, I can make this work." We were flying by the seat of our pants. Somehow we had to keep faith that it would come together. (See pictures of Barack Obama's speechwriting team.)

The speech received rave reviews from political commentators and spawned hundreds of positive editorials. More important, voters also responded very well to it. Wright still bothered them — but they respected how Obama dealt with the issue.

As was the case throughout the campaign, most people did not watch the speech on TV. It was delivered on a Tuesday morning, when just about everyone was at work. Instead, people watched it online, most of them on YouTube, either as it was happening or at their leisure later that day or in the days to come. Eventually, tens of millions of voters saw the speech through various outlets.

This marked a fundamental change in political coverage and message consumption, and one that will only continue as technology rolls forward: big moments, political or otherwise, will no longer be remembered by people as times when everyone gathered around TVs to watch a speech, press conference or other event. Increasingly, most of us will recall firing up the computer, searching for a video and watching it at home or at the office — or even on our cell phones.

Filling Out the Ticket
What surprised me at [our first meeting to discuss the vice presidency] was that Obama was clearly thinking more seriously about picking Hillary Clinton than Ax and I had realized. He said if his central criterion measured who could be the best VP, she had to be included in that list. She was competent, could help in Congress, would have international bona fides and had been through this before, albeit in a different role. He wanted to continue discussing her as we moved forward.

We met again a couple of weeks later in mid-June and winnowed the list down to about 10 names.

At our next meeting, we narrowed the list down to six. Barack continued to be intrigued by Hillary. "I still think Hillary has a lot of what I am looking for in a VP," he said to us. "Smarts, discipline, steadfastness. I think Bill may be too big a complication. If I picked her, my concern is that there would be more than two of us in the relationship." (See pictures of the last days of Hillary Clinton's campaign.)

Neither Ax nor I were fans of the Hillary option. We saw her obvious strengths, but we thought there were too many complications, both pre-election and postelection, should we be so fortunate as to win. Still, we were very careful not to object too forcefully. This needed to be his call.

We had initially received a lot of advice from many of her supporters to pick her, though this "advice" was perhaps more accurately described as subtle pressure. Their fervor was abating a bit every day, though, helped by Hillary's comments that this was Obama's decision and that he should be left to make it.

In early August, he narrowed his list down to three names: Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia. Hillary did not make the last cut. At the end of the day, Obama decided that there were just too many complications outweighing the potential strengths. But I gave him a lot of credit for so seriously thinking about his fierce former rival. Some in the Clinton orbit thought we gave Hillary short shrift. My view is that any serious consideration was somewhat surprising given all the complications and the toxicity during the primary campaign.

Shortly before he took off for Hawaii and his much needed vacation, Obama asked Axelrod and me to meet with the three finalists. [We] pieced together a schedule that had us departing Chicago at 5:30 a.m. for Wilmington, Del., to meet with Biden; then on to West Virginia, where Bayh was vacationing with his family; and then to Virginia to meet with Kaine.

See pictures of Joe Biden.

Read "Biden's Debate Challenge: Keeping His Mouth Shut."

The [first] meeting started with Biden launching into a nearly 20-minute monologue that ranged from the strength of our campaign in Iowa ("I literally wouldn't have run if I knew the steamroller you guys would put together"); to his evolving views of Obama ("I wasn't sure about him in the beginning of the campaign, but I am now"); why he didn't want to be VP ("The last thing I should do is VP; after 36 years of being the top dog, it will be hard to be No. 2"); why he was a good choice ("But I would be a good soldier and could provide real value, domestically and internationally"); and everything else under the sun. Ax and I couldn't get a word in edgewise.

It confirmed what we suspected: this dog could not be taught new tricks. But the conversation also confirmed our positive assumptions: his firm grasp of issues, his blue collar sensibilities and the fact that while he would readily accept the VP slot if offered, he was not pining for it. (Read "The Five Faces of Barack Obama.")

