[Mark Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University.]

When John McCain nominated Sarah Palin for Vice President, many political hands viewed this choice as a brilliant strategy to woo working class voters away from the Democrats. Palin's "tough girl" persona and take no prisoners approach to political leadership, coupled with an appealing aura of domesticity flowing from her role as a "hockey mom" and mother of five children, seemed to recast the Republican Party, which had presided over the largest give away to the rich in American history, as the Party of the common people. Palin has emphasized her populist credentials at every opportunity, telling adoring crowds, in carefully chosen campaign stops, that she is speaking for "Joe Sixpack" and surrounding herself with symbols of blue collar Americana like country music star Hank Williams Jr.

Because of Palin's charisma, and ability to excite the Republican based in the midwest and the South, who had initially been somewhat cool to his candidacy, John McCain has decided to use Palinesque rhetoric to enhance his own blue collar credentials, which need some burnishing after it was revealed that he owned 7 houses . In his final debate with Barack Obama, McCain made at least 20 references to man he called "Joe The Plumber," who, he claimed, would be severely penalized under Barack Obama's tax plan because he worked hard all his life and made enough money to buy the company he worked for. That the person he referred to, Joe Weltenbacher, turned out, upon investigation, to have no plumbing license and lack the capital to buy a port-o-san, much less a plumbing company, didn't faze McCain strategists. The repeated invocation of the figure "Joe The Plumber," showed that John McCain had the interests of the American working class at heart.

But what working class?

In a nation where the majority of workers are neither blue collar, white, nor male, repeated references to "Joe Sixpack" and "Joe the Plumber," are more exclusionary than inclusive. The white, muscular, gun toting, Nascar-watching, workers that McCain Palin rhetoric glorify as the heart, soul and conscience of America are a shrinking portion of the American workforce, dwarfed in number by the waitresses, nurses, secretaries, sales clerks, teachers and home health aids, of all racial backgrounds, who are overwhelmingly female, and the truck drivers, factory workers, construction workers ( including plumbers) who are Latino, Black, Asian, and South Asian

In a growing portion of the United States, the toughest, most dangerous work is being done by women and recent immigrants. Go to slaughterhouses and chicken processing plants, textile mils and commercial farms, hospitals and construction sites, warehouses and taxi barns. You'll see a lot of Jose's Oscar's and Maria's, Omar's Khalil's. and Karima's, Betty Lou's and Joan's. What you won't see is a lot of white guys named Joe.

By ignoring this reality in their choice of rhetorical symbols, Republican strategists hurt themselves in two ways. First, they make it seem as though non white and women workers ( Jose the Plumber, and Joan Sixpack) are less important to Republicans than white men, a message which the former groups seem to be taking to heart.. The latest polls show a majority of women, and over 70's of Latinos favoring the Obama/Biden ticket, a calculus which seems destined to produce a Democratic victory.

But secondly, these coded racial messages have helped incite a level of xenophobia and racial hostility at Republican rallies have not been seen in a Presidential election since the George Wallace campaigns of thee 60's. Threats and racial slurs directed at Obama supporters, the parading of openly racist symbols like monkeys and nooses, and chants of "terrorist" and "kill him" when Obama's name have appeared with stunning regularity at Republican presidential gatherings, even after John McCain has denounced such behavior, and are being echoed by a deluge of racially based images of what an Obama presidency would men for America that are being circulated on the internet.

In equating the interests of all American workers with those of white native born men, John McCain, and especially Sarah Palin, have unleashed some of the darkest impulses in the American character in a way that has not only damaged their candidacy, but has strained the social fabric to the breaking point.

Let us hope that American voters will see folly of their strategy, and defeat them so roundly at the polls that their racially coded approach will be permanently consigned to the dustbin of history.

[H.R. McMaster is a consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a colonel in the United States Army. He is author of Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and The Lies that Led to Vietnam (1997). This essay is based on his full-length article in the Fall 2008 special issue of Orbis on “The Future of War.”]

War is the final auditor of military institutions. Contemporary conflicts such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq create an urgent need for feedback based on actual experience. Analysis of the present combined with an understanding of history should help us improve dramatically the quality of our thinking about war. Understanding the continuities as well as changes in the character of armed conflict will help us make wise decisions about force structure, develop relevant joint force capabilities, and refine officer education and the organization, training, and the equipping of our forces.

But first we need to reject the unrealistic, abstract ideas concerning the nature of future conflict that gained wide acceptance in the 1990s. Flush with the ease of the military victory over Saddam’s forces in the 1991 Gulf War and aware of the rapid advance of communications, information, and precision munitions technologies, many observers argued then that U.S. competitive advantages in these technologies had brought about a Revolution in Military Affairs. It was assumed that there would be no “peer competitor” of U.S. military forces until at least 2020. Military concepts based on this assumption promised rapid, low-cost victory in future war. Ultimately, these ideas and their corollary of reduced reliance on military manpower became subsumed under “defense transformation.”

Defense transformation advocates never considered conflicts such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq—protracted counterinsurgency and state-building efforts that require population security, security-sector reform, reconstruction and economic development, building governmental capacity, and establishing the rule of law. Our experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the 2006 Lebanon war, provide strong warnings that we should abandon the orthodoxy of defense transformation and make appropriate adjustments to force structure and development.

Policy and Strategy Must Determine Force Development
U.S. force development should be driven by how our forces might be employed to protect vital national interests. Prior to 9/11, “capabilities-based” defense analysis reinforced shallow thinking about war and disconnected war from policy and strategy. The belief that surveillance and information technology could lift the fog of war elevated a desired military capability to the level of strategy. After 9/11, military operations were not clearly subordinated to comprehensive plans that aimed to achieve policy goals and objectives.

It is illogical to acknowledge an uncertain strategic environment yet believe in assured results in military operations. War’s conduct and outcome depend in large measure on subjective factors such as the will of the people, the wisdom of political objectives, and consistency between those objectives and military strategy.

