To Students, Congress Tops ‘American Idol’
College students are regularly criticized as being ignorant, self-absorbed and interested only in pop culture. But a new national study — conducted by Tufts University researchers — found that students know more about politics and civic life than many fear they do, and more than those in the same age group who are not in college.
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The survey was conducted of people aged 18-24 who are not in the military. Half of those surveyed were in college full time and half were not. Demographics matched the population as a whole.
Among the findings:
Half of the college students and 40 percent of the non-college students could name their respective members of Congress. Nearly two-thirds of college students and more than half of the non-college students could name at least one of their two U.S. senators. In contrast, only about 15 percent of the young people knew the name of the most recent winner of “American Idol” and about 10 percent knew the winner of “Dancing with the Stars.”
Approximately 79 percent of college students and more than 73 percent of non-college students said they had voted in the November 2006 elections, but only 10 to 12 percent of respondents reported ever voting in “American Idol” and significantly fewer had voted in “Dancing with the Stars.”
At least some of students’ Web activity is political. On average, college students belonged to almost four Facebook advocacy groups. According to the Tufts study, Facebook tends to be used more for advocacy of Democratic political candidates and liberal or Democratic causes than for Republican candidates or conservative or Republican causes.
More than 61 percent of college students had participated in online political discussions or visited a politically oriented Web site.
Of college students, 58.6 percent reported being somewhat, moderately or very involved in their communities, compared with 36.7 percent for non-students of the same age. More than 47 percent of college students reported involvement with community service organizations compared with slightly more than 24 percent of non-students.
To be sure, surveys abound about the ignorance of college students on key facts of American history and civic life, and the Tufts survey wasn’t trying to find out if students stay up at night arguing over the most significant of the Federalist Papers.
But Tufts researchers were encouraged by the findings. “Young people seem to know more about politics than they know about popular culture,” said Kent E. Portney, project director and professor of political science, in a statement. “This level of political knowledge stands in stark contrast to the image of young people as uninterested in and ignorant about politics and government.”
— Scott Jaschik
Comments
American Idol? Dancing with the Stars?
I’m a college senior and I don’t know a single other student who regularly watches American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. (I also live in DC and don’t have a senator or a real representative so I guess they would have me there.)
Jack, at 10:01 am EDT on April 5, 2007
I always thought it was ridiculous to think that college students were politically apathetic. While it is stupid to watch TV or care about popular culture, in some ways caring too much about politics might hinder a student’s ability to learn analytical skills that would help them later on.
Larry, at 10:25 am EDT on April 5, 2007
No excuses
With the proliferation of information available to students today, we should have the most informed youth in the history of the world. With satelite TV, Radio and the internet, people are inundated with information, both substantive and non-substantive, 24/7.Now, if I could just get my students to identify where there classes are we would have a winner.
Cynic Professor, at 10:26 am EDT on April 5, 2007
http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/05/tufts
Showing posts with label Social Problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Problems. Show all posts
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Living for College
Commentary: Live for Yourself, Not for an Application
Here are some of my reactions to the New York Times article, "For Girls, It's be Yourself, and Be Perfect Too." (See below)
It is very true. Girls--of course boys also--today are pressured to achieve on multiple dimensions and then told to still celebrate their youth.
But I do think it is possible to achieve and still be genuine. Students just have to love what they do. I did all my extracurriculars--theater, ultimate frisbee, chinese harp, newspaper, speech team, Broadway Club, Arista, history club, tutoring, etc.--with smiles on my face because I truly enjoyed everything.
Of course the truth is not everyone enjoy everything and they are being pressured to take up everything for the sake of "being well rounded." I think that everyone will feel a lot better when they take a step back and stop worrying about what they think others want them to do and start focusing on just their own passions. Of course, then they'll think about the admissions officers and will start worrying again!
The biggest problem with this is that people start to lose themselves. They live for others and forget who they are. It's sad when freshmen in high school already start looking around for resume-padders. They should be looking to get involved; but too many do it for the wrong reason. It's great that kids can win national spelling bees knowing the word "ursprache," but did all the participants of The Bee memorize dictionaries because they were interested or because their parents told them that they should be interested? One of the scariest things I can imagine would be for people to wake up one day and realize that they have been living for someone else, that no part of their being really belonged to themselves. But it seems that this very thing happens all the time now.
Of course this is still only dwelling on message #1. Message # 2--Be yourself. Have fun. Don't work too hard--adds even more trouble.
Kaavya Viswanathan's scandal-marred "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" seemed to have been exploring this exact tension. Of course I never got to read the whole book since Little, Brown and Company pulled it from the shelves. But from what I managed to read--the free first chapter--high-achieving Opal got rejected by Harvard for not enjoying her youth and relaxing. (I think her real problem was that she wasn't doing everything she was doing for the sake of doing them, but rather for the sake of getting into Harvard.)
I think this kind of rejection does happen, sometimes unfairly, sometimes not enough (I'm probably going to get jumped for this ::laugh::). It definitely doesn't add to a campus community to have prototype nerds stay up in their dorms or the library all day. A lively college needs students who can do more than do well in classes. Life at college is shaped by those students who are willing to have lives outside of classrooms, libraries and labs.
But then some outstanding friends of mine were probably rejected because they were wrongly classified as uninteresting nerds. That coupled with the acceptance of classmates who did whatever possible to secure the top grades, who club-hopped to pad their resumes, and whose achievements also included underage drinking and drug dealing, really demonstrated to me the unfairness of the whole thing.
In the end, life is imperfect and some injustices simply can't be rectified. What we still have is a world full of enough wonderful things to occupy our time and our mind. When we are happy and in tune with the songs of the universe, we will be able to change the world for the better, a little bit at a time.
When Perfection is Not Enough
For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
In an honors philosophy/literature class, Esther Mobley, center, participates in a discussion of “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
By SARA RIMER
Published: April 1, 2007
NEWTON, Mass., March 31 — To anyone who knows 17-year-old Esther Mobley, one of the best students at one of the best public high schools in the country, it is absurd to think she doesn’t measure up. But Esther herself is quick to set the record straight.
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Excerpts: How Applying to College is Like 'The Aeneid,' and Other E-mails (April 1, 2007)
Text: Esther Mobley's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Text: Colby Kennedy's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Transcripts: 'The Appearance of Effortlessness' (April 1, 2007)
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
At Newton North High School in Newton, Mass., a Wonder Woman mural offers a role model to some girls. Newton North, one of the best public high schools in the country, gears its teaching toward gears its teaching toward a wide range of students.
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up.’
Kat Jiang
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly. This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.’
Esther Mobley
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‘I’m living up to my own expectations. It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.’
Colby Kennedy
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater. You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.’
Julie Mhlaba
“First of all, I’m a terrible athlete,” she said over lunch one day.
“I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly,” she continued. “This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.”
Esther, a willowy, effervescent senior, turned to her friend Colby Kennedy. Colby, 17, is also a great student, a classical pianist, fluent in Spanish, and a three-season varsity runner and track captain. Did Colby worry, Esther asked, that she fell short in some way?
“Or,” said Esther, and now her tone was a touch sarcastic, “do you just have it all already?”
They both burst out laughing.
Esther and Colby are two of the amazing girls at Newton North High School here in this affluent suburb just outside Boston. “Amazing girls” translation: Girls by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitious and confident (if not immune to the usual adolescent insecurities and meltdowns.) Girls who do everything: Varsity sports. Student government. Theater. Community service. Girls who have grown up learning they can do anything a boy can do, which is anything they want to do.
But being an amazing girl often doesn’t feel like enough these days when you’re competing with all the other amazing girls around the country who are applying to the same elite colleges that you have been encouraged to aspire to practically all your life.
An athlete, after all, is one of the few things Esther isn’t. A few of the things she is: a standout in Advanced Placement Latin and honors philosophy/literature who can expound on the beauty of the subjunctive tense in Catullus and on Kierkegaard’s existential choices. A writer whose junior thesis for Advanced Placement history won Newton North’s top prize. An actress. President of her church youth group.
To spend several months in a pressure cooker like Newton North is to see what a girl can be — what any young person can be — when encouraged by committed teachers and by engaged parents who can give them wide-ranging opportunities.
It is also to see these girls struggle to navigate the conflicting messages they have been absorbing, if not from their parents then from the culture, since elementary school. The first message: Bring home A’s. Do everything. Get into a top college — which doesn’t have to be in the Ivy League, or one of the other elites like Williams, Tufts or Bowdoin, but should be a “name” school.
The second message: Be yourself. Have fun. Don’t work too hard.
And, for all their accomplishments and ambitions, the amazing girls, as their teachers and classmates call them, are not immune to the third message: While it is now cool to be smart, it is not enough to be smart.
You still have to be pretty, thin and, as one of Esther’s classmates, Kat Jiang, a go-to stage manager for student theater who has a perfect 2400 score on her SATs, wrote in an e-mail message, “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.”
“Effortlessly hot,” Kat added.
If you are free to be everything, you are also expected to be everything. What it comes down to, in this place and time, is that the eternal adolescent search for self is going on at the same time as the quest for the perfect résumé. For Esther, as for high school seniors everywhere, this is a big weekend for finding out how your résumé measured up: The college acceptances, and rejections, are rolling in.
“You want to achieve,” Esther said. “But how do you achieve and still be genuine?”
If it all seems overwhelming at times, then the multitasking adults in Newton have the answer: Balance. Strive for balance.
But balance is out the window when you’re a high-achieving senior in the home stretch of the race for which all the years of achieving and the disciplined focusing on the future have been preparing you. These students are aware that because more girls apply to college than boys, amid concerns about gender balance, boys may have an edge at some small selective colleges.
“You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater,” said another of Esther’s 17-year-old classmates, Julie Mhlaba, who aspires to medical school and juggles three Advanced Placement classes, gospel choir and a part-time job as a waitress. “You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.”
“You’re supposed to do all these things,” Julie said, “and not go insane.”
Stress Trumps Relaxation
Newton, which has a population of almost 84,000, is known for a liberal sensibility and a high concentration of professionals like doctors, lawyers and academics. Six miles west of Boston, with its heavily settled neighborhoods, bustling downtowns and high numbers of immigrants, Newton is a suburb with an urban feel.
The main shopping area, in Newton Centre, is a concrete manifestation of the conflicting messages Esther and the other girls are constantly struggling to decode. In one five-block stretch are two Starbucks and one Peets Coffee & Tea, several psychotherapists’ offices, three SAT test-prep services, two after-school math programs, and three yoga studios promising relaxation and inner peace.
Smack in the middle of all of this is Esther’s church, the 227-year-old First Baptist, which welcomes everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation or denomination, and where Esther puts in a lot of time.
The test-prep business is booming. Kaplan (“Be the ideal college applicant!”) is practically around the corner from Chyten (“Our average SAT II score across all subjects is 720!”), which is three blocks from Princeton Review (“We’re all about scoring more!”). My First Yoga (for children 3 and up), with its founder playing up her Harvard degree, is conveniently located above Chyten, which includes the SAT Cafe.
High-priced SAT prep has become almost routine at schools like Newton North. Not to hire the extra help is practically an act of rebellion.
“I think it’s unfair,” Esther said, explaining why she decided against an SAT tutor, though she worried about her score (ultimately getting, as she put it, “above 2000”). “Why do I deserve this leg up?”
Parents view Newton’s expensive real estate — the median house price in 2006 was $730,000 — and high taxes as the price of admission to the prized public schools. There are less affluent parents, small-business owners, carpenters, plumbers, social workers and high school guidance counselors, but many of these families arrived decades ago when it was possible to buy a nice two-story Colonial for $150,000 or less.
Newton North, one of two outstanding public high schools here, is known for its academic rigor, but also its vocational education, reflecting the wide range of its 1,967 students. Nearly 73 percent of them are white, 7.3 percent black, nearly 12 percent Asian and 7.5 percent Hispanic. Many of the black and Hispanic students live in the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston, and are bused in under a 35-year-old voluntary integration program.
Newton North has a student theater, winning athletic teams and dozens of after-school clubs (ultimate Frisbee, mock trial, black leadership, Hispanic culture, Israeli dance). There is an emphasis on nonconformity — even if it is often conformity dressed up as nonconformity — and an absence of such high school conventions as, say, homecoming queens, valedictorians and class rankings.
‘Superhuman’ Resistance
Jennifer Price, the Newton North principal, said she and her faculty emphasized to students that they could win admission to many excellent colleges without organizing their entire lives around résumé building. By age 14, Ms. Price said, the school’s highest fliers are already worrying about marketing themselves to colleges: “You almost have to be superhuman to resist the pressure.”
If more students aren’t listening to the message that they can relax a bit, one reason may be that a lot of the people delivering the message went to the elite colleges. Ms. Price has an undergraduate degree from Princeton — she makes a point of saying that she got in because she was recruited to play varsity field hockey — and is a doctoral candidate at Harvard. Many of the teachers have degrees from the Ivy League and other elite schools.
But the message also tends to get drowned out when parents bump into each other at Whole Foods and share news about whose son or daughter just got accepted (or not) at Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn or Stanford.
Or when the final edition of the award-winning student newspaper, the Newtonite, comes out every June, with its two-page spread listing all the seniors, and their colleges. For that entire week, Esther says, everyone pores over the names, obsessing about who is going where.
“In a lot of ways, it’s all about that one week,” she said.
There is something about the lives these girls lead — their jam-packed schedules, the amped-up multitasking, the focus on a narrow group of the nation’s most selective colleges — that speaks of a profound anxiety in the young people, but perhaps even more so in their parents, about the ability of the next generation to afford to raise their families in a place like Newton.
Admission to a brand-name college is viewed by many parents, and their children, as holding the best promise of professional success and economic well-being in an increasingly competitive world.
