Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 375

Donald Trump Thinks America Needs a Better Ballroom

What would Donald Trump do if elected president?

Rather than cover the billionaire’s candidacy as a sideshow, National Journal’s Andy Kroll sought answers. “Who did he plan to listen to on policy, for instance, and how would he work with Congress? What did he hope to leave as a legacy after a term or two in the White House, beyond sealing up the border as tight as Tupperware?”

His search was not fruitful.

“I have zero to report about Trump's plans for actually being president,” he concluded, “except that, from all available evidence, he hasn't given it a moment's thought.”

Peter Suderman concurs in the judgment that when it comes to solid positions, “there’s simply nothing to find.” The Trump campaign’s substance cannot be analyzed because “aside from a generalized angry nativism, there isn’t any.” Liberal polices that Trump formerly touted, like gun restrictions, government health care, and wealth taxes, “only tell us how little his support for any particular position matters. Even if there was any policy substance to be found, it would be beside the point.”

For the most part, these writers have a point.

Even on immigration and China, the two subjects on which Trump is most emphatic, one cannot help but wonder what policies he would actually pursue in office.

But there is one promise the political press has overlooked.

Almost five years ago, during a previous flirtation with running for the presidency, the real-estate developer and reality-television star laid out a specific, seemingly earnest complaint about one aspect of Obama administration policy. This isn’t just a policy that he vowed to change if he were in charge. It’s one he spoke of trying to remedy while still a private citizen, offering unsolicited advice to a sitting leader.

I speak of balls and ballrooms.

“This is nothing much,” he began, “and I shouldn't even waste your program's time by saying it.” Then he launched into a lengthy, animated harangue. “I notice that the White House they give a lot of the balls for people, and some should have balls!” he exclaimed to his interviewer, Rush Limbaugh. “I mean, if you look at Britain, if you look at certain places, they've come through and they've been good allies, and we should have balls for them. As you know, because you're in Palm Beach, I have the greatest ballroom probably in the world. I built it five years ago, and it's one of the great ballrooms of the world. It's at the Mar-a-Lago Club. And I see that the White House—the White House, Washington, DC—when a dignitary comes in from India, from anywhere, they open up a tent. They have a tent. A tent!”

This really got under Trump’s skin.

“A lousy looking tent,” he repeated. “An old, rotten tent that frankly they probably rented, pay a guy millions of dollars for it even though it's worth about two dollars, okay?”

As he surveyed America, looked at its problems, and pondered solutions—this was the issue that actually roused Trump to action.

“So recently, a couple of months ago, I called up the White House. I said, ‘Listen, I'm really good at this stuff. I will build you a magnificent ballroom. We'll go through committees. You know, you have all sorts of things with committees. We'll go through committees; we'll pick the one they like. We'll pick the architect everybody likes. We'll pick something that works. We'll do ten designs. You'll pick the one that's the greatest with the greatest architecture. I will build it free.’ So that's anywhere from a 50 to 100 million-dollar gift. I will give that, and I mean, I'm talking, Rush—it's the first time I've said this. I'm talking to the biggest person, one of the biggest people at the White House. I'm not talking to a low-level person.”

If it had been up to Trump, America would have that ballroom.

“So when the head of India comes to town we can give him a five-star dinner in a magnificent ballroom, befitting of this country and the White House, right? They never got back to me. It's a $100 million gift. They never got back to me.”

His interviewer suggested that they snubbed him because he’s a Republican.

“Well, but they never got back to me, Rush,” he complained. “When whether I'm a Republican or an independent or a Democrat, they never got back to me. If I was a Republican they should do it anyway! They should say, ‘Trump's gonna give us a hundred million dollars? He's gonna build the ballroom? It's gonna be magnificent?’ Why wouldn't they get back to me? That's the problem with this country.”

It may seem like I’m being less than serious in relating this anecdote––and I admit that I am laughing as hard rereading the exchange as I did when I first heard it back in 2011––but I really do believe that this exchange lends insight into how Trump would govern.

He would seize on building something in order to show the world that America and its president are possessed of the means, power, and taste to erect impressive stuff. And the White House would have a ballroom.

Is Starbucks's Howard Schultz the Liberal Donald Trump?

You can imagine why Democrats might be jealous. The big story on their side of the aisle in this presidential election is a candidate widely viewed to be both a prohibitive frontrunner and sort of boring—even by her backers, and even if her candidacy is historic because she is a woman. Meanwhile, the Republicans have Donald Trump!

Really, though, there’s no reason that Democrats can't have their own Trump. What it would take? Well, first, you’d need someone with money—a lot of money. Say, about $3 billion dollars. He or she would need to have spoken out on political issues in the past, but never have actually run for office or been seriously involved in politics. This person would also have donated money to candidates of both parties. Ideally, that political involvement might involve some controversial comments about race, and accusations of political naïveté. The candidate would have to be from one of New York’s outer boroughs, obviously. An inept stint as owner of a professional sports team would be good, too.

Luckily, just such a man exists.

Related Story

The Upwardly Mobile Barista

He is Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. Net worth? $3 billion, per Forbes. Political dabbling? Check. Donations to both parties? He hasn’t done much for Republicans, but he did give to John McCain in 2000, so it counts. Unwise comments about race? Schultz’s “Race Together” campaign wasn’t inflammatory, like so many of Trump’s comments, but it was widely panned. Place of birth? Brooklyn. Failed sports venture? Sure—Schultz used to own an NBA team in Seattle. (Pour one out for the SuperSonics, and make it a venti.)

