Americans believe in religion -- but know little about it.
Sunday, March 4, 2007; BW03
By Stephen Prothero
The United States is the most religious nation in the developed world, if religiosity is measured by belief in all things supernatural -- from God and the Virgin Birth to the humbler workings of angels and demons. Americans are also the most religiously ignorant people in the Western world. Fewer than half of us can identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible, and only one third know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount.
These are just two of the depressing statistics in Stephen Prothero's provocative and timely Religious Literacy. The author of American Jesus (2003) and the chair of the religion department at Boston University, Prothero sees America's religious illiteracy as even more dangerous than general cultural illiteracy "because religion is the most volatile constituent of culture, because religion has been, in addition to one of the greatest forces for good in world history, one of the greatest forces for evil."
In this book, the author combines a lively history of the rise and fall of American religious literacy with a set of proposed remedies based on his hope that "the Fall into religious ignorance is reversible." He also includes a useful multicultural glossary of religious definitions and allusions, in which religious illiterates can find the prodigal son, the promised land, the Quakers and the Koran.
The condition Prothero describes in Religious Literacy is unquestionably one manifestation of a more general decline in the public's cultural and civic knowledge. According to polls conducted by the National Constitution Center, only one third of Americans can name even one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Is it any more startling that only one third can identify the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount?
A 2005 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly two-thirds of Americans endorse the simultaneous teaching of creationism and evolution in public schools. How can citizens know what creationism means, or make an informed decision about whether it belongs in classrooms, if fewer than half can identify Genesis? No doubt the same proportion of Americans think that Thomas Edison said, "Let there be light."
Approximately 75 percent of adults, according to polls cited by Prothero, mistakenly believe the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves." More than 10 percent think that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. Only half can name even one of the four Gospels, and -- a finding that will surprise many -- evangelical Christians are only slightly more knowledgeable than their non-evangelical counterparts.
It is less surprising but more dangerous, given America's role in the world, that the public knows even less about Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism than it does about Christianity and Judaism. As Prothero notes, President Bush repeatedly declared that "Islam is peace" in the months after 9/11, while the prophet Muhammad was called a "terrorist" by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. "Who was right?" Prothero asks. "Unfortunately, Americans had no way to judge."
The book's main concern, though, is ignorance about the role of religion in American history. Prothero dates the beginning of the long decline in our religious literacy to the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s. The fervor of America's periodic cycles of revivalism, rooted in a personal relationship with God rather than in theology handed down by learned clergy, has always had a strong anti-intellectual as well as spiritual component.
Yet the author also sees the Protestant-influenced 19th-century schools as an important factor in maintaining the Puritan heritage of Americans as "people of the book." This may overestimate the religious influence of schools. It is hard to believe that religious literacy, already instilled by families and churches, needed reinforcement from the once ubiquitous McGuffey readers, which rendered the Ten Commandments in such rhymes as, "Thou no gods shall have but me/ Before no idol bend the knee." In 1880, the average American still had only four years of schooling (although the figure was higher in cities than in rural areas). Yet 19th-century autodidacts, including Abraham Lincoln (who had less than a year of formal education) and Robert Green Ingersoll, the orator known as "the Great Agnostic," achieved both religious and secular literacy by reading Shakespeare and the King James Bible without any prompting from teachers.
Prothero views the 20th century's much sharper decline in religious literacy as a product of changes in both religion and society. One ironic factor is an emphasis on a bland tolerance that, while vital to pluralistic American democracy, has also discouraged our awareness of religious distinctions. A politician may intone the phrase "Judeo-Christian" in every speech, but Jews still do not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, and Christians do. If no one knows what "Messiah" means, though, it hardly matters. But one inexplicable omission from Prothero's analysis is the post-1950 shift from a print to a video culture, with its incalculable erosion of all forms of cultural literacy. Many of the religious allusions and metaphors explained by Prothero in his glossary were once as common as the universal reference points now supplied by television.
The weakest part of this otherwise excellent book is Prothero's proposed remedy: high school and college courses dealing with the historical and cultural role of religion. As the author rightly notes, teaching about religion -- as distinct from preaching religion -- is not prohibited by the First Amendment's ban on "an establishment of religion." But given the failure of so many schools to inculcate the most elementary facts about American history, it is hard to imagine that most teachers would be up to the task of explaining, say, the subtleties of biblical arguments for and against slavery. Furthermore, a curriculum that would meet with the approval of Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and nonreligious parents would probably be a worthless set of platitudes.
Prothero movingly calls on Americans to reconstruct the "chain of memory" that once made the acquisition of religious knowledge as natural as breathing. But religion is no longer the air we breathe, and it is doubtful that schools can accomplish what parents and congregations cannot or will not in a society where people read fewer and fewer books of any kind -- including the book they consider the word of God. ·
Susan Jacoby is the author of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism."
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Being a Muslim American – Book Review by Reza Aslan
After 9/11, living a life of faith in a time of suspicion.
Sunday, February 18, 2007; BW07 – Washington Post
The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion
By Paul M. Barrett
Farrar Straus Giroux. 304 pp. $25
By most estimates, Islam is now the largest non-Christian religion in the United States. And yet some 60 percent of Americans claim never to have met a Muslim. No wonder, then, that so many wild misconceptions about Muslims endure in the United States. Indeed, a third of Americans told Gallup pollsters in July 2006 that they thought America's Muslims are sympathetic to al-Qaeda.
Paul M. Barrett's well wrought and engaging new book, American Islam, seeks to change perceptions by providing an intimate group portrait of Muslim Americans as they struggle to combat the threats, prejudices and stereotypes that have dogged them since 9/11. Barrett, a longtime Wall Street Journal reporter who's now at BusinessWeek, uses his journalistic skills to insinuate himself into the lives of his subjects -- no easy task in a time of heightened suspicions. The book traces the lives of seven American Muslims, from the wily Dearborn, Mich., publisher and political activist Osama Siblani to the energetic journalist and Islamic feminist Asra Nomani, whose crusade to tear down the wall of separation between men and women in her Morgantown, W.Va., mosque made her a media superstar in the United States and, to her surprise, a scourge in her own community.
Barrett's profiles paint the American Muslim community -- more than 6 million strong and almost infinitely diverse -- as a microcosm of the larger worldwide community of Muslims. Muslims in the United States face the same religious, ethnic and sectarian divides that one finds throughout the Muslim world -- Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Iranians, Muslims and Christians. Yet American Muslims have, for the most part, avoided the conflicts of identity and integration that plague so many of their far more marginalized co-religionists in Europe. This partly has to do with economics: While most European Muslims are descended from impoverished immigrant families who flooded into Europe as guest workers at the end of World War II, most Muslims in the United States are, like the protagonists of Barrett's book, either middle-class converts or well-heeled and often highly educated immigrants from a wide array of ethnic backgrounds.
While Barrett maintains a sense of narrative cohesion throughout, the individual profiles are, alas, a bit uneven. His otherwise absorbing chapter on Khaled Abou El Fadl, the renowned theologian and law professor at UCLA, lacks an in-depth discussion of why his theories about Islamic law, or sharia, are so controversial among traditionalist Muslims. And one wishes that Barrett's profile of the charismatic Siraj Wahhaj, the imam of a Brooklyn mosque, had more fully mined the complex history of African American Islam, its troubling roots in the Nation of Islam and its continuing animosity toward Muslims from the Middle East and South Asia.
Despite these shortcomings, American Islam provides a welcome antidote to the widespread Islamophobia that has infected so many Americans over the last five years. Indeed, at a time when global perceptions of the United States are hideously unfavorable, the book makes a compelling argument that the greatest tool in America's arsenal in the "war on terror" may be its own thriving and thoroughly assimilated Muslim community.
Still, it is hard not to be disheartened by Barrett's account of the case of Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a University of Idaho graduate student caught in the wide net thrown upon America's Muslim community after 9/11. Charged in February 2003 with violating the USA Patriot Act for providing "material support" to terrorists by running Arabic-language Web sites that encouraged suicide bombings, Hussayen suffered the same fate as the thousands of other Muslim and Arab Americans who were rounded up and held without due process, often on flimsy immigration charges. Throughout his ordeal, Hussayen insisted that he shunned terrorism and never lost confidence in the American legal system, which he relied upon to find him innocent and allow him to return to his family and his studies. He believed this to be true even after his wife and children were deported to Saudi Arabia in a blatant attempt to force him to "confess" to being a terrorist. He continued to believe it right up to the moment in July 2004 when, having been found innocent of all the terrorism charges, he was nevertheless deported for the most inconsequential visa violations.
While it is dispiriting to read about the bungling overzealousness of a government that has more often treated American Muslims as part of the problem of Islamic extremism than as part of the solution, there is nevertheless something oddly hopeful in Hussayen's unflinching faith that the rights and freedoms for which the United States has for centuries been admired throughout the world would ultimately protect him from harm. Perhaps generations from now, when the war on terror has become little more than a somber footnote in our nation's great history, that may once again be true.
As Muslims say, "Inshallah." God willing. ?
Reza Aslan, a Middle East analyst for CBS News, is the author of "No god but God."
Sunday, February 18, 2007; BW07 – Washington Post
The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion
By Paul M. Barrett
Farrar Straus Giroux. 304 pp. $25
By most estimates, Islam is now the largest non-Christian religion in the United States. And yet some 60 percent of Americans claim never to have met a Muslim. No wonder, then, that so many wild misconceptions about Muslims endure in the United States. Indeed, a third of Americans told Gallup pollsters in July 2006 that they thought America's Muslims are sympathetic to al-Qaeda.
Paul M. Barrett's well wrought and engaging new book, American Islam, seeks to change perceptions by providing an intimate group portrait of Muslim Americans as they struggle to combat the threats, prejudices and stereotypes that have dogged them since 9/11. Barrett, a longtime Wall Street Journal reporter who's now at BusinessWeek, uses his journalistic skills to insinuate himself into the lives of his subjects -- no easy task in a time of heightened suspicions. The book traces the lives of seven American Muslims, from the wily Dearborn, Mich., publisher and political activist Osama Siblani to the energetic journalist and Islamic feminist Asra Nomani, whose crusade to tear down the wall of separation between men and women in her Morgantown, W.Va., mosque made her a media superstar in the United States and, to her surprise, a scourge in her own community.
Barrett's profiles paint the American Muslim community -- more than 6 million strong and almost infinitely diverse -- as a microcosm of the larger worldwide community of Muslims. Muslims in the United States face the same religious, ethnic and sectarian divides that one finds throughout the Muslim world -- Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Iranians, Muslims and Christians. Yet American Muslims have, for the most part, avoided the conflicts of identity and integration that plague so many of their far more marginalized co-religionists in Europe. This partly has to do with economics: While most European Muslims are descended from impoverished immigrant families who flooded into Europe as guest workers at the end of World War II, most Muslims in the United States are, like the protagonists of Barrett's book, either middle-class converts or well-heeled and often highly educated immigrants from a wide array of ethnic backgrounds.
While Barrett maintains a sense of narrative cohesion throughout, the individual profiles are, alas, a bit uneven. His otherwise absorbing chapter on Khaled Abou El Fadl, the renowned theologian and law professor at UCLA, lacks an in-depth discussion of why his theories about Islamic law, or sharia, are so controversial among traditionalist Muslims. And one wishes that Barrett's profile of the charismatic Siraj Wahhaj, the imam of a Brooklyn mosque, had more fully mined the complex history of African American Islam, its troubling roots in the Nation of Islam and its continuing animosity toward Muslims from the Middle East and South Asia.
Despite these shortcomings, American Islam provides a welcome antidote to the widespread Islamophobia that has infected so many Americans over the last five years. Indeed, at a time when global perceptions of the United States are hideously unfavorable, the book makes a compelling argument that the greatest tool in America's arsenal in the "war on terror" may be its own thriving and thoroughly assimilated Muslim community.
Still, it is hard not to be disheartened by Barrett's account of the case of Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a University of Idaho graduate student caught in the wide net thrown upon America's Muslim community after 9/11. Charged in February 2003 with violating the USA Patriot Act for providing "material support" to terrorists by running Arabic-language Web sites that encouraged suicide bombings, Hussayen suffered the same fate as the thousands of other Muslim and Arab Americans who were rounded up and held without due process, often on flimsy immigration charges. Throughout his ordeal, Hussayen insisted that he shunned terrorism and never lost confidence in the American legal system, which he relied upon to find him innocent and allow him to return to his family and his studies. He believed this to be true even after his wife and children were deported to Saudi Arabia in a blatant attempt to force him to "confess" to being a terrorist. He continued to believe it right up to the moment in July 2004 when, having been found innocent of all the terrorism charges, he was nevertheless deported for the most inconsequential visa violations.
While it is dispiriting to read about the bungling overzealousness of a government that has more often treated American Muslims as part of the problem of Islamic extremism than as part of the solution, there is nevertheless something oddly hopeful in Hussayen's unflinching faith that the rights and freedoms for which the United States has for centuries been admired throughout the world would ultimately protect him from harm. Perhaps generations from now, when the war on terror has become little more than a somber footnote in our nation's great history, that may once again be true.
As Muslims say, "Inshallah." God willing. ?
Reza Aslan, a Middle East analyst for CBS News, is the author of "No god but God."
Time to Kiss Up
By Maral Kibarian Skelsey – Outlook Section - Washington Post
Sunday, March 4, 2007; B02
My Dear Brother:
Congratulations on the occasion of your beautiful boy's second birthday. As usual, I am ready to report on the perils of this milestone. Forget what you've read about the terrible twos. The real issue is that the party is over and you now have to think about nursery school admissions. As our family's official bearer of bad news, I'm here to tell you not to underestimate the process. Just because you matriculated at Sidwell, Brown and Dartmouth, don't expect this to be easy.
First off, you have to realize that the whole thing is about you, not your child. No matter what anyone says, you are the one being judged. And because there are more kids than open slots, the admissions directors are really hoping that you screw it up so they can take you off their lists.
The process usually begins with an open house/information session or a small group tour. Try to remember that you are being interviewed. You should wear a suit and an Hermes or other identifiably expensive tie; you should be affable, but mildly distracted by the pressing burden of making huge amounts of money. Mom should be smartly dressed but casual. She should not wear business attire nor appear in any way too busy for the exciting volunteer "opportunities" associated with the school. Think Tory Burch flats and a good but not over-the-top bag. Wear a wedding ring and do not wear black.
Appear engaged but do not ask any hard questions. I cannot emphasize enough that this is not the time to find out how much they pay teachers, what their qualifications are or how they do background checks. Resign yourself to the fact that you will not find out anything about the school until after you've written your first check and it's too late.
Do ask questions that will allow the school to shine: "I notice you have terrific playground facilities -- when do the children go outside?" Remark on how you wish you could come back as a 4-year-old and go to school there, heh, heh, heh.
Under no circumstances -- unless applying to a Montessori school -- should you ask about their approach to teaching reading. Most schools with play-based philosophies will blackball you for that one. I was at an open house for a school based on the Reggio Emilia approach and one untutored dad asked just that. The admissions director looked at him as though he'd just asked when the children would be taught to operate a forklift. "Our goal is the whole child, not training them for a single task," blah, blah, blah. That particular man's son, it goes without saying, was not accepted and I think his wife left him, too.
Montessori schools don't mind if you inquire about things like that, although some people call them communist workhouses because of their focus on tasks such as polishing and sweeping.
Of course it's a cliche, but you will want to ask how parents can be involved in the school. Mom will need to show that she used to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company but is now ready to put all her management skills toward running the spring gala. You should exhibit mild enthusiasm, but no one expects or wants you to do anything more than write a large check to the annual fund and donate a weekend at the family beach house to the silent auction (please learn about silent auctions ahead of time). A really involved dad disrupts the clique of power moms like a fox in a henhouse.
The next step is the application in which you'll answer questions such as:
· How does your child respond to new situations and challenges?
· What are your child's interests and activities?
· What words would you use to describe your child's personality?
Try to avoid anything that resembles the truth. I learned the hard way that it's best to use this as an opportunity to describe your dream date, and not your actual child who usually responds to new situations by a) throwing a tantrum, b) throwing a block at his sister or c) throwing up.
You will then be invited to a "playdate" at the school. This benign-sounding activity usually is scheduled during your child's regular naptime or another inopportune moment. They'll see how he plays with other kids and if he knows what to do with crackers and juice. But mainly they want to know if he's a biter. If, God forbid, you suspect he may have bitten someone, immediately pull the fire alarm and then put your house on the market. Your child will never eat a snack in that town again.
After the visit, send a note to the admissions director about how much Junior enjoyed the school. Include something charming he may have said about what he did. Conclude that you and your spouse agree that this would be a "great fit" for him and your family.
Toward the end of the process, call the director. You can leave a message. Just ask if there is anything missing from your file and reiterate your strong interest, because St. Elsewhere is definitely your first choice.
In addition to being very rich, I would recommend that you work on becoming famous -- but try to do so without being indicted. You don't need rock star status -- just something like the cover of Forbes magazine.
Now just sit back and relax!
MKS100@gunet.georgetown.edu
Maral Kibarian Skelsey, a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Georgetown Medical Center, has been applying to preschools for her two children continuously since 2001.
Sunday, March 4, 2007; B02
My Dear Brother:
Congratulations on the occasion of your beautiful boy's second birthday. As usual, I am ready to report on the perils of this milestone. Forget what you've read about the terrible twos. The real issue is that the party is over and you now have to think about nursery school admissions. As our family's official bearer of bad news, I'm here to tell you not to underestimate the process. Just because you matriculated at Sidwell, Brown and Dartmouth, don't expect this to be easy.
First off, you have to realize that the whole thing is about you, not your child. No matter what anyone says, you are the one being judged. And because there are more kids than open slots, the admissions directors are really hoping that you screw it up so they can take you off their lists.
The process usually begins with an open house/information session or a small group tour. Try to remember that you are being interviewed. You should wear a suit and an Hermes or other identifiably expensive tie; you should be affable, but mildly distracted by the pressing burden of making huge amounts of money. Mom should be smartly dressed but casual. She should not wear business attire nor appear in any way too busy for the exciting volunteer "opportunities" associated with the school. Think Tory Burch flats and a good but not over-the-top bag. Wear a wedding ring and do not wear black.
Appear engaged but do not ask any hard questions. I cannot emphasize enough that this is not the time to find out how much they pay teachers, what their qualifications are or how they do background checks. Resign yourself to the fact that you will not find out anything about the school until after you've written your first check and it's too late.