The U.S. government must develop improved interdepartmental capabilities for planning and executing complex operations, emphasizing operational design that begins with a comprehensive understanding of the environment and the enemy. Joint forces must be designed not only to defeat identifiable enemy forces, but also to impose security and undertake the wide range of activities necessary to achieve political objectives. Until civilian departments within the U.S. government expand deployable capabilities in order to establish local governance and rule of law, develop police forces, improve basic services, build institutional capacity, and set conditions for economic growth and development, the U.S. military will continue to bear responsibility for those missions.

Counterterrorism Demands a Broad Range of Capabilities
Notwithstanding terrorist organizations’ improved use of communications and their access to increased destructive capacity, they still find it hard to operate without a safe haven, state sponsorship, or tacit support from nation-states or communities therein. As counterterrorism efforts improve, networked movements like Al Qaeda become less effective as they are forced to operate in a more dispersed manner. For this reason Al Qaeda continues to emphasize control of geographic space, whether in Pakistan, Somalia, or a particular region within Iraq. Considering the terrorist threat as merely a law enforcement, homeland defense, or intelligence problem overlooks terrorist organizations’ immediate sources of strength and support, such as freedom of movement and the ability to plan, organize, and prepare for operations in a safe location.

Iran’s engagement in proxy wars through terrorist and insurgent groups in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, and Afghanistan demonstrates that the greatest danger to international security may lie at the intersection between hostile states and terrorist organizations. That is why the U.S. Joint Force must expand its ability to deter, coerce, or defeat nations that either threaten U.S. vital interests or attack those vital interests through proxies. It must also improve its ability to take on a wide range of missions, including interdiction of terrorist movement and support; raids against leadership and support bases; and counterinsurgency, peace support, and state-building operations in places that terrorists would like to use as bases of operation.

Fighting Under Conditions of Uncertainty
Initial military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq illustrated more continuities than breaks with previous conflicts.[1] Surveillance and information technologies failed to deliver the promised “dominant battlespace knowledge” as enemy forces employed traditional countermeasures (e.g. dispersion, concealment, deception, and intermingling with civilian populations) to Coalition technological capabilities. While long-range surveillance and precision-strike capabilities were essential to both U.S. campaigns, over-reliance on these capabilities complicated the transition from major combat operations and limited our forces’ effectiveness. At Tora Bora, for example, surveillance of the difficult terrain could not compensate for a lack of ground forces to cover exfiltration routes. After a 16-day battle, many Al Qaeda forces, probably including Osama bin Laden, escaped across the Pakistan border.

Conventional “legacy” Army organizations, designed to fight under uncertain conditions, proved critical in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan in March 2002 and in the attack into Baghdad a year later. But some of those organizations have since been eliminated or redesigned, based in part on the assumption that future tactical and operational environments would be marked by a high degree of certainty. Although the divisional cavalry squadron of the Third Infantry Division, a unit designed to fight for information, protect against surprise, and ease the forward movement of follow-on forces, was invaluable during the attack toward Baghdad, that formation and all others like it have since been eliminated in favor of small, lightly armed reconnaissance squadrons designed to use mainly aerial and ground sensors to develop situational awareness out of contact.

The major offensive operation that quickly toppled the Hussein regime in Iraq clearly demonstrated the possibilities associated with new technology, as well as the effects that improved speed, knowledge, and precision can have in the context of a large-scale offensive operation. However, the initial phases of the operation also revealed important continuities in warfare that lie beyond the reach of technology. Unconventional forces will continue to evade detection from even the most advanced surveillance capabilities. Moreover, what commanders most needed to know about enemy forces, such as their degree of competence and motivation, lay completely outside the reach of technology.

Post-9/11 experience highlights the enduring uncertainty of combat and the need for balanced air, ground, and maritime forces that can both project power from a distance and conduct operations on the ground to defeat the enemy and secure critical terrain. Yet some observers continue to portray the impressive performance of new technologies and airpower in Afghanistan and Iraq as decisive and consistent with the prewar belief that these capabilities had revolutionized the nature of armed conflict. Defense programs have not been altered significantly despite experiences that expose fatal flaws in the assumptions that underpinned many of those programs.

We must develop new joint and service operational concepts that are consistent with the enduring uncertainty and complexity of war. Rather than “capabilities-based,” these concepts ought to be based on real and emerging threats and connected to scenarios that direct military force toward the achievement of policy goals and objectives.

In doing this, we must avoid viewing force design as a zero-sum game among the services. Precision strike, information, and surveillance technologies cannot substitute for balanced joint forces, but they are nonetheless vitally important. Technological improvements have delivered a higher level of situational understanding. Without dominance at sea or supremacy in the air, U.S. ground forces would be extremely vulnerable to enemy action. Additionally, U.S. air and naval strike capabilities make it difficult for enemy ground forces to concentrate, except in very complex terrain or urban areas. Moreover, the ability of small U.S. forces to bring overwhelming firepower to bear upon contact with the enemy permits our forces to operate with confidence while dispersed across wide areas.

However, recent conventional combat experience also suggests that we should reject the notion that lightness, ease of deployment, and reduced logistical infrastructure are virtues in and of themselves. What a force is expected to achieve once it is deployed is far more important than how quickly it can be moved and how easily it can be sustained. As we endeavor to improve ground force capability, we must therefore increase airlift and sealift capabilities.

Counterinsurgency and Stability Operations
The United States is likely to become engaged in future conflicts against armed groups that employ tactics and strategies similar to those it is facing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have also confirmed that the key battleground in these conflicts is the population.

Some commanders and defense officials were slow to recognize the character of the conflicts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Initial emphasis was on an attrition approach to the complex problem of growing insurgencies. Using technical intelligence and surveillance capabilities, U.S. forces attempted to defeat networked enemy organizations through attacking leadership and reducing critical capabilities. This approach viewed the enemy as a complex system that could be collapsed if the right nodes were destroyed. A “raiding” approach to counterinsurgency, combined with the rapid generation of Iraqi security forces, seemed to promise quick results and compensate for insufficient Coalition troop strength to secure the population. This approach elevated an important capability to the level of strategy. Resources were dictating strategy, rather than the other way around.