Even better, his name is already being floated for president. The first major mention came, weirdly enough, in the New York Times column in which Maureen Dowd broke the news that Joe Biden was still considering a presidential run. “Potent friends of America’s lord of latte, Howard Schultz, have been pressing him to join the Democratic primary, thinking the time is right for someone who’s not a political lifer. For the passionate 62-year-old—watching the circus from Seattle—it may be a tempting proposition,” she wrote, but the morsel was somewhat overlooked beside the Biden tidings.

Schultz himself writes in Thursday’s Times that he’s not running. “Despite the encouragement of others, I have no intention of entering the presidential fray. I’m not done serving at Starbucks,” Schultz writes.

But Schultz’s denial is hardly Shermanesque, concluding with a somewhat cryptic anecdote about a rabbi and worthiness. His description of the sort of leader he believes America needs sounds a lot like, well, Howard Schultz. He calls for “servant leadership,” including “putting others first and leading from the heart.” He says leaders need to appeal to civility and humility. Those are just the sorts of initiatives Schultz has trumpeted. Remember Starbucks’s “Come Together” campaign during the the 2013 government shutdown? Or “Race Together,” the well-intentioned but ill-fated post-Ferguson push for a race conversation? As The Seattle Times notes, political engagement has been a surprising hallmark of his second stint as Starbucks CEO, and the Puget Sound Business Journal says it’s heard this kind of rumor before.

Of course, it’s unfair to compare Schultz to Trump for any number of reasons. Schultz is inherently a more serious person, and he’s been more politically consistent over the years. He also probably couldn’t pull off what Trump is doing on the campaign trail right now—who could?

But a Schultz campaign, or even the fantasy of such a thing, mirrors the Trump phenomenon in the GOP. As Republican leaders seek to modernize the party, they’re pushing the party to accept comprehensive immigration reform, reach out to minority voters, and seek accommodation on social issues like gay marriage, which they believe the party needs to put behind it. But many Republican voters still care a lot about these issues and don’t take kindly to having them nudged toward the dustbin. Trump has succeeded by capitalizing on this grievance and on voters’ dislike of GOP mandarins—something he’s uniquely suited to do as an outsider.

The Democratic Party is in flux, too, as the centrist legacy of Bill Clinton seems to give way to a party enthralled by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The result is a party that is more confrontational, and more concerned about economic justice and social justice, and more willing to pick fights with corporate America. It’s easy to see why that direction wouldn’t appeal to someone like Schultz, an executive who sees himself bringing people together.

Schultz perfectly represents a portion of the Democratic Party that risks being left behind in this shift: bien-pensant big-city progressives, who are socially liberal, fiscally corporatist, and rhetorically gauzy. In other words, he’s the fantasy candidate of groups like AmericansElect, the failed 2012 attempt to select a Michael Bloomberg-style third-party alternative. The key word there is “failed”: Efforts like this always seem to come up short, in part because what’s on offer is really just an attempt to repackage the Democratic Party platform for people who fancy themselves maverick independents. (After all, what is Barack Obama if not a big-city progressive socially liberal, fiscally corporatist, and fond of gauzy rhetoric about uniting?)

They also tend to fail for the same reason Trump will probably come up short. Politics is harder work than it looks, and newbies are unlikely to quickly master the tricks. Schultz would bring one crucial skill to a campaign. Starbucks has shown he has the ability to build and manage a huge nationwide network, involving physical locations, an ability to get people to turn over perplexing sums of money, and a fan base that seems (or in the case of the coffee, really is) addicted to the product on offer.

Forget about shaky-handed Frappuccino addicts, though. Would Schultz’s own baristas vote for him, the Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger wondered? “I would need to see his platform,” one barista said with a shrug and a smile.

Maybe it takes more than earnest pleas for unity to create a political movement.

Bill Cosby and a More Than 40-Year-Old Case

A California judge ruled Thursday that Bill Cosby must give sworn testimony on October 9. The case is a lawsuit brought by a woman who says the comedian forced her to perform a sexual act in 1974, when she was 15 years old.

Although the statute of limitations has passed for filing criminal charges, the woman,  Judy Huth, who is now 56, is suing Cosby for psychological damage. Last month, the California Supreme Court dealt a setback to Cosby’s attempt to fend off the allegations when it allowed Huth’s lawsuit to continue.

Huth will give her deposition on October 15. Cosby’s lawyers, who say the case is an attempt to extort the comedian, had wanted her to give her testimony before him.

The deposition would be Cosby’s first since 2005; that case, which was settled out of court, was also related to allegations against him. But a judge ordered the release of that deposition in which the comedian acknowledged giving Quaaludes to women with whom he wanted to have sex.

The allegations against Cosby resurfaced late last year and have continued to grow with more women accusing him of sexually abusing them. Last month, New York magazine published an article in which 35 of Cosby’s accusers laid out what they said the comedian did to them.

Cosby denies all wrongdoing, and has never been charged with a crime, but the scandal has hurt the comedian’s reputation.  As my colleague Spencer Kornhaber wrote:

These are women from different walks of life—from supermodels to bartenders—whose tales of abuse are both painfully specific and horrifyingly familiar when placed next to each other. Even if statutes of limitations make it so that Cosby likely won’t ever be tried in court, even if you believe that every story has two sides, the article makes the question of whether Cosby preyed upon women seem almost crass. Without a full public confession from the star, nothing is certain, but at this point, it’d take a leap of logic to argue that public opinion should presume Cosby is innocent.