Later that day, we met with the two other finalists. Bayh's answers to our questions were substantively close to perfect, if cautiously so. Seeing Bayh right after Biden provided some interesting contrasts and comparisons. Listening to Bayh talk, I thought, There's no way this guy will color outside the lines. Biden may cross them with too much frequency. Biden will probably end up having more range — he can reach higher heights but could cause us real pain. Bayh's upside and downside are probably the closest spread of the three. As the day grew long, we headed to Richmond, our last stop. We appreciated [Kaine's] opening remarks. "I'd be honored to be picked," he told us. "But I have to assume I'm at the bottom of the list right now. I'll try to explain why I think I'd be a good pick, both for the campaign and after we win, but just know that I won't have an ounce of hard feelings or disappointment if I don't get picked. I signed on to this team in the beginning — all I want is for Barack to be elected President."

There was no great way to explain putting someone with no foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. If we chose him, we would need to rely on some of the same language we had used on this issue as it related to Obama — judgment vs. Washington experience, a new foreign policy vision vs. the status quo — but doubling down would make it twice as tough for us to roll this boulder uphill.

Later that night, we held a conference call with Obama to brief him on our day. "Well, it sounds like you both are for Biden, but barely," he said. "I really haven't settled this yet in my own mind. It's a coin toss now between Bayh and Biden, but Kaine is still a distinct possibility. I know the experience attack people will make if we pick him. But if that really concerned me, I wouldn't have run in the first place. My sense is — and you tell me if the research backs this up — that Barack Hussein Obama is change enough for people. I don't have to convince people with my VP selection that I am serious about change." (Read "Obama and Biden's Chemistry Test.")

The selection of his vice-presidential nominee was his first presidential decision. On the evening of Aug. 17, he called Ax and me with the news. "I've decided," he said. "It's Biden."

Hurricane Sarah
We always knew this day was going to be a pain in the ass. Coming right off the exhaustion and exhilaration of our convention week and VP pick, we would have to jump right in and deal with theirs. But [Sarah] Palin was a bolt of lightning, a true surprise. She was such a long shot, I didn't even have her research file on my computer, as I did for the likely McCain picks. I started Googling her, refreshing my memory while I waited for our research to be sent.

Her story was original: small-town mayor takes on the Establishment and wins a governor's race; she was an avid hunter, sportswoman and athlete, and her husband was a champion snowmobiler; she had just given birth to a child with Down syndrome. A profile out of a novel, I thought.

But here she was, joining our real-life drama. And given her life story, coupled with the surprise nature of her selection, her entrance to the race would be nothing short of a phenomenon. But I also thought it was a downright bizarre, ill-considered and deeply puzzling choice. The one thing every voter knew about John McCain's campaign at this point was that it had been shouting from the rooftops that Barack Obama lacked the experience to be President.

Read "Behind Obama's Palin Strategy."

Read "How Did Sarah Palin Write Her Memoir So Fast?"

With the Palin pick, he had completely undermined his core argument against us. Worse yet for McCain, he would look inherently political in doing so. His strength — and the threat he posed to us — was rooted in the fact that many independent voters believed in his maverick reputation and believed he did not make his decisions by prioritizing politics over what was right. I guessed people would view this choice more as a political stunt than a sound, reasoned call.

On our 6:00 a.m. conference call, [campaign adviser] Anita Dunn, who had worked against Palin in Alaska in the 2006 governor's race, warned us that she was a formidable political talent — clearly not up to this moment, she assured us, but bound to be a compelling player and a real headliner in the weeks ahead. (Read about where Sarah Palin is going next.)

"All of you on this call should watch video of her debates and speeches," Dunn counseled. "The substance is thin, but she's a very able performer. And her story is out of Hollywood. She'll be a phenomenon for a while."

Our strategy with the other potential picks would've been to start by saying that choice X subscribed to the same failed George Bush policies as John McCain; all they were doing was doubling down on the same out-of-touch economic policies that had hurt American families. We should have gone the same way with Palin. But McCain had been haranguing us for months about experience, and we were incredulous that he had picked someone with zero foreign policy experience who had been a governor for less time than Obama had been a Senator. Galled by the hypocrisy, we moved in a more aggressive direction.

We decided to call McCain on the experience card directly. The value was in making him look political — essentially, calling him full of shit — and we sent out a release making that clear. "Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency," it read. "Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies — that's not the change we need; it's just more of the same."