“It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up,” Kat said.
Esther, however, is aiming for a decidedly nonlucrative profession. Inspired by her father, Greg Mobley, who is a Biblical scholar, she wants to be a theologian.
She says she is interested in “Scripture, the Bible, the development of organized religion, thinking about all this, writing about all this, teaching about all this.” More than anything else, she wrote in an e-mail message, she wants to be a writer, “and religion is what I most like to write about.”
“I have such a strong sense of being supported by my faith,” she continued. “It gives me priorities. That’s why I’m not concerned about making money, because I know that there is so much more to living a rich life than having money.”
First Baptist Church counts on Esther. She organizes pancake suppers, tutors a young congregant and helps lead the youth group’s outreach to the poor.
On a springlike Sunday afternoon toward the end of winter, Esther could be found with her father, her two brothers and members of her youth group handing out food to homeless people on Boston Common. She had spent the morning in church.
About 2 p.m., a text message flashed across her cellphone from Gabe Gladstone, a co-captain of mock trial: “Where are you?” Esther, a key member of the group, was needed at a meeting.
Esther messaged back: “I’m feeding the homeless, I’ll come when God’s work is done.”
Fending Off ‘Anorexia of the Soul’
On a Saturday afternoon in late November, Esther and her mother, Page Kelley, sat at the dining room table talking about the contradictions and complexities of life in Newton. Esther’s father was with his sons, Gregory, 15, who plays varsity basketball for Newton North, and Tommy, 10, coaching Tommy’s basketball team.
Ms. Kelley, 47, an assistant federal public defender, and Mr. Mobley, 49, a professor at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, grew up in Kentucky and came north for college. Ms. Kelley is a graduate of Smith College and Harvard Law School. Mr. Mobley has two graduate degrees from Harvard.
Amid all the competitiveness and consumerism, and the obsession with achievement in Newton, Ms. Kelley said, “You just hope your child doesn’t have anorexia of the soul.”
“It’s the idea that you end up with this strange drive,” she continued. “One of the great things about Esther is that she does have some kind of spiritual life. You just hope your kid has good priorities. We keep saying to her: ‘The name of the college you go to doesn’t matter. There are a lot of good colleges out there.’ ”
Esther said her mother is her role model. “I think the work she does is very noble,” she said.
“She has these impressive degrees,” Esther said, “and she chooses to do something where she’s not making as much money as she could.”
As close as mother and daughter are, there is one important generational divide. “My mother applied to one college,” Esther said. “She got in, she went.”
Back from basketball practice with his sons, Mr. Mobley joined the conversation. To Mr. Mobley, a formalized, competitive culture pervades everything from youth sports to getting into college. He pointed out to his wife that the lives of their three children were far more directed “than any of the aimless hours I spent in my youth daydreaming and meandering.”
Ms. Kelley asked, “Is that because of us?”
“Yes — and no,” he said. “It’s because of 2006 in America, and the Northeast.”
The bar for achievement keeps being raised for each generation, he said: “Our children start where we finished.”
As the afternoon turned into early evening, Esther went out to meet her best friend, Aliza Edelstein. The family dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Bandit, was underfoot, trolling for affection.
“I’m not worried about Esther because I know her,” Mr. Mobley said. “Esther’s character is sealed in some fundamental way.”
Ms. Kelley, however, wondered aloud: “Don’t you worry that she never rebelled? When I was growing up, you were supposed to rebel.”
But she acknowledged that she had sent her own mixed signals. “As I’m sitting here saying I don’t care what kind of grades she gets, I’m thinking, she comes home with a B, and I say: ‘What’d you get a B for? Who gave you a B? I’m going to talk to them.’
“You do want your child to do well.”
Mr. Mobley nodded. “We’re not above it,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
On a Fierce Mission to Shine
To sit in on classes with Esther in her vibrant high school where, between classes, the central corridor, called Main Street, is a bustling social hub, is to see why these students are genuinely excited about school.
Their teachers are pushing them to wrestle with big questions: What is truth? What does Virgil’s “Aeneid” tell us about destiny and individual happiness? How does DNA work? How is the global economy reshaping the world (subtext: you have to be fluid and highly educated to survive in the new economy)?
Esther’s ethics teacher, Joel Greifinger, spent considerable time this winter on moral theories. An examination of John Rawls’s theory of justice led to extensive discussions about American society and class inequality. Among the reading material Mr. Greifinger presented was research showing the correlation between income and SAT scores.
The class strengthened Esther’s earlier decision not to take private SAT prep.
In her honors philosophy/literature class, Esther has been reading Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, “Sophie’s Choice” and Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Amid a discussion of the strangely unsettling emptiness Frankl encountered upon his release from a Nazi concentration camp, Esther quoted Sartre: “You are condemned to freedom.”
Her honors teacher, Mike Fieleke, nodded. “That’s the existential idea. If we don’t awaken to that freedom, then we are slaves to our fate.”
A few weeks earlier, Esther, taking stock of her own life, wrote in an e-mail message: “I feel like I’m on the verge. I feel like I’m just about to get out of high school, to enter into adulthood, to reach some kind of state of independence and peacefulness and enlightenment.”
More immediately, she wrote, Mr. Fieleke had told her “he thought, from reading my papers and hearing me speak in class, that I was just on the verge of some really great idea.”
“I asked him if he thought that idea would come by next Wednesday, when our big Hamlet paper was due. He said I might feel this way all year long.”
The most intensely pressurized academic force field at school is the one surrounding the students on the Advanced Placement and honors track. About 145 of the 500 seniors are taking a combined total of three, four and five Advanced Placement and honors classes, with a few students even juggling six and seven.
Esther’s friend Colby takes four Advanced Placement and one honors class. “I’m living up to my own expectations,” Colby said. “It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.”
Another of Esther’s friends, from student theater, Lee Gerstenhaber, 17, was juggling four Advanced Placement classes with intense late-night rehearsals for her starring role as Maggie, the seductive Southern belle in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” It was too much. About 4 a.m one day last fall, she was still fighting her way through Advanced Placement physics homework. She dissolved in tears.
“I had always been able to do it before,” Lee recalled later. “But I finally said to myself, ‘O.K., I’m not Superwoman.’ ”
She dropped physics — and was incandescent as Maggie.
Esther’s schedule includes two Advanced Placement and one honors class. Among certain of her classmates who are mindful that many elite colleges advise prospective applicants to pursue the most rigorous possible course of study, taking two Advanced Placement classes is viewed as “only two A.P.’s.” But Esther says she is simply taking the subjects she is most interested in.
She also shrugged off advice that it would look better on her résumé to take another science class instead of her passion, A.P. Latin. Like so many of her classmates, Esther started taking Latin in the seventh grade, when everyone was saying Latin would help them with the SAT. But now, except for Esther and a handful of other diehards who are devoted to Latin — and to their teacher, Robert Mitchell — everyone else has moved on.
“I like languages,” said Esther, who also takes Advanced Placement Spanish. “And I really like Latin.”
Who Needs a Boyfriend?
This year Esther has been trying life without a boyfriend. It was her mother’s idea. “She’d say, ‘I think it’s time for you to take a break and discover who you are,’ ” Esther said over lunch with Colby. “She was right. I feel better.”
Esther turned to Colby: she seems to pretty much always have a boyfriend.
“I never felt like having a boyfriend was a burden,” Colby said. “I enjoy just being comfortable with someone, being able to spend time together. I don’t think that means I wouldn’t feel comfortable or confident without one.”
Esther said: “I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing. I’m like you. I never thought, ‘If I don’t have a boyfriend I’ll feel totally forlorn and lost.’ ”
But who needs a boyfriend? “My girlfriends have consistently been more important than my boyfriends,” Esther wrote in an e-mail message. “I mean, girlfriends last longer.”
Boyfriends or not, a deeper question for Esther and Colby is how they negotiate their identities as young women. They have grown up watching their mothers, and their friends’ mothers, juggle family and career. They take it for granted that they will be able to carve out similar paths, even if it doesn’t look easy from their vantage point.
They say they want to be both feminine and assertive, like their mothers. But Colby made the point at lunch that she would rather be considered too assertive and less conventionally feminine than “be totally passive and a bystander in my life.”
Esther agreed. She said she admired Cristina, the spunky resident on “Grey’s Anatomy,” one of her favorite TV shows.
“She really stands up for herself and knows who she is, which I aspire to,” Esther said.
Cristina is also “gorgeous,” Esther laughed. “And when she’s taking off her scrubs, she’s always wearing cute lingerie.”
Speaking of lingerie, part of being feminine is feeling good about how you look. Esther is not trying to be one of Newton North’s trendsetters, the girls who show up every day in Ugg boots, designer jeans — or equally cool jeans from the vintage store — and tight-fitting tank tops under the latest North Face jacket.
She never looks “scrubby,” to use the slang for being a slob, but sometimes comes to school in sweats and moccasins.
“I think sometimes I might be trying a little too hard not to conform,” Esther says.
She says she is one of the few girls in her circle who doesn’t have a credit card. But she is hardly immune to the pressure to be a good consumer.
During the discussion around the dining room table, Esther’s mother expressed her astonishment over her daughter’s expertise in designer jeans. They had been people-watching at the mall. Esther, as it turned out, knew the brand of every pair of jeans that went by.
So what were the coolest jeans at Newton North?
“The coolest jeans are True Religions,” Esther said.
“They look,” she said, and here she smiled sheepishly as she stood up to reveal her denim-clad legs, “like these.”
Aliza and several of Esther’s other friends chipped in to buy them for her 17th birthday, in November.
Encouraged to Ease Up a Little
The amazing boys say they admire girls like Esther and Colby.
“I hate it when girls dumb themselves down,” Gabe Gladstone, the co-captain of mock trial, was saying one morning to the other captain, Cameron Ferrey.
Cameron said he felt the same way.
One of Esther’s close friends is Dan Catomeris, a school theater star. “One of the most attractive things about Esther is how smart she is,” said Dan, whose mother is a professor at Harvard Business School. “There’s always been this intellectual tension between us. I see why she likes Kierkegaard — he’s existential, but still Christian. She really likes Descartes. I was not so into Descartes. I really like Hume, Nietzsche, the existentialist authors. The musician we’re most collectively into is Bob Dylan.”
Sometimes, though, everybody wants some of these hard-charging girls to chill out. Tom DePeter, an Advanced Placement English teacher, wants his students to loosen up so they can write original sentences. The theater director, Adam Brown, wants the girls to “let go” in auditions.
Peter Martin, the girls’ cross-country coach, says girls try so hard to please everyone — coaches, teachers, parents — that he bends over backward not to criticize them. “I tell them, ‘Just go out and run.’ ” His team wins consistently.
But how do you chill out and still get into a highly selective college?
One of Esther’s favorite rituals is to hang out at her house with Aliza, eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching a DVD of a favorite program like “The Office.” Their friendship helped Esther and Aliza keep going last fall, when there was hardly time to hang out. Esther recalled in an e-mail message how one night she had telephoned Aliza, who is also a top student, and a cross-country team captain, to say she was feeling overwhelmed.
“I said, ‘Aliza, this is crazy, I have so much homework to do, and I won’t be able to relax until I do it all. I haven’t gone out in weeks!’ And Aliza (who had also been staying in on Fridays and Saturdays to do homework) pointed out: ‘I’d rather get into college.’ ”
By Dec. 15, Newton North was in a frenzy over early admissions answers. Esther’s friend Phoebe Gardener had been accepted to Dartmouth. Her friend Dan Lurie was in at Brown. Harvard wanted Dan Catomeris.
Esther was in calculus class, the last period of the day when her cellphone rang. It was her father. The letter from Williams College — her ideal of the small, liberal arts school — had arrived.
Her father would be at her brother’s basketball game when she got home. Her mother would still be at the office. Esther did not want to be alone when she opened the letter.
“Dad, can you bring it to school?” she asked.
Ten minutes later, when her father arrived, Esther realized that he had somehow not registered the devastating thinness of the envelope. The admissions office was sorry. Williams had had a record number of highly qualified applicants for early admission this year. Esther had been rejected. Not deferred. Rejected.
Her father hugged her as she cried outside her classroom, and then he drove her home.
Esther said several days later: “Maybe it hurt me that I wasn’t an athlete.”
But she was already moving on. “I chose Williams,” she said, with a shrug. “They didn’t choose me back.”
About that thin envelope: Mr. Mobley, unschooled in such intricacies, said he hadn’t paid much attention to it. He had wanted so much for his daughter to get into Williams, he said, and believed so strongly in her, that it was as if he had wished the letter into being an acceptance.
“It was a setback,” Mr. Mobley said weeks later. “But it’s not a failure.”
And Then One Day, a Letter Arrives
Has this all been a temporary insanity?
Esther’s friend Colby learned in February that she had been accepted at the University of Southern California. Soon, more letters of acceptance rolled in: from the University of Miami, the University of Texas at Austin, Tulane. With the college-application pressure behind her, she can go back to being the pragmatic romantic who opened her journal last August and wrote her “life list,” with 35 goals and dreams, in pink ink.
She wants: To write a novel. Own a (red) Jeep Wrangler. Get into college. Name her firstborn daughter Carmen. Go to carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Learn to surf. Live in a Spanish-speaking country. Learn to play the doppio movimiento of Chopin’s Sonata in B Flat. Own a dog. Be a bridesmaid. Vote for president. Write a really good poem. Never get divorced.
In mid-January Esther was thrilled to receive an acceptance letter from Centre College, one of her fallback schools, in Kentucky. But she was still dreaming about her remaining top choices: Amherst, Middlebury, Davidson and Smith, her mother’s alma mater.