Netflix's New Parental-Leave Policy: "Just About Ideal"

A handful of Silicon Valley companies provide employees with generous (at least by American standards) leave policies upon the birth or adoption of a child.

Google offers 18 weeks of paid maternity leave. Facebook gives four months. Twitter, 20 weeks.

Now Netflix has gone and outdone them all—way outdone them all. Yesterday, the company’s chief talent officer announced that it will allow new moms and dads to take as much time off as they’d like in a baby’s first year of life.

That’s a lot. By American standards, all but unheard of. Joan Williams, the director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings, applauded Netflix’s move, calling one year of leave “just about ideal.”

“It’s heartening to see an American company giving what is fundamentally the suitable amount of parental leave and making it available equally for men and women,” she said. “To require people as a condition of keeping their jobs to return to work when the baby’s three months old is not civilized behavior.”

Now that Netflix has outlined such a generous option, the difficulties lie in implementing it in a way that both men and women take advantage of it. This is crucial, because if only women employees take Netflix up on its offer, the generosity of the policy could backfire, pushing women onto a “mommy track,” with fewer promotions and fewer raises in the offing. The good news for Netflix, Williams argues, is that this isn’t all that hard to do.

“What you do is,” she says, “when a man announces that his partner is pregnant you just have a really informal meeting with him, congratulate him, and say, ‘By the way around here we expect everybody to take parental leave, and it’s very important to us ... for business reasons.’”

Another challenge will be in ensuring that people up and down the corporate ladder take the time they need. “Expecting your entry-level Netflix employees to do this first is asking them to stick their necks out,” says Caitlyn Collins, a doctoral student at the University of Texas, Austin, who studies parental-leave policies around the world. Managers will have to set an example if they want the policy to be used. “We know that when managers, for example, demonstrate the use of policies themselves, employees feel much more comfortable following suit.”

Williams says that beyond the question of who takes the leave, there’s also the question of how to smooth the transitions out of work and back to work, both for the sake of the new parents and for their colleagues who will be covering for them while they’re away. In preparation for employees to leave, she recommends a system of three meetings—one that’s essentially for congratulating the parent-to-be, another for helping him or her create a transition plan, and a third, just a few weeks before the due date, making sure the transition is on track—and she recommends a similar, formal plan be made for when an employee comes back to work.

“We hear again and again women return from maternity leave and they have a really hard time getting work. Because people think, ‘I can't give her work, she has lots of responsibilities, I don't want to burden her,’ and also, less benevolently, ‘she has other priorities, I don't want to work with her now.’” With a transition plan in place, this process can go much more smoothly, and decrease resentment both toward the employees on leave and the leave policy itself.

Is Netflix’s policy possibly too generous? Will new parents find their careers irreparably set back after a year out of the office?

Collins says that research has shown that one year of leave really strikes the right balance. At one year old, most babies are done breastfeeding (or, at least, can eat cow’s milk and solid food during the day), they’re sleeping more regularly (parents will be a bit better rested for work), and childcare costs drop (daycare centers require fewer providers per one-year-old than per infant). At the same time, one year away from work won’t set parents back too much, in terms of keeping up with new technologies, systems, and organizational changes. This is all the more the case if the transitions are handled thoughtfully, as per Williams’s advice.

Perhaps the worst that can be said of Netflix’s policy is that it’s a pity that it’s such a rarity. Without a federal mandate, parental leave in America is unevenly distributed and often grossly inadequate. “Workers who are in the most desirable jobs are the ones who are getting these benefits,” Collins says. “Netflix is a really desirable company to work for and so, they want to attract top talent, and so that means they get access to this paid leave and workers at the bottom of the labor market don't.”

“The fact that the U.S. is one of only two countries in the entire world that doesn't have federally-mandated paid parental leave is a travesty,” she added.

Williams agreed: “What we should have is national parental leave, equally available for men and women, and financed on a federal basis. That’s what virtually every other industrialized country has, and the reason is that the country is not one generation long. We have to raise the next generation—that is a macroeconomic imperative and it is a patriotic imperative.”

Of course, raising the next generation (and supporting their parents) doesn’t merely require generous parental leave following the birth of a baby—kids, after all, aren’t set to go at the ripe old age of one. “If you have a child living at home for 18 years,” Collins says, “it’s really wonderful and really important that you have time to spend with your child in the first year of its birth, but it's also really important that you get to attend their recitals and their soccer games and take them to the doctor when they're sick and those things don't just happen in the first year of a child's birth.”

To get there, companies will need to take steps beyond parental leave in the first year of life and look at ways of protecting employees’ family time when they’re away from the office (such as policies that ban or discourage after-hours email) and providing generous vacation benefits. But those are projects for another day.

From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton Scandal Primer

Another week, another new front on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

First, there was Representative Trey Gowdy’s select committee on Benghazi. Then, in late July, news emerged that two inspectors general were concerned that classified information was being revealed as the State Department published tranches of Clinton’s emails from her time as secretary. That publication was ordered by a judge. Clinton says she neither sent nor received any classified information on the account, but some material has since been classified.