As indigenous security forces came under increased enemy pressure and insurgent groups replaced their killed or captured leaders, commanders moved off large bases and conducted area security operations to protect the population, isolate the insurgents, foster political and economic development, build security forces, and help establish the rule of law. However, lacking sufficient forces to secure the population in critical areas, many commanders were only able to continue raiding operations to disrupt the enemy. Meanwhile, insurgent forces were able to coerce the population, establish safe operating bases in areas beyond Coalition reach, incite sectarian conflict, and prevent Coalition and Iraqi forces from establishing the security necessary for economic and political development. A lack of troop strength also compelled dispersed Coalition forces to move continuously along routes they were unable to secure, a main cause of large numbers of casualties from roadside bombs.

Population security must be the focus of counterinsurgency operations. Technology can assist greatly in that effort, but it cannot substitute for a sufficient strength of land forces. In weak or collapsed states, indigenous forces cannot provide security on their own. Recent combat experience has demonstrated the need to develop in military forces the critical skill sets relevant to state-building and developing security forces, even though this will take time.

Obstacles That Undermine Learning from Conflicts
Unfortunately, parochial agendas and narrow perspectives threaten to impede the effort to repair the intellectual foundation for defense modernization and adjust force development. Some analysts maintain that current operations either are derived from flawed policy or unimportant to U.S. vital interests. For example, U.S. Air Force Major General Charles Dunlap argued recently that the Iraq War is an aberration—an ill-advised “hearts and minds campaign.” He suggested that America should eschew conflicts like those in Afghanistan and Iraq in favor of “scenarios” that call for the destruction of an adversary’s “capacity to project power.” In Dunlap’s construct, war could once again be made simple, fast, inexpensive, and efficient by divorcing military operations from policy or limiting the application of military force to targets capable of “projecting power.” Instead of “colossal, boots on the ground efforts,” the United States should rely on “air strikes to demolish enemy capabilities complemented by short-term, air-assisted raids and high-tech Air Force surveillance.” Divorced from its political context, the problem of future war could be solved by America’s “asymmetric advantages.”[2] The argument has appeal, in part, because it defines war as we might prefer it to be.

Those who advocate a return to 1990s thinking also assert that U.S. airpower and the delivery of “effects” from long range (e.g., bombing) are more “culturally compatible,” because these capabilities represent America’s “asymmetrical advantage.”[3] Air Force Lieutenant General David Deptula has argued that increased investment in asymmetric capabilities would permit U.S. forces to “project power without projecting mass.”[4] While it is clear that air, space, and cyber systems deliver valuable speed and flexibility, it is not clear how those systems alone will deliver sufficient capability to overcome countermeasures, defeat determined adversaries, or achieve political objectives.

Another argument used to support the orthodoxy of the RMA is that remotely delivered effects would make war less risky, less costly, and even more humane. Dunlap and Deptula, among others, cite the targeting of U.S. land forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. They seem to attribute combat in Iraq and Afghanistan to the mere presence of U.S. forces rather than the possibility that these forces pose a threat to enemy organizations and designs hostile to U.S. political goals. Deptula and Dunlap fail to consider the enemy’s ability to react and adopt countermeasures that complicate our ability to remotely deliver effects. One wonders what kind of remotely delivered capability might secure people from terrorists living in their midst, reconstitute a police force, or interdict concealed vehicle bombs aimed at crowded marketplaces. Dunlap and Deptula suggest that the United States reexamine the degree to which it will accept “collateral damage,” but do not explain how bombing suspected targets without the ability to secure the population or discriminate between combatants and noncombatants would support U.S. objectives in current or potential conflicts.

Finally, Deptula and Dunlap, among others, argue that future war will be fundamentally different. For example, Deptula states that “the profound effects of globalization and the information revolution are mirrored, if not magnified, in the realm of conflict—where they have recast the nature of our adversaries, redefined the fabric and scope of the battlespace, and reinvented the tools and techniques used to conduct warfare.” The assumption that future war will lie mainly in the realm of certainty has obscured differences between business and war. It fosters the belief that the influence of information technology on business and the economy is directly transferable to war. Prior to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the RMA movement was driven in large measure by that belief, reinforced by computer simulations that failed to replicate the conditions of war. Faulty analogies and flawed experiments were mutually reinforcing. However, the continuous interactions with the enemy in war and uncertainties associated with those interactions are fundamentally different from business interactions.

Moreover, efficiency in war means barely winning, and in war, barely winning is an ugly proposition. In war one seeks to overwhelm the enemy such that he is unable to take effective action; the business principle of maximum payoff for minimum investment does not apply. The complexity and uncertainty of war require decentralization and a certain degree of redundancy, concepts that cut against business’s emphasis on control and efficiency.

We need to reject the assertion that future war will differ fundamentally from recent and ongoing conflicts in order to protect future commanders from what could become a tendency toward risk aversion and over-control. Assuming information superiority might lead some commanders to conclude that making near-perfect decisions based on near-perfect intelligence is the essence of command. Commanders must be capable of conceptual thought and have the ability to communicate a vision of how the force will achieve its objectives.

Potential adversaries are developing technological countermeasures to attack components of emerging capabilities. Recent examples include the Chinese demonstration of an anti-satellite capability and Russian cyber attacks that reveal the vulnerability of information systems. Future adversaries will likely develop countermeasures that pose a significant threat to U.S. surveillance, information, communications, and precision-strike capabilities and the network on which those capabilities depend.

The above factors militate for the development of balanced joint forces capable of operating against determined enemies that will attempt to evade and attack our technological advantages. But theory continues to triumph over practice, due largely to informal relationships between defense contractors, the DoD, Congress, and think tanks, some of whom built client bases on marketing or lending legitimacy to flawed concepts. Moreover, conflicts of interest present obstacles to unbiased experimentation. The stark contrast between actual experience and the results of tests and experiments argues for a critical examination of joint and Defense experimentation and the practice of using experimentation results to justify Defense programs.

Implications for Land Forces
The U.S. Army, despite having fought for six years under conditions that run counter to the orthodoxy of defense transformation, is still finding it difficult to break away from years of wrongheaded thinking. The Army brigade organization, designed using mainly computer simulations to validate a smaller, lighter, more efficient organization that could “see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively,” has not undergone significant revision. That “quality of firsts,” based on the assumption of dominant knowledge in future war, has gone largely unchallenged.[5] Indeed, the quality of firsts, despite being exposed as unrealistic by combat experience, continues to provide the primary conceptual justification for the Army’s Future Brigade Combat Team (FBCT) organization and some acquisition programs.