Esther’s application to Smith included a letter from her father. He wrote about how, when Esther was a baby, they had gone to his wife’s 10th college reunion. He described the alumni parade as an “angelic procession of women in white, decade by decade, at every stage in the course of human life.”
He wrote about seeing the young women, the middle-aged graduates and, finally, “the elderly women, some with the assistance of canes and wheelchairs, but with no diminution of the confidence that a great education brings.”
“I still remember holding Esther as we watched those saints go marching into the central campus for the commencement ceremony,” he wrote.
“Lord,” he concluded, and he could have been talking about any of the schools his daughter still has her heart set on, “I want Esther to be in that number.”
Epilogue: Esther learned last week that she had gotten into Smith. She learned on Saturday that she had been rejected by Amherst and Middlebury. She is still hoping for Davidson.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/us/01girls.html?ei=5070&en=8542ef1a2b8dc3e1&ex=1176436800&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all
Here are some of my reactions to the New York Times article, "For Girls, It's be Yourself, and Be Perfect Too." (See below)
It is very true. Girls--of course boys also--today are pressured to achieve on multiple dimensions and then told to still celebrate their youth.
But I do think it is possible to achieve and still be genuine. Students just have to love what they do. I did all my extracurriculars--theater, ultimate frisbee, chinese harp, newspaper, speech team, Broadway Club, Arista, history club, tutoring, etc.--with smiles on my face because I truly enjoyed everything.
Of course the truth is not everyone enjoy everything and they are being pressured to take up everything for the sake of "being well rounded." I think that everyone will feel a lot better when they take a step back and stop worrying about what they think others want them to do and start focusing on just their own passions. Of course, then they'll think about the admissions officers and will start worrying again!
The biggest problem with this is that people start to lose themselves. They live for others and forget who they are. It's sad when freshmen in high school already start looking around for resume-padders. They should be looking to get involved; but too many do it for the wrong reason. It's great that kids can win national spelling bees knowing the word "ursprache," but did all the participants of The Bee memorize dictionaries because they were interested or because their parents told them that they should be interested? One of the scariest things I can imagine would be for people to wake up one day and realize that they have been living for someone else, that no part of their being really belonged to themselves. But it seems that this very thing happens all the time now.
Of course this is still only dwelling on message #1. Message # 2--Be yourself. Have fun. Don't work too hard--adds even more trouble.
Kaavya Viswanathan's scandal-marred "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" seemed to have been exploring this exact tension. Of course I never got to read the whole book since Little, Brown and Company pulled it from the shelves. But from what I managed to read--the free first chapter--high-achieving Opal got rejected by Harvard for not enjoying her youth and relaxing. (I think her real problem was that she wasn't doing everything she was doing for the sake of doing them, but rather for the sake of getting into Harvard.)
I think this kind of rejection does happen, sometimes unfairly, sometimes not enough (I'm probably going to get jumped for this ::laugh::). It definitely doesn't add to a campus community to have prototype nerds stay up in their dorms or the library all day. A lively college needs students who can do more than do well in classes. Life at college is shaped by those students who are willing to have lives outside of classrooms, libraries and labs.
But then some outstanding friends of mine were probably rejected because they were wrongly classified as uninteresting nerds. That coupled with the acceptance of classmates who did whatever possible to secure the top grades, who club-hopped to pad their resumes, and whose achievements also included underage drinking and drug dealing, really demonstrated to me the unfairness of the whole thing.
In the end, life is imperfect and some injustices simply can't be rectified. What we still have is a world full of enough wonderful things to occupy our time and our mind. When we are happy and in tune with the songs of the universe, we will be able to change the world for the better, a little bit at a time.
When Perfection is Not Enough
For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
In an honors philosophy/literature class, Esther Mobley, center, participates in a discussion of “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
By SARA RIMER
Published: April 1, 2007
NEWTON, Mass., March 31 — To anyone who knows 17-year-old Esther Mobley, one of the best students at one of the best public high schools in the country, it is absurd to think she doesn’t measure up. But Esther herself is quick to set the record straight.
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Excerpts: How Applying to College is Like 'The Aeneid,' and Other E-mails (April 1, 2007)
Text: Esther Mobley's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Text: Colby Kennedy's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Transcripts: 'The Appearance of Effortlessness' (April 1, 2007)
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
At Newton North High School in Newton, Mass., a Wonder Woman mural offers a role model to some girls. Newton North, one of the best public high schools in the country, gears its teaching toward gears its teaching toward a wide range of students.
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up.’
Kat Jiang
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly. This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.’
Esther Mobley
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‘I’m living up to my own expectations. It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.’
Colby Kennedy
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater. You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.’
Julie Mhlaba
“First of all, I’m a terrible athlete,” she said over lunch one day.
“I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly,” she continued. “This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.”
Esther, a willowy, effervescent senior, turned to her friend Colby Kennedy. Colby, 17, is also a great student, a classical pianist, fluent in Spanish, and a three-season varsity runner and track captain. Did Colby worry, Esther asked, that she fell short in some way?
“Or,” said Esther, and now her tone was a touch sarcastic, “do you just have it all already?”
They both burst out laughing.
Esther and Colby are two of the amazing girls at Newton North High School here in this affluent suburb just outside Boston. “Amazing girls” translation: Girls by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitious and confident (if not immune to the usual adolescent insecurities and meltdowns.) Girls who do everything: Varsity sports. Student government. Theater. Community service. Girls who have grown up learning they can do anything a boy can do, which is anything they want to do.
But being an amazing girl often doesn’t feel like enough these days when you’re competing with all the other amazing girls around the country who are applying to the same elite colleges that you have been encouraged to aspire to practically all your life.
An athlete, after all, is one of the few things Esther isn’t. A few of the things she is: a standout in Advanced Placement Latin and honors philosophy/literature who can expound on the beauty of the subjunctive tense in Catullus and on Kierkegaard’s existential choices. A writer whose junior thesis for Advanced Placement history won Newton North’s top prize. An actress. President of her church youth group.
To spend several months in a pressure cooker like Newton North is to see what a girl can be — what any young person can be — when encouraged by committed teachers and by engaged parents who can give them wide-ranging opportunities.
It is also to see these girls struggle to navigate the conflicting messages they have been absorbing, if not from their parents then from the culture, since elementary school. The first message: Bring home A’s. Do everything. Get into a top college — which doesn’t have to be in the Ivy League, or one of the other elites like Williams, Tufts or Bowdoin, but should be a “name” school.
The second message: Be yourself. Have fun. Don’t work too hard.
And, for all their accomplishments and ambitions, the amazing girls, as their teachers and classmates call them, are not immune to the third message: While it is now cool to be smart, it is not enough to be smart.
You still have to be pretty, thin and, as one of Esther’s classmates, Kat Jiang, a go-to stage manager for student theater who has a perfect 2400 score on her SATs, wrote in an e-mail message, “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.”
“Effortlessly hot,” Kat added.
If you are free to be everything, you are also expected to be everything. What it comes down to, in this place and time, is that the eternal adolescent search for self is going on at the same time as the quest for the perfect résumé. For Esther, as for high school seniors everywhere, this is a big weekend for finding out how your résumé measured up: The college acceptances, and rejections, are rolling in.
“You want to achieve,” Esther said. “But how do you achieve and still be genuine?”
If it all seems overwhelming at times, then the multitasking adults in Newton have the answer: Balance. Strive for balance.
But balance is out the window when you’re a high-achieving senior in the home stretch of the race for which all the years of achieving and the disciplined focusing on the future have been preparing you. These students are aware that because more girls apply to college than boys, amid concerns about gender balance, boys may have an edge at some small selective colleges.
“You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater,” said another of Esther’s 17-year-old classmates, Julie Mhlaba, who aspires to medical school and juggles three Advanced Placement classes, gospel choir and a part-time job as a waitress. “You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.”
“You’re supposed to do all these things,” Julie said, “and not go insane.”
Stress Trumps Relaxation
Newton, which has a population of almost 84,000, is known for a liberal sensibility and a high concentration of professionals like doctors, lawyers and academics. Six miles west of Boston, with its heavily settled neighborhoods, bustling downtowns and high numbers of immigrants, Newton is a suburb with an urban feel.
The main shopping area, in Newton Centre, is a concrete manifestation of the conflicting messages Esther and the other girls are constantly struggling to decode. In one five-block stretch are two Starbucks and one Peets Coffee & Tea, several psychotherapists’ offices, three SAT test-prep services, two after-school math programs, and three yoga studios promising relaxation and inner peace.
Smack in the middle of all of this is Esther’s church, the 227-year-old First Baptist, which welcomes everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation or denomination, and where Esther puts in a lot of time.
The test-prep business is booming. Kaplan (“Be the ideal college applicant!”) is practically around the corner from Chyten (“Our average SAT II score across all subjects is 720!”), which is three blocks from Princeton Review (“We’re all about scoring more!”). My First Yoga (for children 3 and up), with its founder playing up her Harvard degree, is conveniently located above Chyten, which includes the SAT Cafe.
High-priced SAT prep has become almost routine at schools like Newton North. Not to hire the extra help is practically an act of rebellion.
“I think it’s unfair,” Esther said, explaining why she decided against an SAT tutor, though she worried about her score (ultimately getting, as she put it, “above 2000”). “Why do I deserve this leg up?”
Parents view Newton’s expensive real estate — the median house price in 2006 was $730,000 — and high taxes as the price of admission to the prized public schools. There are less affluent parents, small-business owners, carpenters, plumbers, social workers and high school guidance counselors, but many of these families arrived decades ago when it was possible to buy a nice two-story Colonial for $150,000 or less.
Newton North, one of two outstanding public high schools here, is known for its academic rigor, but also its vocational education, reflecting the wide range of its 1,967 students. Nearly 73 percent of them are white, 7.3 percent black, nearly 12 percent Asian and 7.5 percent Hispanic. Many of the black and Hispanic students live in the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston, and are bused in under a 35-year-old voluntary integration program.
Newton North has a student theater, winning athletic teams and dozens of after-school clubs (ultimate Frisbee, mock trial, black leadership, Hispanic culture, Israeli dance). There is an emphasis on nonconformity — even if it is often conformity dressed up as nonconformity — and an absence of such high school conventions as, say, homecoming queens, valedictorians and class rankings.
‘Superhuman’ Resistance
Jennifer Price, the Newton North principal, said she and her faculty emphasized to students that they could win admission to many excellent colleges without organizing their entire lives around résumé building. By age 14, Ms. Price said, the school’s highest fliers are already worrying about marketing themselves to colleges: “You almost have to be superhuman to resist the pressure.”
If more students aren’t listening to the message that they can relax a bit, one reason may be that a lot of the people delivering the message went to the elite colleges. Ms. Price has an undergraduate degree from Princeton — she makes a point of saying that she got in because she was recruited to play varsity field hockey — and is a doctoral candidate at Harvard. Many of the teachers have degrees from the Ivy League and other elite schools.
But the message also tends to get drowned out when parents bump into each other at Whole Foods and share news about whose son or daughter just got accepted (or not) at Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn or Stanford.
Or when the final edition of the award-winning student newspaper, the Newtonite, comes out every June, with its two-page spread listing all the seniors, and their colleges. For that entire week, Esther says, everyone pores over the names, obsessing about who is going where.
“In a lot of ways, it’s all about that one week,” she said.
There is something about the lives these girls lead — their jam-packed schedules, the amped-up multitasking, the focus on a narrow group of the nation’s most selective colleges — that speaks of a profound anxiety in the young people, but perhaps even more so in their parents, about the ability of the next generation to afford to raise their families in a place like Newton.
Admission to a brand-name college is viewed by many parents, and their children, as holding the best promise of professional success and economic well-being in an increasingly competitive world.
“It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up,” Kat said.
Esther, however, is aiming for a decidedly nonlucrative profession. Inspired by her father, Greg Mobley, who is a Biblical scholar, she wants to be a theologian.
She says she is interested in “Scripture, the Bible, the development of organized religion, thinking about all this, writing about all this, teaching about all this.” More than anything else, she wrote in an e-mail message, she wants to be a writer, “and religion is what I most like to write about.”
“I have such a strong sense of being supported by my faith,” she continued. “It gives me priorities. That’s why I’m not concerned about making money, because I know that there is so much more to living a rich life than having money.”
First Baptist Church counts on Esther. She organizes pancake suppers, tutors a young congregant and helps lead the youth group’s outreach to the poor.
On a springlike Sunday afternoon toward the end of winter, Esther could be found with her father, her two brothers and members of her youth group handing out food to homeless people on Boston Common. She had spent the morning in church.
About 2 p.m., a text message flashed across her cellphone from Gabe Gladstone, a co-captain of mock trial: “Where are you?” Esther, a key member of the group, was needed at a meeting.
Esther messaged back: “I’m feeding the homeless, I’ll come when God’s work is done.”
Fending Off ‘Anorexia of the Soul’
On a Saturday afternoon in late November, Esther and her mother, Page Kelley, sat at the dining room table talking about the contradictions and complexities of life in Newton. Esther’s father was with his sons, Gregory, 15, who plays varsity basketball for Newton North, and Tommy, 10, coaching Tommy’s basketball team.
Ms. Kelley, 47, an assistant federal public defender, and Mr. Mobley, 49, a professor at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, grew up in Kentucky and came north for college. Ms. Kelley is a graduate of Smith College and Harvard Law School. Mr. Mobley has two graduate degrees from Harvard.
Amid all the competitiveness and consumerism, and the obsession with achievement in Newton, Ms. Kelley said, “You just hope your child doesn’t have anorexia of the soul.”