The inspectors general’s referral to the Justice Department led to an unusual volley between The New York Times and the Clinton presidential campaign. The first version of the story suggested that Clinton herself might be suspected of wrongdoing, but the paper later corrected that and said she was not a target. The Clinton campaign responded with a scathing 1,900-word letter to the paper taking issue with its reporting.

Now comes news of the FBI investigation. Once again, there’s no accusation of wrongdoing against Clinton per se. But officials are concerned about whether the server on which Clinton kept her emails was secure, The Washington Post reports. The bureau has contacted the Denver-based company that responsible for the server, and has also asked her lawyer about a thumb drive he has that contains copies of her work emails from the State Department. The focus is reportedly the security of now-classified material that passed through the server.

Related Story

Among the Hillary Haters

The investigation has turned up some interesting facts about how much effort Clinton put into the running and upkeep of the server. The server itself had been purchased for her unsuccessful 2008 run for president. Initially, it was run by a former Senate aide who was then hired by the State Department. Later, amid concerns about reliability, she hired Platte River, the Denver company now subject to FBI questions.

The email controversy is quickly turning into a classic Clinton scandal. Her use of a private email account became known during the course of an investigation into the 2012 deaths of U.S. personnel in Benghazi, Libya. Thus far, the investigations have found no wrongdoing on Benghazi, but the private-email use and now the classified-info referral have become stories unto themselves. This is something of a pattern with the Clinton family, which has been in the public spotlight since Bill Clinton’s first run for office, in 1974: Something that appears potentially scandalous on its face turns out to be innocuous, but an investigation into reveals other questionable behavior. The classic case is Whitewater, a failed real-estate investment Bill and Hillary Clinton made in 1978. While no inquiry ever produced evidence of wrongdoing, investigations ultimately led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice.

With Hillary Clinton favored to win the Democratic nomination for president, every Clinton scandal—from Whitewater to Clinton’s State Department emails—will be under the microscope. (No other American politicians—even ones as corrupt as Richard Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush—has fostered the creation of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.) Keeping track of each controversy, where it came from, and how serious it is, is no small task, so here’s a primer. We’ll update it as new information emerges.

Clinton’s State Department Emails Secretary of State Hillary Clinton checks her phone on board a plane from Malta to Tripoli, Libya. (Kevin Lamarque / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What? Setting aside the question of the Clintons’ private email server, what’s in the emails that Clinton did turn over to State? While some of the emails related to Benghazi have been released, there are plenty of others covered by public-records laws that haven’t.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Who knows? The fact that Clinton sorted her own emails would seem to offer some inoculation. But a federal judge’s ruling that the State Department must release new batches of cleared emails every 30 days means there will be a monthly cycle of reporters digging into the cache—bad news for a candidate who’d rather put it behind her. Plus there have already been some strange revelations, like the fact that former Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal was advising her on Libya and a wide range of matters, and may have been the source of initial, misleading ideas that the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous mob violence. Two inspectors general have also requested a criminal investigation into whether classified material was improperly released as part of the publication of Clinton’s emails.

Benghazi A man celebrates as the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi burns on September 11, 2012. (Esam Al-Fetori / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What? On September 11, 2012, attackers overran a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Since then, Republicans have charged that Hillary Clinton failed to adequately protect U.S. installations or that she attempted to spin the attacks as spontaneous when she knew that they were planned terrorist operations.

When? September 11, 2012-present

How serious is it? Benghazi has gradually turned into a classic “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” scenario. Only the fringes argue, at this point, that Clinton deliberately withheld aid. A House committee continues to investigate the killings and aftermath. But it was through the Benghazi investigations that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server became public—a controversy that remains potent.

The Clintons’ Private Email Server Jim Young / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic

What? During the course of the Benghazi investigation, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt learned that Clinton had used a personal email account while secretary of state. It turned out she had also been using a private server, located at a house in New York. The result was that Clinton and her staff decided which emails to turn over to the State Department as public records and which to withhold; they say they then destroyed the ones they had designated as personal.

When? 2009-2013, during Clinton’s term as secretary.

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; top aides including Huma Abedin

How serious is it? The rules governing use of personal emails are murky, and Clinton aides insist that she followed all rules. There’s no evidence at this point that proves otherwise. The greater political problem for Clinton is that it raises questions about how she selected the emails she turned over and what was in the ones that she deleted. Are those emails truly deleted? Could the server have been hacked? Some of the emails she received on her personal account are marked sensitive. Plus there’s a entirely different set of questions about Clinton’s State Department emails. The FBI is investigating the security of the server as well as the safety of a thumb drive belonging to her lawyer that contains copies of her emails.

Sidney Blumenthal Blumenthal takes a lunch break while being deposed in private session of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. (Jonathan Ernst / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What? A former journalist, Blumenthal was a top aide in the second term of the Bill Clinton administration and helped on messaging during the bad old days. He served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and when she took over the State Department, she sought to hire Blumenthal. Obama aides, apparently still smarting over his role in attacks on candidate Obama, refused the request, so Clinton just sought out his counsel informally. At the same time, Blumenthal was drawing a check from the Clinton Foundation.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Some of the damage is already done. Blumenthal was apparently the source of the idea that the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous, a notion that proved incorrect and provided a political bludgeon against Clinton and Obama. He also advised the secretary on a wide range of other issues, from Northern Ireland to China. But emails released so far show even Clinton’s top foreign-policy guru, Jake Sullivan, rejecting Blumenthal’s analysis, raising questions about her judgment in trusting him.