Our statement immediately received an enormous amount of attention because it went right at her experience. The press clearly sensed heat and was eager to help drive the fight. Seeing the reaction, I began to think perhaps we had misfired. Obama clearly thought so. He called me from the air. "Listen, I just told this to Axelrod and [communications director Robert] Gibbs," he began. "I understand the argument you guys were trying to make. And maybe we should make it someday. But not today. We shouldn't have put out the first part of that statement. I want to put out another statement that simply welcomes her to the race, and I'll call her and congratulate her when I land." (Read a two-minute bio of Robert Gibbs.)

I didn't disagree but thought backtracking would only add to the sense in the press that perhaps Palin was a brilliant game-changing pick that had scrambled the race. Even the famously disciplined Obama campaign can't get its story straight — this would be the blowback. "Look," I told him, "simply say that you're adding your own personal voice, one principal to another." He acknowledged that he understood and would watch his words. "We'll send out a personal statement from you and Biden," I said, "but it's important you not suggest we misfired on the original statement. Don't throw the campaign under the bus."

But when he took a few questions from the press later that day, he proceeded to drive the bus right over us. "I think that, you know, campaigns start getting these hair triggers, and the statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments," he said. Great, I thought, already imagining the heat we'd take on this. But all in all, I felt solid about our instincts. Despite our clumsiness, I still thought we had nailed, in the predawn hours, what this pick would mean over time.

Obama and I had a long talk late that afternoon to evaluate Palin. "I just don't understand how this ends up working out for McCain," he said. "In the long term, I mean. The short term will be good for them. But when voters step back and analyze how he made this decision, I think he's going to be in big trouble. You just can't wing something like this — it's too important."

"I think we just need to sit back and play our game," said Obama. "It actually won't be bad to be off-Broadway for a few days. We should just leave her out of the equation. This is a race between John McCain and me. To the extent we talk about Palin, I think it should be about the differences in our selection processes — it illuminates differences in how we'd make decisions in the White House."

Read "Plouffe to Democrats: Calm Down."

See David Plouffe as a 2009 TIME 100 finalist.

Welcome to the Fun House - Time

Image via Wikipedia

By Michael Scherer and Jay Newton-Small

Civility is so 20th century. In today's Congress, the propriety of a gentleman and $5 will get you lots of committee work and a ham sandwich. Embrace the new media landscape, however, and you can break out in the national media fun house as an Internet and cable-news populist. Fame and campaign cash await.

Just take a look at this year's two great breakout stars of partisanship: Florida Democrat Alan Grayson and Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann. Once upon a time, their junior status in the House of Representatives, with its 435 power-hungry politicos, might have confined them to their cramped offices and after-hours speaking time on C-SPAN. Instead they have turned outrageous utterances into viral sensations on YouTube. Tapping into the partisan fervor surrounding health-care reform, Grayson and Bachmann have built national profiles and become the darlings of their respective ideological camps. And though they represent polar political extremes, they have followed a similar three-step formula for making a name in the 111th Congress.

Step 1: Find Your Niche

This isn't hard in our hyperpartisan age. But it is especially easy for Grayson and Bachmann. Elected in 2008, he came into politics as a litigator of war profiteers in Iraq who affixed a bush lied/people died bumper sticker to his car. She came up through grass-roots Republican politics as a culture warrior, working to ban gay marriage, expand the teaching of intelligent design and restrict abortion. In another era, strident politicians on the ideological edges found themselves marginalized once they got to Washington, where power accrues to longevity--and longevity tends to mellow. But Grayson and Bachmann found a back door.

Populists have been doing it for years--telling the common man that politicians are against them or that the political process is a farce. The difference today is that politicians no longer need to broaden their appeal beyond a committed, activist base. And they know more precisely than ever what the base wants. The soapbox, which became the sound bite, thanks to radio and television, has gone interactive. If you say it today, the audience will come to you. "There is an interactive element to this. I spend enough time online to figure out what people are thinking," explains Grayson. "I think what the Internet has done is to make mass politicking something that can also be microtargeted."