“It’s the idea that you end up with this strange drive,” she continued. “One of the great things about Esther is that she does have some kind of spiritual life. You just hope your kid has good priorities. We keep saying to her: ‘The name of the college you go to doesn’t matter. There are a lot of good colleges out there.’ ”
Esther said her mother is her role model. “I think the work she does is very noble,” she said.
“She has these impressive degrees,” Esther said, “and she chooses to do something where she’s not making as much money as she could.”
As close as mother and daughter are, there is one important generational divide. “My mother applied to one college,” Esther said. “She got in, she went.”
Back from basketball practice with his sons, Mr. Mobley joined the conversation. To Mr. Mobley, a formalized, competitive culture pervades everything from youth sports to getting into college. He pointed out to his wife that the lives of their three children were far more directed “than any of the aimless hours I spent in my youth daydreaming and meandering.”
Ms. Kelley asked, “Is that because of us?”
“Yes — and no,” he said. “It’s because of 2006 in America, and the Northeast.”
The bar for achievement keeps being raised for each generation, he said: “Our children start where we finished.”
As the afternoon turned into early evening, Esther went out to meet her best friend, Aliza Edelstein. The family dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Bandit, was underfoot, trolling for affection.
“I’m not worried about Esther because I know her,” Mr. Mobley said. “Esther’s character is sealed in some fundamental way.”
Ms. Kelley, however, wondered aloud: “Don’t you worry that she never rebelled? When I was growing up, you were supposed to rebel.”
But she acknowledged that she had sent her own mixed signals. “As I’m sitting here saying I don’t care what kind of grades she gets, I’m thinking, she comes home with a B, and I say: ‘What’d you get a B for? Who gave you a B? I’m going to talk to them.’
“You do want your child to do well.”
Mr. Mobley nodded. “We’re not above it,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
On a Fierce Mission to Shine
To sit in on classes with Esther in her vibrant high school where, between classes, the central corridor, called Main Street, is a bustling social hub, is to see why these students are genuinely excited about school.
Their teachers are pushing them to wrestle with big questions: What is truth? What does Virgil’s “Aeneid” tell us about destiny and individual happiness? How does DNA work? How is the global economy reshaping the world (subtext: you have to be fluid and highly educated to survive in the new economy)?
Esther’s ethics teacher, Joel Greifinger, spent considerable time this winter on moral theories. An examination of John Rawls’s theory of justice led to extensive discussions about American society and class inequality. Among the reading material Mr. Greifinger presented was research showing the correlation between income and SAT scores.
The class strengthened Esther’s earlier decision not to take private SAT prep.
In her honors philosophy/literature class, Esther has been reading Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, “Sophie’s Choice” and Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Amid a discussion of the strangely unsettling emptiness Frankl encountered upon his release from a Nazi concentration camp, Esther quoted Sartre: “You are condemned to freedom.”
Her honors teacher, Mike Fieleke, nodded. “That’s the existential idea. If we don’t awaken to that freedom, then we are slaves to our fate.”
A few weeks earlier, Esther, taking stock of her own life, wrote in an e-mail message: “I feel like I’m on the verge. I feel like I’m just about to get out of high school, to enter into adulthood, to reach some kind of state of independence and peacefulness and enlightenment.”
More immediately, she wrote, Mr. Fieleke had told her “he thought, from reading my papers and hearing me speak in class, that I was just on the verge of some really great idea.”
“I asked him if he thought that idea would come by next Wednesday, when our big Hamlet paper was due. He said I might feel this way all year long.”
The most intensely pressurized academic force field at school is the one surrounding the students on the Advanced Placement and honors track. About 145 of the 500 seniors are taking a combined total of three, four and five Advanced Placement and honors classes, with a few students even juggling six and seven.
Esther’s friend Colby takes four Advanced Placement and one honors class. “I’m living up to my own expectations,” Colby said. “It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.”
Another of Esther’s friends, from student theater, Lee Gerstenhaber, 17, was juggling four Advanced Placement classes with intense late-night rehearsals for her starring role as Maggie, the seductive Southern belle in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” It was too much. About 4 a.m one day last fall, she was still fighting her way through Advanced Placement physics homework. She dissolved in tears.
“I had always been able to do it before,” Lee recalled later. “But I finally said to myself, ‘O.K., I’m not Superwoman.’ ”
She dropped physics — and was incandescent as Maggie.
Esther’s schedule includes two Advanced Placement and one honors class. Among certain of her classmates who are mindful that many elite colleges advise prospective applicants to pursue the most rigorous possible course of study, taking two Advanced Placement classes is viewed as “only two A.P.’s.” But Esther says she is simply taking the subjects she is most interested in.
She also shrugged off advice that it would look better on her résumé to take another science class instead of her passion, A.P. Latin. Like so many of her classmates, Esther started taking Latin in the seventh grade, when everyone was saying Latin would help them with the SAT. But now, except for Esther and a handful of other diehards who are devoted to Latin — and to their teacher, Robert Mitchell — everyone else has moved on.
“I like languages,” said Esther, who also takes Advanced Placement Spanish. “And I really like Latin.”
Who Needs a Boyfriend?
This year Esther has been trying life without a boyfriend. It was her mother’s idea. “She’d say, ‘I think it’s time for you to take a break and discover who you are,’ ” Esther said over lunch with Colby. “She was right. I feel better.”
Esther turned to Colby: she seems to pretty much always have a boyfriend.
“I never felt like having a boyfriend was a burden,” Colby said. “I enjoy just being comfortable with someone, being able to spend time together. I don’t think that means I wouldn’t feel comfortable or confident without one.”
Esther said: “I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing. I’m like you. I never thought, ‘If I don’t have a boyfriend I’ll feel totally forlorn and lost.’ ”
But who needs a boyfriend? “My girlfriends have consistently been more important than my boyfriends,” Esther wrote in an e-mail message. “I mean, girlfriends last longer.”
Boyfriends or not, a deeper question for Esther and Colby is how they negotiate their identities as young women. They have grown up watching their mothers, and their friends’ mothers, juggle family and career. They take it for granted that they will be able to carve out similar paths, even if it doesn’t look easy from their vantage point.
They say they want to be both feminine and assertive, like their mothers. But Colby made the point at lunch that she would rather be considered too assertive and less conventionally feminine than “be totally passive and a bystander in my life.”
Esther agreed. She said she admired Cristina, the spunky resident on “Grey’s Anatomy,” one of her favorite TV shows.
“She really stands up for herself and knows who she is, which I aspire to,” Esther said.
Cristina is also “gorgeous,” Esther laughed. “And when she’s taking off her scrubs, she’s always wearing cute lingerie.”
Speaking of lingerie, part of being feminine is feeling good about how you look. Esther is not trying to be one of Newton North’s trendsetters, the girls who show up every day in Ugg boots, designer jeans — or equally cool jeans from the vintage store — and tight-fitting tank tops under the latest North Face jacket.
She never looks “scrubby,” to use the slang for being a slob, but sometimes comes to school in sweats and moccasins.
“I think sometimes I might be trying a little too hard not to conform,” Esther says.
She says she is one of the few girls in her circle who doesn’t have a credit card. But she is hardly immune to the pressure to be a good consumer.
During the discussion around the dining room table, Esther’s mother expressed her astonishment over her daughter’s expertise in designer jeans. They had been people-watching at the mall. Esther, as it turned out, knew the brand of every pair of jeans that went by.
So what were the coolest jeans at Newton North?
“The coolest jeans are True Religions,” Esther said.
“They look,” she said, and here she smiled sheepishly as she stood up to reveal her denim-clad legs, “like these.”
Aliza and several of Esther’s other friends chipped in to buy them for her 17th birthday, in November.
Encouraged to Ease Up a Little
The amazing boys say they admire girls like Esther and Colby.
“I hate it when girls dumb themselves down,” Gabe Gladstone, the co-captain of mock trial, was saying one morning to the other captain, Cameron Ferrey.
Cameron said he felt the same way.
One of Esther’s close friends is Dan Catomeris, a school theater star. “One of the most attractive things about Esther is how smart she is,” said Dan, whose mother is a professor at Harvard Business School. “There’s always been this intellectual tension between us. I see why she likes Kierkegaard — he’s existential, but still Christian. She really likes Descartes. I was not so into Descartes. I really like Hume, Nietzsche, the existentialist authors. The musician we’re most collectively into is Bob Dylan.”
Sometimes, though, everybody wants some of these hard-charging girls to chill out. Tom DePeter, an Advanced Placement English teacher, wants his students to loosen up so they can write original sentences. The theater director, Adam Brown, wants the girls to “let go” in auditions.
Peter Martin, the girls’ cross-country coach, says girls try so hard to please everyone — coaches, teachers, parents — that he bends over backward not to criticize them. “I tell them, ‘Just go out and run.’ ” His team wins consistently.
But how do you chill out and still get into a highly selective college?
One of Esther’s favorite rituals is to hang out at her house with Aliza, eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching a DVD of a favorite program like “The Office.” Their friendship helped Esther and Aliza keep going last fall, when there was hardly time to hang out. Esther recalled in an e-mail message how one night she had telephoned Aliza, who is also a top student, and a cross-country team captain, to say she was feeling overwhelmed.
“I said, ‘Aliza, this is crazy, I have so much homework to do, and I won’t be able to relax until I do it all. I haven’t gone out in weeks!’ And Aliza (who had also been staying in on Fridays and Saturdays to do homework) pointed out: ‘I’d rather get into college.’ ”
By Dec. 15, Newton North was in a frenzy over early admissions answers. Esther’s friend Phoebe Gardener had been accepted to Dartmouth. Her friend Dan Lurie was in at Brown. Harvard wanted Dan Catomeris.
Esther was in calculus class, the last period of the day when her cellphone rang. It was her father. The letter from Williams College — her ideal of the small, liberal arts school — had arrived.
Her father would be at her brother’s basketball game when she got home. Her mother would still be at the office. Esther did not want to be alone when she opened the letter.
“Dad, can you bring it to school?” she asked.
Ten minutes later, when her father arrived, Esther realized that he had somehow not registered the devastating thinness of the envelope. The admissions office was sorry. Williams had had a record number of highly qualified applicants for early admission this year. Esther had been rejected. Not deferred. Rejected.
Her father hugged her as she cried outside her classroom, and then he drove her home.
Esther said several days later: “Maybe it hurt me that I wasn’t an athlete.”
But she was already moving on. “I chose Williams,” she said, with a shrug. “They didn’t choose me back.”
About that thin envelope: Mr. Mobley, unschooled in such intricacies, said he hadn’t paid much attention to it. He had wanted so much for his daughter to get into Williams, he said, and believed so strongly in her, that it was as if he had wished the letter into being an acceptance.
“It was a setback,” Mr. Mobley said weeks later. “But it’s not a failure.”
And Then One Day, a Letter Arrives
Has this all been a temporary insanity?
Esther’s friend Colby learned in February that she had been accepted at the University of Southern California. Soon, more letters of acceptance rolled in: from the University of Miami, the University of Texas at Austin, Tulane. With the college-application pressure behind her, she can go back to being the pragmatic romantic who opened her journal last August and wrote her “life list,” with 35 goals and dreams, in pink ink.
She wants: To write a novel. Own a (red) Jeep Wrangler. Get into college. Name her firstborn daughter Carmen. Go to carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Learn to surf. Live in a Spanish-speaking country. Learn to play the doppio movimiento of Chopin’s Sonata in B Flat. Own a dog. Be a bridesmaid. Vote for president. Write a really good poem. Never get divorced.
In mid-January Esther was thrilled to receive an acceptance letter from Centre College, one of her fallback schools, in Kentucky. But she was still dreaming about her remaining top choices: Amherst, Middlebury, Davidson and Smith, her mother’s alma mater.
Esther’s application to Smith included a letter from her father. He wrote about how, when Esther was a baby, they had gone to his wife’s 10th college reunion. He described the alumni parade as an “angelic procession of women in white, decade by decade, at every stage in the course of human life.”
He wrote about seeing the young women, the middle-aged graduates and, finally, “the elderly women, some with the assistance of canes and wheelchairs, but with no diminution of the confidence that a great education brings.”
“I still remember holding Esther as we watched those saints go marching into the central campus for the commencement ceremony,” he wrote.
“Lord,” he concluded, and he could have been talking about any of the schools his daughter still has her heart set on, “I want Esther to be in that number.”
Epilogue: Esther learned last week that she had gotten into Smith. She learned on Saturday that she had been rejected by Amherst and Middlebury. She is still hoping for Davidson.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/us/01girls.html?ei=5070&en=8542ef1a2b8dc3e1&ex=1176436800&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Wall Street Journal March Archive
Monthly Archive - March 2007March 7, 2007, 6:30 pm
WSJ/NBC News Poll Shows Giuliani's Strength
Giuliani
Americans are already paying close attention to the 2008 presidential race, and they are giving new traction to one rising star in each party.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that among Republicans, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has climbed into a solid lead for his party’s nomination for the White House. Boasting support across his party’s ideological spectrum, Giuliani leads Arizona Sen. John McCain by 55% to 34% in a head to head match of the two top Republican candidates.
Among Democrats, the Journal/NBC poll shows, Barack Obama continues his improbable rising in the White House race after just two years as a U.S. senator from Illinois. Obama trails Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton by a relatively narrow 47% to 39% in a match between two candidates who could make history. Clinton, a New York senator and former First Lady, could become America’s first woman president; Obama could become the first African-American president.
The telephone poll of 1,007 adults, conducted March 2-5 by Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, carries a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. Read more. –John Harwood
Readers: In your opinion, who’s the strongest Republican candidate?
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Read more: Global, Campaign 2008 March 7, 2007, 4:52 pm
Obama: Default Position?
Obama
Sen. Barack Obama, on the hot seat for a couple of investments in companies backed by big donors, told reporters today, “At no point did I know that stocks were held, and at no point did I direct how those stocks were invested.”