The Speeches Keith Bedford / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic

What? Since Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001, both Clintons have made millions of dollars for giving speeches.

When? 2001-present

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; Chelsea Clinton

How serious is it? This might be the most potent of all the current Clinton scandals. For the couple, who left the White House up to their ears in legal debt, lucrative speeches—mostly by the former president—proved to be an effective way of rebuilding wealth. They have also been an effective magnet for prying questions. Where did Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton speak? How did they decide how much to charge? What did they say? How did they decide which speeches would be given on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, with fees going to the charity, and which would be treated as personal income? Are there cases of conflicts of interest or quid pro quos—for example, speaking gigs for Bill Clinton on behalf of clients who had business before the State Department?

The Clinton Foundation A brooch for sale at the Clinton Museum Store in Little Rock, Arkansas (Lucy Nicholson / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What? Bill Clinton’s foundation was actually established in 1997, but after leaving the White House it became his primary vehicle for … well, everything. With projects ranging from public health to elephant-poaching protection and small-business assistance to child development, the foundation is a huge global player with several prominent offshoots. In 2013, following Hillary Clinton’s departure as secretary of State, it was renamed the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

When? 1997-present

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; Chelsea Clinton, etc.

How serious is it? If the Clinton Foundation’s strength is President Clinton’s endless intellectual omnivorousness, its weakness is the distractibility and lack of interest in detail that sometimes come with it. On a philanthropic level, the foundation gets decent ratings from outside review groups, though critics charge that it’s too diffuse to do much good, that the money has not always achieved what it was intended to, and that in some cases the money doesn’t seem to have achieved its intended purpose. The foundation made errors in its tax returns it has to correct. Overall, however, the essential questions about the Clinton Foundation come down to two, related issues. The first is the seemingly unavoidable conflicts of interest: How did the Clintons’ charitable work intersect with their for-profit speeches? How did their speeches intersect with Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department? Were there quid-pro-quos involving U.S. policy? The second, connected question is about disclosure. When Clinton became secretary, she agreed that the foundation would make certain disclosures, which it’s now clear it didn’t always do. And the looming questions about Clinton’s State Department emails make it harder to answer those questions.

The Bad Old Days Supporter Dick Furinash holds up cardboard cut-outs of Bill and Hillary Clinton. (Jim Young / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What is it? Since the Clintons have a long history of controversies, there are any number of past scandals that continue to float around, especially in conservative media: Whitewater. Troopergate. Paula Jones. Monica Lewinsky. Vince Foster.

When? 1975-2001

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; a brigade of supporting characters

How serious is it? Not terribly. Some are wholly spurious (Foster). Others (Lewinsky, Whitewater) have been so exhaustively investigated that it’s hard to imagine them doing much further damage to Hillary Clinton’s standing. In fact, the Lewinsky scandal famously boosted her public approval ratings. But that doesn’t mean you won’t hear plenty about them.

The First Evidence from Flight MH370

Malaysia’s prime minister said Wednesday the fragment of a plane’s wing that washed ashore last week in Reunion Island belongs to flight MH370, which went missing more than a year ago with 239 people on board.

"It is with a very heavy heart, I must tell you, a team of experts have conclusively confirmed that debris found on Reunion island is indeed from MH370," Najib Razak said.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board when it disappeared from radar shortly after takeoff on March 8, 2014. An international search effort to find the aircraft turned up nothing.

“I hope that this confirmation, however tragic and painful, will at least bring certainty to the families and loved ones of the 239 people on board MH370,” Razak said Wednesday.

The recovered wing fragment—measuring 9 feet by 3 feet—is called a “flaperon,” and it was the first piece of physical evidence discovered since the plane’s disappearance. The flaperon from the Boeing 777 aircraft was sent, as my colleague Matt Schiavenza reported last week, to France where investigators determined whether it belonged to the Malaysian Airlines flight.

Razak said an international team of experts had determined that the fragment was from the missing plane.

“We now have physical evidence that on 31 March last year, flight MH370 tragically ended in the south Indian Ocean,” he said.

At a separate news conference in Paris, Serge Mackowiak, a French prosecutor, said there “is a very strong supposition” the flaperon belongs to the missing plane.

Although it’s now clear what happened to the plane, it’s still far from certain where the rest of the aircraft is. As Matt noted:

The discovery in Reunion Island, more than 2,000 miles west from the main search area, doesn’t mean the rest of the debris will be nearby: Ocean currents may have pushed other fragments of the plane toward the main search area near Australia, or even somewhere else entirely. And even the recovery of much of the aircraft may not reveal what, precisely, brought the plane down last March.

3 Questions on Jeb Bush's ‘Women's Health’ Gaffe

Jeb Bush offered a study in how not to talk about reproductive health on Tuesday. Attack Planned Parenthood? Smart politics for a Republican. Tell an audience, “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues”? Not such a great idea. Unsurprisingly, Bush now says he misspoke, but his remarks raise several interesting questions.

