Scene from the play Perderse in Bogota, Colombia, two years ago. It shows my own spirit animal. (Photo Juancho Torres/Anadolu via Getty.)

Through my decades in journalism, I’ve written in a variety of cadences.

-I spent most of my time in college at the student daily newspaper, often there until the presses rolled at 2am.

-I’ve written for dailies, for weeklies, for monthlies (mostly The Atlantic), for quarterlies, for short-notice campaign speeches and long-planned White House addresses, for other outlets on other schedules.

-In the earliest days of blogging in the 1990s, and through the years when Deb and I lived in China and then again when we were traveling around small-town America, I’d often do online posts day by day. I’ve also done that repeatedly in my “Trump Time Capsule” installments about the past decade’s elections, as with this entry on “press normalization” back in 2016.

-For nearly five years now, my online home has been Substack, which came along at just the right time for me and has been a flexible, supportive, and encouraging partner. I’m glad that Substack’s overall reach has grown more than tenfold in that same period.

Through all these changes in pace and platform, the one constant has been my stepping aside every few years to finish a book, or to concentrate on a big magazine project. (Like the Atlantic pieces on The Fifty-First State in 2002, or Chickenhawk Nation in 2015, or the ‘Bureaucratic Horror Story’ of the M-16 back in 1981.) These limited periods of “going dark” have paid off in two ways.

-First, they’re the only way I would ever have gotten the writing done. The easiest and most attractive thing to do when on a big project is not to write, and instead to fritter time and attention on something else. I’ve published 12 books so far—some short, some long, one with the benefits of being a co-author with Deb. All of them required the discipline of a defined time off the grid.

-The second benefit of temporarily stepping aside is that I’ve always felt newly energized once the ordeal of “long-form” writing is behind me, and I can dive back into other subjects and dramas I care about. Each time I’ve felt as if I am seeing things with a refreshed eye.

I’m about to step temporarily off the grid again, to finish a big magazine project I’m excited about. To get it done, I’ll again need to “go dark,” this time for about two months. That will let me come back bushy-tailed just as the fateful 2026 midterm campaigning is revving up, and as the issues I normally cover—from aviation, to rhetoric, to China, to the wayward press, to tech, to the eternal question of “is this country going to make it?”, plus more—will still be with us. Based on past experience, a deep-focus period will help me get out of potential mental ruts and look at events with a keener and different perspective.

During this time, effective late tonight, the Substack system allows me to “pause” all subscription payments. No renewal fees or other costs will be processed during this period, and I’ll receive no revenue. All paid subscriptions will be automatically extended by the length of this hiatus. That is: Monthly or annual renewal notices will come two months (or so) later than they otherwise would. For free subscribers there should be no detectable change. For either paid or free subscribers, no action is needed on your side. All existing archives and links will remain available here. More technical and billing details are below.

I’ll probably pop in from time to time with updates or news reactions, or reports from the project I’m working on. They’ll go out in the usual email way to all current readers, free or paid, with no paywall.

Once I get this magazine project wrapped up, I’ll tell you more about it. And then I will be eager to jump back into the election-countdown fray, and to re-engage with the members of this online community, which has come to mean so much to me.

For now: Head down, fingers on the keyboard, mental focus on that timeless literary mantra, “Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can’t Lose.” OK, that’s from Friday Night Lights, whose original TV version Deb and I loved watching in our apartment when we lived in Beijing. But it’s how I’m feeling about this community right now.

Sincere thanks for your interest and support. See you later this summer.

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Technical and billing details.

(a) During this “pause” period starting tonight, the Substack system will accept only new free subscriptions. The paid-or-free subscription system will return to normal when the pause is over.

(b) If you signed up recently for a 7-day free trial, or any other time-limited trial, that clock is also frozen. For instance, if you have three days left on your trial, those three days will start again when I return, and you will not be billed in the meantime.

(c) I’ve learned that the Substack system does not automatically notify all subscribers when the pause is over and billing is turned back on. When I near that point, I’ll send a series of “Now hear this!” emails giving everyone advance warning that the billing system will reset.

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The renowned composer and pianist Philip Aaberg, in a kayak on the Marias River near his home in tiny Chester, Montana, when we visited him there. His music expressed the spirit of the place he loved. (Except as noted, all photos by Deborah Fallows.)