Step 2: Drop Some Bombs

"we have gangster government when the Federal Government has set up a new cartel," Bachmann announced on the floor of the House on June 9, referring to the government takeover of General Motors. A video of that speech attracted more than 2 million YouTube views. A few months later, from the same podium, she wondered if health reform would allow a 13-year-old girl to use a school "sex clinic" to get a referral for an abortion and "go home on the school bus that night." It wouldn't, but the terrifying suggestion buzzed around the Internet. The White House was forced to respond, condemning Bachmann in a blog post--which played exactly into her hands. In another speech she speculated that Democratic reforms would deny health care to the ill. "So watch out if you are disabled!" she blared. Just like that: another viral hit.

Grayson kicked off his big controversy by taking charts to the floor of the House, which makes for better video. Republicans, he said, have a "health-care plan for America: 'Don't get sick.'" He then added that they also had a plan for the sick: "Die quickly." It was an instant online sensation, with more YouTube viewers than Grayson got votes in his home district. He offered up more bombast, calling a Federal Reserve Board staffer who is a former lobbyist a "K Street whore" and calling Republicans "foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals" on CNN. The liberal online hub the Huffington Post linked to the caveman remark, and more than 1,500 people wrote comments. "We need about 100 more Graysons in Congress," read one. Grayson later apologized to the Fed aide but repeatedly refused to apologize to the GOP. (You can watch those videos on YouTube too.)

For Grayson and Bachmann, the objective is both to rally their loyalists and to rile the other side. Cable news embraces this sort of stuff, having turned August into the summer of town-hall fury. The liberal MSNBC host Keith Olbermann joyfully turned Bachmann into a "worst person in the world," just as Grayson became a star of conservative broadcasting as a sort of public enemy No. 1. "They gave us enormous free media exposure," Grayson says of his political opponents after his "die quickly" performance. "They were running my speech unedited on Fox for an entire day."

If you have gotten this far, you have already made it as a new media populist. Grayson now gets invited on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. Bachmann is bombarded with booking requests, which she grants with some regularity. "Frankly, Congresswoman Bachmann is in Congress to serve the people, not the media," says her spokeswoman, Debbee Keller. But Bachmann hardly lets that stop her.

Step 3: Cash In

Grayson and Bachmann have found ways to use the controversies surrounding their outbursts to raise money and broaden their reach. Their devoted followers respond to appeals. Grayson posted his CNN caveman quip on a website he created, called Congressman?With?Guts.com attracting pledges of $220,000 from nearly 3,000 donors in about three weeks. (Almost 10,000 individuals gave Grayson more than $250,000 immediately after the "die quickly" speech.) Bachmann, meanwhile, took her fundraising appeal to social media and talk radio, asking her supporters to send a message to "Big Sister Pelosi and Big Brother Reid" and the "gangster government." It worked. "The left can't ignore $118,000!!!" she announced on Twitter, boasting of a three-day online fundraising haul.

"The interesting dynamic here is that you used to be penalized by the public for not being civil," says Republican strategist John Feehery, who worked for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. "Now it's almost glorified." We still don't know whether this sort of fly-by-night notoriety of rhetorical bombast is sustainable or just diverting. In 2008, Bachmann had to battle for her seat after saying on MSNBC's Hardball that Barack Obama "may have anti-American views." And Grayson must defend a Republican-leaning district next to Disney World that he won by just 13,364 votes. Republicans have put his district at the top of their target list for 2010. "I made myself the No. 1 target for the national Republican Party," he admits. "Whatever happens, happens."

In the meantime, the Establishment is obligated to roll its eyes. Obama has likened cable news to professional wrestling and said in a recent TV interview, "The media encourages some of the outliers in behavior because, let's face it, the easiest way to get on television right now is to be really rude." But Obama plays the game too: his online fundraising pitches read like populist fairy tales, with the big insurance industry playing the wicked witch of K Street. And at a fundraiser in Miami on Oct. 26, the President called Grayson an "outstanding member of Congress."

"It's all theater," says South Carolina's James Clyburn, the House Democratic whip. "People have learned to speak in sound bites and look to generate headlines." That insight is key. The headlines are what matter most, not the substance. And in Congress today, the loudest carnival barker gets the crowds.