First, what exactly does it mean to talk about “women’s health issues”? Women often bristle at men discussing reproductive issues—a particularly common issue in politics, where men dominate. Of course, women are slightly more than half the general American population, so the idea it’s a niche concern is misguided at best and condescending at worst. This is a problem that cuts across party lines: When Republican leaders attempted to pass a late-term abortion ban that set stringent conditions on rape exceptions, female GOP lawmakers revolted and scuttled the deal. Some of the issues considered “women’s health” really do concern mostly women, like mammograms. But others, such as family planning, sexually transmitted diseases, and birth control, affect the entire population. Even if social expectations have placed much of the burden for preventing pregnancy on women, that’s a socialized rather than inherent condition.

Second, how much money is that half a billion, really? In short: not a great deal. In fact, dividing the $528.4 million Planned Parenthood received in the fiscal year ending in June 2014 by the female population of the United States, it comes out to just about $3.25 per woman per year—about the same as a grande Starbucks cold brew.

But what does that money do? About a quarter of Planned Parenthood’s government revenue comes from grants for Title X services, which comprises family-planning for low-income people, including:

contraceptions and counseling breast-cancer and cervical-cancer screening pregnancy tests and counseling testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections HIV testing

By statute, federal funding can’t go to abortion services—at Planned Parenthood or anywhere else. (Planned Parenthood says only 3 percent of its annual spending is on abortions.) But anti-abortion advocates say that doesn’t mean at all what it seems, arguing that since money is fungible, and since providing abortions is clearly important to Planned Parenthood, every federal dollar that goes to the organization frees up another dollar from another source to pay for abortions.

The other three-quarters of the government money that Planned Parenthood receives comes from Medicaid, which also provides services to low-income people. As Politico reported, that complicates the defunding push. Generally patients have broad latitude to choose their provider, so state-level efforts to block funding to Planned Parenthood have tended to be blocked by courts that find the measures infringe on patient choice.

What’s interesting about these services is pretty much everyone agrees they ought to be available. (Who’s against cervical-cancer screening?) The dispute is purely over who ought to provide it—and whether Planned Parenthood’s abortion services (and the recent sting videos) ought to disqualify it.

Planned Parenthood’s defenders argue that not only is defunding the organization potentially illegal, it’s dangerous. The rest of Bush’s quote, after the verbal misstep, offers an interesting argument. “Dollar for dollar, there are many extraordinary fine organizations, community health organizations, that exist, federally sponsored organizations, to provide quality care for women on a variety of health issues,” he said. Other social conservatives have advanced similar claims. Planned Parenthood’s critics say there are plenty of ready alternatives.

Democrats argue that isn’t true, that in the absence of Planned Parenthood, many people—including men, and not just women—would be left without providers for health care. It’s hard to predict how a national defunding would pay out, but the case of Texas offers a somewhat chastening story. The state successfully blocked Planned Parenthood from receiving funds, but lost federal Medicaid funding because it had fallen afoul of rules. As a result, women reported struggling to find the services they’d previously received. Even if Planned Parenthood’s medical services under Medicaid and Title X are replaceable, its size suggests it would be hard to immediately fill the gap.

But there will soon be another possible test. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, one of Bush’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, announced Tuesday he would block state funding for Planned Parenthood. With the federal defunding push at least temporarily stalled, Louisiana may be the battleground to watch.

Obama on the Iran Deal: The 'Strongest Nonproliferation Agreement Ever Negotiated'

Updated on August 5, 2015, at 12:55 p.m. ET

President Obama said Wednesday the deal with Iran on its nuclear program does not resolve all our problems with the Islamic republic, “but it achieves one of our most critical security objectives.”

“This is the strongest nonproliferation agreement ever negotiated,” Obama said.

Obama’s speech was at American University, the same place President Kennedy called for diplomacy and nuclear disarmament at the height of the Cold War. Wednesday’s speech also fell on the anniversary of the nuclear test-ban treaty signed by the U.S., U.K. and the Soviet Union in 1963. Obama said the agreement builds on that strong tradition of Cold War-era diplomacy.

The agreement with Iran has praised by many nonproliferation experts, but criticized on Capitol Hill as well as in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called it a “historic mistake.” Critics say the deal offers Iran many incentives, including sanctions relief, and gets too little in return.

Obama, in his speech Wednesday, spoke directly to the Israeli people, saying their concerns were “understandable,” given the nature of Iran’s theocratic regime, but: “A nuclear-armed Iran is far more dangerous … than an Iran that benefits from sanctions relief.”

The president also reiterated the administration’s position that the alternative to the agreement with Iran was conflict.

“The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war,” he said, adding that “military action would be far less effective that this deal” in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.  

The president’s comments are part of a broad push by the administration to sell the deal—which Obama described as the “most consequential foreign policy debate since the invasion of Iraq”—to Congress and the American public.

In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned that if Congress rejects the deal, it will confirm suspicions harbored by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and eventually lead to war. Kerry also sought to assuage Israeli concerns about a deal.

“I’ve gone through this backwards and forwards a hundred times and I’m telling you, this deal is as pro-Israel, as pro-Israel’s security, as it gets,” Kerry said. “And I believe that just saying no to this is, in fact, reckless.”

As part of the administration’s outreach to Congress on the deal, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz; Wendy Sherman, chief U.S. negotiator in the Iran talks; and Adam Szubin, acting undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial crimes, will brief senators Wednesday in a closed-door session.