Recent combat experience has had no discernible effect on the FBCT or current Army Brigade Combat Team (BCT) organizations, largely because of flawed doctrinal concepts and a continued fixation on futuristic experiments in constructive simulations even as U.S. forces are at war. Forces equipped only for self-defense under the assumption that information superiority will protect them and permit the destruction of the enemy at a great distance are certain to suffer a high number of casualties when they engage in close combat. In war, the enemy makes decisions that help determine when, where, and how our forces will fight. If a force optimized for operations under conditions of information superiority loses communications, it could become isolated and unable to access remote fires. Any ambiguity will necessitate reallocating sensors and an analysis effort to avoid risks associated with encountering the enemy unexpectedly. While much of the transformation literature stresses speed, adaptability, and initiative, the force’s inability to overmatch the enemy in a close fight will predispose leaders toward waiting for information rather than taking resolute action in uncertain conditions. Ironically, a force that was supposed to be fast and agile will operate ponderously.

The factors underpinning uncertainty in war are mainly land-based. As defense analyst C. Kenneth Allard has observed, operations on land provide challenges “for which technology at best provides only incomplete answers.”[6] Indeed, people live on land, and land is where political, social, and cultural factors interact with geography and determined enemies to generate profound uncertainty. U.S. Joint Forces must be prepared to fight and win under conditions of uncertainty.

Conclusion
It is time to discard flawed idealized visions of future war and the assumptions that underpin them. New doctrine based on logical projections into the near future should provide the conceptual foundation for joint and service force design. Civilian and military defense leaders should eliminate the practice of contracting out their intellectual responsibilities. In particular, defense contractors should not produce and test operational concepts that can later be used to justify the purchase of their systems or products. We might declare a moratorium on joint and service experimentation so these programs can be audited and alternative means developed to justify acquisition programs. Forces ought to be designed explicitly to fight under conditions of uncertainty and to achieve effectiveness rather than efficiency. This will entail tolerating a higher degree of redundancy. We should build sufficient logistical and lift capacity to sustain and transport forces for what they are to accomplish in wartime. In particular, the disparity between the doctrinal foundation for Army forces and recent experiences demands a thorough review of Army organization. Instead of creating more of the same BCTs as the Army grows in strength, leaders might conduct a comprehensive review of the BCT design and strengthen those organizations based on recent and ongoing experience.

New technologies and “spin outs” from acquisition programs have contributed significantly to the combat effectiveness of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; technological modernization and innovation should be pursued with undiminished vigor. Understanding both the capabilities and limitations associated with these technologies, however, is essential to shaping the future force.

Notes
1. ^ See Stephen Biddle, “Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy,” Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa., November 2002, esp. pp. 1-3; and Stephen Biddle et al., “Iraq and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy,” August 2003, U.S. Army War College, at www.globalsecurity.org.
2. ^ Major General Charles Dunlap, “America’s Asymmetric Advantage,” Armed Forces Journal, Sept. 2006.
3. ^ Ibid.; Deptula, “Air and Space Power Going Forward.”
4. ^ Ibid.
5. ^ Mark Rocke and David Fitchitt, “Establishing Strategic Vectors: Charting a Path for Army Transformation,” Association of the U.S. Army, April 2007, at www.ausa.org/pdfdocs/special/may07.pdf
6. ^ C. Kenneth Allard, “Information Warfare: The Burden of History and the Risk of Hubris,” in The Information Revolution and National Security: Dimensions and Directions, ed. Stuart J. D. Schwartzstein (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1996).

[Peter J. Katzenstein is the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University and the President of the American Political Science Association. His research and teaching lie at the intersection of the fields of international relations and comparative politics. This is a revised and updated excerpt from chapter 1 of Peter J. Katzenstein, Rethinking Japanese Security: Internal and External Dimensions (New York: Routledge, 2008), with permission of the publisher.]

... Because only Japan and Germany challenged in war the Anglo-American world order in the first half of the 20th century, and experienced traumatic defeat and occupation, no other world region has evolved similarly situated core states. After its historic victory over the political alternative that Fascism posed to Anglo-American hegemony in the middle of the 20th century, U.S. foreign policies sought to anchor its Japanese and German clients firmly within America's emerging imperium ( Lake 1988).

Gavan McCormack (2007, 79–80) writes: "...it is hard to escape the feeling that they [U.S. officials today] functioned rather as proconsuls, advising and instructing, while seeing Japan still as an imperial dependency, rather like General MacArthur a half-century earlier, who was acclaimed a benevolent liberator even while treating the Japanese people as children." An assessment that was correct for the late 1940s is wrong half a century later. In the case of Japan as much as Germany it is a mistake to argue that this client status remains intact. Eventually both states left their client status behind, becoming regional powers in their own right and supporters of the United States. Each is intent on exercising economic and political power indirectly, thereby simultaneously extending the reach and durability of the American imperium (Katzenstein and Shiraishi 1997, 2006; Katzenstein 1997). These two supporter states were of vital importance in keeping Asia and Europe porous rather than closed regions. Their attachment to the American imperium was steady, first in the name of anti-Communism, and subsequently in the name of globalization and counter-terrorism. Yet the difference in the geo-strategic context—as yet no politically viable East Asian Community, no large immigrant Muslim population in Japan, a geographically proximate perceived national security threat in the form of North Korea, and a deep suspicion of an increasingly powerful China—has left Japan a more dependable supporter state of the United States than Germany. The bipartisan Armitage-Nye report of October 2000 illustrates how far American policy has come to recognize Japan's strategic importance for U.S. foreign policy in East Asia, and how far it has left behind policies that regarded Japan as a client (as in the 1950s) or the subject of external pressure politics (as in the 1980s) (Green 2007: 147).