Over this past weekend, Deb and I got the sad and unexpected news that our friend Philip Aaberg, a brilliant musician and influential civic and cultural leader, had died of complications from cancer, at age 77.

Readers of this site may recognize Phil’s name from the comments section, where he was an active participant. Barely two weeks ago, I was corresponding with him about the state of the world. Also just this month, we had Phil’s music playing through the evening when friends came to dinner at our house.

There is so much we would like to say about Phil Aaberg, his wife Patty, their family, and their impact on cultural life around the world and civic life in the part of America they called home. For now I’ll devote the rest of this post to a dispatch Deb Fallows, a college classmate of Phil’s, wrote ten years ago for what was then the “American Futures” series in The Atlantic. (This led to the Our Towns book and HBO movie, and the ongoing Our Towns Foundation site.)

For context, in those years Deb and I were traveling in our single-engine propeller plane to small communities around the nation. After visiting Maya Lin’s then-new installation for the Confluence Project along the Columbia River in eastern Washington, and before a multi-day stay at the large nature reserve now known as American Prairie along the Missouri River in northern Montana, we spent time in the remote farming town of Chester, Montana, where Phil and Patty Aaberg lived.

Now, over to Deb.

Listening to Montana.

In Chester, Montana, a world away from city life inspires an artist’s music.

By Deborah Fallows.

March 16, 2016.

To the north, the first traffic light is 144 miles away.

To the south, the first traffic light is 92 miles away.

There are no traffic lights here in Chester, Montana.

This is how the musician Philip Aaberg introduced his hometown of Chester, Montana, in a short radio commentary he produced for KCRW a while back, along with his wife, Patty, and their son Jake.

Chester lies at the top of the country, 30 miles as the crow flies from the Canadian border. From even farther west [along the Columbia], we flew over the Bitterroot Mountains, which then rolled away into the high plains, with fields of green, yellow, and gold. The rivers below us meandered. The rail tracks looked very important. The roads indeed didn’t need traffic lights. In the skies, there was not another plane in sight for hours….

Our friends Phil and Patty Aaberg live in Chester. Phil is a musician—a pianist and composer with a collection of awards, performances, and collaborations that more than prove his bona fides to anyone who hasn’t had the good fortune yet to hear his music. Windham Hill Records, nominations for Grammies and an Emmy, and some 20 albums with names like From the Ground Up and Live from Montana.

Knowing where you are: Distances from Chester.

After time on the east and west coasts, Phil and Patty moved to Chester, a town of well under 1,000 people, to the house where Aaberg grew up, right across from his old school. Partly, they were looking for such a place to raise their young son and partly because, well, Montana always had a strong pull on Phil.

Back in the late 19th century, Chester was a stop for the steam engines of Great Northern Railroad to replenish coal and water. Homesteaders soon followed. Phil’s family has been there about a century. Already a serious music student as a young teenager, Phil would ride the train every few weeks to meet with his piano teacher in Spokane, a seven-hour trip, or 10 hours if there were lots of stops. From his remote home town he went to college at Harvard on a Leonard Bernstein scholarship.

Great Northern B&B and Aaberg’s music studio in a silo, in downtown Chester.

When the Aabergs opened their Great Northern B&B, where we stayed with them, it doubled the number of lodging options for visitors and those just passing through. And then they opened another on First Street. Sometimes, people biking through the north will stop in Chester. Once, a biker stopped for a day, and ended up staying for a week, waiting to take delivery of some bike parts. It was one of those stories that you could imagine ending with something like, “And then he met my second cousin who runs the pharmacy, they fell in love, and he’s been here ever since.” That didn’t happen, but it was easy to believe it could have. Chester is that kind of town.

Coming in for landing at Chester. The runway we’re heading toward is what looks like an extension of a downtown street, paralleling the highway on the far side of town.

We flew into Chester’s tiny airport. It wasn’t unusual to find an airport there; some 5,000 small airports dot the country, a legacy of airstrips built for military pilot training around World War II, and then for civic and post office growth. Chester’s airport was even more convenient than most. When Phil heard our plane overhead, he could hop in his car with Jake, head the few blocks to the edge of town where the airport lay, and still have plenty of time left over to wait and see us land.

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People who are from towns this small, this remote, and this beautiful grow up with a deep imprint of place on their lives, and for artists like Phil, on their work.

View toward the Sweetgrass Hills. Philip Aaberg named his company Sweetgrass Music. (Photo courtesy of Philip Aaberg.)