Do ask questions that will allow the school to shine: "I notice you have terrific playground facilities -- when do the children go outside?" Remark on how you wish you could come back as a 4-year-old and go to school there, heh, heh, heh.
Under no circumstances -- unless applying to a Montessori school -- should you ask about their approach to teaching reading. Most schools with play-based philosophies will blackball you for that one. I was at an open house for a school based on the Reggio Emilia approach and one untutored dad asked just that. The admissions director looked at him as though he'd just asked when the children would be taught to operate a forklift. "Our goal is the whole child, not training them for a single task," blah, blah, blah. That particular man's son, it goes without saying, was not accepted and I think his wife left him, too.
Montessori schools don't mind if you inquire about things like that, although some people call them communist workhouses because of their focus on tasks such as polishing and sweeping.
Of course it's a cliche, but you will want to ask how parents can be involved in the school. Mom will need to show that she used to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company but is now ready to put all her management skills toward running the spring gala. You should exhibit mild enthusiasm, but no one expects or wants you to do anything more than write a large check to the annual fund and donate a weekend at the family beach house to the silent auction (please learn about silent auctions ahead of time). A really involved dad disrupts the clique of power moms like a fox in a henhouse.
The next step is the application in which you'll answer questions such as:
· How does your child respond to new situations and challenges?
· What are your child's interests and activities?
· What words would you use to describe your child's personality?
Try to avoid anything that resembles the truth. I learned the hard way that it's best to use this as an opportunity to describe your dream date, and not your actual child who usually responds to new situations by a) throwing a tantrum, b) throwing a block at his sister or c) throwing up.
You will then be invited to a "playdate" at the school. This benign-sounding activity usually is scheduled during your child's regular naptime or another inopportune moment. They'll see how he plays with other kids and if he knows what to do with crackers and juice. But mainly they want to know if he's a biter. If, God forbid, you suspect he may have bitten someone, immediately pull the fire alarm and then put your house on the market. Your child will never eat a snack in that town again.
After the visit, send a note to the admissions director about how much Junior enjoyed the school. Include something charming he may have said about what he did. Conclude that you and your spouse agree that this would be a "great fit" for him and your family.
Toward the end of the process, call the director. You can leave a message. Just ask if there is anything missing from your file and reiterate your strong interest, because St. Elsewhere is definitely your first choice.
In addition to being very rich, I would recommend that you work on becoming famous -- but try to do so without being indicted. You don't need rock star status -- just something like the cover of Forbes magazine.
Now just sit back and relax!
MKS100@gunet.georgetown.edu
Maral Kibarian Skelsey, a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Georgetown Medical Center, has been applying to preschools for her two children continuously since 2001.
A Russian Plea for Collaboration
By Sergey Rogov – Washington Post
Sunday, March 4, 2007; B05
My generation arrived in this world when Russia and America were engaged in a Cold War confrontation. I've spent 40 years -- all my adult life -- studying the United States and Russian-American relations, and now I'm afraid that when my generation leaves this world, America and Russia will be adversaries again. The Cold War ended nearly two decades ago. When communism collapsed, the expectations were high that former enemies would become strategic partners. But it never happened. Why?
Many people in Russia blame America. Many people in America blame Russia. Unfortunately, both are right. Nice but empty declarations cannot substitute for a clear strategy. Personal chemistry between presidents cannot substitute for institutionalized cooperation and common policies. Predictably, the backlash against the unfulfilled hopes and promises is strong today in both countries.
The 1990s were a very difficult time for Russia. Some in the United States saw the beginning of a golden age of democracy, but Russians saw and felt the disintegration of a former superpower. President Boris Yeltsin brought out tanks to fire on the parliament to impose his policy of speedy privatization of industry, business and natural resources, so a few became super-rich and many were pushed into poverty. My country nearly became a failed state. But the worst-case scenario was avoided. With a lot of help from high oil prices, Russia has managed to begin an economic revival. Today the standard of living is going up, and the threat of a civil war is gone. We still face a long and difficult path to a mature democracy and a modern market economy, of course. New mistakes can still be made, but Russia is on its way to recovery.
Meanwhile the United States has enjoyed the fruits of "victory" in the Cold War. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington's strategy has been to prevent the emergence of a new peer competitor and to extend "the unipolar moment" as long as possible into the 21st century. America has failed to resist the temptation of unilateralism and preemption. A new surge of the arrogance of power brought the United States into Iraq.
The relationship with Russia no longer dominates America's foreign policy. Washington has stopped treating Moscow as an equal player. Instead, Russians have been lectured on the need for domestic reforms, and sometimes given assistance when it directly served U.S. interests. But with the exception of the Nunn-Lugar program to help the former Soviet republics dismantle nuclear weapons, there has been no substantial assistance, no Marshall Plan for Russia.
In fact, Russia has had to repay all the Soviet sovereign debt plus International Monetary Fund and World Bank credits. The flow of capital from Russia (including official transfers and the much bigger illegal and unofficial flight of capital) has exceeded by many times all Western assistance and private investment in Russia. Even today, Russia helps to finance the U.S. federal budget deficit, holding hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign currency reserves (though not as much as China).
Ironically, while some Russian oligarchs make huge investments in America, the U.S. Congress has never repealed the 35-year-old Jackson-Vanik amendment, which treats Russia as a centrally planned economy undeserving of most-favored-nation trading status. This still stings in Moscow.
On issues of international security, Russia has been treated as a second-rate power whose complaints can be ignored. At the end of the Cold War, President George H.W. Bush proposed a new security system "from Vancouver to Vladivostok," but this idea was quickly forgotten. So was NATO's promise not to expand its military infrastructure eastward beyond West Germany.
"The winner takes all" -- so despite Russia's objections, all former Soviet clients in Eastern Europe have been admitted into NATO, including three former republics of the Soviet Union. And two more former republics -- Georgia and Ukraine -- could be next. Russia's objections were also ignored when NATO started its first war in Kosovo.
At the same time, the old arms-control regime is half-dead. The two strategic arms-limitation agreements on the books will expire in 2009 and 2012. Today there are no serious negotiations between Russia and America about any new arms-control arrangements, and the Bush administration says that there is no more need for legally binding treaties. To demonstrate its point, the administration unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, ignoring Russian objections.
Now the United States wants to deploy the components of missile defenses (interceptors and a radar) in Poland and the Czech Republic. Now Russians are complaining that the deployment of American missile defense systems so close to Russia could undermine Russian nuclear deterrence.
Many in Russia say that the United States violates a commitment to avoid a "substantial deployment of forces" in Eastern Europe, which America and the West made, when the Russia-NATO Founding Act was signed in 1997. The perception of violated promises and mistrust of American intentions produced calls in Moscow to deploy nuclear and conventional medium-range missiles. This could lead to new tensions.
Unfortunately, Russia and America have never fully escaped from the Cold War doctrine of "mutual assured destruction." Both pretend that they may someday confront each other with nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the nuclear club continues to grow ominously. It now has five official and three "de facto" members. North Korea and Iran could also join, if diplomatic efforts fail. A new wave of proliferators would surely follow. What used to be primarily a bilateral Soviet-American nuclear arms race during the Cold War already looks like a multilateral competition that might make a real nuclear war more possible. And with China's recent anti-satellite test, we are threatened with a new arms race in outer space.
After Iraq, the United States will not be able to act as the world's policeman. The American public does not want to play that role. To avoid chaos, there must be a workable, multipolar international system based on multilateral rules of the game that are accepted by all major players.
America and Russia have unique responsibilities here. If they revert to confrontation, we cannot expect, say, China or France to lead efforts to create a new world order and control the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Only Americans and Russians can lead the world away from the biggest dangers. To do so effectively, they must begin serious cooperation in three areas:
First, a real effort to reinvent arms control. I'm not suggesting the restoration of old treaties. Both countries should make a commitment to take seriously each other's security concerns and avoid actions that the other side might perceive as a threat. The dispute over anti-missile equipment in Eastern Europe should be resolved through a compromise, not a confrontation.
Even more important are Russian-American initiatives to invite other nuclear countries to demonstrate self-restraint and abstain from the unnecessary buildup of their nuclear arsenals. Joint brainstorming is needed to prevent the collapse of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is at serious risk.
Second, Russia and the United States must cooperate on bilateral and multilateral efforts to manage regional conflicts. The success of the six-party negotiations on North Korea proves that when the United States gives priority to non-proliferation instead of a regime change, solutions are possible. The same approach should be applied to Iran.
Multilateral efforts must be expanded to prevent the Taliban from restoring its grip on Afghanistan. Russia, China and India can help NATO politically and economically, and even militarily, if Russia can overcome its "Afghanistan syndrome."
If the United States agrees that the way out of the Iraq quagmire requires multilateral arrangements, Russia also can help. And it can share responsibility for implementing the "road map" to an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.
Third are the problems of democracy and values. Russia and the United States face serious problems related to terrorist threats. It is premature to claim that either has found the best ways to expand human rights and democratic freedoms. America hardly occupies the high moral ground that would enable it to lecture others. Neither does Russia, which is debating a vague concept of "sovereign democracy," trying to understand how to apply universal standards of human rights and democratic procedures.
It would be a great blunder to revive the spirit of the ideological crusade that gave us the Cold War. Propagandistic campaigns should belong to history. While there are heated debates on these issues in each country, we need a Russian-American dialogue instead of mutual accusations.
Russia is back as an international player. While it is not a superpower (except in the number of its nuclear weapons) and is still amid a difficult internal transformation, no one should be surprised that Russia wants to protect its national interests. Russia should be treated as a responsible player, sharing the rights and the duties of membership in the community of democratic market economies in a globalized world. That was President Vladimir Putin's message in the speech he gave last month in Munich. And Russia, if necessary, should be criticized for her mistakes, as should America, or China, or other members of the international community. But the goal should be a new cooperation, not a new Cold War.
-------------------------------------------
District Should Try London-Style Congestion Charge
Sunday, March 4, 2007; B08 – Washington Post
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty should take a play from the mayor of London's book and impose a congestion charge that applies to each nonresident who commutes into the District by car. He should be first in line to take advantage of President Bush's recent proposal to support a few cities that experiment with such a charge.
A stunning two-thirds of all income earned in the District is by nonresidents. Of these commuters, roughly 250,000 drive solo into Washington daily, making them both polluters of our air and freeloaders of our infrastructure.
Unlike all 50 states, the District is not permitted to collect income tax from those who work there but reside elsewhere. We in the District pay the second-highest "state" taxes in the country, in part because there is no nonresident tax and because the federal government, embassies and nonprofits are often exempt from property tax. Exempt property makes up 41 percent of the District's total area. Wrongly, Congress -- the entity that taxes us without representation -- won't let us impose a nonresident income tax. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is pondering all options to improve the bottom line, including a major fare hike. A congestion charge would allow the District to increase its financial support of Metro, which could then transform Metrorail and Metrobus into a world-class transport network.
As it is, Metro may raise fares substantially, in part because the governments of the region (read: Maryland and Virginia) won't pay their fair share. The result could be that many current Metro riders will be reaching for their car keys, and adding to District pollution and congestion, if fare increases take effect.
Fenty should impose a District version of London's congestion charge on all nonresident commuters. As in London, the charge should apply to all nonresidents -- even diplomats and members of Congress.
The fee for a vehicle to circulate in central London is 8 British pounds, or $15.70 per day. The money is used to improve public transportation. The charge has increased the use of public transportation by 20 to 30 percent as well as the use of bikes and motorbikes. It has decreased the average commute time by 20 percent.
London uses an expensive high-tech means to enforce the charge. The District should look at all the options, but I would recommend a low-tech scheme involving parking garages and sharp-eyed District parking enforcement officers. The District could charge $1 a day for nonresident commuters. Parking garages would receive, say, 5 percent to cover administrative costs. Commuters who voluntarily purchase a sticker for one year would get a small discount. Those who don't comply, either at garages or on the street, would be subject to escalating fines.
Based on 285,000 nonresident drivers (including carpoolers) commuting at $1 a day for 250 workdays a year, less total administrative costs of 15 percent, I calculate that this very reasonable charge would generate approximately $60 million annually that the District could use for public transit and other environment-friendly alternatives.
While the London program covers passenger and commercial vehicles, I believe commercial delivery vehicles should be exempt here to avoid indirectly raising the cost of food and other goods in the District. The Supreme Court has ruled that it is permissible to discriminate based on place of residence (e.g., the lack of voting rights for the 5 million U.S. citizens not living in a state). The District has power over parking and environmental quality, and, if it acts promptly, it may even be able to obtain Bush administration support. The plan should pass judicial and political muster.
Mayor Fenty's administration should put the charge in place before Metro increases fares, driving more commuters into their cars as District residents gag on one more byproduct of taxation without representation.
-- Todd Howland - Washington
Sunday, March 4, 2007; B05
My generation arrived in this world when Russia and America were engaged in a Cold War confrontation. I've spent 40 years -- all my adult life -- studying the United States and Russian-American relations, and now I'm afraid that when my generation leaves this world, America and Russia will be adversaries again. The Cold War ended nearly two decades ago. When communism collapsed, the expectations were high that former enemies would become strategic partners. But it never happened. Why?
Many people in Russia blame America. Many people in America blame Russia. Unfortunately, both are right. Nice but empty declarations cannot substitute for a clear strategy. Personal chemistry between presidents cannot substitute for institutionalized cooperation and common policies. Predictably, the backlash against the unfulfilled hopes and promises is strong today in both countries.
The 1990s were a very difficult time for Russia. Some in the United States saw the beginning of a golden age of democracy, but Russians saw and felt the disintegration of a former superpower. President Boris Yeltsin brought out tanks to fire on the parliament to impose his policy of speedy privatization of industry, business and natural resources, so a few became super-rich and many were pushed into poverty. My country nearly became a failed state. But the worst-case scenario was avoided. With a lot of help from high oil prices, Russia has managed to begin an economic revival. Today the standard of living is going up, and the threat of a civil war is gone. We still face a long and difficult path to a mature democracy and a modern market economy, of course. New mistakes can still be made, but Russia is on its way to recovery.
Meanwhile the United States has enjoyed the fruits of "victory" in the Cold War. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington's strategy has been to prevent the emergence of a new peer competitor and to extend "the unipolar moment" as long as possible into the 21st century. America has failed to resist the temptation of unilateralism and preemption. A new surge of the arrogance of power brought the United States into Iraq.
The relationship with Russia no longer dominates America's foreign policy. Washington has stopped treating Moscow as an equal player. Instead, Russians have been lectured on the need for domestic reforms, and sometimes given assistance when it directly served U.S. interests. But with the exception of the Nunn-Lugar program to help the former Soviet republics dismantle nuclear weapons, there has been no substantial assistance, no Marshall Plan for Russia.
In fact, Russia has had to repay all the Soviet sovereign debt plus International Monetary Fund and World Bank credits. The flow of capital from Russia (including official transfers and the much bigger illegal and unofficial flight of capital) has exceeded by many times all Western assistance and private investment in Russia. Even today, Russia helps to finance the U.S. federal budget deficit, holding hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign currency reserves (though not as much as China).
Ironically, while some Russian oligarchs make huge investments in America, the U.S. Congress has never repealed the 35-year-old Jackson-Vanik amendment, which treats Russia as a centrally planned economy undeserving of most-favored-nation trading status. This still stings in Moscow.
On issues of international security, Russia has been treated as a second-rate power whose complaints can be ignored. At the end of the Cold War, President George H.W. Bush proposed a new security system "from Vancouver to Vladivostok," but this idea was quickly forgotten. So was NATO's promise not to expand its military infrastructure eastward beyond West Germany.
"The winner takes all" -- so despite Russia's objections, all former Soviet clients in Eastern Europe have been admitted into NATO, including three former republics of the Soviet Union. And two more former republics -- Georgia and Ukraine -- could be next. Russia's objections were also ignored when NATO started its first war in Kosovo.
At the same time, the old arms-control regime is half-dead. The two strategic arms-limitation agreements on the books will expire in 2009 and 2012. Today there are no serious negotiations between Russia and America about any new arms-control arrangements, and the Bush administration says that there is no more need for legally binding treaties. To demonstrate its point, the administration unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, ignoring Russian objections.
Now the United States wants to deploy the components of missile defenses (interceptors and a radar) in Poland and the Czech Republic. Now Russians are complaining that the deployment of American missile defense systems so close to Russia could undermine Russian nuclear deterrence.
Many in Russia say that the United States violates a commitment to avoid a "substantial deployment of forces" in Eastern Europe, which America and the West made, when the Russia-NATO Founding Act was signed in 1997. The perception of violated promises and mistrust of American intentions produced calls in Moscow to deploy nuclear and conventional medium-range missiles. This could lead to new tensions.
Unfortunately, Russia and America have never fully escaped from the Cold War doctrine of "mutual assured destruction." Both pretend that they may someday confront each other with nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the nuclear club continues to grow ominously. It now has five official and three "de facto" members. North Korea and Iran could also join, if diplomatic efforts fail. A new wave of proliferators would surely follow. What used to be primarily a bilateral Soviet-American nuclear arms race during the Cold War already looks like a multilateral competition that might make a real nuclear war more possible. And with China's recent anti-satellite test, we are threatened with a new arms race in outer space.
After Iraq, the United States will not be able to act as the world's policeman. The American public does not want to play that role. To avoid chaos, there must be a workable, multipolar international system based on multilateral rules of the game that are accepted by all major players.
America and Russia have unique responsibilities here. If they revert to confrontation, we cannot expect, say, China or France to lead efforts to create a new world order and control the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Only Americans and Russians can lead the world away from the biggest dangers. To do so effectively, they must begin serious cooperation in three areas:
First, a real effort to reinvent arms control. I'm not suggesting the restoration of old treaties. Both countries should make a commitment to take seriously each other's security concerns and avoid actions that the other side might perceive as a threat. The dispute over anti-missile equipment in Eastern Europe should be resolved through a compromise, not a confrontation.
Even more important are Russian-American initiatives to invite other nuclear countries to demonstrate self-restraint and abstain from the unnecessary buildup of their nuclear arsenals. Joint brainstorming is needed to prevent the collapse of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is at serious risk.
Second, Russia and the United States must cooperate on bilateral and multilateral efforts to manage regional conflicts. The success of the six-party negotiations on North Korea proves that when the United States gives priority to non-proliferation instead of a regime change, solutions are possible. The same approach should be applied to Iran.