This is not to deny that as history changes, so may the character and standing of these two supporter states. Japan and Germany are increasingly removed in time, although not necessarily in terms of their memory, from their traumatic national defeats. After 9/11 the Bush administration's sharp turn toward a militant and unilateralist policy has given rise to strong opposition among mass publics abroad (Katzenstein and Keohane 2007). For example, democratization in South Korean politics gave rise to an anti-Americanism that has been accentuated greatly by the abrasive political style of a hapless U.S. diplomacy (Steinberg 2005). Anti-Americanism among the young in particular has risen to heights that would have been inconceivable in the late 1990s. In China, American-inflected globalization is embraced while anti-hegemonism, especially its behavioral manifestations, continues to be a powerful oppositional ideology that resists American primacy. While it is not as virulent or racist as anti-Japanese sentiments, this anti-Americanism is a powerful latent force that is readily activated around many issues and most certainly around the volatile issue of Taiwan (Johnston and Stockmann 2007).

Japan is a notable exception to these changes in East Asian popular attitudes. In the mid- and late 1950s Japanese anti-Americanism ran so deep, in the form of opposition to the US-Japan Security Treaty, that President Eisenhower cancelled his visit in 1960, after the Japanese government informed the White House that a full mobilization of Japan's total police force could not guarantee the physical security of the Presidential motorcade from Haneda airport to the Imperial Hotel in downtown Tokyo. Since the end of the Vietnam war anti-Americanism has virtually disappeared as Japan's party system has moved to center-right, and as a new national consciousness has taken hold of a younger generation psychologically no longer moved by the dominant concerns of the 1950s and 1960s and unnerved by North Korean nuclear-reinforced bluster and China's rise. At a popular level the relationship between Japan and the United States is free from rancor. Despite sustained protests against American bases in Okinawa, public opinion polls typically show above 60 per cent of the Japanese public favoring the United States, about twice as large as corresponding numbers for various European countries (Pew Global Attitudes Project 2007; Tanaka 2007).

Furthermore, as the character of the American imperium changes, its two supporter states are unavoidably repositioned in the matrix of Asian and European politics. There exists thus no reason why the role of these supporter states could not be filled by others. If Germany were to be submerged totally in a European polity (which seems very unlikely) and if Japan's GDP were surpassed, eventually, by China's (which seems very likely, but not imminent), together with other historical changes affecting Asia, Europe, and the United States, this might eventually transform the role played by traditional supporters and other regional pivots. In the case of France and China, for example, the magnitude of such changes would have to be very substantial. These two states are crucial pivots. But it is hard to imagine how they could replace Japan and Germany any time soon as Asia's and Europe's supporter states.

Japan

Alliance with the United States has provided the political and strategic foundations for Japan’s economic rise in the American imperium (Ikenberry and Inoguchi 2003, 2007). To be sure, with the passing of time Asia has become more important as war and occupation receded and as Japan's reconstruction and economic clout made it Asia's preeminent economic power. But it was Asia viewed from Tokyo through an American looking-glass. There was more than a whiff of the historical role that Japan sought after the Meiji restoration—casting itself in the role of interlocutor between Asia and the West.

Since 1945 Japan has experienced a phenomenal rise. Its economic fortunes were helped greatly by serving as the Asian armory in America's global struggle against Communism, first in Korea in the 1950s and subsequently in Vietnam and Southeast Asia in the 1960s. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the two oil shocks of the 1970s set the stage for the economic rise of Japan in financial markets. The 1980s were the decade of Japan's global ascendance as an economic superpower, ending in a speculative bubble that collapsed into economic torpor lasting more than a decade. In manufacturing Japan's technological prowess is no longer unchallenged in defining East Asia's economic frontiers. Japan has a mature economy that is trying to cope with an aging and thrifty population and with being one of the two main sources of credit for the United States. This completed the transformation of Japan's strategic relationship with the United States from client to supporter state.

Japan has been important in supporting, both directly and indirectly, U.S. policies in a variety of ways (Krauss and Pempel 2004; McCormack 2007; Pyle 2007; Hughes and Krauss 2007). It helped refurbish the institutional infrastructure of international financial institutions following the Asian financial crisis of 1997, became for a while the world's largest aid donor, and played a central role, especially in the mid-1980s, of intervening in financial markets to realign the values of the world's major currencies. Since the 1980s Japan has accommodated the United States on issues central to the functioning of the international economy, with evident reluctance in opening Japanese markets for goods, services and capital and with an air of resignation in amassing close to a trillion dollars in reserves, substantial portions of which have helped to finance perennial U.S. budget and trade deficits....

[Shatha Almutawa is a PhD student in History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She is studying the interactions between Muslim and Jewish philosophy in the medieval period.]

This Ramadan, Muslims and Arabs across the United States have come face to face with questions of identity and portrayal, as 28 million copies of the movie Obsession: Radical Islam's War against the West were distributed in fourteen swing states, in a blatant and large-scale misrepresentation of Muslims. The DVDs were distributed by seventy newspapers including The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and were also mailed directly to registered voters shortly after the anniversary of 9/11. The Detroit Free Press and two other newspapers refused to circulate the DVD because "distributing the piece would have been irresponsible and harmful."

And the film is, indeed, harmful. The disclaimer at the beginning, that the movie is about radical Islam and not the majority of Muslims who are peaceful, is forgotten ten minutes into the movie when Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab, says, "What is worrying is that there's a silent majority that is not speaking out in a very strong voice against these groups. And I hope it's only out of fear and not out of sympathy with people like Osama ben Laden." This quote summarizes the message of the movie: Americans have no way of knowing which Muslim is an extremist who agrees with Osama ben Laden and which one is peaceful, and therefore ought to be suspicious of every Muslim.

Aside from its prejudiced message, the movie makes several unfounded claims. Walid Shoebat, "former PLO terrorist," claims that there are as many Muslim supporters of terrorism as there are Americans, and that these Muslims are all over the world. Following footage of the pilgrimage in Mecca, the narrator asks, "[W]hat percentage of the Islamic world supports jihad?" Abu Toameh answers, "The Muslim world consists of more than one billion people," and Daniel Pipes says that ten to fifteen percent support radical Islam. He continues, "That is not to say that only ten percent are anti-American or anti-Zionist. No, that's much larger."