In a formal interview he once gave, Aaberg talked about how this place—these northern plains and his hometown—has inspired the music he creates.

Sounds from Montana

Aaberg describes the early days of noticing music, when his mother and grandmother were choir directors at the Catholic Church. He heard a lot of music, including Gregorian chants. He recounts the first time, at 4 years old, when he ran home from church to the family piano to sound out a tune he had heard. He described the thrill of figuring that out all by himself, and recalling it vividly as the moment that he knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

When Aaberg is touring on the road, he builds in time to teach a little music to the schoolkids in the towns. He includes listening exercises, having the kids pause to just listen to the sounds around them for a whole minute. “Listening is the most important thing you can do,” he tells them. “If people in the world would listen to each other, the world would be a lot safer place.”

Time in Montana

Aaberg says, “I love this land. There is something about this country that really opens me up.” He talks about the amount of time and the quality of the time he spent in Chester. “When I was here, I was really here.” He talked about the relationship between his music and seeing the land here, watching the sky change, seeing the Sweetgrass Hills, watching the flights of birds. “All incredibly important to me,” he says, and a source of his inspiration

Phil Aaberg at his piano in his studio.

Phil built his studio, fittingly, from an old grain silo. He invited us in to look and listen a little while. He played some of the songs I knew; now that I had been in Montana, I recognized that they actually sound like Montana.

We all went kayaking one afternoon on the Marias River, an expedition that began gently, with dreams of even a dip in the water, but turned surprisingly and quickly into a dramatic paddle-for-your-life ordeal as a fierce windy storm blew in. The hills right up to one side of the water’s edge seemed steeper, and the marshy banks on the other seemed farther away and less hospitable. But you know we survived.

After we headed east to the American Prairie, I got an email from Phil. He said he was heading out to go camping in the Sweetgrass Hills. Lucky man. You can’t get to Chester, Montana, today, or probably even tomorrow. But you can bring a bit of Montana into your life through this music. You can listen here and here and here, and find more music here.

A closing note.

This is Jim Fallows again. Because I have wanted to include many photos from Deb’s original dispatch, some email systems might truncate it part way. If so, you’ll see a “click to read more” button.

One more thing about Philip Aaberg. If you’d like an absolutely brilliant example of his musical gifts and personal bearing, I strongly encourage you to go to his 2024 interview for Five Things I’ve Learned About America—and after you’ve read and heard his comments, please scroll down to the end. When you see the image below, headlined “There’s more!”, please click on it to hear Phil with a three-plus minute lively virtuoso rendition of perhaps his most famous song, High Plains. I promise you won’t regret it.

We send our best wishes to Patty, to Phil’s brother and four sons, and to the many others who felt a connection to him. We are full of gratitude to have known Phil.

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A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie by Albert Bierstadt. During the Civil War, Bierstadt traveled the West and began sketching out this view. He finished the painting soon after the war ended: Violent storms all around, but a promising shaft of light. (Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty.)

People may look back on this past week as a milestone in political awareness. It’s not only that public opinion keeps turning against Donald Trump. That’s been evident for months in plummeting approval ratings, for all the obvious reasons: Tariffs, brutal ICE raids, blatant self-dealing, needless and unpopular wars.

The real milestone, it seems to me, comes in signs of dawning awareness, crucially among some GOP forces who have enabled Trump, that he won’t be there forever. They’re already hearing from constituents that they don’t like soaring gas prices and an open-ended war. Eventually there will be questions about why their representatives turned a blind eye to these abuses for so…

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Donald Trump arriving today in Beijing. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Here are five quick points about Donald Trump’s quick visit to China, with meetings scheduled to start in a few hours as I type.

By the end of this week, we may have a clearer sense of how much—or how little—came out of this toe-tap foreign excursion. My bet is on “how little”: Recall how little came out of the humiliating “Putin Summit” in Alaska last summer. But we’ll see. Meanwhile here is a quick, non-comprehensive guide to some issues I’ll be keeping in mind.

1) China has worse problems in the long run. But right now, it’s watching the US burn itself down.

After the 2008 economic crisis, while Deb and I were living in Beijing, I interviewed a Communist Party official about the US-China economic tensions of the day. “You Americans feel so sorry for yourselves,” he said, as I remember it. “We’d trade your problems for ours, any day.”