Multilateral efforts must be expanded to prevent the Taliban from restoring its grip on Afghanistan. Russia, China and India can help NATO politically and economically, and even militarily, if Russia can overcome its "Afghanistan syndrome."
If the United States agrees that the way out of the Iraq quagmire requires multilateral arrangements, Russia also can help. And it can share responsibility for implementing the "road map" to an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.
Third are the problems of democracy and values. Russia and the United States face serious problems related to terrorist threats. It is premature to claim that either has found the best ways to expand human rights and democratic freedoms. America hardly occupies the high moral ground that would enable it to lecture others. Neither does Russia, which is debating a vague concept of "sovereign democracy," trying to understand how to apply universal standards of human rights and democratic procedures.
It would be a great blunder to revive the spirit of the ideological crusade that gave us the Cold War. Propagandistic campaigns should belong to history. While there are heated debates on these issues in each country, we need a Russian-American dialogue instead of mutual accusations.
Russia is back as an international player. While it is not a superpower (except in the number of its nuclear weapons) and is still amid a difficult internal transformation, no one should be surprised that Russia wants to protect its national interests. Russia should be treated as a responsible player, sharing the rights and the duties of membership in the community of democratic market economies in a globalized world. That was President Vladimir Putin's message in the speech he gave last month in Munich. And Russia, if necessary, should be criticized for her mistakes, as should America, or China, or other members of the international community. But the goal should be a new cooperation, not a new Cold War.
-------------------------------------------
District Should Try London-Style Congestion Charge
Sunday, March 4, 2007; B08 – Washington Post
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty should take a play from the mayor of London's book and impose a congestion charge that applies to each nonresident who commutes into the District by car. He should be first in line to take advantage of President Bush's recent proposal to support a few cities that experiment with such a charge.
A stunning two-thirds of all income earned in the District is by nonresidents. Of these commuters, roughly 250,000 drive solo into Washington daily, making them both polluters of our air and freeloaders of our infrastructure.
Unlike all 50 states, the District is not permitted to collect income tax from those who work there but reside elsewhere. We in the District pay the second-highest "state" taxes in the country, in part because there is no nonresident tax and because the federal government, embassies and nonprofits are often exempt from property tax. Exempt property makes up 41 percent of the District's total area. Wrongly, Congress -- the entity that taxes us without representation -- won't let us impose a nonresident income tax. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is pondering all options to improve the bottom line, including a major fare hike. A congestion charge would allow the District to increase its financial support of Metro, which could then transform Metrorail and Metrobus into a world-class transport network.
As it is, Metro may raise fares substantially, in part because the governments of the region (read: Maryland and Virginia) won't pay their fair share. The result could be that many current Metro riders will be reaching for their car keys, and adding to District pollution and congestion, if fare increases take effect.
Fenty should impose a District version of London's congestion charge on all nonresident commuters. As in London, the charge should apply to all nonresidents -- even diplomats and members of Congress.
The fee for a vehicle to circulate in central London is 8 British pounds, or $15.70 per day. The money is used to improve public transportation. The charge has increased the use of public transportation by 20 to 30 percent as well as the use of bikes and motorbikes. It has decreased the average commute time by 20 percent.
London uses an expensive high-tech means to enforce the charge. The District should look at all the options, but I would recommend a low-tech scheme involving parking garages and sharp-eyed District parking enforcement officers. The District could charge $1 a day for nonresident commuters. Parking garages would receive, say, 5 percent to cover administrative costs. Commuters who voluntarily purchase a sticker for one year would get a small discount. Those who don't comply, either at garages or on the street, would be subject to escalating fines.
Based on 285,000 nonresident drivers (including carpoolers) commuting at $1 a day for 250 workdays a year, less total administrative costs of 15 percent, I calculate that this very reasonable charge would generate approximately $60 million annually that the District could use for public transit and other environment-friendly alternatives.
While the London program covers passenger and commercial vehicles, I believe commercial delivery vehicles should be exempt here to avoid indirectly raising the cost of food and other goods in the District. The Supreme Court has ruled that it is permissible to discriminate based on place of residence (e.g., the lack of voting rights for the 5 million U.S. citizens not living in a state). The District has power over parking and environmental quality, and, if it acts promptly, it may even be able to obtain Bush administration support. The plan should pass judicial and political muster.
Mayor Fenty's administration should put the charge in place before Metro increases fares, driving more commuters into their cars as District residents gag on one more byproduct of taxation without representation.
-- Todd Howland - Washington
Next Stop, Tysons
Fairfax County Planners See Ballston Neighborhood as Model For Transit-Oriented Overhaul of Sprawling Business Center
Sunday, February 18, 2007; C01 – Washington Post
Fairfax County's leaders have a theory. The way to reduce traffic and improve the quality of life in Tysons Corner and the rest of the million-person county, they say, is to cluster thousands of high-rise apartments and offices into areas near public transit.
And in response to those who argue that cramming in more towers and people seems like an unlikely way to reduce congestion, the leaders have a single word: Ballston.
That section of Arlington, along with the rest of the corridor between Rosslyn and Ballston, is a national model for "transit-oriented development" -- and it is now defining the debate over how to redevelop the Washington suburbs.
Over three decades, Arlington has transformed what was once a timeworn commercial strip into a thriving corri dor of gleaming towers and busy sidewalks strung like an open necklace along Metro's Orange Line, which reached
Ballston in 1979. Most notably, the surge in development along the corridor has produced relatively little additional automobile traffic, which is why Fairfax, Montgomery County and other suburbs are invoking the high-density model as the cure to their traffic woes.
"If we don't change the old pattern of growth and development, we will continue to get what we have always gotten," said Gerald E. Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax Board of Supervisors.
But to many residents of Fairfax, Montgomery and other suburbs, the Rosslyn-Ballston model simply does not apply outside of Arlington. It verges on delusional, they argue, to expect that injecting tens of thousands of people, many of whom will use their cars, into places like Tysons will turn them into a pedestrians' paradise. To skeptics, "Ballstonization" has become a dirty word, a planners' fantasy sure to produce disaster.
In Montgomery, where plans call for focusing growth around the county's 11 Metro stations, residents have spoken out in recent years against proposals for intense development around the Shady Grove Station north of Rockville and the Takoma Station, just across the District line. Similar debates are expected in coming years in Prince George's County as its leaders move to encourage development around several stations that are surrounded by parking lots -- although plans to build offices, shops and hundreds of apartments around the West Hyattsville Station have so far been well received. The debate also has taken hold in the District, where residents are battling plans for high-rise development around the Tenleytown and Friendship Heights stations.
The struggle over the Arlington model was most on display in the recent debate over plans to surround Tysons Corner Center with eight towers holding offices, a hotel and 1,385 apartments -- 3.5 million square feet, more than doubling what's on the 78-acre site. At the meeting in which Fairfax supervisors voted for the plans, Connolly said Tysons desperately needs to increase the number of its residents -- currently 17,000, compared with 117,000 employees -- so that everyone isn't streaming into the area at rush hour.
"While it may be counterintuitive, we need a lot more people than are living there right now to break that pattern," he said.
Darren Ewing, a Falls Church resident testifying against the plans, wasn't buying it. "By adding additional congestion, do you solve that?"
"If I live where I work, I'm not going to have that kind of problem," Connolly said. "The problem at Tysons is peak congestion."
Ewing disagreed: "Common sense dictates we're at gridlock. If you add 3.5 million square feet, you're not going to improve that."
Skeptics argue that the high-density approach worked in Arlington for several reasons: It is a well-defined corridor with multiple entry points from the surrounding grid of streets; its proximity to the District makes its apartment towers attractive to young people; and the hodgepodge of car dealerships and low-slung shopping strips that predated the start of redevelopment in the 1970s was insubstantial enough that it could be displaced with something else.
Tysons, on the other hand, is a sprawling, 1,700-acre area that lacks a street grid and is both broken up and sealed off by several highways, including the Capital Beltway, the Dulles Toll Road and Route 7, skeptics note. Although it is scheduled to get Metro in 2012, it is farther from the District and thus less appealing to many potential younger residents. And although some of its office towers are nearing the end of their lifespan, much of what is there today, including the two big malls at its center, is unlikely to be replaced anytime soon, precluding a total overhaul like Arlington's.
Among the skeptics is Robert E. Simon, founder of Reston and its Town Center. He agrees with Fairfax's plans to focus growth near transit but said it was unrealistic that Tysons would ever be as cohesive and pedestrian-friendly as the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, because of its sheer size and the way it's "so chopped up because of the enormous superhighways."
"It isn't conceivable that it will ever work, because people will not walk from one part of it to another. I can conceive of them finding one place, a pleasant mall or plaza-like place, but as far as converting the whole thing into something good, I can't see that," Simon said.
But others say such doubts betray a lack of imagination. Although Tysons covers a big area, optimists say, the county can certainly hope to transform at least the slice of it that will be within walking distance of the four stations planned along Route 7 and 123 -- a stretch that is slightly shorter than the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.
If the county focuses new apartment buildings in those areas, implements a street grid and invests in a strong bus system to feed into the rail stations, a transformation is possible, said Patty Nicoson, a former Arlington transportation planner who runs a nonprofit group advocating for the rail extension to Tysons and Dulles International Airport. It's no harder to envision that, she said, than it was to imagine 30 years ago that Arlington would be what it is today.
"If you take the longer view, you can see that as this place develops, people are going to embrace a vision, too," she said. "You need to have faith."
Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, agreed that Tysons can be transformed, but only if the planned Metro line is run underground instead of on an elevated track, as is planned. He compared the importance of that decision to Arlington's choice of locating the Orange Line beneath Wilson Boulevard instead of up Interstate 66, even though it cost much more do to so.
Also necessary, he said, is that the state drop its plans to turn Route 123 into an expressway and instead make it into a boulevard, as is planned for Route 7. This would improve pedestrian access to Tysons Corner Center and free up the chunk of land taken up by the interchange of Routes 7 and 123.
Following this debate from nearby, current and former Arlington officials say they wish officials in Fairfax and other suburbs well, but they caution that duplicating the model won't be easy. It took Arlington decades, they said, to draw up plans, win support from nearby residents and then attract the kind of development they were hoping for.
Winning local support was achieved, officials said, only after countless meetings and pledges that Arlington would stick to a "bull's-eye" approach, limiting the tallest buildings to a quarter-mile radius from rail stations and not encroaching on neighborhoods. To keep up support over time, the county instituted parking limits and traffic-calming methods on nearby streets.
Employees and residents in the corridor are encouraged to stay out of their cars through parking limits, transit subsidies, a county bus system, bike paths and pedestrian-friendly street designs. The county has the advantage of having control over the design of its secondary streets, an authority that in most Virginia counties is held by the state.
"It's not just one policy but a whole series of things," said Dennis Leach, the county's transportation chief. "This is not something you do overnight. Arlington's been at this 30 years, and not everything's perfect. We have a lot more to do."
The results are the envy of transportation planners worldwide. After declining in the 1970s, Arlington's population has expanded by a third since 1980 to nearly 200,000, with much of the growth in the corridor. Yet the county has seen only modest increases in traffic on local streets. Metro ridership, meanwhile, is surging, with a 36 percent increase in the county in the past decade. In the corridor, only 40 percent of residents drive alone to work, compared with 70 percent in other area suburbs including Fairfax and Montgomery, and homes in the corridor average one car each, compared with 1.75 in other suburbs.
Few expect that Fairfax can match those figures, but some argue that the county should try anyway. Christopher Leinberger, a land-use expert at the Brookings Institution, said that in an age of global warming and dwindling resources, suburbs such as Fairfax have no choice but to adopt Arlington's approach.
"High-density, transit-oriented urbanity is one of the most important things we have to achieve," he said. "It's not too late for Tysons. Having said that, Tysons and Tysons-like places pose problems we don't yet know how to solve."
Sunday, February 18, 2007; C01 – Washington Post
Fairfax County's leaders have a theory. The way to reduce traffic and improve the quality of life in Tysons Corner and the rest of the million-person county, they say, is to cluster thousands of high-rise apartments and offices into areas near public transit.
And in response to those who argue that cramming in more towers and people seems like an unlikely way to reduce congestion, the leaders have a single word: Ballston.
That section of Arlington, along with the rest of the corridor between Rosslyn and Ballston, is a national model for "transit-oriented development" -- and it is now defining the debate over how to redevelop the Washington suburbs.
Over three decades, Arlington has transformed what was once a timeworn commercial strip into a thriving corri dor of gleaming towers and busy sidewalks strung like an open necklace along Metro's Orange Line, which reached
Ballston in 1979. Most notably, the surge in development along the corridor has produced relatively little additional automobile traffic, which is why Fairfax, Montgomery County and other suburbs are invoking the high-density model as the cure to their traffic woes.
"If we don't change the old pattern of growth and development, we will continue to get what we have always gotten," said Gerald E. Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax Board of Supervisors.
But to many residents of Fairfax, Montgomery and other suburbs, the Rosslyn-Ballston model simply does not apply outside of Arlington. It verges on delusional, they argue, to expect that injecting tens of thousands of people, many of whom will use their cars, into places like Tysons will turn them into a pedestrians' paradise. To skeptics, "Ballstonization" has become a dirty word, a planners' fantasy sure to produce disaster.
In Montgomery, where plans call for focusing growth around the county's 11 Metro stations, residents have spoken out in recent years against proposals for intense development around the Shady Grove Station north of Rockville and the Takoma Station, just across the District line. Similar debates are expected in coming years in Prince George's County as its leaders move to encourage development around several stations that are surrounded by parking lots -- although plans to build offices, shops and hundreds of apartments around the West Hyattsville Station have so far been well received. The debate also has taken hold in the District, where residents are battling plans for high-rise development around the Tenleytown and Friendship Heights stations.
The struggle over the Arlington model was most on display in the recent debate over plans to surround Tysons Corner Center with eight towers holding offices, a hotel and 1,385 apartments -- 3.5 million square feet, more than doubling what's on the 78-acre site. At the meeting in which Fairfax supervisors voted for the plans, Connolly said Tysons desperately needs to increase the number of its residents -- currently 17,000, compared with 117,000 employees -- so that everyone isn't streaming into the area at rush hour.
"While it may be counterintuitive, we need a lot more people than are living there right now to break that pattern," he said.
Darren Ewing, a Falls Church resident testifying against the plans, wasn't buying it. "By adding additional congestion, do you solve that?"
"If I live where I work, I'm not going to have that kind of problem," Connolly said. "The problem at Tysons is peak congestion."
Ewing disagreed: "Common sense dictates we're at gridlock. If you add 3.5 million square feet, you're not going to improve that."
Skeptics argue that the high-density approach worked in Arlington for several reasons: It is a well-defined corridor with multiple entry points from the surrounding grid of streets; its proximity to the District makes its apartment towers attractive to young people; and the hodgepodge of car dealerships and low-slung shopping strips that predated the start of redevelopment in the 1970s was insubstantial enough that it could be displaced with something else.
Tysons, on the other hand, is a sprawling, 1,700-acre area that lacks a street grid and is both broken up and sealed off by several highways, including the Capital Beltway, the Dulles Toll Road and Route 7, skeptics note. Although it is scheduled to get Metro in 2012, it is farther from the District and thus less appealing to many potential younger residents. And although some of its office towers are nearing the end of their lifespan, much of what is there today, including the two big malls at its center, is unlikely to be replaced anytime soon, precluding a total overhaul like Arlington's.
Among the skeptics is Robert E. Simon, founder of Reston and its Town Center. He agrees with Fairfax's plans to focus growth near transit but said it was unrealistic that Tysons would ever be as cohesive and pedestrian-friendly as the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, because of its sheer size and the way it's "so chopped up because of the enormous superhighways."
"It isn't conceivable that it will ever work, because people will not walk from one part of it to another. I can conceive of them finding one place, a pleasant mall or plaza-like place, but as far as converting the whole thing into something good, I can't see that," Simon said.
But others say such doubts betray a lack of imagination. Although Tysons covers a big area, optimists say, the county can certainly hope to transform at least the slice of it that will be within walking distance of the four stations planned along Route 7 and 123 -- a stretch that is slightly shorter than the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.
If the county focuses new apartment buildings in those areas, implements a street grid and invests in a strong bus system to feed into the rail stations, a transformation is possible, said Patty Nicoson, a former Arlington transportation planner who runs a nonprofit group advocating for the rail extension to Tysons and Dulles International Airport. It's no harder to envision that, she said, than it was to imagine 30 years ago that Arlington would be what it is today.
"If you take the longer view, you can see that as this place develops, people are going to embrace a vision, too," she said. "You need to have faith."
Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, agreed that Tysons can be transformed, but only if the planned Metro line is run underground instead of on an elevated track, as is planned. He compared the importance of that decision to Arlington's choice of locating the Orange Line beneath Wilson Boulevard instead of up Interstate 66, even though it cost much more do to so.
Also necessary, he said, is that the state drop its plans to turn Route 123 into an expressway and instead make it into a boulevard, as is planned for Route 7. This would improve pedestrian access to Tysons Corner Center and free up the chunk of land taken up by the interchange of Routes 7 and 123.
Following this debate from nearby, current and former Arlington officials say they wish officials in Fairfax and other suburbs well, but they caution that duplicating the model won't be easy. It took Arlington decades, they said, to draw up plans, win support from nearby residents and then attract the kind of development they were hoping for.
Winning local support was achieved, officials said, only after countless meetings and pledges that Arlington would stick to a "bull's-eye" approach, limiting the tallest buildings to a quarter-mile radius from rail stations and not encroaching on neighborhoods. To keep up support over time, the county instituted parking limits and traffic-calming methods on nearby streets.
Employees and residents in the corridor are encouraged to stay out of their cars through parking limits, transit subsidies, a county bus system, bike paths and pedestrian-friendly street designs. The county has the advantage of having control over the design of its secondary streets, an authority that in most Virginia counties is held by the state.
"It's not just one policy but a whole series of things," said Dennis Leach, the county's transportation chief. "This is not something you do overnight. Arlington's been at this 30 years, and not everything's perfect. We have a lot more to do."
The results are the envy of transportation planners worldwide. After declining in the 1970s, Arlington's population has expanded by a third since 1980 to nearly 200,000, with much of the growth in the corridor. Yet the county has seen only modest increases in traffic on local streets. Metro ridership, meanwhile, is surging, with a 36 percent increase in the county in the past decade. In the corridor, only 40 percent of residents drive alone to work, compared with 70 percent in other area suburbs including Fairfax and Montgomery, and homes in the corridor average one car each, compared with 1.75 in other suburbs.