According to the Pew Charitable Foundation's Global Attitudes Project, people in Muslim countries predominantly view Islamic extremism as people in the West do, and are concerned that it poses a threat to their own countries. The film fails to point out that according to quantifiable data, more Muslims oppose terrorism, especially suicide bombings, than ever in the past. Nonie Darwish, the daughter of a "martyr," tells us that Jihad means "to conquer the world for Allah." But Muslim leaders and scholars of Islam have repeatedly stated that Jihad does not mean holy war. Muslims have defined and redefined this term countless times – to give only one example, the Muslim gay and lesbian community has claimed the term for their struggle for LGBT rights. They, like many other Muslims, understand jihad according to its literal meaning: struggle, and in most cases it is internal struggle.

The movie then claims that Muslims who do not agree with the terrorists are killed, even though Muslims have spoken out publicly against extremism without being killed, in the US and abroad, profesors and laymen, mullas and secular Muslims alike. The American Muslim, a journal that was established in 1989, states that its mission is the "promotion of peace, justice, and reconciliation for all humanity." One section on their website, "Muslim Voices Against Terrorism and Extremism" boasts hundreds of articles.

Muslims and Arabs across the United States are speaking out against this misrepresentation, and they are joined by clergy across many denominations. The Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance in Washington D.C., issued a public statement in which he wrote, "We firmly believe that everyone has a right to an opinion. But when a cynical attempt is made to influence our nation's presidential election by stoking fear of one religious group we believe the media along with public officials, such as the Federal Election Commission, must establish who is trying to influence our politics through religious bigotry."

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) investigated the Clarion Fund, which distributed the film, and found that "it is a front organization for an Israeli-based group, Aish HaTorah International." CAIR filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission to investigate a foreign-based group trying to influence the outcome of the American elections. Because of its 501(c)(3) status, Clarion Fund "can't engage in partisan politics," according to NPR's 2008 Election Campaign Secret Money Project. But that is exactly what it does by distributing the film in such a way, inciting fear and prejudice among Americans and rendering the moderate Muslim and Arab majority invisible and voiceless.

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.]

I guess now I know what it is like to live in a battleground state. I got both of the calls transcribed below (you can listen to the audio at Talking Points Memo) this week. They came to my southwest Virginia home right before the dinner hour.

“Hello. I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats aren’t who you think they are. They say they want to keep us safe, but Barack Obama said the threat we face now from terrorism is nowhere near as dire as it was in the end of the Cold War. And Congressional Democrats now want to give civil rights to terrorists. John McCain and his party allies understand the threats we face. When you vote, vote for the team you can trust to keep America safe. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500.”

“Hello. I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500.”

I guess that John McCain’s resolution that he is going to run a race grounded in “facts” rather than negative insinuation lasted less than 24 hours. How are these scripts meaningfully different than the “we need to be afraid of an Obama presidency” comment that McCain denounced last Friday? What happened to “I don’t care about an old, washed-up terrorist”?

I cannot imagine the rationalization.

Read the first call’s script through quickly. Is there any escaping the insinuation that Obama and Ayers worked “closely” on planting the bombs rather than on the board of an educational foundation that is run by a McCain supporter? If even remotely true, how could McCain live with his own claim that Obama is a “good family man” and that they only “disagree on issues”?

John McCain seems unable to decide whether he is ready to go into the pit in order to win the election. He disavows any intention to suggest that the Democrats are anything other than “honorable men (and women) and citizens,” claims he has denounced everything that Republicans have said that might be out of bounds, and then accuses his opponents of being directly affiliated with terrorist activities and suggests that they are only pretending to care about keeping Americans safe. The cognitive dissonance is bizarre.

It may be a long last three weeks.

[About Meyer: After living in mainland China and Taiwan for four years and in Japan for one year I returned to the U.S. and earned a doctoral degree in Chinese history, which I teach at the City University of New York. This blog reflects my belief that the study of the history and culture of other nations is indispensible to the conduct of modern politics.]

At last night's debate, John McCain unveiled a new line of attack against Barack Obama, the "Joe the Plumber" offensive. The plumber in question is Joe Wurzelbacher, a resident of Holland, Ohio who posed a question to Obama on the campaign trail this Sunday. Joe was concerned that under Obama's tax plan, a business he plans to purchase that has revenues of $250,000-280,000 dollars would have its taxes raised. The entire exchange was caught on camera, Obama goes through the specifics of his tax plan with Joe in rather extensive detail. In the end he suggests that, with capital gains cuts and other small-business incentives built into Obama's plan, Joe may actually see his taxes cut, though he could not guarantee that without looking at the particulars of Joe's business.

All of this might have been less than a footnote to history, except that Obama uttered three words which are a lightning rod of American political discourse: "spread the wealth." A cursory survey of the blogosphere and pennings of the commentariat reveals that these remarks of Obama's will be among the most misquoted in the annals of American politics. Republicans will hammer away at these thee words to craft them into a singular message: "Obama wants to take your hard-earned money away and give it to other people."

This kind of rhetoric is always good for stirring up partisan anger. It bears no relation to what actually passed between Obama and Joe Wurzelbacher on the campaign trail in Ohio, however. Obama never told Joe that he wanted to "spread his wealth around." If you watch the video and listen carefully to the exchange, the context in which the three dread words are uttered is this:

OBAMA: My attitude is, if the economy is good for folks from the bottom up, it's going to be good for everybody. If you've got a plumbing business, you're going to be better off if you've got a whole bunch of customers who are going to pay to hire you. Right now the economy is so pinched that business is bad for everybody, and I believe that when we spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.

So there you have it. Obama is not talking about taking Joe's money away and giving it to those in need, he is talking about spreading purchasing power to a broader segment of the economy so that service providers like Joe will have an expanded revenue base. This makes good economic sense, and is about as "socialist" as a BLT with cheese is kosher.

Mr. Wurzelbacher has evidently, in subsequent interviews, decried Obama's ideas as socialist and detrimental to the American dream (though, it is interesting to note, as of this writing he has yet to endorse John McCain). Joe is an appealing and likable figure, and it would not surprise me if this fifteen minutes of fame translates into a career move from plumbing to politics. I think that John McCain's attempt to use Joe as a political icon will ultimately backfire, however.