At the end of a press conference on immigration, the Illinois Democrat and presidential hopeful, said he didn’t want investments “that potentially would create conflicts with my work here,” and explained that his broker bought the stocks as part of a quasi-blind trust. “Obviously, the thing didn’t work the way I wanted it to.”
Could it be that when it comes to controversies, Obama’s emerging default position is the claim that he has no idea what people around him are doing on his behalf? Last month, when the fight broke out between the Obama and Hillary Clinton camps over cutting remarks about the Clintons by Hollywood mogul and Obama supporter David Geffen, Obama distanced himself from the fight — particularly from a fusillade from his campaign aide Robert Gibbs — saying he had been on a plane, got a haircut and took his daughters to school while the mud fight erupted.
We’re waiting to hear what Obama says next, since he is certain to get more questions on the investment matter, first reported by the New York Times. It involves purchases of stock in AVI Biopharma and Skyterra Communications; a major investor in both was Obama friend and contributor George W. Haywood. Also, back in 2005, another Skyterra investor Jared Abbruzzese, an Albany, N.Y., area businessman, and his wife, Sherrie, contributed $10,000 to Obama’s political action committee, the Hope Fund.
Abbruzzese is now part of a public corruption investigation in Albany. For the Abbruzzeses, the donation to the Obama PAC was a deviation. The Center for Responsive Politics shows they gave $75,000 to the Republican National Committee in the 2005-2006 election cycle, $10,000 to the 21st Century Freedom PAC, headed by former New York Gov. George Pataki. Former New York Rep. John Sweeney, who lost his re-election bid last November amid questions about domestic violence, got $6,100 from the couple, and Sen. Bob Corker, the newly elected Republican senator from Tennessee, got $2,500. –Mary Lu Carnevale
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Read more: Global, Campaign 2008 March 7, 2007, 11:33 am
Gates Opposes Repeal of Estate Tax
Gates
Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates told a Senate panel today that he opposes a repeal of the federal estate tax.
Tax-cut legislation enacted in 2001 reduced the estate tax rate and provided for 10 years of increasing exemptions. For 2007, the top estate tax rate is 45% and the exemption is $2 million. Under the law, the tax is fully repealed in 2010 but will be revived in 2011 with a top rate of 55% and an exemption of $1 million. Pending legislation proposes making the full repeal permanent.
Gates’s father, Bill Gates Sr., has launched a public campaign in opposition to such a repeal along with other financial beacons such as Warren Buffett.
Sen. Kennedy and Gates on Capitol Hill
Asked Wednesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, “How are you getting along with your dad?” Gates said he agreed with many of his father’s arguments. Gates said he hadn’t spoken much about the issue publicly, choosing instead to focus on issues such as competitiveness and global health. Gates said of his father’s efforts, “I think what he’s doing has a lot of merit.”
Gates has made similar comments in the past, but never in such a public forum, a Microsoft spokesman said. Gates was testifying on American competitiveness before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee.
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Read more: Global, Budget, Spending and Taxes March 7, 2007, 12:15 am
As Doubts on Economy Grow, Stock Investors Stay Upbeat
Americans have become more pessimistic about the health of the economy, but investors remain confident about stocks despite recent market fluctuations.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of American adults shows a significant decline in economic confidence since the year began. About 31% of Americans now expect the economy to get worse over the next year, double the proportion who said so in January.
Yet a smaller group of Americans with some stock-market investments remains bullish. Among those who say they have at least $5,000 in the market, 46% expect the market to move higher over the next year, while just 16% expect the market to fall. One-third expect the market to stay the same. Read the full article.–John Harwood
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Read more: Global, Economy March 6, 2007, 7:11 pm
Clinton’s Focus on Women
Sen. Hillary Clinton is focusing her presidential campaign on women these days. At a lunchtime address to Emily’s List, she announced a new outreach to women — Women for Hillary — and she said she will reintroduce her bill aimed at shrinking the pay gap between men and women.
The numbers tell the story: In 2004, 54% of the votes were cast by women, and if Clinton can attract significantly more support among women than her opponents can, the effect could be decisive. Emily’s List, a political committee that raises money for Democratic women candidates who support abortion rights, has already endorsed Clinton. Today, she promised the crowd of some 1,200 that “together, we can break the hardest and highest of glass ceilings,” by electing her in 2008.
In a “Hillcast” on pay parity, Clinton (this time wearing a blue jacket with a mandarin collar) said the Paycheck Fairness Act would give women greater ability to sue their employers for pay discrimination, bar employers from punishing employees for sharing salary information and enforce equal pay laws for federal contracts. But passage will be difficult. Similar bills have been introduced in the House and Senate every Congress since 1997.
To build support among younger women and their mothers, the Clinton campaign is preparing to launch a Web site next week: www.icanbepresident.com. –Dean Treftz
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Read more: Global, Campaign 2008 March 6, 2007, 5:30 pm
Case Closed?
“I do not expect to file any additional charges,” special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald declared at a news conference after a jury convicted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. “We’re all going back to our day jobs.”
That would be one of the most remarkable outcomes of the government’s CIA leak investigation since any number of earlier independent counsel investigations have dragged on for years, winding up far afield from the original probe. (Think Whitewater, which began in 1993 as an investigation into a failed Arkansas land deal and ended in 2000 after delving into the White House travel office, the suicide of a White House lawyer, and President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky – all at a cost to taxpayers of some $80 million.)
While Fitzgerald said that if new information materializes “we will take action,” he made it clear he wants to return to his “day job” as the U.S. attorney in Chicago. He was tapped for the CIA leak case in 2003 by then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey, a friend who gave him wide latitude as special prosecutor. When Fitzgerald started going after journalists, many thought he had little regard for the First Amendment. And when his investigation reached President Bush’s inner circle, conservatives cried foul. Still others thought he didn’t go far enough. Even today, juror Denis Collins, a former Washington Post reporter, said jurors wanted to hear from other Bush administration officials, including political adviser Karl Rove. “It was said a number of times [by jurors], ‘What are we doing with this guy here? Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?’ ” Collins said. “It seemed like he [Libby] was, as Mr. Wells put it, he was the fall guy.”
But details of how that came about might never become public. As a special prosecutor — and not an independent counsel — he doesn’t have to file a report on the on the probe. –John McCary
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Read more: Global, Courts March 6, 2007, 5:24 pm
A Little Respect
President Bush said “he respected the jury’s verdict,” much as “he was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said after the former White House aide was convicted of perjury and related crimes. Vice President Cheney, however, had no word on respect for the jury or its verdict.
“I am very disappointed with the verdict. I am saddened for Scooter and his family. As I have said before, Scooter has served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction through many years of public service,” the vice president said in a statement. Because Libby, who served as Cheney’s chief of staff, plans to seek a new trial or appeal his conviction, “I plan to have no further comment on the merits of this matter until these proceedings are concluded,” the vice president said. –Jess Bravin
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Read more: Global, Courts, White House March 6, 2007, 4:11 pm
A Teaching Moment for President Bush?
Days before President Bush begins a five-country tour of Latin America, the University of Nebraska sued to end the administration’s hold on a Bolivian professor originally slated to teach at the Lincoln campus in August 2005.
The university first petitioned for the historian, Waskar Ari, to receive a special worker visa nearly two years ago, paying extra fees to guarantee a decision within 15 business days. But the application has been delayed “for unspecified ’security checks,’” according to the Washington immigration firm handling the suit.
Ari’s lawyer, Michael Maggio, has said officials may have mistakenly linked his client to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has strongly criticized the Bush administration and, like Ari, is an Aymara Indian.
Ari received a Ph.D. from Georgetown University in May 2005 and returned to Bolivia for what he expected to be a brief visit before assuming his duties at Nebraska. Instead, officials summoned him to the U.S. Embassy in La Paz and canceled his visa. “I don’t understand. I am considered to be very pro-America in Bolivia,” Ari told the Washington Post last summer.
In another prominent case, the government denied a visa to Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss professor and vocal supporter of Palestinians, to teach Islamic studies at Notre Dame. Decisions to deny a visa are not subject to appeal, though immigrants can sue government agencies to fully process their applications.
Bush will arrive in Brazil on Friday, followed by visits to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. Washington Wire noted Monday that Bush plans to meet with ordinary people “to counter a rise in leftist sentiment symbolized by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez .” –Ben Winograd
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Read more: Global, Foreign Policy, White House March 6, 2007, 3:14 pm
White House Doesn’t Rule Out Pardon for Libby
The White House said it wouldn’t comment on the Libby case.
Well, OK, maybe just a little.
Notably, the administration refused to rule out a pardon for the former senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, convicted today of perjury and obstruction of justice. At a lively daily briefing for reporters, spokeswoman Dana Perino said in response to questions that “there’s a process in place for all Americans if they want to receive a pardon from a president.” She added that she wasn’t characterizing Libby’s prospects of getting clemency if he eventually does apply. “I don’t think that speculating on a wildly hypothetical situation at this time is appropriate,” she said.
Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada had immediately called for President Bush to pledge that he wouldn’t pardon Libby, who now faces a prison term. Some legal observers thought Libby put himself on a track to ask for a pardon by not calling Cheney as a witness or rehashing many potentially embarrassing or incriminating events.
Perino also described Bush’s whereabouts when the verdict was announced (he was in the Oval Office with Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and senior adviser Dan Bartlett) as well as his reaction (sadness for Libby and his family). She added that the president respected the jury verdict. In response to questions, she also disagreed with the suggestion that the verdict reflected a culture of corruption in the administration or a cloud on the vice president’s office. And she acknowledged that it can be “frustrating” to go through such a lengthy investigation into “unpleasant” issues.
She initially said it was appropriate for Reid to make his comments about the verdict, but when asked why it then wasn’t appropriate for the White House to comment, too, she said she wasn’t “going to make a judgment on Sen. Reid.” –John D. McKinnon
Vote: Do you agree with the guilty verdict?
Readers: Was the White House’s response appropriate?
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Read more: Global, White House March 6, 2007, 2:21 pm
Libby Juror Has His Say
Scooter Libby juror Denis Collins, in a lengthy news conference on the courtroom steps, said the least convincing argument presented in the trial was that “Mr. Libby was working so hard that he could just forget everything. Our conclusion was, yeah, he worked hard and had some memory problems… But you don’t forget what you know.”
Still, the 57-year-old former Washington Post reporter, said the jury felt sympathy for Libby, his wife and children. “It’s not like I would vote for Mr. Libby if he ran for office,” said Collin, “but we all felt for him…the unpleasantness of passing judgment was palpable.”
As for a pardon, he said, “Personally, I wouldn’t be upset a bit… I just don’t have any anger toward Mr. Libby.” Collins, who said he’s a registered Democrat, said politics didn’t enter into the jury’s verdict.
Evaluating the lawyers’ performances, Collins said both Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (whom he described as “a light heavyweight, straight ahead” fighter) and Theodore Wells, Libby’s lead attorney, (“He kinda jumped around”) both were first-rate. “We just thought Fitzgerald was given a lot more to work with.” –Mary Lu Carnevale
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Read more: Global March 6, 2007, 1:14 pm
Democrats Applaud Verdict in Libby Case
Libby
Democratic leaders quickly weighed in on the jury’s guilty verdict against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, issued a statement, saying, “I welcome the jury’s verdict. It’s about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics.”
He went on to say that Libby “has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney’s role in this sordid affair. Now, President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the trial “provided a troubling picture of the inner workings of the Bush Administration. The testimony unmistakably revealed — at the highest levels of the Bush Administration — a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq.”
The Democratic National Committee, meantime, put a picture of Libby and a banner headline “GUILTY” on its Web site. The first comment, was simply: “MERRY FITZMAS!!!!”
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in a news conference outside the courtroom, told reporters that “any lie under oath is serious… The truth is what drives the judicial system.”
Libby attorney Theodore Wells told reporters that the defense team plans to file a motion for a new trial and if that’s rejected, will appeal. “Despite our disappointment in the jurors’ verdict, we believe in the American justice system and we believe in the jury system,'’ he said. –Mary Lu Carnevale
UPDATE: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.) said Libby’s conviction “underscores what happens when our foreign and national security policies are subverted by politics and ideology. Leaks and innuendo in pursuit of a flawed policy lead to shameful episodes such as this. It should never happen again.”
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.) said the “entire intelligence community was chilled by this politically-motivated outing by White House operatives. While the White House was saying “trust us” to the American people, it simultaneously was saying to the American intelligence community “if you tell the truth, we’ll threaten your family.” This deception is now catching up with them.”
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Read more: Global, White House March 6, 2007, 10:17 am
Labor Takes on Bush Trade Agenda
The labor community is stepping up opposition to the Bush trade agenda.
AFL-CIO leaders are signaling their intention to challenge efforts to renew the president’s trade-negotiating authority, which expires at the end of June. The authority gives the president the ability to negotiate trade deals and submit them to Congress for approval without amendment. It’s a top priority of the White House, and would give the administration added time to finish a deal in the Doha Round of world-wide trade talks.
At a news conference today, leaders of the AFL-CIO are expected to urge the Democratic-controlled Congress to embrace an “alternative vision” for trade policy, one that strengthens the role of Congress in negotiations and puts greater emphasis on worker rights and environmental standards, among other things. The challenge posed by the AFL-CIO will raise pressure on Democratic leaders not to compromise with the White House on trade.