The Associated Press notes:

The president, long criticized for his limited outreach to Capitol Hill, has displayed in particular a rare level of personal engagement with congressional lawmakers. Since the Iran agreement was finalized last month, Obama has had individual or small group conversations with 84 lawmakers. Cabinet secretaries and other senior officials have had similar outreach to 180 members.

Congress has until September 17 to vote on the deal that was struck in July. Obama has threatened a veto if lawmakers reject the historic accord. It’s unclear if Congress has enough votes to override a presidential veto.

In his speech Wednesday, Obama noted that “many of the same people who argued for war in Iraq” are opposed to the deal with Iran.

Most Republicans oppose the deal, as do some prominent Jewish Democrats, including Congressman Steve Israel of New York. Democratic lawmakers who support the agreement include Congressman Adam Schiff of California, as well as Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Bill Nelson of Florida.

Drake, Taylor Swift, and the Triumph of the Fake

If you follow pop culture, perhaps you spent part of this Tuesday clicking through Internet slideshows of images of the slideshow of Internet images that Drake showed at his most recent show. Perhaps you then Googled around to see whether anyone had yet made a meme involving Drake and the concept of ouroboros, and the best you could find was an image of the Toronto rapper in an Inception poster.

Related Story

Why Drake Replied

The Drake/Meek Mill feud that led to this grand exercise in the meta has captured public attention not only because it involves famous people, but also because it involves the question of what makes certain people famous. Mill accused Drake of not writing his own lyrics; Drake changed the subject with amusing disses that generated amusing memes that he then repurposed for a amusing PowerPoint-like presentation at his OVO Fest in Toronto. The sheer volume of Drake’s response has led many to call him the victor in the beef (Meek’s latest, paltry salvo: wedgie threats), but he’s still yet to deny the ghostwriting accusation that started it all—in fact, he just let the Internet ghostwrite his concert.

The saga’s made clear that Drake, like a lot of stars, should be thought of less as a solo artist than as a collaborator both with behind-the-scenes figures and with pop culture at large. He (and/or his team) serves up raw material—songs that balance tough-talking wit and sensitivity, but also “YOLO,” GIFable videos, and emoji tattoos—to be digested and turned into viral phenomena, which are then reseeded into the project that is “Drake”: music catalogue, media narrative, and merchandise trademark. Part of his success comes from whatever image of hip-hop authenticity that Mill tried to slash through, but more of it comes from his entertainment value, which has nothing to do with being real.

The Drake kind of celebrity is not new, but it is thriving. The Kardashians are continuing to pioneer new ways of not-so-secretly manipulating the public: Kim expanding into entrepreneurship and motherhood while maintaining her ability to winkingly “Break the Internet” with her body; Caitlyn Jenner using a deeply personal transition for a reality TV series that doubles as a public-awareness campaign. But the current media master is Taylor Swift, whose marketing is deeply powerful and as sophisticated as a multinational’s. She wears the memes made about her; she rewards her fans with films of them being rewarded; she presents her pivot from singer-songwriter country into factory-made pop as a move to satisfy her soul; she uses her friendships to evangelize for friendship to evangelize for herself.

Swift, like Drake, will always be a target of controversy because some people think this kind of manipulation is deceitful or wrong. Last month, partly spurred by a Twitter spat between Swift and Nicki Minaj (Meek Mill’s girlfriend![?]), a flood of pent-up dislike was unleashed toward the 25-year-old singer, perhaps most potently by Dayna Evans at Gawker. In a post titled “Taylor Swift Is Not Your Friend,” she called Swift “evil” for being a “a ruthless, publicly capitalist pop star” who uses feminism for profit. Like Meek Mill calling Drake a hack, articles like Evans’s create the impression of there being a counter-narrative that the public should wake up to; if only people realized their entertainers were putting on a show, they wouldn’t scream for them.

Drake just let the Internet ghostwrite his concert.

The truth, though, is that on some level fans and haters alike are already in on the routine. The majority of people who think every giggle and grin and shout-out Swift makes onstage is 100 percent the result of pure, spontaneous feeling are probably tweenagers or younger; even the most positive concert reviews from adults center around just how savvy she is. If you love dancing “Shake It Off,” if you cry to “All Too Well,” if your kid sister builds stronger bonds with her female friends because of something Swift posted on Instagram, then it means that the machine worked. If it doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for you—but another machine probably will.  

What about the idea of hypocrisy? The fact that she has rooms full of songwriters and huge marketing power might make Swift’s on-stage projection of herself as a warm, selfless underdog seem false to some. But those are also the very things that allow her to be big enough to be on that stage in the first place, putting on the show at all, delivering any sort of message—deeply sincere or not. Similarly, the existence of a ghostwriter clearly undercuts a lot of what Drake raps about (“understand nothing was done for me,” yeah right). But it’s also helped bring him the success that allows him to swagger so convincingly in front of a festival he founded, slinging disses about a guy who dared to point out that it’s all an act. Of course it’s an act. It’s entertainment.

Unwrapped: The Subtle Joys of Food Packaging

In design jargon, “appetite appeal” describes the level of sensory stimulation that food packaging should have in order to attract consumers. A product covered with only type is by default less mouth-watering than one with photographs of a delicious chicken taco or cheese pizza.

Related Story

Can Design Help the USPS Make Stamps Popular Again?