Few expect that Fairfax can match those figures, but some argue that the county should try anyway. Christopher Leinberger, a land-use expert at the Brookings Institution, said that in an age of global warming and dwindling resources, suburbs such as Fairfax have no choice but to adopt Arlington's approach.
"High-density, transit-oriented urbanity is one of the most important things we have to achieve," he said. "It's not too late for Tysons. Having said that, Tysons and Tysons-like places pose problems we don't yet know how to solve."
Back to Work, Leaving Baby and Peace of Mind Behind
By Mary Ellen Slayter - Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 4, 2007; K01
Want to know what hurts way more than childbirth?
The first time you leave your baby to go back to work.
At least for me, it did. After 12 weeks of maternity leave, I went back to the office a couple of weeks ago. What a shock.
I was prepared, in the abstract. After all, I had a lot of advantages, I thought. I was lucky to be working for a great company that allowed me to take as much leave as I did, with pay. (Most American moms don't have that.) I have a great child-care arrangement for my daughter, Irene. She's mainly with her father, with a part-time nanny to cover the hours neither of us is available. I even have an understanding boss who was willing to let me ease into returning to the office full time by working at home part of the day.
But none of that mattered. The first day, she cried the whole time I was gone. I struggled not to cry myself. By the end of the week, I felt as if I had been pulled in a thousand different directions -- and that I had done a lousy job at everything.
I love my work. And I don't consider my salary optional. So I know we have to pull this off. After all, millions of mothers across America do this every day, right? So in the hope that the weeks to come could go more smoothly, I asked some more-experienced moms for their tips about making the back-to-work transition.
Here's what they had to say:
· Ease back into it. When Suzanne Dove, a program manager in Madison, Wis., who used to live in Fairfax, returned to her old job at a federal agency when her now-21-month-old daughter was 4 months old, she started by working half time. Her husband also had flexible hours, so they could minimize the time the baby spent away from her parents. "She was only in day care a few hours a day, which let her get used to it -- and let us get used to it." This is an option that's not available to all parents. But if you're lucky enough to have it, take it. And at least ask your employer for some leeway. You might be pleasantly surprised at the arrangement you can work out -- without hurting your career prospects long term.
· Telecommute, if possible. When she returned to full-time work, Dove worked from home two days a week. Her daughter was still in day care those days, but because it was nearby, Dove was able to stop by and nurse her when she was hungry instead of pumping breast milk and sending bottles. She said she was grateful to have an understanding boss who helped her work out a schedule.
· Develop simpler routines."I find that I have to be so much more organized," said Inger Moran, an administrative assistant who lives in Arlington. "When I was not working, I could always say to myself, 'I'll go do that later.' Now, even though I work 20 hours, I have to schedule everything. If I don't, it all slips by." And it also helps to minimize all other responsibilities and activities. "We pared down a lot of stuff, so that we could have more time together," Dove said.
· Share the care. When you're at home full time and your partner has returned to work, it's easy to take over the household chores as well as handling the child-care duties. You can't keep this up once you have returned to work. Moran said that she had to make a point of asking for help with the laundry and dishes once she started working again. "As a stay-at-home mom, I just did it all, no questions."
It's best to talk about this new division of labor explicitly and find ways to make it easier. Dove and her husband chose a day-care provider near their home rather than one of their jobs so either one could handle drop-offs and pickups.
If neither parent has the time to cover chores, hire someone. Dianne Lane, a consultant in Manassas, said a housekeeping service was essential. "I have figured out how much it costs me per hour and how many hours it would take me to do the same thing (if I could find the time to do it), and there is no contest -- it is worth it," she wrote in a recent e-mail.
· Separate work and baby."I didn't spend a lot of time at work thinking and talking about my daughter," Dove said. "I found that when I thought a lot about my baby, I really missed her and felt sad and less productive. Instead, I tried to just focus on my work to finish and then go home (and tried not to log on to e-mail after putting the baby to bed!)."
Sunday, March 4, 2007; K01
Want to know what hurts way more than childbirth?
The first time you leave your baby to go back to work.
At least for me, it did. After 12 weeks of maternity leave, I went back to the office a couple of weeks ago. What a shock.
I was prepared, in the abstract. After all, I had a lot of advantages, I thought. I was lucky to be working for a great company that allowed me to take as much leave as I did, with pay. (Most American moms don't have that.) I have a great child-care arrangement for my daughter, Irene. She's mainly with her father, with a part-time nanny to cover the hours neither of us is available. I even have an understanding boss who was willing to let me ease into returning to the office full time by working at home part of the day.
But none of that mattered. The first day, she cried the whole time I was gone. I struggled not to cry myself. By the end of the week, I felt as if I had been pulled in a thousand different directions -- and that I had done a lousy job at everything.
I love my work. And I don't consider my salary optional. So I know we have to pull this off. After all, millions of mothers across America do this every day, right? So in the hope that the weeks to come could go more smoothly, I asked some more-experienced moms for their tips about making the back-to-work transition.
Here's what they had to say:
· Ease back into it. When Suzanne Dove, a program manager in Madison, Wis., who used to live in Fairfax, returned to her old job at a federal agency when her now-21-month-old daughter was 4 months old, she started by working half time. Her husband also had flexible hours, so they could minimize the time the baby spent away from her parents. "She was only in day care a few hours a day, which let her get used to it -- and let us get used to it." This is an option that's not available to all parents. But if you're lucky enough to have it, take it. And at least ask your employer for some leeway. You might be pleasantly surprised at the arrangement you can work out -- without hurting your career prospects long term.
· Telecommute, if possible. When she returned to full-time work, Dove worked from home two days a week. Her daughter was still in day care those days, but because it was nearby, Dove was able to stop by and nurse her when she was hungry instead of pumping breast milk and sending bottles. She said she was grateful to have an understanding boss who helped her work out a schedule.
· Develop simpler routines."I find that I have to be so much more organized," said Inger Moran, an administrative assistant who lives in Arlington. "When I was not working, I could always say to myself, 'I'll go do that later.' Now, even though I work 20 hours, I have to schedule everything. If I don't, it all slips by." And it also helps to minimize all other responsibilities and activities. "We pared down a lot of stuff, so that we could have more time together," Dove said.
· Share the care. When you're at home full time and your partner has returned to work, it's easy to take over the household chores as well as handling the child-care duties. You can't keep this up once you have returned to work. Moran said that she had to make a point of asking for help with the laundry and dishes once she started working again. "As a stay-at-home mom, I just did it all, no questions."
It's best to talk about this new division of labor explicitly and find ways to make it easier. Dove and her husband chose a day-care provider near their home rather than one of their jobs so either one could handle drop-offs and pickups.
If neither parent has the time to cover chores, hire someone. Dianne Lane, a consultant in Manassas, said a housekeeping service was essential. "I have figured out how much it costs me per hour and how many hours it would take me to do the same thing (if I could find the time to do it), and there is no contest -- it is worth it," she wrote in a recent e-mail.
· Separate work and baby."I didn't spend a lot of time at work thinking and talking about my daughter," Dove said. "I found that when I thought a lot about my baby, I really missed her and felt sad and less productive. Instead, I tried to just focus on my work to finish and then go home (and tried not to log on to e-mail after putting the baby to bed!)."
Saturday, March 3, 2007
My Adventures in Psychopharmacology
My Adventures in Psychopharmacology
By Gogo Lidz - The New York Times
Fall 2001Ritalin
I was 16 when I was prescribed my first mood-altering drug.
I’d been a dreamy, drifty child. But when adolescence closed in, I became tall and clumsy and socially inept. The flood of hormones seemed to unsettle my mind. I was silly and giddy one minute, bursting with rage the next; running around excitedly in the afternoon but impossible to rouse out of bed in the morning. I lost friends almost as fast as I could make them.
By 16, my concentration had ebbed so low and my grades had plummeted so deep into the alphabet that my parents decided to send me to a child psychiatrist. I was concerned, too, and put up no resistance.
So, six Halloweens ago, my father, my mother, my kid sister, and I went to the office of an upright fellow in his late thirties who wore a cardigan sweater and a narrow, straight-edge bow tie. All of us found the psychiatrist charming—except my sister, Daisy, who called him Dr. Titrate because he talked incessantly about “titrating” the drugs he prescribed.
“What’s titrate mean?” I asked during that first session.
“I’ll explain the term as simply as possible,” Dr. Titrate said, grabbing a dictionary from the bookcase. “Titration is the process of determining the concentration of a dissolved substance in terms of the smallest amount of a reagent of known concentration required to bring about a given effect in reaction with a known volume of the test solution.” Though it didn’t sound simple, we all nodded our heads in agreement.
I described my symptoms and family medical history (depressed aunts, a schizophrenic uncle) to Dr. Titrate, who wagged his head wisely and asked me a few questions to screen for attention deficit disorder:
“Do you have trouble following through on things?”
“Are you often sidetracked?”
“Do you make careless mistakes?”
I answered yes to every one. Then again, so did my father. And my mother. And my sister. Not only was I a candidate for ADD, but so was everyone else in my home.
Satisfied that I was suffering from ADD, Dr. Titrate gave me samples of Ritalin.
Winter 2001Metadate, Dextrostat, Dexedrine Spansules, Adderall, Adderall XR, Strattera
Discovering that I had a recognized syndrome brought my parents tremendous relief. The news was comforting to me too. All I had to do, I thought, was pop a few pills and I’d be as focused and success-driven as everyone else in my school. I’d be normal.
But the Ritalin made me feel spacey. Classes were easier to sit through, but if a teacher asked me a question, I’d answer with a disoriented “Whaaat?” When I explained this to Dr. Titrate at our next session, he turned pharmacist. Over the next few months, he plied me with a small galaxy of ADD drugs: Metadate, Dextrostat, Dexedrine Spansules, Adderall, Adderall XR, and Strattera, alone and in various combinations. The non-stimulant, Strattera, had no effect on me. The stimulants turned me into a tweaked-out whiz kid. It was as if I had been nearsighted and now had X-ray vision.
Adderall XR was my drug of choice. It turbocharged my brain during the school day, but when I got home, I crashed hard. Sometimes I’d lie in bed for hours and sob. To supplement the Adderall XR, Dr. Titrate prescribed the short-term amphetamine Dextrostat for after-school studying. Taking so many stimulants made it hard to sleep more than six hours a night. It also made me rapidly lose weight. At first, I liked this side effect. But when my classmates started calling me Anna Rexic, the thrill faded. I always felt queasy, and food tasted like sand.
Hopped up on stimulants, I gained confidence. After Dr. Titrate wrote to my headmaster that I had ADD and needed more time on tests, my performance at school improved dramatically. A C student in tenth grade, I was pulling A’s by the eleventh. After Dr. Titrate wrote the same note to the College Board, I got a near-perfect score on my SAT. I turned from a basket case into an overachieving young adult. But I was dimly aware that the ADD medication was also doing something else, something I didn’t like. I felt impatient, irritable, explosively angry. I’d scream at my father for buying me the wrong toothpaste. I’d scream at my sister for borrowing my hairbrush. I’d scream at my car for running out of gas.
When I told Dr. Titrate about this, he nodded empathetically and said, “Remember to take your medicine.” To be honest, I didn’t always. My only friend with ADD took Concerta, a kind of slow-release Ritalin. Occasionally, we’d have “no-medicine days” when we’d skip our daily doses and giggle and act random. The problem with skipping the meds was that I’d want to sleep all the next day.
Spring 2002–Summer 2003Adderall XR, Dextrostat, marijuana, Tylenol PM, Effexor, Zyprexa
During my junior year of high school, I hooked up with a pudgy stoner, a senior. If I took stimulants and finished all my homework, I’d smoke a joint with him in the evening. Smoking weed took me out of my usual speedy state. I’d get blissful and drowsy and amused by gravity, and finally I could sleep. What perfect titration, I thought.
This system worked very well until Pudgy Stoner graduated and enrolled at a party school a thousand miles away. My source of herbal titration was gone, and the pressure to get into college was on. At first, I called Pudgy every night. But gradually, he stopped picking up the phone. One morning, before school, he dumped me over e-mail. I was devastated. After lunch, I asked to be excused from class and ran to the girls’ room, where I sobbed and slapped my wrists against the tile floors.
The next day, I dropped off my sister at school and, while searching in vain for a parking space, decided to end my life. I drove to a pharmacy and bought a box of Tylenol PM. Then I drove to another parking lot. As Fiona Apple’s “Sullen Girl” played over the car radio, I swallowed twenty pills. I tore four pages out of my AP European-history notebook and wrote a dramatic suicide note. Then I waited.
As I settled into a stupor, I suddenly realized the gravity of what I had done. I grabbed my cell phone and dialed home. My father picked up. As hysterical as I was, I still managed to tell him where I was and what I had done. He found me and drove me to a hospital, where I was given a charcoal lavage and admitted overnight to the psych ward.
When I was released from the hospital 24 hours later, my parents took me to see Dr. Titrate. I told him I hadn’t really wanted to commit suicide; I just wanted to get back at my ex-boyfriend. My mother asked Dr. Titrate if he thought I might be suffering from depression. “Well, that may be a tiny component of her condition,” Dr. Titrate said. When my father asked about manic depression, he said, “That’s another tiny component. She’s also got a little cyclothymia and phase-of-life issues. She’s a unique case. I hope some day to write about her in a medical journal.” Dr. Titrate kept me on the stimulants Adderall XR and Dextrostat and added the antidepressant Effexor to my drug regimen.
But Effexor seemed to have no effect on me, and so the day before I left for college in upstate New York, my father and I met with Dr. Titrate again. He put me on a heavy-duty antipsychotic called Zyprexa. Dr. Titrate warned me of side effects. “Watch out for tardive dyskinesia, acute dystonia, and neuroleptic malignant syndrome,” he said. I nodded dumbly. “Of course,” he added, “the possibility is remote.”
Fall 2003Adderall XR, Dextrostat, Zyprexa, alcohol, marijuana, mushrooms, hash, cocaine
With my parents eleven toll booths away, and my mind on Adderall and Dextrostat, I allowed my wildest impulses to take over during my first semester at Bard. I drank, drugged, and got the world’s most ridiculous tattoo (oh my!) inscribed on the small of my back. My substances of choice were mellow drugs: pot, hash, mushrooms. I snorted cocaine once, but it had little effect on me—I already had quite a tolerance for stimulants.
Stoked by Dr. Titrate’s little helpers, I hosted my own college radio show and called it “The ADD Hour.” Naturally, “The ADD Hour” lasted just nine minutes, and I played only the first eighteen seconds of every song. I couldn’t keep still in class or the library or even my dorm room. I put off starting assignments until the last possible moment. My classmates pulled all-nighters; I pulled all-several-nighters. To finish an art-history paper, I once stayed up 72 hours. Which wasn’t that difficult—the stimulants made sleep nearly impossible.
Bard had a don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitude toward drugs, and a thriving black market for stimulants. The going rate for Adderall was $5 a pill. After less than a month at school, I got reprimanded by the dean for giving a fellow freshman a couple of my Adderall XRs. “I’ve got a paper due,” he had told me, before selling them to a narc for $10 apiece and ratting me out to save his skin.
As the semester wore on, I became increasingly erratic. I skipped classes and disappeared from campus for days at a time. My friends still talk of the day they lost me in a Wal-Mart: After paging me for twenty minutes, they found me with no money and a brand-new .22 hunting rifle. (It hadn’t occurred to me where I would store the gun or shoot it or what I would shoot at.) Another day, my parents and Daisy drove up to Bard to meet me for lunch, but I was 100 miles away at a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn, hungover from a night of hard drinking.
Daisy, then a high-school sophomore, was crushed that I had blown off the visit. She didn’t blame me as much as Dr. Titrate, whom she called my “enabler.” When her concentration began to wane in school, she, too, had seen him. She, too, had been diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Adderall. But she stopped taking it after a few months. “It changes my personality,” she said. “It makes me mean.”
I stayed on Adderall, but I stopped taking recreational drugs: Downers only brought me down.
Spring 2004Adderall XR, Dextrostat, muscle relaxants, Ambien, Abilify
Four weeks into my second semester, my parents received a late-night phone call from my roommate. I had OD’d again. I vaguely recall staggering around campus in a speedy, woozy haze. I later learned a classmate had found me unconscious and called for an ambulance. An EKG revealed I had come close to cardiac arrest.
The next morning, my father signed me out of the hospital and we met with the college dean. Still in a haze, I rabbited on about all the hard drugs I had taken. My father was horrified. So was the dean, who kicked me out of school. By afternoon, my head had cleared and I realized I had been regurgitating what I had read in Naked Lunch. “I didn’t know what I was saying,” I told my father. He believed me. We met again with the dean, who didn’t.
When I got home, I saw Dr. Titrate in an emergency session. He kept me on Adderall XR and Dextrostat and added Abilify to stabilize my mood. Two days later, the toxicology report came back from the lab—on the night of my overdose, nothing had been in my system except my prescribed stimulants, an Ambien, and muscle relaxants. Now I remembered: I had self-medicated for menstrual cramps. The combination of drugs must have caused the overdose. After Dr. Titrate called the dean to plead my case, I was allowed to return to school. Conditionally.
I submitted to random urine screenings, and passed every one. I got a new boyfriend, a straight-arrow lit major. Soon after that, Dr. Titrate took me off Abilify, but not Adderall XR. The following year, health regulators in Canada would suspend Adderall XR following the deaths of twenty people, including fourteen children, who had taken it between 1999 and 2003.
Fall 2004Adderall XR, Dextrostat, Lexapro, Advil
Feeling anxious at the start of my sophomore year, I phoned Dr. Titrate from college to ask if he knew of a potent antidepressant called Lexapro. My new boyfriend was on the drug for depression. Dr. Titrate said he recommended Lexapro for anxiety, and had a prescription faxed to my off-campus pharmacy. His only warning: “Let me know if it starts making you feel manic. ” I was unsure what Dr. Titrate meant, but I swallowed my daily Lexapro with my daily Adderall XR and my daily Dextrostat.
Over the course of my sophomore year, I did not get any less anxious. I spent day after gloomy day in bed, feeling dizzy and nauseous and paranoid, getting stomachaches, driving my friends crazy, and wanting to kill myself. I became more and more unstable: sometimes moored to my bed, sometimes restlessly ricocheting around campus. I had a couple of scary panic attacks—each followed by sudden eerie moments of composure and lucidity. I became terrified of being alone.