And he went on to detail why. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people were poor (and still are). Around its borders, the US had partners or allies—and across the seas, it had a network of allies. Around its own borders, China had enemies or troublesome neighbors. US universities and companies attracted talent from around the world. Much of China’s young talent was drawn to those same American schools and companies. And so on.

Everything I wrote from China in that era1 reflected what I still believe: That in the long run, the US has advantages over every other economy and world power. And in the long run, China has deep challenges on every front—demographic, environmental, military, political.

But the long run comes later. Right now the Chinese leadership is watching the MAGA team destroy almost everything that gave the US its long-term edge: Its universities. Its openness to international talent. Its network of foreign alliances. Its place as a self-interested but sane center of world commerce. Its limits on corruption. Its imperfect but aspirational commitment to rule of law.

My guess is that Chinese leaders would prefer a less randomly self-destructive US than the one they confront now. After all, stability of the US-centric world trading order has given China room to develop over the past 40 years. Its leaders understood how to deal with the “Madman Strategy” under Richard Nixon. It’s harder to deal with an actual mad man.

But right now, the sanest thing they can do is stand aside, as MAGA demonstrates what many Chinese officials told me when we lived there: That the only threat to American strength and dominance would come from America itself.

At the moment, Xi Jinping “has the cards,” to use Trump’s favorite phrasing. I’ll be watching to see how Xi plays them.

2) The Chinese know who they are dealing with.

Watching or listening to Donald Trump, especially in these past few months, you often wonder: Does he know that other people can see this?

-When he sends berserk-seeming posts and self-glorifying AI images all through the night? When he goes out of his way to insult female reporters in the press pool, especially reporters who are Black? When he repeatedly calls Black leaders, from Barack Obama on down, “low IQ” and “very stupid”? When he invents grotesque fantasies of fact—that gas prices are falling, that he has “aced” dementia-screening exams? When he lights up at hours-long public groveling by his minions, nationally televised as “cabinet meetings”? When he can’t stop talking about the stupid ballroom?

Leaders in China have seen all of this. They know the kind of person Trump is, and all the buttons he likes to have pushed.

He likes big public festivals featuring him, “on a scale which nobody has ever seen before”? No problem! Big spectacles are where Beijing excels.2 We’ll never forget watching the mass precision of the 2008 Olympic opening ceremonies. Trump likes to think that his powerful deal-making presence can make others bend to his will? No problem! Smile, and flatter him—like all the CEOs aboard his plane—and then quietly walk away, having pocketed the winnings.

If you’ve lived in other countries and wrestled with other languages, you know that when a local says, “Oh, your [Japanese/ Chinese/ French] is so good!” it’s actually hollow praise. The Chinese will tell Trump what a great leader and shrewd negotiator he is. Of course he will believe them. And then he’ll be putty in their hands.

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3) Donald Trump has no idea what he is walking into.

This is true by definition: He doesn’t know about anything except ballrooms and golf courses. Donald Trump didn’t know that the US already holds rights to all the military bases it could ever want in Greenland, without threatening to invade. He didn’t think or care how a Prime Minister of Japan would feel about a live-televised Oval Office “joke” about Pearl Harbor. He didn’t recognize that Britain’s current king was mocking him as acidly in his recent speech to Congress, as Barack Obama had done at the famed 2011 White House Correspondents dinner.

When it comes to China in specific, the MAGA team is notably short on prominent figures with on-scene experience. They’re squeezing in this rushed “summit” between trips to Mar-a-Lago and managing the disaster in Iran. Based on his own statements over the years, Trump himself knows two things about China:

-That it is bad.

-That Xi Jinping likes him personally, and therefore is good.

Too harsh? Remember what Trump credulously told the New York Times, after his friend Xi Jinping had given him a big ceremonial welcome in 2017:

I like very much President Xi. He treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China.

Right.

4) Something we want to hear about: Jimmy Lai.

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Less than 11 years ago, representatives of major European powers, plus the US, Russia, and China, signed an agreement that gave outside inspectors 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear sites, and capped its uranium stockpiles at 300 kgs, enriched to a paltry 3.67%. Three years later, thanks to Donald Trump, their work was ashes. Now Iran’s uranium stockpiles and enrichment levels have soared, and the world is at war. (Photo Hasan Tosun /Anadolu /Getty.)

This is the promised Part 3 final installment in the series about “memory gaps” between current US MAGA leadership and its counterparts in Iran.