In recent weeks, top Democrats, including House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), have talked with the Bush administration about elevating labor rights in pending U.S. trade deals with Peru, Colombia and Panama, as well as the president’s broader negotiating authority. The AFL-CIO supports greater protections for worker rights but is skeptical that the White House will ever agree to a level of protection acceptable to the labor movement. Moreover, the AFL-CIO has a number of additional concerns with the Bush trade agenda, such as the patent protections sought for U.S. pharmaceuticals. –Greg Hitt
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Read more: Global, Business, Trade March 6, 2007, 8:46 am
Global Economy 'as Strong as I've Seen,' Paulson Says
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Tuesday said the world economy is very strong amid substantial growth in Japan, China, the U.S. and developing countries around the world. “The global economy is more than sound: it’s as strong as I’ve seen in my business lifetime.” Paulson, who is meeting with Japanese officials on the first day of a four-day visit to Asia, downplayed the long-term impact of the global stock market decline.
“Markets very seldom move in a straight line,” Paulson said to reporters after a meeting at the Tokyo Stock Exchange. “You are always going to have volatility.” Paulson told reporters the U.S. economy is strong, supported by low inflation, growing employment, and higher wages. He noted that U.S. home sales and prices have slowed over the past year. –Elizabeth Price
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Read more: Global, Economy March 6, 2007, 8:30 am
Fed Official Sees Plenty of Liquidity
Despite last week’s turmoil in the financial markets, liquidity is not “in short supply,” says Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.
Warsh told the Institute of International Bankers in Washington today that while “risk premiums” – the additional return investors demand to hold a risky asset – “rose some last week, markets are functioning well… and overall liquidity does not appear to be in short supply.” But he cautioned that it’s too soon for a “comprehensive” assessment.
Stocks world-wide fell sharply last week and yields on risky debt, such as bonds backed by subprime mortgages, rose sharply. Futures markets priced in a higher probability that the Fed would cut interest rates this year because of the Fed’s history of easing monetary policy in response to disorderly market conditions, and because weaker stock prices and higher risk premiums often foreshadow economic weakness.
But in the last week, Fed officials have struck a confident tone, even arguing that periods of such volatility are healthy safeguards against investor complacency. That suggests little inclination as yet to cut rates.
Fed Governor Randall Kroszner told a community bankers’ meeting in Washington that “the outlook for the U.S. economy has not materially changed.” And William Poole, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said in Santiago, Chile, that it would be wise for the Fed not to respond to the trouble through its monetary policy “until you have a better idea of what’s actually happening.”
Warsh said that judging from liquidity alone, “it would be hard to conclude that monetary policy has been restrictive.” He said liquidity has multiple definitions, but he defined it as investors’ confidence in their ability to buy and sell with ease because they can quantify risks. In conditions like those of recent months, when investors believe the economic outlook is “benign” and more damaging possibilities remote or easy to measure, he said, liquidity is “plentiful.”
Warsh, a former investment banker, said investor overconfidence could not be “ruled out,” but he cited fundamental explanations for low risk premiums. The economy is less volatile, there are many new financial products for spreading risk and investors such as hedge funds to buy them, and emerging markets are sending excess savings to developed countries, he said. Even if there is a shakeout, risks will remain easier to disperse and hedge, he said. –Greg Ip
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Read more: Global March 6, 2007, 8:15 am
Libby Trial: Defining 'Humanly Possible'
On the ninth day of jury deliberations in the I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial, jurors posed this question to Judge Reggie Walton: “We would like clarification of the term ‘reasonable doubt.’ Specifically, is it necessary for the government to present evidence that it is not humanly possible for someone not to recall an event in order to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?'’
The question led to nearly an hour of discussion among the judge, the prosecution and the defense. Walton replied, via note, that the jurors should reread his earlier instructions, and he had a question for them, too: What did they mean by “humanly possible.'’
Reporters trying to read the tea leaves have come up with their own pastime: a pool on the timing of the verdict. But even that isn’t running smoothly. Votes had to be recast today since most of those in the pool figured the decision would come this past Friday. Odds now favor Wednesday or Thursday. –John McCary
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Read more: Global, Courts, White House March 5, 2007, 5:30 pm
Bush Calls Latin American Poverty a 'Scandal'
Bush
Just as he’s acknowledging economic inequality in the U.S., President Bush also is talking more about the vast gulf between rich and poor in Latin America.
In a speech today outlining his message for this week’s trip to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, Bush called poverty in the region a “scandal” — an unusual admission for the normally upbeat president. Since a speech on Wall Street in January, Bush also has been talking more about inequality in the U.S.
Bush’s trip to Latin America will include several stops where he’ll meet with ordinary people, in what aides acknowledge is a new White House effort to demonstrate his sensitivity to the region’s poverty as well as its potential. Bush is trying to counter a rise in leftist sentiment symbolized by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Friday, Bush will take part in a roundtable at the Meninos do Morumbi community center, located in a neighborhood where very wealthy people live near some of the city’s poorest street kids. On Sunday in Colombia, Bush will take part in a roundtable with Afro-Colombians who’ve benefited from U.S. and Colombian educational initiatives. And in Guatemala, Bush will visit an agricultural cooperative, the Labradores Mayas packing station, which provides jobs for indigenous farmers and has been benefiting from trade liberalization.
Bush said today that prosperity in Latin America too often has depended on accidents of birth, a veiled reference to the disparity that exists between European and non-European groups in the region. Still, the White House made no dramatic new aid announcements. Instead, the trip is focused broadly on doing a better job of convincing Latin Americans that democracy and free-market trade bring benefits, a senior White House official said. –John D. McKinnon
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Read more: Global, Foreign Policy, White House March 5, 2007, 5:03 pm
It Takes a Commission
Sen. Judd Gregg, (R., N.H.), said the last time Congress was on the verge of dealing with Social Security reform, Monica Lewinsky interfered, throwing Congress into chaos and squelching lawmakers’ ability to push through a bipartisan bill. This time, he fears Vice President Dick Cheney may have gotten in the way.
Gregg and Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) have been working behind the scenes to build support for a bipartisan commission to deal with reforming entitlements, including Social Security and Medicare, and tackling tax reform as well.
They plan to introduce legislation this week establishing a 16-member commission, made up equally of Democrats and Republicans and chaired by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The commission would be required to take action by October. Gregg says everything would be on the table for discussion, including benefit cuts and tax increases as Congress looks for ways to restrain the costs of Social Security and Medicare, which are ballooning and could eventually swamp the federal budget. That jibes with comments made by Paulson, who has told lawmakers that he wants a discussion without “preconditions” that would cover everyone’s ideas, including taxes.
“Everybody was pretty comfortable with it, then some comments were made that caused people to be skittish,” says Gregg. Those comments included ones made by Cheney, who said that while President Bush wants a discussion on entitlement reform without preconditions, “we don’t believe a tax increase is necessary.”
Those remarks struck a sour note with Democrats, who don’t trust the White House to take seriously anything that includes a tax increase. House Democrats are now said to be wary of backing the commission.
Gregg said the vice president “undercut” the efforts of lawmakers to tackle entitlement reform. “It was a statement that he was directed to make in order to shore up the folks who are concerned about the [tax] rate issues,” he says.
Meanwhile, Paulson is eager to get lawmakers to the table to discuss reform in private and out of the public eye. While he doesn’t necessarily think legislation is necessary to create a commission, people familiar with the matter said he’s willing to participate should a commission be formed.
“We welcome discussions on this issue,” a Treasury spokeswoman said. —Deborah Solomon
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Read more: Global, Congress, Budget, Spending and Taxes, Domestic Policy March 5, 2007, 3:49 pm
Norquist: Romney Introduced, Not Endorsed
Romney
Conservative leader (and Americans for Taxpayer Reform founder) Grover Norquist may have introduced presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this past week, but that doesn’t mean he’s endorsed him.
“It was an introduction, not an endorsement,” Norquist told WSJ editors and reporters today. Norquist says he called all of the nominees to let them know he’d be introducing Romney at the CPAC conference and why: he was the first 2008 Republican presidential nominee to sign the Americans for Taxpayer Reform pledge not to raise taxes.
Two other Republican hopefuls — Rudy Giuliani and John McCain — haven’t signed the pledge yet, but Norquist expects they will by the summer. Republican Mike Huckabee signed the pledge Friday, after getting hammered by the conservative Club for Growth, which released a paper detailing how he raised taxes while governor of Arkansas.
When will Norquist endorse a candidate? Not until every candidate has either signed the tax pledge or made it clear he won’t (which would, obviously, make that person likelier to win the Democratic presidential nomination than get Norquist’s seal of approval). The candidates will be asked to make some more detailed pledges on tax reform before he makes his choice, says Norquist, who added that he hopes to make his choice this summer. He also figures there could be room for his friend (and former House speaker) Newt Gingrich in the Republican race — if Giuliani, McCain or Romney falter. –Amy Schatz
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Read more: Global, Budget, Spending and Taxes, Campaign 2008 March 5, 2007, 2:46 pm
Encouraging Investments From Abroad
With Congress moving to tighten U.S. scrutiny of foreign investment, the Bush administration is launching an initiative to encourage fresh flows of capital from abroad.
Under the initiative to be announced Wednesday, the Commerce Department will head a special task force charged with promoting the U.S. as an attractive destination for foreign investment. The task force will be led by Commerce Undersecretary Franklin Lavin.
Just last week, the House voted 423-0 for legislation to increase U.S. scrutiny of overseas-led business deals — a move that puts pressure on the Senate to act. Among other things, the bill would require the administration to conduct a 45-day investigation of most deals involving foreign governments, give intelligence agencies a formal role in the review and increase disclosure to Congress. –Greg Hitt
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Read more: Global, Business, Trade March 5, 2007, 2:33 pm
High Court Rejects Colorado Map Case
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court found no constitutional problem when the Texas Legislature redrew congressional districts seven years ahead of the next census so as to give Republican candidates a leg up. On Monday, the court — citing different legal issues at play – reached the opposite result in Colorado, rejecting an appeal that sought to advantage a Republican candidate through a map redrawn years ahead of schedule by a Republican-controlled legislature.
Unlike Texas, Colorado’s state constitution limits redistricting to once per census. The state gained a seat after the 2000 census, but the legislature, split between a Democratic Senate and a Republican House, deadlocked on a new map. That threw the issue into state court, which imposed a Democratic-proposed map that put the new seat in Denver’s competitive north suburbs rather than in the Republican-dominated area south of the city.
Republicans took back the state Senate in 2002 and, although Republican Bob Beauprez had narrowly won the new seat, redrew the lines to strengthen their party’s hold in the 2004 elections. In December 2003, however, the Colorado Supreme Court barred the redrawn map from taking effect, citing the state constitution’s limit of one redistricting per census.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 refused to hear a Republican appeal, but four Colorado citizens not party to that case then filed their own suit, alleging that the Colorado court’s decision ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that the “legislature” of each state “shall” prescribe the “manner of holding elections for senators and representatives.”
In its unsigned opinion today, the high court didn’t discuss the merits of the citizen claim. Instead, it said the citizens had no standing to bring the claim in the first place.
“The only injury plaintiffs allege is that the law — specifically the Elections Clause — has not been followed. This injury is precisely the kind of undifferentiated, generalized grievance about the conduct of government that we have refused to countenance in the past,” the justices said, distinguishing the appeal from voting rights cases where individuals alleged that state action had impaired their own ability to cast effective ballots.
As it happens, Beauprez won re-election in 2004, but gave up his seat to run for governor last year, losing to Democrat Bill Ritter. Democrat Ed Perlmutter picked up Beauprez’s old district, giving the Democrats a 4-3 edge in Colorado’s congressional delegation. –Jess Bravin
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Read more: Global, Congress, Courts March 5, 2007, 9:35 am
CPAC Votes for Reagan
Ronald Reagan is alive and well — at least, he was at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend. In a straw poll of conference participants, 79% said they would support “a Ronald Reagan Republican” for president, while only 3% said they would support a “George W. Bush Republican.” Still, 82% said they favor the president’s strategy in Iraq.
The conservative vote remained split, with no candidate a clear favorite. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the straw poll for president with 21%, followed by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani with 17% of the votes from those attending the annual conference — a must-stop for candidates seeking the support of the party’s social conservative wing. Full results of the poll are at CPAC’s Web site. –June Kronholz
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Read more: Global March 5, 2007, 9:27 am
White House Tussles on Doha
As angst over the shaky state of the U.S. trade agenda grows, tensions are emerging within President Bush’s inner circle over how best to get the stalled Doha round of world trade talks moving. The chairman of the National Economic Council, presidential friend Allan Hubbard, and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley have privately voiced frustration with the tortured pace of action in the latest stage of comprehensive talks.
Launched in Doha, Qatar, soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the talks had as their primary aim better integrating poor nations into the global trading system. Hubbard and Hadley have pressed for a bolder U.S. offer in an effort to encourage other countries to compromise.
In one heated meeting among top Bush aides just before Christmas in the Old Executive Office Building, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab opposed the idea of a grand offer. Schwab, who had seen a similar move by her predecessor flop, pushed instead for “quiet negotiations” focusing on details to build trust among Doha’s participants.
Bush sided with Schwab, and has continued to back her. But she is now at risk of being overshadowed — some fear undercut — by new Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who is moving deeper into the public debate on Doha and trade. Read more. –Greg Hitt and Deborah Solomon
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Read more: Global, White House, Trade
WSJ/NBC News Poll Shows Giuliani's Strength
Giuliani
Americans are already paying close attention to the 2008 presidential race, and they are giving new traction to one rising star in each party.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that among Republicans, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has climbed into a solid lead for his party’s nomination for the White House. Boasting support across his party’s ideological spectrum, Giuliani leads Arizona Sen. John McCain by 55% to 34% in a head to head match of the two top Republican candidates.