One night, after my boyfriend told me he needed more “alone time,” I went back to my room and screamed and cried and beat my walls for three hours. I phoned Dr. Titrate, who suggested I “dial down” my Adderall use and increase my dosage of Lexapro.
That summer, on an art-class trip to Italy, I imploded. Convinced that my classmates hated me, I tried to slice my wrists with broken glass. When that proved inefficient, I swallowed a handful of Advil with a glass of wine. After a night in the Venice psych ward, I was put on a plane back to the States.
When I finally got home, I threw a huge tantrum—body thrashing, head whipping from side to side. My mom grabbed my shoulders and hugged me, but I struggled against it. “Why are you doing this to me?” I shrieked.
Daisy begged my parents to fire Dr. Titrate. “He can’t read people,” she said. “He doesn’t listen.” But my parents still trusted him, or at least wanted to trust him. And so they took me to yet another emergency session.
Dr. Titrate said he doubted I had “suicidal ideations” and recommended that I be sent to a substance-abuse-treatment facility. He told my parents, “You can, of course, seek a second opinion.” But there didn’t seem to be time for that. Dr. Titrate spoke with great urgency: He wanted me in the facility within 48 hours. I crumpled in hysterics on his office floor.
June 2005Lexapro, lots of Lexapro
Dr. Titrate recommended a consultant, and the consultant recommended a treatment program in Utah. It cost $450 a day and was not covered by my parents’ insurance. The next morning, I was shipped off to a remote campsite in the High Uinta Mountains. This wilderness program was designed specifically for drug addicts and alcoholics. Dr. Titrate had assured my parents that although I wasn’t technically an addict, the treatment would be beneficial.
But the field therapist—a recovering alcoholic in battle fatigues—and her staff of instructors didn’t seem to be in on the secret. They treated me like the worst kind of addict: one who was in denial. “Acknowledge your addiction, or you’re not getting out of here,” one of the instructors told me.
My attitude baffled the instructors, and I was routinely disciplined with silence and the withholding of hot food. When informed of my resistance, Dr. Titrate upped my daily intake of Lexapro again, to three times the normal dose.
I should note that I was over 18 and technically could have left the program at any time. But leaving was not really an option. Dr. Titrate had given my parents strict instructions: If I phoned and said I planned to come home, they were to say I wasn’t welcome. I would be stranded with no money in the mountains of Utah.
I had little to no contact with the outside world during this time. My mother and father had weekly hour-long phone conversations with the field therapist, who, in turn, had weekly hour-long phone conversations with Dr. Titrate. My parents could send e-mails to the center, but anything deemed “nontherapeutic” was withheld from me.
The letter that did get through was one they were required to write: an “impact letter” that I was to read aloud in group therapy. My parents later told me that it was the hardest thing they ever wrote. They debated. They agonized. They revised the text endlessly. They wrote that they were desperate that I be accountable for my life, that they had sent me to the treatment center because they had no idea how to help and this seemed the best option. They wrote, “Instead of taking responsibility for your life, you are foisting that responsibility on others. But the price is terrible. From middle school on, we have seen you struggle to forge friendships. But this is not the way to make lasting relationships. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We are terrified.”
I was terrified, too, but I didn’t know how to stop. My mental state still swung violently between extremes.
As the Utah program came to an end, Dr. Titrate’s consultant arranged to have me sent to a 90-day “aftercare” program in Southern California. This program, too, was designed for recovering addicts and alcoholics. To get in, I was required to “admit” my addiction in a phone call to the center’s director. After a tearful hour of trying to be honest, I lied and said, “Okay, I’m an addict.”
When I was released a week later, the Utah field therapist said, “I don’t think we can do much else for you, but at least you’ve admitted your problem.”
August 2005Lexapro, Lamictal, Provigil, Wellbutrin, Cymbalta, more Lamictal
In California, I had a brief honeymoon. Now, in addition to a large dose of Lexapro, Dr. Titrate prescribed the mood stabilizer Lamictal and, for focus, Provigil, a non-stimulant used to keep narcoleptics awake. I went to twelve-step meetings, body-image meetings, risk-assessment, and love-addiction meetings. I did t’ai chi, I meditated, and I wrote daily “letters to God.”
But the honeymoon didn’t last. The Provigil made me faint and frenetic. I got dizzy and had frequent stomachaches. I experienced sudden, overpowering moments of terror. Whenever I refused to get out of bed all day (often) or refused to attend group meetings (even more often), I was grounded, which just gave me an excuse to retreat even further into myself.
I did befriend a girl my age, a recovering heroin addict who had been in similar programs half her life. Go through the motions, she told me, and no one will pay attention. Instead of letters to God, I jotted down Ludacris lyrics and dated them. She was right: Nobody noticed the difference.
I suffered panic attacks with greater and greater frequency. One attack was so frightening that I finally demanded to see a psychiatrist. He decided to start weaning me off Lexapro, replace it with the milder antidepressants Wellbutrin and Cymbalta, and increase my dosage of Lamictal.
Around this time, the Utah program mailed me a box of computer printouts—the e-mails my parents had sent that were deemed “nontherapeutic” and withheld. One was an article about cognitive behavioral therapy—a treatment Dr. Titrate had always dismissed. After I read it, I set up an appointment.
When I related my personal history and described my symptoms to the cognitive behavioral therapist, she said, “You don’t sound like an addict. You sound like you’re bipolar II, a form of manic depression.”
She asked for the names of the drugs I was taking.
“Provigil, Lexapro …”
“Lexapro! Do you have any idea what effects that drug can have on bipolar people?”
At the end of the session, I called home and told my parents. My father found a Website that cross-indexed syndromes with drugs. Patients detail their reactions. He typed in bipolar and Lexapro. A sampling: “When first started on 10mg, about 2 hours later felt insane amount of energy, was zooming, felt very speedy. Then shortly after that same day I crashed and couldn’t get out of bed” … “I had euphoria/irritability like never before” … “Manic and then wanting to kill myself all in 15 minutes time.”
He flew to California the next morning. We met at my halfway house and drove to the behavioral therapist’s office. “Your daughter has been misdiagnosed and mis-prescribed,” she said. I felt ecstatic and oddly vindicated. She said antidepressants may be used in adolescent bipolar depression in the acute phase, but only under cover of a mood stabilizer to calm potential manic storms. She said Dr. Titrate should have prescribed Lamictal first, then waited for the mood stabilizer to, well, stabilize me. Then he could have tacked on an antidepressant, but not Lexapro, one of the more volatile and potentially mania-inducing of the lot.
According to this psychiatrist, the stimulants used to treat my alleged ADD may have intensified my bipolar disorder. Adderall, she explained, can cause dysphoria, a symptom of depression defined as a “generalized feeling of discontent.” Dr. Titrate had never warned us that stimulants could complicate depression or hasten the onset of bipolar disorder in kids prone to it.
The behaviorist said the addiction therapy I’d been subjected to was pretty much a wash, and possibly counterproductive. Five months and $75,000 worth of rehabilitation, all for nothing. “This is so typical of the so-called treatment bipolar II patients receive,” the therapist said. “The disorder is usually only diagnosed after everything else is ruled out.”
When my father and I got back to the halfway house, he called Dr. Titrate. I listened in while he recounted the recent turn of events. Dr. Titrate was mostly silent. At the end of the conversation he said, “I admit I’ve made some mistakes. I have a conscience. But, at this point, what can I do?”
January 2007Lamictal
I’m back in college now, in my senior year. Since going off Lexapro, I have been free of manic feelings and suicidal thoughts. I’ve got a new therapist, who specializes in dialectical behavior therapy. She shows me how certain thinking patterns cause symptoms by projecting a fun-house picture of what’s going on in my life. She locks in on what I need to change and what I don’t, then works for those targeted changes. The therapy is different from any I’ve ever had. I feel like I’m taking a college course on myself.
Prescription drugs are still a hit-and-miss proposition for me. Last January, a new psychiatrist prescribed Geodon, a schizophrenia medication used to treat mania associated with bipolar disorder. In rare cases, it can actually provoke mania. I was one of those cases. I jittered and shook and could barely sleep. The only medication I’m on now is Lamictal, the mood stabilizer.
I haven’t heard from Dr. Titrate since an envelope bearing his name and return address arrived at my home. Inside was a bill for $250, his consulting charge for my father’s last phone call. My dad and I had a good laugh over that.
By Gogo Lidz - The New York Times
Fall 2001Ritalin
I was 16 when I was prescribed my first mood-altering drug.
I’d been a dreamy, drifty child. But when adolescence closed in, I became tall and clumsy and socially inept. The flood of hormones seemed to unsettle my mind. I was silly and giddy one minute, bursting with rage the next; running around excitedly in the afternoon but impossible to rouse out of bed in the morning. I lost friends almost as fast as I could make them.
By 16, my concentration had ebbed so low and my grades had plummeted so deep into the alphabet that my parents decided to send me to a child psychiatrist. I was concerned, too, and put up no resistance.
So, six Halloweens ago, my father, my mother, my kid sister, and I went to the office of an upright fellow in his late thirties who wore a cardigan sweater and a narrow, straight-edge bow tie. All of us found the psychiatrist charming—except my sister, Daisy, who called him Dr. Titrate because he talked incessantly about “titrating” the drugs he prescribed.
“What’s titrate mean?” I asked during that first session.
“I’ll explain the term as simply as possible,” Dr. Titrate said, grabbing a dictionary from the bookcase. “Titration is the process of determining the concentration of a dissolved substance in terms of the smallest amount of a reagent of known concentration required to bring about a given effect in reaction with a known volume of the test solution.” Though it didn’t sound simple, we all nodded our heads in agreement.
I described my symptoms and family medical history (depressed aunts, a schizophrenic uncle) to Dr. Titrate, who wagged his head wisely and asked me a few questions to screen for attention deficit disorder:
“Do you have trouble following through on things?”
“Are you often sidetracked?”
“Do you make careless mistakes?”
I answered yes to every one. Then again, so did my father. And my mother. And my sister. Not only was I a candidate for ADD, but so was everyone else in my home.
Satisfied that I was suffering from ADD, Dr. Titrate gave me samples of Ritalin.
Winter 2001Metadate, Dextrostat, Dexedrine Spansules, Adderall, Adderall XR, Strattera
Discovering that I had a recognized syndrome brought my parents tremendous relief. The news was comforting to me too. All I had to do, I thought, was pop a few pills and I’d be as focused and success-driven as everyone else in my school. I’d be normal.
But the Ritalin made me feel spacey. Classes were easier to sit through, but if a teacher asked me a question, I’d answer with a disoriented “Whaaat?” When I explained this to Dr. Titrate at our next session, he turned pharmacist. Over the next few months, he plied me with a small galaxy of ADD drugs: Metadate, Dextrostat, Dexedrine Spansules, Adderall, Adderall XR, and Strattera, alone and in various combinations. The non-stimulant, Strattera, had no effect on me. The stimulants turned me into a tweaked-out whiz kid. It was as if I had been nearsighted and now had X-ray vision.
Adderall XR was my drug of choice. It turbocharged my brain during the school day, but when I got home, I crashed hard. Sometimes I’d lie in bed for hours and sob. To supplement the Adderall XR, Dr. Titrate prescribed the short-term amphetamine Dextrostat for after-school studying. Taking so many stimulants made it hard to sleep more than six hours a night. It also made me rapidly lose weight. At first, I liked this side effect. But when my classmates started calling me Anna Rexic, the thrill faded. I always felt queasy, and food tasted like sand.
Hopped up on stimulants, I gained confidence. After Dr. Titrate wrote to my headmaster that I had ADD and needed more time on tests, my performance at school improved dramatically. A C student in tenth grade, I was pulling A’s by the eleventh. After Dr. Titrate wrote the same note to the College Board, I got a near-perfect score on my SAT. I turned from a basket case into an overachieving young adult. But I was dimly aware that the ADD medication was also doing something else, something I didn’t like. I felt impatient, irritable, explosively angry. I’d scream at my father for buying me the wrong toothpaste. I’d scream at my sister for borrowing my hairbrush. I’d scream at my car for running out of gas.
When I told Dr. Titrate about this, he nodded empathetically and said, “Remember to take your medicine.” To be honest, I didn’t always. My only friend with ADD took Concerta, a kind of slow-release Ritalin. Occasionally, we’d have “no-medicine days” when we’d skip our daily doses and giggle and act random. The problem with skipping the meds was that I’d want to sleep all the next day.
Spring 2002–Summer 2003Adderall XR, Dextrostat, marijuana, Tylenol PM, Effexor, Zyprexa
During my junior year of high school, I hooked up with a pudgy stoner, a senior. If I took stimulants and finished all my homework, I’d smoke a joint with him in the evening. Smoking weed took me out of my usual speedy state. I’d get blissful and drowsy and amused by gravity, and finally I could sleep. What perfect titration, I thought.
This system worked very well until Pudgy Stoner graduated and enrolled at a party school a thousand miles away. My source of herbal titration was gone, and the pressure to get into college was on. At first, I called Pudgy every night. But gradually, he stopped picking up the phone. One morning, before school, he dumped me over e-mail. I was devastated. After lunch, I asked to be excused from class and ran to the girls’ room, where I sobbed and slapped my wrists against the tile floors.
The next day, I dropped off my sister at school and, while searching in vain for a parking space, decided to end my life. I drove to a pharmacy and bought a box of Tylenol PM. Then I drove to another parking lot. As Fiona Apple’s “Sullen Girl” played over the car radio, I swallowed twenty pills. I tore four pages out of my AP European-history notebook and wrote a dramatic suicide note. Then I waited.
As I settled into a stupor, I suddenly realized the gravity of what I had done. I grabbed my cell phone and dialed home. My father picked up. As hysterical as I was, I still managed to tell him where I was and what I had done. He found me and drove me to a hospital, where I was given a charcoal lavage and admitted overnight to the psych ward.
When I was released from the hospital 24 hours later, my parents took me to see Dr. Titrate. I told him I hadn’t really wanted to commit suicide; I just wanted to get back at my ex-boyfriend. My mother asked Dr. Titrate if he thought I might be suffering from depression. “Well, that may be a tiny component of her condition,” Dr. Titrate said. When my father asked about manic depression, he said, “That’s another tiny component. She’s also got a little cyclothymia and phase-of-life issues. She’s a unique case. I hope some day to write about her in a medical journal.” Dr. Titrate kept me on the stimulants Adderall XR and Dextrostat and added the antidepressant Effexor to my drug regimen.
But Effexor seemed to have no effect on me, and so the day before I left for college in upstate New York, my father and I met with Dr. Titrate again. He put me on a heavy-duty antipsychotic called Zyprexa. Dr. Titrate warned me of side effects. “Watch out for tardive dyskinesia, acute dystonia, and neuroleptic malignant syndrome,” he said. I nodded dumbly. “Of course,” he added, “the possibility is remote.”
Fall 2003Adderall XR, Dextrostat, Zyprexa, alcohol, marijuana, mushrooms, hash, cocaine
With my parents eleven toll booths away, and my mind on Adderall and Dextrostat, I allowed my wildest impulses to take over during my first semester at Bard. I drank, drugged, and got the world’s most ridiculous tattoo (oh my!) inscribed on the small of my back. My substances of choice were mellow drugs: pot, hash, mushrooms. I snorted cocaine once, but it had little effect on me—I already had quite a tolerance for stimulants.
Stoked by Dr. Titrate’s little helpers, I hosted my own college radio show and called it “The ADD Hour.” Naturally, “The ADD Hour” lasted just nine minutes, and I played only the first eighteen seconds of every song. I couldn’t keep still in class or the library or even my dorm room. I put off starting assignments until the last possible moment. My classmates pulled all-nighters; I pulled all-several-nighters. To finish an art-history paper, I once stayed up 72 hours. Which wasn’t that difficult—the stimulants made sleep nearly impossible.
Bard had a don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitude toward drugs, and a thriving black market for stimulants. The going rate for Adderall was $5 a pill. After less than a month at school, I got reprimanded by the dean for giving a fellow freshman a couple of my Adderall XRs. “I’ve got a paper due,” he had told me, before selling them to a narc for $10 apiece and ratting me out to save his skin.
As the semester wore on, I became increasingly erratic. I skipped classes and disappeared from campus for days at a time. My friends still talk of the day they lost me in a Wal-Mart: After paging me for twenty minutes, they found me with no money and a brand-new .22 hunting rifle. (It hadn’t occurred to me where I would store the gun or shoot it or what I would shoot at.) Another day, my parents and Daisy drove up to Bard to meet me for lunch, but I was 100 miles away at a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn, hungover from a night of hard drinking.
Daisy, then a high-school sophomore, was crushed that I had blown off the visit. She didn’t blame me as much as Dr. Titrate, whom she called my “enabler.” When her concentration began to wane in school, she, too, had seen him. She, too, had been diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Adderall. But she stopped taking it after a few months. “It changes my personality,” she said. “It makes me mean.”
I stayed on Adderall, but I stopped taking recreational drugs: Downers only brought me down.
Spring 2004Adderall XR, Dextrostat, muscle relaxants, Ambien, Abilify
Four weeks into my second semester, my parents received a late-night phone call from my roommate. I had OD’d again. I vaguely recall staggering around campus in a speedy, woozy haze. I later learned a classmate had found me unconscious and called for an ambulance. An EKG revealed I had come close to cardiac arrest.
The next morning, my father signed me out of the hospital and we met with the college dean. Still in a haze, I rabbited on about all the hard drugs I had taken. My father was horrified. So was the dean, who kicked me out of school. By afternoon, my head had cleared and I realized I had been regurgitating what I had read in Naked Lunch. “I didn’t know what I was saying,” I told my father. He believed me. We met again with the dean, who didn’t.
When I got home, I saw Dr. Titrate in an emergency session. He kept me on Adderall XR and Dextrostat and added Abilify to stabilize my mood. Two days later, the toxicology report came back from the lab—on the night of my overdose, nothing had been in my system except my prescribed stimulants, an Ambien, and muscle relaxants. Now I remembered: I had self-medicated for menstrual cramps. The combination of drugs must have caused the overdose. After Dr. Titrate called the dean to plead my case, I was allowed to return to school. Conditionally.