Part One, about US-Iranian history under presidents from Harry Truman through Jimmy Carter is here. Part Two, devoted exclusively to the consequential Ronald Reagan era, is here. And a bonus interim installment, about a scholar who, from his home in the bombed out landscape of Tehran, is trying to bring classic works of American literature to an Iranian audience, is here.1

This final installment will run from the first George Bush administration to the second term of Donald Trump. These events all fit within Pete Hegseth’s definition of “history” (the past 47 years, the time since Iranian radicals seized US hostages) and may be fresher in American’s minds. And soon I can get on to other topics—though the war itself grinds on.

Again we’ll do it president-by-president:

Bush I: How to run a land war in the Middle East.

The reputation of George H.W. Bush has in many ways been burnished by comparison with the GOP squalor that came after him.

-He was so much deeper, more worldly, and more experienced than his son, who of course also became president. The first Bush employed Dick Cheney as a Cabinet member. The second Bush was functionally Cheney’s pawn, especially in his first two years leading to the catastrophic invasion of Iraq.

-The elder George Bush was accomplished as a person and experienced as a leader. He was in WWII combat in the South Pacific as a naval aviator before age 20; was captain of the Yale baseball team that played in the College World Series on his return from the war, plus being in Phi Beta Kappa; and bicycled around still-closed Beijing as the US envoy in his early 50s. And apart from that he had run a scandal-free CIA and represented the US at the United Nations. Compare that with any of today’s Cabinet members.

-However you feel about America’s erstwhile Episcopalian, prep-school, WASPy elite, the elder Bush illustrated the good sides of that culture. Concepts like “decency” and “how would it look” and “these are the rules” meant something to him.

-And, as US president while the Soviet Union fell apart and the Cold War came to an end, he handled the transition about as well as anyone could have. That was big.

All these—genuine!—positive points about GHW Bush seem to have obscured memories of other parts of his political life. As mentioned in the past installment, with his notorious “Christmas Eve pardons,” just before he left office, he freed most of the Iran-Contra offenders from the Reagan era. This set a terrible precedent for “accountability” and also ended investigations into his own personal role in a scheme that had unfolded while he was vice-president. He approved the racist “Willie Horton” ads against Michael Dukakis in his 1988 campaign. And, in an insult to common sense and the legal profession as a whole, with a straight face he declared that the 43-year-old Clarence Thomas, who had a total of one year’s experience on the bench, was “the best person” for a seat on the Supreme Court. To replace Thurgood Marshall. Oooof.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Clarence Thomas, who will turn 78 this summer, is still there.

But for all this mixed record, let’s say the following about George H.W. Bush: He showed how to wage a land war in the Middle East.

After Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, Bush did these things before going to war, with Operation Desert Storm in early 1991. Within six months:

• He assembled more than 40 countries into a coalition supporting (and in many cases participating) in the war. This was not a “who cares about NATO?” “who cares about the UN?” exercise.

• He went to Congress and, after extensive debate, got both houses to pass an “Authorization for Use of Military Force” against Iraq. This was not one man’s whim.

• He defined clearly what “victory” would mean—getting Iraqi troops out of Kuwait—and what would not be involved. Namely, rolling on into Baghdad to overthrow Saddam Hussein and take responsibility for Iraq’s destiny. This was not an ever-shifting mishmash of “goals” defined by angry nighttime social-media posts.

None of these steps was a gimme. Before the war, the “authorization” resolution passed the Senate on only a 52-47 vote. After the war, many people condemned Bush for not intervening to protect Iraq’s Shia, Kurds, and others in the resistance who had stood up against Saddam—and whom Saddam then killed.

But say this for Bush: He went through the steps of getting international and domestic support for what he was doing. And—in crucial contrast to the current US war on Iran—he asked and answered the question, “How does this end?” before he gave the order: “Let it begin.”

What is the Iran perspective in all of this? Two things, which again might be remembered on the Iranian side and not in the US.

-One is the elder Bush’s management of the Gulf War. In the US this campaign was forgotten so quickly that Bush went from nearly 90% public approval in polls, just after the war, to around 30% barely a year later, when Bill Clinton was preparing to beat him on a platform of “it’s the economy, stupid.”