Among Democrats, the Journal/NBC poll shows, Barack Obama continues his improbable rising in the White House race after just two years as a U.S. senator from Illinois. Obama trails Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton by a relatively narrow 47% to 39% in a match between two candidates who could make history. Clinton, a New York senator and former First Lady, could become America’s first woman president; Obama could become the first African-American president.
The telephone poll of 1,007 adults, conducted March 2-5 by Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, carries a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. Read more. –John Harwood
Readers: In your opinion, who’s the strongest Republican candidate?
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Read more: Global, Campaign 2008 March 7, 2007, 4:52 pm
Obama: Default Position?
Obama
Sen. Barack Obama, on the hot seat for a couple of investments in companies backed by big donors, told reporters today, “At no point did I know that stocks were held, and at no point did I direct how those stocks were invested.”
At the end of a press conference on immigration, the Illinois Democrat and presidential hopeful, said he didn’t want investments “that potentially would create conflicts with my work here,” and explained that his broker bought the stocks as part of a quasi-blind trust. “Obviously, the thing didn’t work the way I wanted it to.”
Could it be that when it comes to controversies, Obama’s emerging default position is the claim that he has no idea what people around him are doing on his behalf? Last month, when the fight broke out between the Obama and Hillary Clinton camps over cutting remarks about the Clintons by Hollywood mogul and Obama supporter David Geffen, Obama distanced himself from the fight — particularly from a fusillade from his campaign aide Robert Gibbs — saying he had been on a plane, got a haircut and took his daughters to school while the mud fight erupted.
We’re waiting to hear what Obama says next, since he is certain to get more questions on the investment matter, first reported by the New York Times. It involves purchases of stock in AVI Biopharma and Skyterra Communications; a major investor in both was Obama friend and contributor George W. Haywood. Also, back in 2005, another Skyterra investor Jared Abbruzzese, an Albany, N.Y., area businessman, and his wife, Sherrie, contributed $10,000 to Obama’s political action committee, the Hope Fund.
Abbruzzese is now part of a public corruption investigation in Albany. For the Abbruzzeses, the donation to the Obama PAC was a deviation. The Center for Responsive Politics shows they gave $75,000 to the Republican National Committee in the 2005-2006 election cycle, $10,000 to the 21st Century Freedom PAC, headed by former New York Gov. George Pataki. Former New York Rep. John Sweeney, who lost his re-election bid last November amid questions about domestic violence, got $6,100 from the couple, and Sen. Bob Corker, the newly elected Republican senator from Tennessee, got $2,500. –Mary Lu Carnevale
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Read more: Global, Campaign 2008 March 7, 2007, 11:33 am
Gates Opposes Repeal of Estate Tax
Gates
Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates told a Senate panel today that he opposes a repeal of the federal estate tax.
Tax-cut legislation enacted in 2001 reduced the estate tax rate and provided for 10 years of increasing exemptions. For 2007, the top estate tax rate is 45% and the exemption is $2 million. Under the law, the tax is fully repealed in 2010 but will be revived in 2011 with a top rate of 55% and an exemption of $1 million. Pending legislation proposes making the full repeal permanent.
Gates’s father, Bill Gates Sr., has launched a public campaign in opposition to such a repeal along with other financial beacons such as Warren Buffett.
Sen. Kennedy and Gates on Capitol Hill
Asked Wednesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, “How are you getting along with your dad?” Gates said he agreed with many of his father’s arguments. Gates said he hadn’t spoken much about the issue publicly, choosing instead to focus on issues such as competitiveness and global health. Gates said of his father’s efforts, “I think what he’s doing has a lot of merit.”
Gates has made similar comments in the past, but never in such a public forum, a Microsoft spokesman said. Gates was testifying on American competitiveness before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee.
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Read more: Global, Budget, Spending and Taxes March 7, 2007, 12:15 am
As Doubts on Economy Grow, Stock Investors Stay Upbeat
Americans have become more pessimistic about the health of the economy, but investors remain confident about stocks despite recent market fluctuations.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of American adults shows a significant decline in economic confidence since the year began. About 31% of Americans now expect the economy to get worse over the next year, double the proportion who said so in January.
Yet a smaller group of Americans with some stock-market investments remains bullish. Among those who say they have at least $5,000 in the market, 46% expect the market to move higher over the next year, while just 16% expect the market to fall. One-third expect the market to stay the same. Read the full article.–John Harwood
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Read more: Global, Economy March 6, 2007, 7:11 pm
Clinton’s Focus on Women
Sen. Hillary Clinton is focusing her presidential campaign on women these days. At a lunchtime address to Emily’s List, she announced a new outreach to women — Women for Hillary — and she said she will reintroduce her bill aimed at shrinking the pay gap between men and women.
The numbers tell the story: In 2004, 54% of the votes were cast by women, and if Clinton can attract significantly more support among women than her opponents can, the effect could be decisive. Emily’s List, a political committee that raises money for Democratic women candidates who support abortion rights, has already endorsed Clinton. Today, she promised the crowd of some 1,200 that “together, we can break the hardest and highest of glass ceilings,” by electing her in 2008.
In a “Hillcast” on pay parity, Clinton (this time wearing a blue jacket with a mandarin collar) said the Paycheck Fairness Act would give women greater ability to sue their employers for pay discrimination, bar employers from punishing employees for sharing salary information and enforce equal pay laws for federal contracts. But passage will be difficult. Similar bills have been introduced in the House and Senate every Congress since 1997.
To build support among younger women and their mothers, the Clinton campaign is preparing to launch a Web site next week: www.icanbepresident.com. –Dean Treftz
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Read more: Global, Campaign 2008 March 6, 2007, 5:30 pm
Case Closed?
“I do not expect to file any additional charges,” special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald declared at a news conference after a jury convicted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. “We’re all going back to our day jobs.”
That would be one of the most remarkable outcomes of the government’s CIA leak investigation since any number of earlier independent counsel investigations have dragged on for years, winding up far afield from the original probe. (Think Whitewater, which began in 1993 as an investigation into a failed Arkansas land deal and ended in 2000 after delving into the White House travel office, the suicide of a White House lawyer, and President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky – all at a cost to taxpayers of some $80 million.)
While Fitzgerald said that if new information materializes “we will take action,” he made it clear he wants to return to his “day job” as the U.S. attorney in Chicago. He was tapped for the CIA leak case in 2003 by then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey, a friend who gave him wide latitude as special prosecutor. When Fitzgerald started going after journalists, many thought he had little regard for the First Amendment. And when his investigation reached President Bush’s inner circle, conservatives cried foul. Still others thought he didn’t go far enough. Even today, juror Denis Collins, a former Washington Post reporter, said jurors wanted to hear from other Bush administration officials, including political adviser Karl Rove. “It was said a number of times [by jurors], ‘What are we doing with this guy here? Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?’ ” Collins said. “It seemed like he [Libby] was, as Mr. Wells put it, he was the fall guy.”
But details of how that came about might never become public. As a special prosecutor — and not an independent counsel — he doesn’t have to file a report on the on the probe. –John McCary
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Read more: Global, Courts March 6, 2007, 5:24 pm
A Little Respect
President Bush said “he respected the jury’s verdict,” much as “he was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said after the former White House aide was convicted of perjury and related crimes. Vice President Cheney, however, had no word on respect for the jury or its verdict.
“I am very disappointed with the verdict. I am saddened for Scooter and his family. As I have said before, Scooter has served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction through many years of public service,” the vice president said in a statement. Because Libby, who served as Cheney’s chief of staff, plans to seek a new trial or appeal his conviction, “I plan to have no further comment on the merits of this matter until these proceedings are concluded,” the vice president said. –Jess Bravin
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Read more: Global, Courts, White House March 6, 2007, 4:11 pm
A Teaching Moment for President Bush?
Days before President Bush begins a five-country tour of Latin America, the University of Nebraska sued to end the administration’s hold on a Bolivian professor originally slated to teach at the Lincoln campus in August 2005.
The university first petitioned for the historian, Waskar Ari, to receive a special worker visa nearly two years ago, paying extra fees to guarantee a decision within 15 business days. But the application has been delayed “for unspecified ’security checks,’” according to the Washington immigration firm handling the suit.
Ari’s lawyer, Michael Maggio, has said officials may have mistakenly linked his client to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has strongly criticized the Bush administration and, like Ari, is an Aymara Indian.
Ari received a Ph.D. from Georgetown University in May 2005 and returned to Bolivia for what he expected to be a brief visit before assuming his duties at Nebraska. Instead, officials summoned him to the U.S. Embassy in La Paz and canceled his visa. “I don’t understand. I am considered to be very pro-America in Bolivia,” Ari told the Washington Post last summer.
In another prominent case, the government denied a visa to Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss professor and vocal supporter of Palestinians, to teach Islamic studies at Notre Dame. Decisions to deny a visa are not subject to appeal, though immigrants can sue government agencies to fully process their applications.
Bush will arrive in Brazil on Friday, followed by visits to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. Washington Wire noted Monday that Bush plans to meet with ordinary people “to counter a rise in leftist sentiment symbolized by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez .” –Ben Winograd
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Read more: Global, Foreign Policy, White House March 6, 2007, 3:14 pm
White House Doesn’t Rule Out Pardon for Libby
The White House said it wouldn’t comment on the Libby case.
Well, OK, maybe just a little.
Notably, the administration refused to rule out a pardon for the former senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, convicted today of perjury and obstruction of justice. At a lively daily briefing for reporters, spokeswoman Dana Perino said in response to questions that “there’s a process in place for all Americans if they want to receive a pardon from a president.” She added that she wasn’t characterizing Libby’s prospects of getting clemency if he eventually does apply. “I don’t think that speculating on a wildly hypothetical situation at this time is appropriate,” she said.
Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada had immediately called for President Bush to pledge that he wouldn’t pardon Libby, who now faces a prison term. Some legal observers thought Libby put himself on a track to ask for a pardon by not calling Cheney as a witness or rehashing many potentially embarrassing or incriminating events.
Perino also described Bush’s whereabouts when the verdict was announced (he was in the Oval Office with Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and senior adviser Dan Bartlett) as well as his reaction (sadness for Libby and his family). She added that the president respected the jury verdict. In response to questions, she also disagreed with the suggestion that the verdict reflected a culture of corruption in the administration or a cloud on the vice president’s office. And she acknowledged that it can be “frustrating” to go through such a lengthy investigation into “unpleasant” issues.
She initially said it was appropriate for Reid to make his comments about the verdict, but when asked why it then wasn’t appropriate for the White House to comment, too, she said she wasn’t “going to make a judgment on Sen. Reid.” –John D. McKinnon
Vote: Do you agree with the guilty verdict?
Readers: Was the White House’s response appropriate?
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Read more: Global, White House March 6, 2007, 2:21 pm
Libby Juror Has His Say
Scooter Libby juror Denis Collins, in a lengthy news conference on the courtroom steps, said the least convincing argument presented in the trial was that “Mr. Libby was working so hard that he could just forget everything. Our conclusion was, yeah, he worked hard and had some memory problems… But you don’t forget what you know.”
Still, the 57-year-old former Washington Post reporter, said the jury felt sympathy for Libby, his wife and children. “It’s not like I would vote for Mr. Libby if he ran for office,” said Collin, “but we all felt for him…the unpleasantness of passing judgment was palpable.”
As for a pardon, he said, “Personally, I wouldn’t be upset a bit… I just don’t have any anger toward Mr. Libby.” Collins, who said he’s a registered Democrat, said politics didn’t enter into the jury’s verdict.
Evaluating the lawyers’ performances, Collins said both Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (whom he described as “a light heavyweight, straight ahead” fighter) and Theodore Wells, Libby’s lead attorney, (“He kinda jumped around”) both were first-rate. “We just thought Fitzgerald was given a lot more to work with.” –Mary Lu Carnevale
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Read more: Global March 6, 2007, 1:14 pm
Democrats Applaud Verdict in Libby Case
Libby
Democratic leaders quickly weighed in on the jury’s guilty verdict against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, issued a statement, saying, “I welcome the jury’s verdict. It’s about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics.”
He went on to say that Libby “has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney’s role in this sordid affair. Now, President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the trial “provided a troubling picture of the inner workings of the Bush Administration. The testimony unmistakably revealed — at the highest levels of the Bush Administration — a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq.”
The Democratic National Committee, meantime, put a picture of Libby and a banner headline “GUILTY” on its Web site. The first comment, was simply: “MERRY FITZMAS!!!!”
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in a news conference outside the courtroom, told reporters that “any lie under oath is serious… The truth is what drives the judicial system.”
Libby attorney Theodore Wells told reporters that the defense team plans to file a motion for a new trial and if that’s rejected, will appeal. “Despite our disappointment in the jurors’ verdict, we believe in the American justice system and we believe in the jury system,'’ he said. –Mary Lu Carnevale
UPDATE: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.) said Libby’s conviction “underscores what happens when our foreign and national security policies are subverted by politics and ideology. Leaks and innuendo in pursuit of a flawed policy lead to shameful episodes such as this. It should never happen again.”
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.) said the “entire intelligence community was chilled by this politically-motivated outing by White House operatives. While the White House was saying “trust us” to the American people, it simultaneously was saying to the American intelligence community “if you tell the truth, we’ll threaten your family.” This deception is now catching up with them.”
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Read more: Global, White House March 6, 2007, 10:17 am
Labor Takes on Bush Trade Agenda
The labor community is stepping up opposition to the Bush trade agenda.
AFL-CIO leaders are signaling their intention to challenge efforts to renew the president’s trade-negotiating authority, which expires at the end of June. The authority gives the president the ability to negotiate trade deals and submit them to Congress for approval without amendment. It’s a top priority of the White House, and would give the administration added time to finish a deal in the Doha Round of world-wide trade talks.