I submitted to random urine screenings, and passed every one. I got a new boyfriend, a straight-arrow lit major. Soon after that, Dr. Titrate took me off Abilify, but not Adderall XR. The following year, health regulators in Canada would suspend Adderall XR following the deaths of twenty people, including fourteen children, who had taken it between 1999 and 2003.
Fall 2004Adderall XR, Dextrostat, Lexapro, Advil
Feeling anxious at the start of my sophomore year, I phoned Dr. Titrate from college to ask if he knew of a potent antidepressant called Lexapro. My new boyfriend was on the drug for depression. Dr. Titrate said he recommended Lexapro for anxiety, and had a prescription faxed to my off-campus pharmacy. His only warning: “Let me know if it starts making you feel manic. ” I was unsure what Dr. Titrate meant, but I swallowed my daily Lexapro with my daily Adderall XR and my daily Dextrostat.
Over the course of my sophomore year, I did not get any less anxious. I spent day after gloomy day in bed, feeling dizzy and nauseous and paranoid, getting stomachaches, driving my friends crazy, and wanting to kill myself. I became more and more unstable: sometimes moored to my bed, sometimes restlessly ricocheting around campus. I had a couple of scary panic attacks—each followed by sudden eerie moments of composure and lucidity. I became terrified of being alone.
One night, after my boyfriend told me he needed more “alone time,” I went back to my room and screamed and cried and beat my walls for three hours. I phoned Dr. Titrate, who suggested I “dial down” my Adderall use and increase my dosage of Lexapro.
That summer, on an art-class trip to Italy, I imploded. Convinced that my classmates hated me, I tried to slice my wrists with broken glass. When that proved inefficient, I swallowed a handful of Advil with a glass of wine. After a night in the Venice psych ward, I was put on a plane back to the States.
When I finally got home, I threw a huge tantrum—body thrashing, head whipping from side to side. My mom grabbed my shoulders and hugged me, but I struggled against it. “Why are you doing this to me?” I shrieked.
Daisy begged my parents to fire Dr. Titrate. “He can’t read people,” she said. “He doesn’t listen.” But my parents still trusted him, or at least wanted to trust him. And so they took me to yet another emergency session.
Dr. Titrate said he doubted I had “suicidal ideations” and recommended that I be sent to a substance-abuse-treatment facility. He told my parents, “You can, of course, seek a second opinion.” But there didn’t seem to be time for that. Dr. Titrate spoke with great urgency: He wanted me in the facility within 48 hours. I crumpled in hysterics on his office floor.
June 2005Lexapro, lots of Lexapro
Dr. Titrate recommended a consultant, and the consultant recommended a treatment program in Utah. It cost $450 a day and was not covered by my parents’ insurance. The next morning, I was shipped off to a remote campsite in the High Uinta Mountains. This wilderness program was designed specifically for drug addicts and alcoholics. Dr. Titrate had assured my parents that although I wasn’t technically an addict, the treatment would be beneficial.
But the field therapist—a recovering alcoholic in battle fatigues—and her staff of instructors didn’t seem to be in on the secret. They treated me like the worst kind of addict: one who was in denial. “Acknowledge your addiction, or you’re not getting out of here,” one of the instructors told me.
My attitude baffled the instructors, and I was routinely disciplined with silence and the withholding of hot food. When informed of my resistance, Dr. Titrate upped my daily intake of Lexapro again, to three times the normal dose.
I should note that I was over 18 and technically could have left the program at any time. But leaving was not really an option. Dr. Titrate had given my parents strict instructions: If I phoned and said I planned to come home, they were to say I wasn’t welcome. I would be stranded with no money in the mountains of Utah.
I had little to no contact with the outside world during this time. My mother and father had weekly hour-long phone conversations with the field therapist, who, in turn, had weekly hour-long phone conversations with Dr. Titrate. My parents could send e-mails to the center, but anything deemed “nontherapeutic” was withheld from me.
The letter that did get through was one they were required to write: an “impact letter” that I was to read aloud in group therapy. My parents later told me that it was the hardest thing they ever wrote. They debated. They agonized. They revised the text endlessly. They wrote that they were desperate that I be accountable for my life, that they had sent me to the treatment center because they had no idea how to help and this seemed the best option. They wrote, “Instead of taking responsibility for your life, you are foisting that responsibility on others. But the price is terrible. From middle school on, we have seen you struggle to forge friendships. But this is not the way to make lasting relationships. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We are terrified.”
I was terrified, too, but I didn’t know how to stop. My mental state still swung violently between extremes.
As the Utah program came to an end, Dr. Titrate’s consultant arranged to have me sent to a 90-day “aftercare” program in Southern California. This program, too, was designed for recovering addicts and alcoholics. To get in, I was required to “admit” my addiction in a phone call to the center’s director. After a tearful hour of trying to be honest, I lied and said, “Okay, I’m an addict.”
When I was released a week later, the Utah field therapist said, “I don’t think we can do much else for you, but at least you’ve admitted your problem.”
August 2005Lexapro, Lamictal, Provigil, Wellbutrin, Cymbalta, more Lamictal
In California, I had a brief honeymoon. Now, in addition to a large dose of Lexapro, Dr. Titrate prescribed the mood stabilizer Lamictal and, for focus, Provigil, a non-stimulant used to keep narcoleptics awake. I went to twelve-step meetings, body-image meetings, risk-assessment, and love-addiction meetings. I did t’ai chi, I meditated, and I wrote daily “letters to God.”
But the honeymoon didn’t last. The Provigil made me faint and frenetic. I got dizzy and had frequent stomachaches. I experienced sudden, overpowering moments of terror. Whenever I refused to get out of bed all day (often) or refused to attend group meetings (even more often), I was grounded, which just gave me an excuse to retreat even further into myself.
I did befriend a girl my age, a recovering heroin addict who had been in similar programs half her life. Go through the motions, she told me, and no one will pay attention. Instead of letters to God, I jotted down Ludacris lyrics and dated them. She was right: Nobody noticed the difference.
I suffered panic attacks with greater and greater frequency. One attack was so frightening that I finally demanded to see a psychiatrist. He decided to start weaning me off Lexapro, replace it with the milder antidepressants Wellbutrin and Cymbalta, and increase my dosage of Lamictal.
Around this time, the Utah program mailed me a box of computer printouts—the e-mails my parents had sent that were deemed “nontherapeutic” and withheld. One was an article about cognitive behavioral therapy—a treatment Dr. Titrate had always dismissed. After I read it, I set up an appointment.
When I related my personal history and described my symptoms to the cognitive behavioral therapist, she said, “You don’t sound like an addict. You sound like you’re bipolar II, a form of manic depression.”
She asked for the names of the drugs I was taking.
“Provigil, Lexapro …”
“Lexapro! Do you have any idea what effects that drug can have on bipolar people?”
At the end of the session, I called home and told my parents. My father found a Website that cross-indexed syndromes with drugs. Patients detail their reactions. He typed in bipolar and Lexapro. A sampling: “When first started on 10mg, about 2 hours later felt insane amount of energy, was zooming, felt very speedy. Then shortly after that same day I crashed and couldn’t get out of bed” … “I had euphoria/irritability like never before” … “Manic and then wanting to kill myself all in 15 minutes time.”
He flew to California the next morning. We met at my halfway house and drove to the behavioral therapist’s office. “Your daughter has been misdiagnosed and mis-prescribed,” she said. I felt ecstatic and oddly vindicated. She said antidepressants may be used in adolescent bipolar depression in the acute phase, but only under cover of a mood stabilizer to calm potential manic storms. She said Dr. Titrate should have prescribed Lamictal first, then waited for the mood stabilizer to, well, stabilize me. Then he could have tacked on an antidepressant, but not Lexapro, one of the more volatile and potentially mania-inducing of the lot.
According to this psychiatrist, the stimulants used to treat my alleged ADD may have intensified my bipolar disorder. Adderall, she explained, can cause dysphoria, a symptom of depression defined as a “generalized feeling of discontent.” Dr. Titrate had never warned us that stimulants could complicate depression or hasten the onset of bipolar disorder in kids prone to it.
The behaviorist said the addiction therapy I’d been subjected to was pretty much a wash, and possibly counterproductive. Five months and $75,000 worth of rehabilitation, all for nothing. “This is so typical of the so-called treatment bipolar II patients receive,” the therapist said. “The disorder is usually only diagnosed after everything else is ruled out.”
When my father and I got back to the halfway house, he called Dr. Titrate. I listened in while he recounted the recent turn of events. Dr. Titrate was mostly silent. At the end of the conversation he said, “I admit I’ve made some mistakes. I have a conscience. But, at this point, what can I do?”
January 2007Lamictal
I’m back in college now, in my senior year. Since going off Lexapro, I have been free of manic feelings and suicidal thoughts. I’ve got a new therapist, who specializes in dialectical behavior therapy. She shows me how certain thinking patterns cause symptoms by projecting a fun-house picture of what’s going on in my life. She locks in on what I need to change and what I don’t, then works for those targeted changes. The therapy is different from any I’ve ever had. I feel like I’m taking a college course on myself.
Prescription drugs are still a hit-and-miss proposition for me. Last January, a new psychiatrist prescribed Geodon, a schizophrenia medication used to treat mania associated with bipolar disorder. In rare cases, it can actually provoke mania. I was one of those cases. I jittered and shook and could barely sleep. The only medication I’m on now is Lamictal, the mood stabilizer.
I haven’t heard from Dr. Titrate since an envelope bearing his name and return address arrived at my home. Inside was a bill for $250, his consulting charge for my father’s last phone call. My dad and I had a good laugh over that.
Why Hollywood ignores the war on terror
Why Hollywood ignores the war on terror
by Andrew Klavan, Los Angeles Times
Published in THE WEEK, February 9, 2007
If ever there were a "rousing story" tailor-made for the silver screen, said Andrew Klavan, the war on terror would be it. Hollywood has a long history of turning real-life drama into blockbuster films, and the battle against Islamic fanaticism does not lack for drama.
Think of the vivid characters a great filmmaker could flesh out, from the brave soldiers and FBI agents on the front lines to the madmen they must stop. Yet, "in the history of our time as told by the movies, the war on terror largely does not exist." The reason, I suspect, has something to do with political correctness.
"To honestly dramatize the simple truth about this existential struggle, you have to depict right-minded Americans - some of whom may be white and male and Christian-hunting down and killing dark-skinned villains of a false and wicked creed." Do that, of course, and you risk appearing "bigoted and jingoistic" - a Hollywood liberal's worst nightmare.
Money plays a part, too. As the film industry grows more dependent on overseas sales, foreign sensibilities are hard to ignore. What a shame that such a powerful art form has been unwilling to tackle "the central event of our time."
by Andrew Klavan, Los Angeles Times
Published in THE WEEK, February 9, 2007
If ever there were a "rousing story" tailor-made for the silver screen, said Andrew Klavan, the war on terror would be it. Hollywood has a long history of turning real-life drama into blockbuster films, and the battle against Islamic fanaticism does not lack for drama.
Think of the vivid characters a great filmmaker could flesh out, from the brave soldiers and FBI agents on the front lines to the madmen they must stop. Yet, "in the history of our time as told by the movies, the war on terror largely does not exist." The reason, I suspect, has something to do with political correctness.
"To honestly dramatize the simple truth about this existential struggle, you have to depict right-minded Americans - some of whom may be white and male and Christian-hunting down and killing dark-skinned villains of a false and wicked creed." Do that, of course, and you risk appearing "bigoted and jingoistic" - a Hollywood liberal's worst nightmare.
Money plays a part, too. As the film industry grows more dependent on overseas sales, foreign sensibilities are hard to ignore. What a shame that such a powerful art form has been unwilling to tackle "the central event of our time."
Old Shopping Malls Require Much More Than Cosmetic Surgery
Old Shopping Malls Require Much More Than Cosmetic Surgery
By Roger K. Lewis
Saturday, February 3, 2007; F17
At the University of Maryland a few years ago, an architecture student undertook an unusual master's thesis project: the functional and aesthetic redesign of a strip shopping area in suburban Maryland.
The goal was to transform a low-density, auto-dominated, formless agglomeration of buildings, roads and parking lots into a more attractive, denser, pedestrian-friendly spot with housing and work space, as well as shopping.
His thesis was timely and relevant because the American suburbs are littered with thousands of generic, aging shopping complexes, large and small, that cry for transformation.
Built decades ago, some are physically run-down, suffering from wear and tear and lack of upkeep. Many are economically unviable, having been configured in ways that no longer meet today's retail needs and design standards.
Others sit in locations that, because of steady population growth or infrastructure improvements over time, have increased greatly in value. These complexes often have the capacity for substantial alteration or expansion incorporating newer, more intense, more diverse uses.
The master's thesis exploration, although hypothetical, was not purely theoretical, as evidenced by recent Washington Post news reports of two older, very different kinds of shopping complexes slated to be transformed -- although the headlines spoke of "overhaul" and "face-lift" rather than transformation.
In the District, a small, partly vacant strip mall at the busy intersection of Riggs Road and South Dakota Avenue NE, near the Fort Totten Metro stop, is to get a "face-lift." Actually, "complete do-over" is more appropriate. Plans are to demolish the one-story structure and replace it with a dense, mixed-use, $300 million development -- dubbed the Dakotas -- with 900 apartments, a grocery store and other retailers.
I often drive by the 9 1/2 -acre property, most of which is a parking lot, and I can see that it's time for a redo. The underused site is accessible and visible. Proper redevelopment could serve and further revitalize the nearby Fort Totten neighborhood. If designed well, the Dakotas also could improve the image and scale of the amorphous Riggs-South Dakota intersection.
In her report about the project, Post staff writer Dana Hedgpeth noted that the developers and members of the community have met to discuss project goals, neighborhood needs and plan options. Among the wishes voiced by local citizens were "a more pedestrian-friendly project" and "quality retail," in addition to moderately priced housing.
In contrast, in Virginia, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors just approved plans for the "overhaul" of 38-year-old Tysons Corner Center. This will, in fact, entail adding uses other than retail. Ringing the existing mall will be eight high-rise towers containing as many as 1,400 apartments, office space, and a hotel or two. To be built in several phases, the towers will rise around the shopping center on land now used for parking or open space.
The Tysons Corner Center overhaul will be but one part of the transformation envisioned for much of Tysons Corner's 1,700 acres, which the county would like to make more citylike, more visually coherent and more hospitable for all modes of travel. Indeed, fixing Tysons will be a test with national import, potentially a model for how other large, sprawling, formless "edge cities" can be aesthetically and functionally enhanced.
The county's consultants are forming an entirely new Tysons Corner plan. Other Tysons property owners plan new structures and higher density for their sites. The Metrorail extension through Tysons to Dulles is on the drawing board, along with substantial road network improvements.
Yet with its great size, awkward patterns of land ownership and use, visual dysfunction, and horrendous congestion, successfully transforming Tysons Corner will be difficult. Speculation is already rampant about the traffic chaos likely to ensue when all the construction gets underway. But if Tysons is to become the kind of place it could and should be, if it is to set an example nationally, the challenge must be met.
These two projects are emblematic of increasingly frequent real estate investment and design challenges that lie ahead. Across the country, tens of millions of square feet of shopping center space, in all shapes and sizes, will need to be upgraded, retrofitted, expanded or demolished.
Part of the design challenge is how to deploy more diverse uses and higher densities. New products and merchandising strategies will put new functional demands on architecture, as will the need for more housing for workers. And, of course, patterns of circulation, vehicular mobility and parking will continue to loom.
But part of the design challenge also will be to create more humane, less ugly places to shop, work and dwell, to create architecture and urban environments that do more than satisfy the functional requirements.
For our thesis student attacking these problems hypothetically, this last challenge, transcending functionality, was much of the fun.
By Roger K. Lewis
Saturday, February 3, 2007; F17
At the University of Maryland a few years ago, an architecture student undertook an unusual master's thesis project: the functional and aesthetic redesign of a strip shopping area in suburban Maryland.
The goal was to transform a low-density, auto-dominated, formless agglomeration of buildings, roads and parking lots into a more attractive, denser, pedestrian-friendly spot with housing and work space, as well as shopping.
His thesis was timely and relevant because the American suburbs are littered with thousands of generic, aging shopping complexes, large and small, that cry for transformation.
Built decades ago, some are physically run-down, suffering from wear and tear and lack of upkeep. Many are economically unviable, having been configured in ways that no longer meet today's retail needs and design standards.
Others sit in locations that, because of steady population growth or infrastructure improvements over time, have increased greatly in value. These complexes often have the capacity for substantial alteration or expansion incorporating newer, more intense, more diverse uses.
The master's thesis exploration, although hypothetical, was not purely theoretical, as evidenced by recent Washington Post news reports of two older, very different kinds of shopping complexes slated to be transformed -- although the headlines spoke of "overhaul" and "face-lift" rather than transformation.
In the District, a small, partly vacant strip mall at the busy intersection of Riggs Road and South Dakota Avenue NE, near the Fort Totten Metro stop, is to get a "face-lift." Actually, "complete do-over" is more appropriate. Plans are to demolish the one-story structure and replace it with a dense, mixed-use, $300 million development -- dubbed the Dakotas -- with 900 apartments, a grocery store and other retailers.
I often drive by the 9 1/2 -acre property, most of which is a parking lot, and I can see that it's time for a redo. The underused site is accessible and visible. Proper redevelopment could serve and further revitalize the nearby Fort Totten neighborhood. If designed well, the Dakotas also could improve the image and scale of the amorphous Riggs-South Dakota intersection.
In her report about the project, Post staff writer Dana Hedgpeth noted that the developers and members of the community have met to discuss project goals, neighborhood needs and plan options. Among the wishes voiced by local citizens were "a more pedestrian-friendly project" and "quality retail," in addition to moderately priced housing.
In contrast, in Virginia, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors just approved plans for the "overhaul" of 38-year-old Tysons Corner Center. This will, in fact, entail adding uses other than retail. Ringing the existing mall will be eight high-rise towers containing as many as 1,400 apartments, office space, and a hotel or two. To be built in several phases, the towers will rise around the shopping center on land now used for parking or open space.
The Tysons Corner Center overhaul will be but one part of the transformation envisioned for much of Tysons Corner's 1,700 acres, which the county would like to make more citylike, more visually coherent and more hospitable for all modes of travel. Indeed, fixing Tysons will be a test with national import, potentially a model for how other large, sprawling, formless "edge cities" can be aesthetically and functionally enhanced.