But Iranians might recall this as an era when the US made rational judgments about how and when to commit troops. And at the time, the Iranian regime was neutral-leaning-toward-positive about the US assault on Iran’s long-time enemy, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But soon afterward, when the US did not intervene to help the Shia rising up against Saddam, and as the US seemed to assert more power as a regional hegemon (which included containing Iran), Iran’s policy shifted back toward wariness and then hostility. Again, I mention this because no one in America remembers it, and leaders in Iran probably do.

-The other is this first Bush’s tentative, early moves toward some rapprochement with Iran. In his inaugural speech, with a line Iran’s leaders might have understood as directed to them, he said:

There are today Americans who are held against their will in foreign lands, and Americans who are unaccounted for. Assistance can be shown here, and will be long remembered. Good will begets good will. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on.

Nothing came of that. Events moved on.

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The Clinton Era: Other things on his mind.

A lot was going on through the 1990s, which was mostly Bill Clinton’s era. The Soviet Union finally came apart, and Clinton’s team (SecStates Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, SecDefs Les Aspin, Bill Perry, Bill Cohen, plus VP Gore) was mainly handling that. Plus the Middle East, with the Oslo Accords. And Northern Ireland, with the Good Friday agreement. Plus NAFTA! And the WTO. And Somalia, and domestic politics, and a million other crises. And trying to enact a health care plan. Plus bringing the federal budget into surplus for the first time in decades! As Clinton left office, the federal government lodged a $232 billion surplus for its fiscal year. And then there was … impeachment.

Iran? It was still there, still part of a “dual containment” balance with Iraq, but not center stage, for either side.

And, for the record, near the end of Bill Clinton’s time in office, his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, officially apologized to Iranian representatives for the US role in overthrowing the Mosaddegh regime in 1953.2

Bush II: ‘Axis of Evil.’

The second George Bush took office with things on his mind other than Iran. But then came 9/11, and everything changed—for the world, and for him.

It seems impossible to believe at the moment, but during GW Bush’s first months in office, policy wonks actually debated how best to spend down the impending federal surplus. With big tax cuts, as the GOP always recommends? By paying down the national debt, as Al Gore and the Dems had proposed? Advance-funding Social Security? Investing in something new? Ah, those were the days.

Don’t believe it? Here was a NYT headline as the Bush-Gore contest of 2000 was heating up:

But everything changed on 9/11, from the defense budget to “Homeland Security” to alliances around the world. And while, in the very short run, the Iranian regime was on the US “side” in opposing the Taliban in Afghanistan, very soon the American president let them know which side they were really on.

In his first State of the Union address after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush named three countries that uniquely represented the evil that the US must resist and eliminate:

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.

These countries, which he called out by name, were Iraq—which had not attacked the US on 9/11, but which the US would soon invade; North Korea, which had nothing to do with US terrorism, and which no country will attack because of its nuclear deterrent force; and Iran, which also had nothing to do with the attacks that had upended American policy and politics. But was now one of the three evil-doers.

The US—wisely!—did not go to war with Iran on the heels of that pronouncement. Instead—idiotically!—it decided to invade Iraq. I don’t think that many current Americans, other than former speechwriters like me, remember the “axis of evil” line, and Iran’s inclusion in it. But I bet some of Iran’s leaders still do.

Thus began … what seemed at the time like an unimaginable self-inflected wound for the US. But we were all so innocent then. We didn’t know what true self-destruction looked like, as we are seeing now.

The Obama years: One and done.

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At right, Alireza Taghdarreh of Tehran. At left, Don Henley, of Eagles and Hotel California. They met and both spoke at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, on the Institute’s 25th anniversary in 2015. This happened to be the very day that the US and Iran announced the now-abandoned JCPOA nuclear deal. (Photo by Matt Burns of the Walden Woods Project.)

This is another installment on the “public memory” gap between the US and Iran. But it will be quite different from the previous two, here and here, and more in that chronology soon.

I’m writing this time not about presidents, shahs, or ayatollahs but about a man who has been trying his best to help each culture understand its deep, under-recognized connections to the other.

This post is about our friend Alireza Taghdarreh, whose well-being and even survival in Tehran Deb and I have been unsure of until the past few days. My main purpose for today is to give a brief sample of the messages he has been trying to give his countrymen—and ours.

‘Thoreau felt he had the blood of Persian poets in his hands.’