At a news conference today, leaders of the AFL-CIO are expected to urge the Democratic-controlled Congress to embrace an “alternative vision” for trade policy, one that strengthens the role of Congress in negotiations and puts greater emphasis on worker rights and environmental standards, among other things. The challenge posed by the AFL-CIO will raise pressure on Democratic leaders not to compromise with the White House on trade.
In recent weeks, top Democrats, including House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), have talked with the Bush administration about elevating labor rights in pending U.S. trade deals with Peru, Colombia and Panama, as well as the president’s broader negotiating authority. The AFL-CIO supports greater protections for worker rights but is skeptical that the White House will ever agree to a level of protection acceptable to the labor movement. Moreover, the AFL-CIO has a number of additional concerns with the Bush trade agenda, such as the patent protections sought for U.S. pharmaceuticals. –Greg Hitt
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Read more: Global, Business, Trade March 6, 2007, 8:46 am
Global Economy 'as Strong as I've Seen,' Paulson Says
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Tuesday said the world economy is very strong amid substantial growth in Japan, China, the U.S. and developing countries around the world. “The global economy is more than sound: it’s as strong as I’ve seen in my business lifetime.” Paulson, who is meeting with Japanese officials on the first day of a four-day visit to Asia, downplayed the long-term impact of the global stock market decline.
“Markets very seldom move in a straight line,” Paulson said to reporters after a meeting at the Tokyo Stock Exchange. “You are always going to have volatility.” Paulson told reporters the U.S. economy is strong, supported by low inflation, growing employment, and higher wages. He noted that U.S. home sales and prices have slowed over the past year. –Elizabeth Price
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Read more: Global, Economy March 6, 2007, 8:30 am
Fed Official Sees Plenty of Liquidity
Despite last week’s turmoil in the financial markets, liquidity is not “in short supply,” says Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.
Warsh told the Institute of International Bankers in Washington today that while “risk premiums” – the additional return investors demand to hold a risky asset – “rose some last week, markets are functioning well… and overall liquidity does not appear to be in short supply.” But he cautioned that it’s too soon for a “comprehensive” assessment.
Stocks world-wide fell sharply last week and yields on risky debt, such as bonds backed by subprime mortgages, rose sharply. Futures markets priced in a higher probability that the Fed would cut interest rates this year because of the Fed’s history of easing monetary policy in response to disorderly market conditions, and because weaker stock prices and higher risk premiums often foreshadow economic weakness.
But in the last week, Fed officials have struck a confident tone, even arguing that periods of such volatility are healthy safeguards against investor complacency. That suggests little inclination as yet to cut rates.
Fed Governor Randall Kroszner told a community bankers’ meeting in Washington that “the outlook for the U.S. economy has not materially changed.” And William Poole, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said in Santiago, Chile, that it would be wise for the Fed not to respond to the trouble through its monetary policy “until you have a better idea of what’s actually happening.”
Warsh said that judging from liquidity alone, “it would be hard to conclude that monetary policy has been restrictive.” He said liquidity has multiple definitions, but he defined it as investors’ confidence in their ability to buy and sell with ease because they can quantify risks. In conditions like those of recent months, when investors believe the economic outlook is “benign” and more damaging possibilities remote or easy to measure, he said, liquidity is “plentiful.”
Warsh, a former investment banker, said investor overconfidence could not be “ruled out,” but he cited fundamental explanations for low risk premiums. The economy is less volatile, there are many new financial products for spreading risk and investors such as hedge funds to buy them, and emerging markets are sending excess savings to developed countries, he said. Even if there is a shakeout, risks will remain easier to disperse and hedge, he said. –Greg Ip
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Read more: Global March 6, 2007, 8:15 am
Libby Trial: Defining 'Humanly Possible'
On the ninth day of jury deliberations in the I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial, jurors posed this question to Judge Reggie Walton: “We would like clarification of the term ‘reasonable doubt.’ Specifically, is it necessary for the government to present evidence that it is not humanly possible for someone not to recall an event in order to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?'’
The question led to nearly an hour of discussion among the judge, the prosecution and the defense. Walton replied, via note, that the jurors should reread his earlier instructions, and he had a question for them, too: What did they mean by “humanly possible.'’
Reporters trying to read the tea leaves have come up with their own pastime: a pool on the timing of the verdict. But even that isn’t running smoothly. Votes had to be recast today since most of those in the pool figured the decision would come this past Friday. Odds now favor Wednesday or Thursday. –John McCary
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Read more: Global, Courts, White House March 5, 2007, 5:30 pm
Bush Calls Latin American Poverty a 'Scandal'
Bush
Just as he’s acknowledging economic inequality in the U.S., President Bush also is talking more about the vast gulf between rich and poor in Latin America.
In a speech today outlining his message for this week’s trip to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, Bush called poverty in the region a “scandal” — an unusual admission for the normally upbeat president. Since a speech on Wall Street in January, Bush also has been talking more about inequality in the U.S.
Bush’s trip to Latin America will include several stops where he’ll meet with ordinary people, in what aides acknowledge is a new White House effort to demonstrate his sensitivity to the region’s poverty as well as its potential. Bush is trying to counter a rise in leftist sentiment symbolized by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Friday, Bush will take part in a roundtable at the Meninos do Morumbi community center, located in a neighborhood where very wealthy people live near some of the city’s poorest street kids. On Sunday in Colombia, Bush will take part in a roundtable with Afro-Colombians who’ve benefited from U.S. and Colombian educational initiatives. And in Guatemala, Bush will visit an agricultural cooperative, the Labradores Mayas packing station, which provides jobs for indigenous farmers and has been benefiting from trade liberalization.
Bush said today that prosperity in Latin America too often has depended on accidents of birth, a veiled reference to the disparity that exists between European and non-European groups in the region. Still, the White House made no dramatic new aid announcements. Instead, the trip is focused broadly on doing a better job of convincing Latin Americans that democracy and free-market trade bring benefits, a senior White House official said. –John D. McKinnon
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Read more: Global, Foreign Policy, White House March 5, 2007, 5:03 pm
It Takes a Commission
Sen. Judd Gregg, (R., N.H.), said the last time Congress was on the verge of dealing with Social Security reform, Monica Lewinsky interfered, throwing Congress into chaos and squelching lawmakers’ ability to push through a bipartisan bill. This time, he fears Vice President Dick Cheney may have gotten in the way.
Gregg and Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) have been working behind the scenes to build support for a bipartisan commission to deal with reforming entitlements, including Social Security and Medicare, and tackling tax reform as well.
They plan to introduce legislation this week establishing a 16-member commission, made up equally of Democrats and Republicans and chaired by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The commission would be required to take action by October. Gregg says everything would be on the table for discussion, including benefit cuts and tax increases as Congress looks for ways to restrain the costs of Social Security and Medicare, which are ballooning and could eventually swamp the federal budget. That jibes with comments made by Paulson, who has told lawmakers that he wants a discussion without “preconditions” that would cover everyone’s ideas, including taxes.
“Everybody was pretty comfortable with it, then some comments were made that caused people to be skittish,” says Gregg. Those comments included ones made by Cheney, who said that while President Bush wants a discussion on entitlement reform without preconditions, “we don’t believe a tax increase is necessary.”
Those remarks struck a sour note with Democrats, who don’t trust the White House to take seriously anything that includes a tax increase. House Democrats are now said to be wary of backing the commission.
Gregg said the vice president “undercut” the efforts of lawmakers to tackle entitlement reform. “It was a statement that he was directed to make in order to shore up the folks who are concerned about the [tax] rate issues,” he says.
Meanwhile, Paulson is eager to get lawmakers to the table to discuss reform in private and out of the public eye. While he doesn’t necessarily think legislation is necessary to create a commission, people familiar with the matter said he’s willing to participate should a commission be formed.
“We welcome discussions on this issue,” a Treasury spokeswoman said. —Deborah Solomon
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Read more: Global, Congress, Budget, Spending and Taxes, Domestic Policy March 5, 2007, 3:49 pm
Norquist: Romney Introduced, Not Endorsed
Romney
Conservative leader (and Americans for Taxpayer Reform founder) Grover Norquist may have introduced presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this past week, but that doesn’t mean he’s endorsed him.
“It was an introduction, not an endorsement,” Norquist told WSJ editors and reporters today. Norquist says he called all of the nominees to let them know he’d be introducing Romney at the CPAC conference and why: he was the first 2008 Republican presidential nominee to sign the Americans for Taxpayer Reform pledge not to raise taxes.
Two other Republican hopefuls — Rudy Giuliani and John McCain — haven’t signed the pledge yet, but Norquist expects they will by the summer. Republican Mike Huckabee signed the pledge Friday, after getting hammered by the conservative Club for Growth, which released a paper detailing how he raised taxes while governor of Arkansas.
When will Norquist endorse a candidate? Not until every candidate has either signed the tax pledge or made it clear he won’t (which would, obviously, make that person likelier to win the Democratic presidential nomination than get Norquist’s seal of approval). The candidates will be asked to make some more detailed pledges on tax reform before he makes his choice, says Norquist, who added that he hopes to make his choice this summer. He also figures there could be room for his friend (and former House speaker) Newt Gingrich in the Republican race — if Giuliani, McCain or Romney falter. –Amy Schatz
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Read more: Global, Budget, Spending and Taxes, Campaign 2008 March 5, 2007, 2:46 pm
Encouraging Investments From Abroad
With Congress moving to tighten U.S. scrutiny of foreign investment, the Bush administration is launching an initiative to encourage fresh flows of capital from abroad.
Under the initiative to be announced Wednesday, the Commerce Department will head a special task force charged with promoting the U.S. as an attractive destination for foreign investment. The task force will be led by Commerce Undersecretary Franklin Lavin.
Just last week, the House voted 423-0 for legislation to increase U.S. scrutiny of overseas-led business deals — a move that puts pressure on the Senate to act. Among other things, the bill would require the administration to conduct a 45-day investigation of most deals involving foreign governments, give intelligence agencies a formal role in the review and increase disclosure to Congress. –Greg Hitt
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Read more: Global, Business, Trade March 5, 2007, 2:33 pm
High Court Rejects Colorado Map Case
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court found no constitutional problem when the Texas Legislature redrew congressional districts seven years ahead of the next census so as to give Republican candidates a leg up. On Monday, the court — citing different legal issues at play – reached the opposite result in Colorado, rejecting an appeal that sought to advantage a Republican candidate through a map redrawn years ahead of schedule by a Republican-controlled legislature.
Unlike Texas, Colorado’s state constitution limits redistricting to once per census. The state gained a seat after the 2000 census, but the legislature, split between a Democratic Senate and a Republican House, deadlocked on a new map. That threw the issue into state court, which imposed a Democratic-proposed map that put the new seat in Denver’s competitive north suburbs rather than in the Republican-dominated area south of the city.
Republicans took back the state Senate in 2002 and, although Republican Bob Beauprez had narrowly won the new seat, redrew the lines to strengthen their party’s hold in the 2004 elections. In December 2003, however, the Colorado Supreme Court barred the redrawn map from taking effect, citing the state constitution’s limit of one redistricting per census.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 refused to hear a Republican appeal, but four Colorado citizens not party to that case then filed their own suit, alleging that the Colorado court’s decision ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that the “legislature” of each state “shall” prescribe the “manner of holding elections for senators and representatives.”
In its unsigned opinion today, the high court didn’t discuss the merits of the citizen claim. Instead, it said the citizens had no standing to bring the claim in the first place.
“The only injury plaintiffs allege is that the law — specifically the Elections Clause — has not been followed. This injury is precisely the kind of undifferentiated, generalized grievance about the conduct of government that we have refused to countenance in the past,” the justices said, distinguishing the appeal from voting rights cases where individuals alleged that state action had impaired their own ability to cast effective ballots.
As it happens, Beauprez won re-election in 2004, but gave up his seat to run for governor last year, losing to Democrat Bill Ritter. Democrat Ed Perlmutter picked up Beauprez’s old district, giving the Democrats a 4-3 edge in Colorado’s congressional delegation. –Jess Bravin
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Read more: Global, Congress, Courts March 5, 2007, 9:35 am
CPAC Votes for Reagan
Ronald Reagan is alive and well — at least, he was at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend. In a straw poll of conference participants, 79% said they would support “a Ronald Reagan Republican” for president, while only 3% said they would support a “George W. Bush Republican.” Still, 82% said they favor the president’s strategy in Iraq.
The conservative vote remained split, with no candidate a clear favorite. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the straw poll for president with 21%, followed by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani with 17% of the votes from those attending the annual conference — a must-stop for candidates seeking the support of the party’s social conservative wing. Full results of the poll are at CPAC’s Web site. –June Kronholz
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Read more: Global March 5, 2007, 9:27 am
White House Tussles on Doha
As angst over the shaky state of the U.S. trade agenda grows, tensions are emerging within President Bush’s inner circle over how best to get the stalled Doha round of world trade talks moving. The chairman of the National Economic Council, presidential friend Allan Hubbard, and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley have privately voiced frustration with the tortured pace of action in the latest stage of comprehensive talks.
Launched in Doha, Qatar, soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the talks had as their primary aim better integrating poor nations into the global trading system. Hubbard and Hadley have pressed for a bolder U.S. offer in an effort to encourage other countries to compromise.
In one heated meeting among top Bush aides just before Christmas in the Old Executive Office Building, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab opposed the idea of a grand offer. Schwab, who had seen a similar move by her predecessor flop, pushed instead for “quiet negotiations” focusing on details to build trust among Doha’s participants.
Bush sided with Schwab, and has continued to back her. But she is now at risk of being overshadowed — some fear undercut — by new Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who is moving deeper into the public debate on Doha and trade. Read more. –Greg Hitt and Deborah Solomon
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Read more: Global, White House, Trade
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