The county's consultants are forming an entirely new Tysons Corner plan. Other Tysons property owners plan new structures and higher density for their sites. The Metrorail extension through Tysons to Dulles is on the drawing board, along with substantial road network improvements.
Yet with its great size, awkward patterns of land ownership and use, visual dysfunction, and horrendous congestion, successfully transforming Tysons Corner will be difficult. Speculation is already rampant about the traffic chaos likely to ensue when all the construction gets underway. But if Tysons is to become the kind of place it could and should be, if it is to set an example nationally, the challenge must be met.
These two projects are emblematic of increasingly frequent real estate investment and design challenges that lie ahead. Across the country, tens of millions of square feet of shopping center space, in all shapes and sizes, will need to be upgraded, retrofitted, expanded or demolished.
Part of the design challenge is how to deploy more diverse uses and higher densities. New products and merchandising strategies will put new functional demands on architecture, as will the need for more housing for workers. And, of course, patterns of circulation, vehicular mobility and parking will continue to loom.
But part of the design challenge also will be to create more humane, less ugly places to shop, work and dwell, to create architecture and urban environments that do more than satisfy the functional requirements.
For our thesis student attacking these problems hypothetically, this last challenge, transcending functionality, was much of the fun.
Humans Faulted For Global Warming
Humans Faulted For Global Warming
International Panel Of Scientists Sounds Dire Alarm
By Juliet EilperinWashington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 3, 2007; A01
An international panel of climate scientists said yesterday that there is an overwhelming probability that human activities are warming the planet at a dangerous rate, with consequences that could soon take decades or centuries to reverse.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of hundreds of scientists from 113 countries, said that based on new research over the last six years, it is 90 percent certain that human-generated greenhouse gases account for most of the global rise in temperatures over the past half-century.
Declaring that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the authors said in their "Summary for Policymakers" that even in the best-case scenario, temperatures are on track to cross a threshold to an unsustainable level. A rise of more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels would cause global effects -- such as massive species extinctions and melting of ice sheets -- that could be irreversible within a human lifetime. Under the most conservative IPCC scenario, the increase will be 4.5 degrees by 2100.
Richard Somerville, a distinguished professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the lead authors, said the world would have to undertake "a really massive reduction in emissions," on the scale of 70 to 80 percent, to avert severe global warming.
The scientists wrote that it is "very likely" that hot days, heat waves and heavy precipitation will become more frequent in the years to come, and "likely" that future tropical hurricanes and typhoons will become more intense. Arctic sea ice will disappear "almost entirely" by the end of the century, they said, and snow cover will contract worldwide.
While the summary did not produce any groundbreaking observations -- it reflects a massive distillation of the peer-reviewed literature through the middle of 2006 -- it represents the definitive international scientific and political consensus on climate science. It provides much more definitive conclusions than the panel's previous report in 2001, which said only that it was "likely" -- meaning between 66 and 90 percent probability on a scale the panel adopted -- that human activity accounted for the warming recorded over the past 50 years.
Some of the report's most compelling sections focused on future climate changes, because the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will exert an effect even if industrialized countries stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow. Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the Boulder, Colo.-based National Center for Atmospheric Research, who helped oversee the chapter on climate projections, said that in the next two decades alone, global temperatures will rise by 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
"We're committed to a certain amount of warming," said Meehl, who worked with 16 computer-modeling teams from 11 countries. "A lot of these changes continue through the 21st century and become more severe as time goes on."
Meehl added, however, that a sharp cut in greenhouse gas emissions could still keep catastrophic consequences from occurring: "The message is, it does make a difference what we do."
For the first time, IPCC scientists also looked at regional climate shifts in detail, concluding that precipitation in the American Southwest will decline as summer temperatures rise, just as precipitation in the Northeast will increase. Linda Mearns -- another NCAR senior scientist who was also one of the lead authors -- said these changes could cause water shortages and affect recreational activities in the Southwest. Developing countries in Africa and elsewhere could also experience severe droughts.
Governments and scientific organizations across the globe nominate scientists to produce and review the IPCC assessment without pay under the auspices of the United Nations. A group of key authors and government officials met in Paris this week to finalize the document, which reflects three years of work.
"Every government in the world signed off on this document, including the U.S.," said World Bank chief scientist Robert T. Watson, who chaired the last round of deliberations. Watson added that compared with the 2001 report, "the difference is now they have more confidence in what they're doing."
The authors concluded that Earth's average temperature will increase between 3.2 and 7.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, while sea levels will rise between seven and 23 inches.
IPCC scientists also said that global warming will not trigger a shutdown within the next 100 years of the North Atlantic ocean current that keeps Northern Europe temperate, though they do not predict if it might occur in future centuries. In a similar vein, the authors concluded they did not have sophisticated enough computer models to project how much melting of the Greenland ice sheet would boost sea levels over the next century, but they suggested that over several centuries the ice sheet's disappearance could raise sea levels by a devastating 23 feet.
Bush administration officials said yesterday that they welcomed the report and emphasized that U.S. research funding helped underpin its conclusions. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., who oversees much of the nation's climate research, said in an interview that the international assessment will lead to "a more objective and informative public debate."
But environmental advocates said the White House -- which remains opposed to mandatory limits on U.S. carbon emissions -- is making a mistake in assuming research and technological advances alone will address global warming.
"The administration's proposals are at least a decade away," said Angela Anderson, vice president for climate programs at the National Environmental Trust. "The promise of better technologies tomorrow shouldn't stop us from doing what we can today."
House and Senate Democratic leaders back a cap on greenhouse gases and hope to enact such legislation this year; next week, several of the report's authors are to testify in congressional hearings.
In an interview yesterday, House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) called the report "a unanimous, definitive world statement" on climate change that, if anything, was too conservative. "It's time to end the debate and act," Gordon said. "All the naysayers should step aside."
Some critics, however, question the push for nationwide limits on emissions from power plants, automobiles and other industrial sources. At the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank that receives funding from Exxon Mobil, chief executive William O'Keefe and President Jeff Kueter issued a statement urging "great caution in reading too much" into the report until the panel releases its detailed scientific documentation a few months from now.
"Claims being made that a climate catastrophe later this century is more certain are unjustified," they said, adding that "the underlying state of knowledge does not justify scare tactics or provide sufficient support for proposals . . . to suppress energy use and impose large economic burdens on the U.S. economy."
International Panel Of Scientists Sounds Dire Alarm
By Juliet EilperinWashington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 3, 2007; A01
An international panel of climate scientists said yesterday that there is an overwhelming probability that human activities are warming the planet at a dangerous rate, with consequences that could soon take decades or centuries to reverse.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of hundreds of scientists from 113 countries, said that based on new research over the last six years, it is 90 percent certain that human-generated greenhouse gases account for most of the global rise in temperatures over the past half-century.
Declaring that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the authors said in their "Summary for Policymakers" that even in the best-case scenario, temperatures are on track to cross a threshold to an unsustainable level. A rise of more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels would cause global effects -- such as massive species extinctions and melting of ice sheets -- that could be irreversible within a human lifetime. Under the most conservative IPCC scenario, the increase will be 4.5 degrees by 2100.
Richard Somerville, a distinguished professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the lead authors, said the world would have to undertake "a really massive reduction in emissions," on the scale of 70 to 80 percent, to avert severe global warming.
The scientists wrote that it is "very likely" that hot days, heat waves and heavy precipitation will become more frequent in the years to come, and "likely" that future tropical hurricanes and typhoons will become more intense. Arctic sea ice will disappear "almost entirely" by the end of the century, they said, and snow cover will contract worldwide.
While the summary did not produce any groundbreaking observations -- it reflects a massive distillation of the peer-reviewed literature through the middle of 2006 -- it represents the definitive international scientific and political consensus on climate science. It provides much more definitive conclusions than the panel's previous report in 2001, which said only that it was "likely" -- meaning between 66 and 90 percent probability on a scale the panel adopted -- that human activity accounted for the warming recorded over the past 50 years.
Some of the report's most compelling sections focused on future climate changes, because the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will exert an effect even if industrialized countries stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow. Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the Boulder, Colo.-based National Center for Atmospheric Research, who helped oversee the chapter on climate projections, said that in the next two decades alone, global temperatures will rise by 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
"We're committed to a certain amount of warming," said Meehl, who worked with 16 computer-modeling teams from 11 countries. "A lot of these changes continue through the 21st century and become more severe as time goes on."
Meehl added, however, that a sharp cut in greenhouse gas emissions could still keep catastrophic consequences from occurring: "The message is, it does make a difference what we do."
For the first time, IPCC scientists also looked at regional climate shifts in detail, concluding that precipitation in the American Southwest will decline as summer temperatures rise, just as precipitation in the Northeast will increase. Linda Mearns -- another NCAR senior scientist who was also one of the lead authors -- said these changes could cause water shortages and affect recreational activities in the Southwest. Developing countries in Africa and elsewhere could also experience severe droughts.
Governments and scientific organizations across the globe nominate scientists to produce and review the IPCC assessment without pay under the auspices of the United Nations. A group of key authors and government officials met in Paris this week to finalize the document, which reflects three years of work.
"Every government in the world signed off on this document, including the U.S.," said World Bank chief scientist Robert T. Watson, who chaired the last round of deliberations. Watson added that compared with the 2001 report, "the difference is now they have more confidence in what they're doing."
The authors concluded that Earth's average temperature will increase between 3.2 and 7.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, while sea levels will rise between seven and 23 inches.
IPCC scientists also said that global warming will not trigger a shutdown within the next 100 years of the North Atlantic ocean current that keeps Northern Europe temperate, though they do not predict if it might occur in future centuries. In a similar vein, the authors concluded they did not have sophisticated enough computer models to project how much melting of the Greenland ice sheet would boost sea levels over the next century, but they suggested that over several centuries the ice sheet's disappearance could raise sea levels by a devastating 23 feet.
Bush administration officials said yesterday that they welcomed the report and emphasized that U.S. research funding helped underpin its conclusions. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., who oversees much of the nation's climate research, said in an interview that the international assessment will lead to "a more objective and informative public debate."
But environmental advocates said the White House -- which remains opposed to mandatory limits on U.S. carbon emissions -- is making a mistake in assuming research and technological advances alone will address global warming.
"The administration's proposals are at least a decade away," said Angela Anderson, vice president for climate programs at the National Environmental Trust. "The promise of better technologies tomorrow shouldn't stop us from doing what we can today."
House and Senate Democratic leaders back a cap on greenhouse gases and hope to enact such legislation this year; next week, several of the report's authors are to testify in congressional hearings.
In an interview yesterday, House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) called the report "a unanimous, definitive world statement" on climate change that, if anything, was too conservative. "It's time to end the debate and act," Gordon said. "All the naysayers should step aside."
Some critics, however, question the push for nationwide limits on emissions from power plants, automobiles and other industrial sources. At the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank that receives funding from Exxon Mobil, chief executive William O'Keefe and President Jeff Kueter issued a statement urging "great caution in reading too much" into the report until the panel releases its detailed scientific documentation a few months from now.
"Claims being made that a climate catastrophe later this century is more certain are unjustified," they said, adding that "the underlying state of knowledge does not justify scare tactics or provide sufficient support for proposals . . . to suppress energy use and impose large economic burdens on the U.S. economy."
Back Off, Columnists!
Back Off, Columnists!
Here's What 'Washington, D.C.' Means to Me
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B08
On Jan. 14, Close to Home shared with us the opinions of 10 local news columnists from across the country about "What 'Washington, D.C.' Means to Them."
If you are among those of us who are natives of this area, perhaps after reading those commentaries you felt, as I did, that our home town needed a little defending. It was difficult to read that people from places such as Utah and Kentucky think so negatively of us and of what happens here. I grew up here, moved away and moved back, so I feel qualified -- and obligated -- to respond.
It was hard to hear that many Americans believe that this city offers little more than corrupt politicians and crime. It was hard to read, for instance, that South Dakotans "know good people go to the nation's capital but [they] just don't like what happens to them when they stay too long." Despite what others may believe, there is a contingent of folks who have lived here modestly and (mostly) happily and have done so for years, even generations. And while Washington is a melting pot of people from across the world, it's still the place I call home.
Admittedly, it can be a difficult place to live. I am not naive about the extra effort Washington sometimes requires of us. Traffic, taxes, housing costs, partisanship, and did I mention the traffic? No doubt, these things can wear a person down. As a sports fan, it's even hard to root for the home team. (In case you out-of-towners among us have forgotten, those teams are the Redskins, the Wizards, the Nationals and the Capitals.) But we get up every day, get in our cars and merge into the rat race alongside 5 million other people in the metro area. Why? Maybe no one can explain why. When terrorism knocked on our door a few years back, I asked myself why I live here and even if I wanted to stay. But immediately following that September day, and in the five years since, the reasons I live here have become clearer.
So, to those columnists who offered their unflattering opinions of this city, I say, this is what Washington means to me:
Washington means culture, diversity, power and history.
Washington means incredible springs and colorful autumns, blistering summers and wimpy winters. Where else can stores run out of milk and toilet paper when the forecast simply says "chance of snow"?
Washington is Vienna Inn chili dogs and Hawk 'n' Dove cold beers, Constitution Avenue T-shirt vendors and College Park game days.
Washington is cherry blossoms and ethnic food, presidential motorcades and eternal architecture. Is there anything better than playing softball on the Mall on a warm summer night, surrounded by monuments and icons known around the globe?
Washington is Embassy Row and Adams Morgan, quaint Clifton and booming Bethesda. We are science and technology, history and memorabilia. We represent the United States to the world, and whether you agree with who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. or not, the majesty, tradition and significance of that address are undeniable.
Washington offers hospitality to the world and honor to its small-town heroes. There are street parades and fundraisers, and I would bet that we fly more flags here than anyplace else in America. And if you've ever been to the Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving Day, you know the real meaning of school pride and community support.
Washington is picturesque Great Falls and chic urban downtown, historic Ellicott City and up-and-coming Del Ray.
Washington is my childhood, my young adulthood, my past and my present. Washington is my town, and no one can take that away.
Here's What 'Washington, D.C.' Means to Me
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B08
On Jan. 14, Close to Home shared with us the opinions of 10 local news columnists from across the country about "What 'Washington, D.C.' Means to Them."
If you are among those of us who are natives of this area, perhaps after reading those commentaries you felt, as I did, that our home town needed a little defending. It was difficult to read that people from places such as Utah and Kentucky think so negatively of us and of what happens here. I grew up here, moved away and moved back, so I feel qualified -- and obligated -- to respond.
It was hard to hear that many Americans believe that this city offers little more than corrupt politicians and crime. It was hard to read, for instance, that South Dakotans "know good people go to the nation's capital but [they] just don't like what happens to them when they stay too long." Despite what others may believe, there is a contingent of folks who have lived here modestly and (mostly) happily and have done so for years, even generations. And while Washington is a melting pot of people from across the world, it's still the place I call home.
Admittedly, it can be a difficult place to live. I am not naive about the extra effort Washington sometimes requires of us. Traffic, taxes, housing costs, partisanship, and did I mention the traffic? No doubt, these things can wear a person down. As a sports fan, it's even hard to root for the home team. (In case you out-of-towners among us have forgotten, those teams are the Redskins, the Wizards, the Nationals and the Capitals.) But we get up every day, get in our cars and merge into the rat race alongside 5 million other people in the metro area. Why? Maybe no one can explain why. When terrorism knocked on our door a few years back, I asked myself why I live here and even if I wanted to stay. But immediately following that September day, and in the five years since, the reasons I live here have become clearer.
So, to those columnists who offered their unflattering opinions of this city, I say, this is what Washington means to me:
Washington means culture, diversity, power and history.
Washington means incredible springs and colorful autumns, blistering summers and wimpy winters. Where else can stores run out of milk and toilet paper when the forecast simply says "chance of snow"?
Washington is Vienna Inn chili dogs and Hawk 'n' Dove cold beers, Constitution Avenue T-shirt vendors and College Park game days.
Washington is cherry blossoms and ethnic food, presidential motorcades and eternal architecture. Is there anything better than playing softball on the Mall on a warm summer night, surrounded by monuments and icons known around the globe?
Washington is Embassy Row and Adams Morgan, quaint Clifton and booming Bethesda. We are science and technology, history and memorabilia. We represent the United States to the world, and whether you agree with who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. or not, the majesty, tradition and significance of that address are undeniable.
Washington offers hospitality to the world and honor to its small-town heroes. There are street parades and fundraisers, and I would bet that we fly more flags here than anyplace else in America. And if you've ever been to the Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving Day, you know the real meaning of school pride and community support.
Washington is picturesque Great Falls and chic urban downtown, historic Ellicott City and up-and-coming Del Ray.
Washington is my childhood, my young adulthood, my past and my present. Washington is my town, and no one can take that away.
Victory Is Not an Option
Victory Is Not an Option
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy
By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B01
The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.
Its gloomy implications -- hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact -- put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose the president's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.
For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.
No task is more important to the well-being of the United States. We face great peril in that troubled region, and improving our prospects will be difficult. First of all, it will require, from Congress at least, public acknowledgment that the president's policy is based on illusions, not realities. There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq. Most Americans need no further convincing, but two truths ought to put the matter beyond question:
First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by professional students of the topic. Of the more than 40 democracies created since World War II, fewer than 10 can be considered truly "constitutional" -- meaning that their domestic order is protected by a broadly accepted rule of law, and has survived for at least a generation. None is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. None has deep sectarian and ethnic fissures like those in Iraq.
Strangely, American political scientists whose business it is to know these things have been irresponsibly quiet. In the lead-up to the March 2003 invasion, neoconservative agitators shouted insults at anyone who dared to mention the many findings of academic research on how democracies evolve. They also ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the democracy Americans enjoy today. Somehow Iraqis are now expected to create a constitutional order in a country with no conditions favoring it.
This is not to say that Arabs cannot become liberal democrats. When they immigrate to the United States, many do so quickly. But it is to say that Arab countries, as well as a large majority of all countries, find creating a stable constitutional democracy beyond their capacities.
Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It took the United States more than a century to get over its hostility toward British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S. occupation, polls have recorded Iraqis' rising animosity toward the United States. Even supporters of an American military presence say that it is acceptable temporarily and only to prevent either of the warring sides in Iraq from winning. Today the Iraqi government survives only because its senior members and their families live within the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and military command.
As Congress awakens to these realities -- and a few members have bravely pointed them out -- will it act on them? Not necessarily. Too many lawmakers have fallen for the myths that are invoked to try to sell the president's new war aims. Let us consider the most pernicious of them.