Back in 2015, Deb and I first met Ali, as I will refer to him, at the Walden Institute event that we were fortunate to attend. Ali was there on his first visit to the place he had spent the previous decade of his life thinking and writing about. Through that time, he had carefully been translating Thoreau’s Walden for an Iranian readership.

Don Henley—yes, that Don Henley—was there because he has been a serious environmentalist, and in particular a defender of the ecosystem and historical heritage of Thoreau and Walden. If you’ve watched the new three-part PBS documentary series on Thoreau—by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers, presented by Ken Burns—you’ve seen Henley listed as an Executive Producer.

The message from Ali in his presentation (which you can see on YouTube here, including Henley’s intro) was about the spiritual connection between the most renowned American Transcendentalist writers, and the great Persian poets and philosophers, from Rumi onward. As I wrote 11 years ago, after hearing him talk, in words I could have written today:

I have learned over the years and around the world that it matters if people from one culture generally feel a connection with, versus an estrangement from, people from another….

Ali Taghdarreh’s entire theme was: From his little room in Tehran, he recognized the human, the transcendent, the universal in the works of that quintessential American, Henry David Thoreau. Today he had a chance to say so at the real Walden Pond that he had thought about but never seen. I have imagined that, given a chance, most people in Iran and the United States would recognize a similar connection. That does not obviate the complications of this proposed agreement [JCPOA] or the conflicts of national interests. But it means something, and something left out of a lot of the fevered “let’s bomb them before they do more evil!” talk.

Deb and I stayed in touch with Ali (and Don Henley) after this event. A year afterwards, I posted a guest essay by Ali on the meaning of Mother’s Day in Iran.

As the bombs fell…

When the US and Israeli attacks began, I sent emails to Ali in Tehran, to tell him that we were thinking of him and his family. Until last week, we heard nothing in return. We could imagine many reasons, some of them very dark.

About a week ago, along with others among Ali’s many friends and supporters around the world, we started getting replies. With Ali’s permission, the rest of this post consists of material from him.

First, his messages to outside-world friends this past week, from Tehran. Then, his introduction to his latest piece, comparing isolation and “freedom” as rendered in Walden with that of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Then, the full text of his essay from several years ago, likening Thoreau to the famed Persian poet Rumi.

1) Emails from Ali.

Some selections:

-Eight days ago, our first message back from him since the war began:

So far we are alive and well. Our connection was restored only a few hours ago -- with some limited access to emails, not much more. Our neighborhood was heavily bombed, and we had some very dangerous moments. We have managed to stay alive.

Followed by this, yesterday:

I do not know how long I can send and receive emails. I cannot do anything else on the internet.

-Three days ago, about the reason for his literary work:

I do not mean to merely translate books. My goal is to do deep comparative studies between Persian and world literature and to tie the roots of our cultures together. This is the dream that gives me motivation to survive against death and destruction.

-Also three days ago, about his ongoing plans, which began with a mention of his new essay in The Concord Saunterer:

In it, I have compared the meaning of freedom in a Gulag camp and Walden Pond through a comparison between the novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and Walden.

Americans, and anyone else living in the free world, should not be too comfortable with the mere fact that they are simply living in a free land. It is our understanding and our approach to life that makes us free men or bondsmen in a deeper sense….

Please tell the American people that I would love to speak with them about my comparative studies between Rumi from Iran and Thoreau, Emerson and other American poets. This will unite us mystically and poetically.

Contrast this with the thoughts of a world potentate who says that at his whim, “a whole civilization will die tonight.”

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2) How Alireza found Thoreau.

The opening paragraphs of his new piece, “Evolution for Revolutions,” about Walden and Ivan Denisovich.1 (Update: The essay is now available for download as a PDF, here.)

Before I thought about learning English or heard the names Thoreau and Emerson, my soul was being prepared to meet them through the works of Persian poets who lived some 800 years earlier:

Rumi, Hafez, Saadi and other mystic poets who were always recited by my unschooled parents and grandparents during my childhood. Those were years when Iran and the United States shared close cultural connections. I watched American movies and television series based on works of American writers like Mark Twain, Faulkner, Tennessee Williams among others.

Those Persian poets and mystics, far from me in time, and the Americans, far in geography, created a vibrant and colorful life for me. These literary and cultural seeds kept a distant world alive within me. I especially loved Little House on the Prairie (1974-1983), which portrayed a simple, frontier way of living enriched by personal love and the revival of essential values.