But for brands, elegant typography and bold design can telegraph its own appetizing message. For more upscale chains like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, getting customers to keep coming back is about more than just hunger: Food packaging has to signal reliability, trustworthiness, and consistency. Different companies might want to emphasize different qualities in their products—Trader Joe’s, for example, might want to signal its quirky personality, while the New York-based mini-chain Fairway might emphasize value for money. But for every single product, design has to consider a wealth of different factors in order to best sell and market its products, and, on the whole, American stores are considerably less creative and inspired than their European counterparts.

First things first: Shoppers aren’t at the store for beautifully designed labels. They’re there for food. So price is often the most important factor, particularly for staples such as milk, butter, eggs, and cereal. Other than a design snob, who really cares whether or not the Trader Joe’s generic Bran Flakes box looks like the national brand as long as the product is cheaper? And does it really matter that Fairway’s “Golden Honey” plastic bear is a cloned copy of the more expensive original Dutch Gold Honey?

m01229 / Flickr

But good design is good business. Supermarket “private labels” don’t have to be bland, and there are reasons, aside from aesthetic pleasure, why a little improvement can go a long way. A package contains more than a product—it’s a reliquary, of sorts, of that product’s story (even its fabricated story), which can be a powerful selling tool. Scores of memorable brands have iconic packaging, like Heinz, Coca-Cola, and Kraft. Companies use bottles and labels to represent their respective reputations, which gives customers a certain pride of purchase and helps maintain the products’ market superiority.

There’s also a trend among certain independent brands to increase their footholds in competitive markets on the theory that a new product combined with striking design will be the tipping point. The unfettered, elegant packages for Siggi’s yogurt, Sarabeth’s jams, and Fizzie Lizzie beverages, if not iconic have contributed to a pride of purchase among a growing number of loyal customers.

Mike Mozart / Flickr

In 1998 I co-authored Food Wrap, a survey of new design styles and techniques for supermarket and specialty stores worldwide. The book’s aim was to prove that food packaging was not entirely dictated by design conventions but by more fashionable and personal typography and illustration. In the late ’80s, independent graphic-design studios were increasingly taking commissions away from traditional packaging design firms to create a new genre of premium products for a growing yuppie market. Then, during the ’90s, a supermarket revolution of sorts took place, with stores undergoing modern redesigns and new upstart products becoming more visible in renovated aisles. Graphic designers found new ways to trigger consumers’ Pavlovian responses through more nuanced typography, illustration, and color. The result was a dichotomy between mass-market and upscale products, with audiences often willing to pay more for food products that were designed with more sophistication.

While traditional supermarket brands are designed with straightforward imagery (a ripe tomato says tomato sauce) and stylized marquee logos, designs for the “fancy food” market are subtler in terms of logo, color, typography, and imagery. But in recent years, the line between the two sectors has blurred, with upscale design conceits being introduced to mainstream products.

No one does it better than the British chain Marks & Spencer on its Simply Food collection. Focusing on a young, middle-class, fashion-conscious audience, Charlotte Raphael-Graham, the store’s head of graphic packaging, has created a culinary boutique of consistently beautiful and imaginative display worthy packages featuring hundreds of products, from eggs to tea. The soothing colors, delightful illustrations and vibrant typography, designed with wit, create a unified overall store identity and a pleasing shopping experience.

Suzanne Plunkett / Reuters

In a close second, the budget French chain Monoprix, has a range of colorful, carnivalesque packing designed by the French agency Havas City that busts supermarket conventions by using only bold sans-serif typefaces in caps covering all sides of the containers—not a picture of a sandwich or soup in sight. When all the products are displayed on the shelves, it’s clear that a great design mind is at the helm. Havas has said, that the aesthetic represents the “simplicity, humility, but also the cheerfulness of everyday life.”

Stuart Kolakovic

The same can’t be said for Fairway. Its Magic Marker-esque Fairway logo doesn’t compliment other typefaces well, and most of its house-brands seem like the name has been tacked on anywhere as an afterthought. Although nothing is egregiously ugly, there’s a graphic dissonance and brand disconnect between their specific products, rather than an overarching direction, as though the supplier of each item made their own packaging leaving an empty space for the Fairway logo.

The house design at Trader Joe’s toes the line, and sometimes achieves excellence. But here too, inconsistency reigns. Some of its cookie and cracker boxes, for instance, are given a nostalgic 19th-century engraving pastiche that suggests something from an old general store and implies “artisanal” production. But TJ’s canned and frozen foods, including chili, garbanzo beans, and tomato sauce, retain the blandly generic supermarket look, customized only with the Trader Joe’s logo. More attention to the overall graphic design may not influence all customers, but for those attuned to such things it can make all the difference between loyalty and not.

Mucca

Only Whole Foods, which created a sophisticated yet simple “handcrafted” typographic style for its first store in Gowanus, Brooklyn, deliberately challenged all the rules of conventional supermarket packaging. Designed by Mucca in New York, the system is built solely on simple yet distinctive labels that are fixed to transparent bags and plastic containers. Rather than use a photograph, the actual product—whether seven-grain bread, guacamole, or linguini—is its own illustration. And what further sets the packages apart from other premium products is how well they are integrated into a larger design system throughout the store. The entire environment exudes appetite appeal.

Critics of packaging argue that the best package is no package, suggesting a return to the venerable ways of selling food in bulk from burlap bags and wooden barrels. But branded packaged goods are not going away just yet, and good design can not only addresses sustainability issues, but also make the stressful supermarket experience a little more enjoyable.