1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon. Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess -- the mess we created, which has become worse each year we have remained. Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath express fear that quitting it will leave a blood bath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a "failed state," or some other horror. But this "aftermath" is already upon us; a prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists.
2) We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq. This is another absurd notion. One of the president's initial war aims, the creation of a democracy in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian influence, both in Iraq and the region. Electoral democracy, predictably, would put Shiite groups in power -- groups supported by Iran since Saddam Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many members of Congress swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now supposed to prevent precisely what starting the war inexorably and predictably caused? Fear that Congress will confront this contradiction helps explain the administration and neocon drumbeat we now hear for expanding the war to Iran.
Here we see shades of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy in Vietnam: widen the war into Cambodia and Laos. Only this time, the adverse consequences would be far greater. Iran's ability to hurt U.S. forces in Iraq are not trivial. And the anti-American backlash in the region would be larger, and have more lasting consequences.
3) We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq. But it was the U.S. invasion that opened Iraq's doors to al-Qaeda. The longer U.S. forces have remained there, the stronger al-Qaeda has become. Yet its strength within the Kurdish and Shiite areas is trivial. After a U.S. withdrawal, it will probably play a continuing role in helping the Sunni groups against the Shiites and the Kurds. Whether such foreign elements could remain or thrive in Iraq after the resolution of civil war is open to question. Meanwhile, continuing the war will not push al-Qaeda outside Iraq. On the contrary, the American presence is the glue that holds al-Qaeda there now.
4) We must continue to fight in order to "support the troops." This argument effectively paralyzes almost all members of Congress. Lawmakers proclaim in grave tones a litany of problems in Iraq sufficient to justify a rapid pullout. Then they reject that logical conclusion, insisting we cannot do so because we must support the troops. Has anybody asked the troops?
During their first tours, most may well have favored "staying the course" -- whatever that meant to them -- but now in their second, third and fourth tours, many are changing their minds. We see evidence of that in the many news stories about unhappy troops being sent back to Iraq. Veterans groups are beginning to make public the case for bringing them home. Soldiers and officers in Iraq are speaking out critically to reporters on the ground.
But the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing the war is the implication that the troops are somehow responsible for deciding to continue the president's course. That political and moral responsibility belongs to the president, not the troops. Did not President Harry S. Truman make it clear that "the buck stops" in the Oval Office? If the president keeps dodging it, where does it stop? With Congress?
Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses not to exercise its power of the purse to end the war and open the way for a strategy that might actually bear fruit.
The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.
Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.
Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.
Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.
Realigning our diplomacy and military capabilities to achieve order will hugely reduce the numbers of our enemies and gain us new and important allies. This cannot happen, however, until our forces are moving out of Iraq. Why should Iran negotiate to relieve our pain as long as we are increasing its influence in Iraq and beyond? Withdrawal will awaken most leaders in the region to their own need for U.S.-led diplomacy to stabilize their neighborhood.
If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.
If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to earn the credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for some presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy
By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B01
The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.
Its gloomy implications -- hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact -- put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose the president's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.
For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.
No task is more important to the well-being of the United States. We face great peril in that troubled region, and improving our prospects will be difficult. First of all, it will require, from Congress at least, public acknowledgment that the president's policy is based on illusions, not realities. There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq. Most Americans need no further convincing, but two truths ought to put the matter beyond question:
First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by professional students of the topic. Of the more than 40 democracies created since World War II, fewer than 10 can be considered truly "constitutional" -- meaning that their domestic order is protected by a broadly accepted rule of law, and has survived for at least a generation. None is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. None has deep sectarian and ethnic fissures like those in Iraq.
Strangely, American political scientists whose business it is to know these things have been irresponsibly quiet. In the lead-up to the March 2003 invasion, neoconservative agitators shouted insults at anyone who dared to mention the many findings of academic research on how democracies evolve. They also ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the democracy Americans enjoy today. Somehow Iraqis are now expected to create a constitutional order in a country with no conditions favoring it.
This is not to say that Arabs cannot become liberal democrats. When they immigrate to the United States, many do so quickly. But it is to say that Arab countries, as well as a large majority of all countries, find creating a stable constitutional democracy beyond their capacities.
Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It took the United States more than a century to get over its hostility toward British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S. occupation, polls have recorded Iraqis' rising animosity toward the United States. Even supporters of an American military presence say that it is acceptable temporarily and only to prevent either of the warring sides in Iraq from winning. Today the Iraqi government survives only because its senior members and their families live within the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and military command.
As Congress awakens to these realities -- and a few members have bravely pointed them out -- will it act on them? Not necessarily. Too many lawmakers have fallen for the myths that are invoked to try to sell the president's new war aims. Let us consider the most pernicious of them.
1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon. Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess -- the mess we created, which has become worse each year we have remained. Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath express fear that quitting it will leave a blood bath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a "failed state," or some other horror. But this "aftermath" is already upon us; a prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists.
2) We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq. This is another absurd notion. One of the president's initial war aims, the creation of a democracy in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian influence, both in Iraq and the region. Electoral democracy, predictably, would put Shiite groups in power -- groups supported by Iran since Saddam Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many members of Congress swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now supposed to prevent precisely what starting the war inexorably and predictably caused? Fear that Congress will confront this contradiction helps explain the administration and neocon drumbeat we now hear for expanding the war to Iran.
Here we see shades of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy in Vietnam: widen the war into Cambodia and Laos. Only this time, the adverse consequences would be far greater. Iran's ability to hurt U.S. forces in Iraq are not trivial. And the anti-American backlash in the region would be larger, and have more lasting consequences.
3) We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq. But it was the U.S. invasion that opened Iraq's doors to al-Qaeda. The longer U.S. forces have remained there, the stronger al-Qaeda has become. Yet its strength within the Kurdish and Shiite areas is trivial. After a U.S. withdrawal, it will probably play a continuing role in helping the Sunni groups against the Shiites and the Kurds. Whether such foreign elements could remain or thrive in Iraq after the resolution of civil war is open to question. Meanwhile, continuing the war will not push al-Qaeda outside Iraq. On the contrary, the American presence is the glue that holds al-Qaeda there now.
4) We must continue to fight in order to "support the troops." This argument effectively paralyzes almost all members of Congress. Lawmakers proclaim in grave tones a litany of problems in Iraq sufficient to justify a rapid pullout. Then they reject that logical conclusion, insisting we cannot do so because we must support the troops. Has anybody asked the troops?
During their first tours, most may well have favored "staying the course" -- whatever that meant to them -- but now in their second, third and fourth tours, many are changing their minds. We see evidence of that in the many news stories about unhappy troops being sent back to Iraq. Veterans groups are beginning to make public the case for bringing them home. Soldiers and officers in Iraq are speaking out critically to reporters on the ground.
But the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing the war is the implication that the troops are somehow responsible for deciding to continue the president's course. That political and moral responsibility belongs to the president, not the troops. Did not President Harry S. Truman make it clear that "the buck stops" in the Oval Office? If the president keeps dodging it, where does it stop? With Congress?
Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses not to exercise its power of the purse to end the war and open the way for a strategy that might actually bear fruit.
The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.
Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.
Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.
Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.
Realigning our diplomacy and military capabilities to achieve order will hugely reduce the numbers of our enemies and gain us new and important allies. This cannot happen, however, until our forces are moving out of Iraq. Why should Iran negotiate to relieve our pain as long as we are increasing its influence in Iraq and beyond? Withdrawal will awaken most leaders in the region to their own need for U.S.-led diplomacy to stabilize their neighborhood.
If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.
If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to earn the credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for some presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.
Obama Joins Race With Goals Set High
Obama Joins Race With Goals Set High
Now-Official Presidential Candidate Talks of Universal Health Care, Leaving Iraq
By Dan Balz and Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 11, 2007; A01
SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Feb. 10 -- Illinois Sen. Barack Obama formally opened his campaign for president here Saturday, invoking memories of Abraham Lincoln and challenging a new generation to help him transform the nation.
Standing on the grounds of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln delivered his famous "House Divided" speech against slavery in 1858, the Democratic first-term senator began a bid for the White House that barely seemed possible just a few months ago but could make him the first black president. "I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness -- a certain audacity -- to this announcement," he said. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."
Thousands of supporters, some of whom had driven long distances to be here, braved freezing temperatures to join Obama at an event described by many as history in the making. Long before the candidate arrived with his wife, Michelle, and two young daughters shortly after 10 a.m. Central time, the Old Capitol grounds and surrounding areas were packed to capacity.
Against the morning cold, Obama wore an overcoat and a scarf, but no hat or gloves. In his speech, he presented an ambitious agenda that includes bringing an end to the Iraq war, eliminating poverty, ensuring universal health care and creating energy independence. But he seemed to be trying to transcend traditional political debate by arguing that what the country lacks is not good ideas.
"What's stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans," he said. "What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems."
Recalling past periods of economic or political crisis, he said, "Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more -- and it is time for our generation to answer that call."
The story of Obama's rise has captivated political insiders and ordinary Americans alike. The months ahead will test whether he now can transform himself from political phenomenon into the kind of candidate who can withstand the rigors of the marathon ahead.
Obama will be asked to demonstrate that his dearth of experience is not the liability that some of his rivals suggest, and he will be challenged to fill in the blanks of a policy agenda that is longer on goals than details.
He begins as one of the principal challengers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the early favorite for the Democratic nomination. But he must also contend with former North Carolina senator John Edwards, whose progressive agenda and grass-roots campaign threatens to occupy some of the same space Obama aims to seize for his own candidacy. Other more experienced candidates hope to profit if he falters.
For all the enthusiasm that surrounds his candidacy, Obama still faces the reality that Clinton begins with a political machine that is far deeper and broader than his. Obama advisers said their campaign for the nomination may be more unconventional than hers.
"I think that the path to get there has to do with our ability to inspire a lot of people to get involved in this process who have not been involved, or who may have been involved once but lost heart," said David Axelrod, the campaign's chief strategist. "We have to give people a real sense of investment so that the electorate will maybe look a little different."
Obama's sharpest difference with both Clinton and Edwards is his early opposition to the Iraq war; they voted for the 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq. Edwards has since apologized for his vote, and Clinton has said she would not have voted that way had she known then what she knows now.
But Obama can point to remarks he made in the fall of 2002 in which he not only called the war "dumb" but also predicted the dangers of the long occupation that followed the successful invasion. In his announcement speech, he described the war as a "tragic mistake."
"It's time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else's civil war," he said Saturday. "That's why I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008. Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace."
Beyond the setting itself, Obama invoked Lincoln throughout the speech, even to the point where the tall, thin Obama recalled a "tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer" who ended slavery and led the nation though one of its darkest moments.
"He had his doubts," Obama said of Lincoln. "He had his defeats. He had his setbacks. But through his will and his words, he moved a nation and helped free a people."
But in issuing a call for a new generation to take its place at the center of public life, Obama summoned up memories of President John F. Kennedy and his 1960 campaign.
Obama, 45 and the son of a black Kenyan man and a white Kansas woman, worked as a community organizer in Chicago before graduating from Harvard Law School and returning to the city to become a civil rights lawyer. He ran for the state Senate in 1996 and served four terms there before launching what seemed a long-shot campaign for the U.S. Senate. Even before he won the seat and became the only African American in the Senate, Obama was seen as a rising star in his party because of the keynote speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His two best-selling books -- and his appearances on "Oprah," on ESPN's "Monday Night Football" and in the pages of People magazine -- have spread his appeal widely over the past few months, even as his name recognition across the electorate remains relatively low.
In his announcement speech Saturday and in interviews leading up to it, Obama began the process of both laying out his professional experience and arguing that experience in Washington is not a requirement for becoming president.
Critical of Bush's presidency and what he said are the nation's unmet challenges, Obama decried the cynicism that he said pervades the political process and called on those disillusioned by a culture of special interests and gridlocked politics to join him in his campaign.
"The time for that politics is over. It is through. It is time to turn the page, right here, right now," he said, and the crowd responded with chants of "Obama, Obama, Obama."
Although his campaign infrastructure is still being built -- his advisers moved into their Chicago headquarters only last week -- Obama's launch had the trappings of a campaign that has been building for months. That included a new Web site launched in conjunction with the announcement and a new campaign logo, a blue "O" that evokes a rising sun and that appeared on buttons, placards and T-shirts.
The crowd was filled with committed Obama supporters who lifted signs -- "Barack the Vote" was among the more creative -- and cheered in waves as the candidate spoke.
From Illinois, Obama flew to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a town hall meeting with more than 2,000 people. Obama spent an hour fielding questions about Iraq, North Korea, the No Child Left Behind Act and the cost of college tuition.
He said he believes many Americans feel that something has been lost since the promise of the Kennedy era.
"What's been lost is that our politics feels very much like an insider's game," he said. "People feel like you've got the two parties splitting the pot, and ordinary voters are left out of the process."
Opening the session, Obama talked about the challenges facing the country and his own ambitions to be president.
"I want to win," he said, "but I don't just want to win. I want to transform this country."
Now-Official Presidential Candidate Talks of Universal Health Care, Leaving Iraq
By Dan Balz and Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 11, 2007; A01
SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Feb. 10 -- Illinois Sen. Barack Obama formally opened his campaign for president here Saturday, invoking memories of Abraham Lincoln and challenging a new generation to help him transform the nation.
Standing on the grounds of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln delivered his famous "House Divided" speech against slavery in 1858, the Democratic first-term senator began a bid for the White House that barely seemed possible just a few months ago but could make him the first black president. "I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness -- a certain audacity -- to this announcement," he said. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."
Thousands of supporters, some of whom had driven long distances to be here, braved freezing temperatures to join Obama at an event described by many as history in the making. Long before the candidate arrived with his wife, Michelle, and two young daughters shortly after 10 a.m. Central time, the Old Capitol grounds and surrounding areas were packed to capacity.
Against the morning cold, Obama wore an overcoat and a scarf, but no hat or gloves. In his speech, he presented an ambitious agenda that includes bringing an end to the Iraq war, eliminating poverty, ensuring universal health care and creating energy independence. But he seemed to be trying to transcend traditional political debate by arguing that what the country lacks is not good ideas.
"What's stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans," he said. "What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems."
Recalling past periods of economic or political crisis, he said, "Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more -- and it is time for our generation to answer that call."
The story of Obama's rise has captivated political insiders and ordinary Americans alike. The months ahead will test whether he now can transform himself from political phenomenon into the kind of candidate who can withstand the rigors of the marathon ahead.
Obama will be asked to demonstrate that his dearth of experience is not the liability that some of his rivals suggest, and he will be challenged to fill in the blanks of a policy agenda that is longer on goals than details.
He begins as one of the principal challengers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the early favorite for the Democratic nomination. But he must also contend with former North Carolina senator John Edwards, whose progressive agenda and grass-roots campaign threatens to occupy some of the same space Obama aims to seize for his own candidacy. Other more experienced candidates hope to profit if he falters.
For all the enthusiasm that surrounds his candidacy, Obama still faces the reality that Clinton begins with a political machine that is far deeper and broader than his. Obama advisers said their campaign for the nomination may be more unconventional than hers.
"I think that the path to get there has to do with our ability to inspire a lot of people to get involved in this process who have not been involved, or who may have been involved once but lost heart," said David Axelrod, the campaign's chief strategist. "We have to give people a real sense of investment so that the electorate will maybe look a little different."
Obama's sharpest difference with both Clinton and Edwards is his early opposition to the Iraq war; they voted for the 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq. Edwards has since apologized for his vote, and Clinton has said she would not have voted that way had she known then what she knows now.
But Obama can point to remarks he made in the fall of 2002 in which he not only called the war "dumb" but also predicted the dangers of the long occupation that followed the successful invasion. In his announcement speech, he described the war as a "tragic mistake."
"It's time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else's civil war," he said Saturday. "That's why I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008. Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace."
Beyond the setting itself, Obama invoked Lincoln throughout the speech, even to the point where the tall, thin Obama recalled a "tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer" who ended slavery and led the nation though one of its darkest moments.
"He had his doubts," Obama said of Lincoln. "He had his defeats. He had his setbacks. But through his will and his words, he moved a nation and helped free a people."
But in issuing a call for a new generation to take its place at the center of public life, Obama summoned up memories of President John F. Kennedy and his 1960 campaign.
Obama, 45 and the son of a black Kenyan man and a white Kansas woman, worked as a community organizer in Chicago before graduating from Harvard Law School and returning to the city to become a civil rights lawyer. He ran for the state Senate in 1996 and served four terms there before launching what seemed a long-shot campaign for the U.S. Senate. Even before he won the seat and became the only African American in the Senate, Obama was seen as a rising star in his party because of the keynote speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His two best-selling books -- and his appearances on "Oprah," on ESPN's "Monday Night Football" and in the pages of People magazine -- have spread his appeal widely over the past few months, even as his name recognition across the electorate remains relatively low.
In his announcement speech Saturday and in interviews leading up to it, Obama began the process of both laying out his professional experience and arguing that experience in Washington is not a requirement for becoming president.
Critical of Bush's presidency and what he said are the nation's unmet challenges, Obama decried the cynicism that he said pervades the political process and called on those disillusioned by a culture of special interests and gridlocked politics to join him in his campaign.
"The time for that politics is over. It is through. It is time to turn the page, right here, right now," he said, and the crowd responded with chants of "Obama, Obama, Obama."
Although his campaign infrastructure is still being built -- his advisers moved into their Chicago headquarters only last week -- Obama's launch had the trappings of a campaign that has been building for months. That included a new Web site launched in conjunction with the announcement and a new campaign logo, a blue "O" that evokes a rising sun and that appeared on buttons, placards and T-shirts.
The crowd was filled with committed Obama supporters who lifted signs -- "Barack the Vote" was among the more creative -- and cheered in waves as the candidate spoke.
From Illinois, Obama flew to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a town hall meeting with more than 2,000 people. Obama spent an hour fielding questions about Iraq, North Korea, the No Child Left Behind Act and the cost of college tuition.
He said he believes many Americans feel that something has been lost since the promise of the Kennedy era.
"What's been lost is that our politics feels very much like an insider's game," he said. "People feel like you've got the two parties splitting the pot, and ordinary voters are left out of the process."
Opening the session, Obama talked about the challenges facing the country and his own ambitions to be president.
"I want to win," he said, "but I don't just want to win. I want to transform this country."
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