Some people, like Joe himself, will watch his encounter with Obama and come away with the impression of insidious socialism. My guess is, however, that if the video of Obama's conversation with Joe Wurzelbacher gets the airplay it should, it will reinforce the positive impressions that the electorate has been building about Obama himself. Here is a man who, as of Sunday, had been on the campaign trail for a grueling two years, enduring constant attacks to his judgment and character. Confronted with a direct and challenging question about his policy he was not irritated or dismissive, but candid, earnest, and respectful. He addresses Joe's concerns with rigorous detail and minimum rhetoric, every inch the statesman who is sensible of his personal accountability to the voter. If that is not the kind of person we should have as our president, I do not know who is.

The third and final debate again went to Obama in the instant polls done by organizations such as CNN. Independents told CNN they generally thought Obama won. CNN's real-time tracking of opinion among viewers in its studio showed that independents especially disliked the smear tactic of attempting to link Obama to prominent Chicago educator Bill Ayers, who had had a radical youth but long since had become a mainstream figure. McCain came across as sarcastic and mean-spirited, though he was more animated and more coherent than in the earlier debates.

He especially lost points, as Rachel Maddow pointed out, by dismissing concerns about the health of the mother in the decision to end a pregnancy. In that stance he sounded like Sarah Palin, who wants to make women bear their rapist's child. As I pointed out in Salon, the current McCain-Palin stance on abortion is identical to that in fundamentalist regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Obama was calm, cool, collected, gracious and cautious. He knows that he is ahead by some 10 points or more, and that the race is now his to lose. He sought to avoid being combative or making mistakes. He even praised Sarah Palin, knowing that it looks bad to beat up on a woman. (Bush senior debated Geraldine Ferraro aggressively in 1984, at one point condescendingly saying, 'let me help you with that, Mrs. Ferraro. After the debate, Bush's people tried to play Joe Six-Pack, putting out the word that he had 'kicked ass,'-- not realizing that working class men would not use that phrase for a contest with a woman. Bush's ticket went on to win, but he was not at the top of the ticket then and he made a bad impression.)

There is no room for complacency. This is a strange election in a strange time, and polls are notoriously untrustworthy more than a day or two out. People need to come out and vote.

But it is now not crazy to say that the likelihood is that Obama will win and that he will have a strong majority in the House and 57 or so in the Senate, so that the Republicans will find it difficult to block his policies (he will need three or four liberal Republican senators for important votes unless it really is a landslide.)

Obama said repeatedly that the U.S. faces the most dire economic crisis since the Great Depression. That may be so, but it is not a depression yet. There has not been a run on the banks (though there easily could have been), and unemployment has not skyrocketed to 25 percent (except in Flint, Michigan but that is an older story). The market is behaving erratically and a lot of people will likely have to postpone retirement (assuming that they don't lose their jobs). Something like ten percent of mortgages were in danger before the big credit crisis hit. I hesitate to think what it must be now.

It seems pretty obvious that Obama will need a New New Deal, but more focused on mortgages and liquidity than on state-supplied jobs.

The major foreign policy initiative undertaken by FDR in his first term, the Good Neighbor Policy, was to withdraw from heavy-handed intervention in Latin America, which reversed earlier policies of sending expeditionary forces and knee-jerk support for rightwing local elites. The Roosevelt administration got out of Haiti and openly spoke of the illegitimacy of interloping into the domestic affairs of other sovereign states.

Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, write Tom Barry, Laura Carlsen, and John Gershman

' specifically renounced most previous justifications for U.S. military interventions—including preemptive strikes to ensure political stability, occupations to force payment of foreign debts, retaliation for expropriation of U.S. investments, and the promotion of democracy. He ordered the withdrawal of all remaining U.S. troops in the Caribbean Basin, ending the long and shameful history of military interventions and occupations there. Speaking at a regional conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in December 1933, Secretary of State Hull said that one of the core principles of the Good Neighbor Policy was nonintervention: “No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.”

A year later Roosevelt reassured the still-skeptical nations of Latin America and the Caribbean by saying, “The definite policy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention.” '

A president Obama will withdraw from Iraq, perhaps faster than the timeline that the that Bush and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have just agreed to (2011 at the latest). It seems obvious that Obama and al-Maliki will work very smoothly together.

This move could be a step toward a new Good Neighbor policy in the Middle East. Obviously, Iraq is only one piece of the puzzle. But Obama's willingness to talk to all the regimes in the region where it is called for (and he never said he wouldn't do preparation for such negotiations) could lead to other breakthroughs.

Given the world's increasing energy crisis and the consequent ever closer entanglement of the US with the region, an Obama Good Neighbor Policy in the Middle East may be as important for the destiny of our country as the domestic economic initiatives he launches.

[Peter Lawler is Dana Professor of Government at Berry College in Georgia. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including Postmodernism Rightly Understood, Stuck With Virtue, Aliens in America, and Homeless and at Home in America.]

We can learn from comparisons with the past only if we approach them with some — but not too much — irony. Here are some descriptions of past elections. Each is spun in such a way as to heighten its relevance to the one going on right now and in order to produce some enjoyable controversy:

1932: Republicans control the presidency when the economy takes a nosedive of unprecedented proportions. There’s no confidence in the incumbent (Hoover) being able to deal with the crisis; everybody thinks the country is moving in the wrong direction. The attractive Democratic challenger (FDR) wins a largely “negative landslide” and takes advantage of “unified government” to do a lot more than he ever mentioned during the campaign. His eloquent reformist self-confidence reassures the people; his actual policies probably, on balance, prolong the Depression.

1948: The popular, uncharismatic incumbent (Truman) leads a party that’s clearly been in office too long. The other party captures control of Congress in 1946. Polls show a smooth challenger (Dewey) with a substantial lead. Incumbent focuses a “Give ‘em hell” campaign on a “do-nothing” Congress. He surges and confounds the expert s with an upset.

1952: The same incumbent (Truman) has extremely low approval ratings, largely because of an unpopular war that’s dragged on . His party nominates a classy guy (Stevenson) who can’t really distance himself enough from his party’s record. The Republicans nominate a confident, likeable guy (Eisenhower) who promises to do what it takes to end the war. He wins by a landslide. (I actually think there’s a lot to this comparison, although McCain seems more Eisenhower and Obama more like Stevenson.)

1960: The Republican incumbent (Eisenhower) is boring and not rhetorically gifted. People clearly want change, to get the country moving again, without any clear of view of what that means. The Democrats nominate a good-looking young guy (with a beautiful wife) with little experience and a lazy, mediocre record as Senator (JFK). His speeches are inspirational, and he also inspires confidence because most of the party’s establishment experts are advising him. He’s a Harvard guy who appeals to intellectual snobs. He’s a member of a demographic group (Catholics) that’s a key part of the Democratic coalition, but has never had a president. The experienced Republican candidate (Nixon) looks odd — even unhealthy — during the debates. The Democratic challenger very, very narrowly wins.

1968: The Democratic incumbent (LBJ) is unpopular because he can’t end a war that threatens to drag on forever and for failed domestic policies. The Democratic candidate (Humphrey) is a man with lots of experience in the Senate but is clearly sloppy and otherwise undisciplined The very smart and competent Republican challenger (Nixon) promises to have a plan to end the war. The coalition that elected in the incumbent starts to come back together for Humphery, who campaigns enthusiastically until the end. But it’s too little, too late. (The relevance of this comparison is McCain’s best hope.)

1976: The party of the incumbent (Ford) is utterly discredited by corruption. As a candidate, he is experienced and somewhat respected but quite inarticulate and a bit bumbling. The Democratic challenger (Carter) presents himself as an outsider and a wholly new kind of candidate who transcends politics as usual. The Democrat is way ahead for a while. But Ford closes quickly because he creates real doubts about his opponent’s character and temperament. If the campaign had lasted another week, the president would have stayed in office. (I think McCain took this comparison too seriously for a week or two: Obama is far more likeable than Carter.)

1980: The Democratic incumbent (Carter) is blamed, with plenty of evidence, for making America weaker in many ways—and especially for embarrassing ineptitude in Iran, an oil crisis, an economic downturn, and for a general national malaise. The Republicans, seemingly stupidly, nominate one of the most extremely conservative members of their party (Reagan). The incumbent looks like he might hold on, until the candidates, late in the campaign, finally have a debate. It turns out that the voters only needed reassurance that the challenger was not a crazy extremist—and Reagan came off as a calm and reasonable guy—to turn to him as safe and needed change. Support for the incumbent collapses, and Reagan wins by a near-landslide. (This comparison is obviously relevant. Two differences between 1980 and 2008, of course: The economic crisis and the first debate occurring much earlier, meaning the McCain collapse occurred earlier. McCain’s ghost of a chance: He’s not literally dead, only collapsed, and he had the time to come back that Carter didn’t.)

1996: A smart Democratic incumbent (Clinton) seems to have given us peace and prosperity, but character issues persist. The Republicans go with a very old man (Dole) with a most admirable record of service—both in the military and in the Senate. The Republicans decide to focus their campaign on honor. Big-mistake, people vote peace-and-prosperity over character.

[Christopher Jencks is a professor of social policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. His books include Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass (Harvard University Press, 1992). This essay was adapted from a talk he gave at the most-recent meeting of the American Sociological Association.]

The American Dream sounds like apple pie and motherhood. Everyone is for it.

But when everyone endorses an ideal, whether it's the American Dream, equal opportunity, or justice, you can be pretty sure that they disagree about what the ideal means, and that the appearance of agreement is being achieved by talking past one another.

There are at least two competing versions of the American Dream, and they are not only different but mutually incompatible. Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that they will both need to be reinvented if our children and grandchildren are to inhabit a livable planet.

In one version, this country is the place where anyone who builds a better mousetrap can get rich. To do that, the mousetrap builder will need a lot of help: workers to make the mousetraps, salespeople to put them in the hands of consumers, and security guards to prevent the world from beating a path to the inventor's door and helping themselves. In order to get rich, mousetrap developers will also have to pay their workers far less than they make themselves. Otherwise there won't be enough money left over from mousetrap sales to make the inventor rich.

This version of the American Dream emphasizes individual talent and effort. It favors freedom and opposes government regulation. And it belongs to the Republican Party.

Democrats have another version of the American Dream: Everyone who works hard and behaves responsibly can achieve a decent standard of living. But the definition of a decent standard of living is a moving target. For those who came of age before 1950, it usually meant a steady job, owning a house in a safe neighborhood with decent schools, and believing that your children would have a chance to go to college even if you did not.

True, lots of people who worked hard and behaved responsibly didn't realize this dream. Blue-collar workers were laid off during recessions through no fault of their own, and their jobs often disappeared when technological progress allowed employers to produce more stuff with fewer workers. Still, more and more people achieved this dream between 1945 and 1970, so the Democratic version of the American Dream had broader appeal than the Republican version, in which a smaller number of people could get much richer.

Since the early 1970s, however, all that has changed.

The American economy has been under siege. Real per capita disposable income has continued to grow, but the average annual increase has fallen, from 2.7 percent between 1947 and 1973 to 1.8 percent between 1973 and 2005. Of course, even a 1.8-percent annual increase in purchasing power is far more than the human species achieved during most of its history, and it is also far more than we are likely to achieve in the future unless we do a lot of creative accounting.

What transformed the political landscape was not the slowdown in growth but the distributional change that accompanied it. From 1947 to 1973, the purchasing power of those in the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution rose at the same rate as per capita disposable income, about 2.7 percent a year. Among families in the top 5 percent, the growth rate was 2.2 percent. From 1973 to 2006, however, the average annual increase in the purchasing power of the bottom 95 percent was only .6 percent. The top 5 percent, in contrast, managed to maintain annual growth of 2.0 percent, which was almost the same as what they enjoyed before 1973.

That's a lot of numbers, but what my students at the Kennedy School call the "take-away" is pretty simple: After 1973, when economic growth slowed, America had a choice. We could have tried to share the pain equally by maintaining the social contract under which living standards had risen at roughly the same rate among families at all levels. Or we could have treated the slowdown in growth as evidence that the Democratic version of the American Dream didn't work, and that we should try the Republican version, in which we all look out for ourselves, some people get rich, and most get left behind.

We chose the Republican option....