When the 1979 revolution came to Iran, Little House on the Prairie was one of many American television series taken off the air by the censorship of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), leaving behind a quiet yearning for the parts of American culture I had come to cherish—a yearning I carried within me for many years, until I finally healed it through literature. Literature has helped me realize that distance does not mean disappearance, and political separation can be bridged by the power of art to reach human depths that politics cannot change.

3) ‘Poetry heals where politics hurts.’

And here is an essay about the philosophical connections between Thoreau and Rumi. This was published in 2020 in the Thoreau Society Bulletin. I am quoting it in full with Ali’s permission:

Light and Language in Thoreau and Rumi

By Alireza Taghdarreh

For Natalie Baker, Kate Manolakos and Robert Hajek

With all the unhappiness
Going on in the world,
Our friendship goes on;
The world should behold.
Nobody may rule
The hearts that desire
Friendship and love
That never expire.

Thoreau says, “Be not simply good—be good for something.“ As a translator of Walden into Persian, I know that a mere good translation of this masterpiece is not enough. If put to use, such a translation is good for increasing understanding between my people in Iran and the people of the United States at an extremely dangerous time. The excellent translations of the poetry of the celebrated Persian poet Rumi by my dear friend Coleman Barks do the same in the United States. Poetry heals where politics hurts.

Sometimes I go beyond my own translation and read sentences by Thoreau in English to those who are learning this language in my country. This makes the connection even stronger. It also reveals some linguistic characteristics that may remain hidden in translation.

I recently started a discussion with my students about this short sentence excerpted from Walden:

I sat in my sunny doorway rapt in a revery.

After a journey of more than 15 years in the book, sentences, phrases and even individual words it contains are sacred souvenirs for me. The above sentence, for instance, fills my soul with light. It also contains a play on words that is a doorway into Thoreau’s mastery of language and meaning.

If you listen, you can hear a pun emphasized by the alliteration of “r“ and the dactylic rhythm of “rapt in a revery.“ This could be heard as “wrapped in a revery.“ (Maybe we could also say that Thoreau’s soul is rapt in a revery while his body is wrapped in it.)

Given the different spelling and etymologies of the two words (”rapt” is from Latin rapere, to seize; “wrap” is from Germanic roots, “to bend, twist, wind”), the pun happens entirely in the sound of the words. It is found, appropriately, in the chapter entitled “Sounds.”

With this and other puns, Thoreau’s words continue their journey in our souls as we ruminate on Walden even after closing the book. A great American poet, William Stafford, says, “Closing the book, I find I have left my head inside.“ It was while my head was left in my closed copy of Walden that I discovered this pun.

I also asked myself why Thoreau says “I sat in my sunny doorway“ instead of “I sat in the sun at my doorway.“ In the phrase he did not use, the doorway is one noun and the sun another, the object of the preposition “in.” The doorway is simply an architectural feature. In Thoreau’s version, “sunny“ is the same word used literally for the quality of light, and metaphorically for a person of bright and warm character. Thoreau associates his doorway with a very pleasant character. And this is the doorway he sat in.

In Walden, life is immersed in light. Thoreau here has an intuitive recognition of well-established scientific fact, that without the energy brought to earth by the light of the sun, no life would exist. Thoreau did believe that “all poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora.” In many passages of Walden, his journals, and his essays, light is both an everyday presence and a higher power. Heavenly light is the source of purification and clarification for Thoreau’s soul and his beloved Walden Pond. It cleanses Walden Pond of impurities left from our mundane world:

“...no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh; a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun’s hazy brush,—this the light dust-cloth.”

Thoreau’s mirror reflects light and spreads it through the world around, while impurities presented to it are not reflected back; they are swept aside and sink away.

It seems to me that Walden Pond is not just for the bathing of the body, nor is Thoreau’s Walden a mere entertainment for the mind. They are both useful for the purification of the mind and soul if only we are standing before them awake and honest.

The passage quoted above, about Walden Pond as a mirror reminds me of a story I once heard about a Persian dervish. They say that a dervish arrived at a temple and asked the doorman, “What kind of place is this?” The doorman answered: “This is a place where you must leave envy, lust, greed, anger, hostility, meanness, and the like behind to enter.“ To this, the dervish said, “If I were able to put all these negative traits behind, why would I need to enter this place? I need a place where I can carry in my impurities, and emerge without them.“ This is how the light in Thoreau’s words purifies our souls.

This is a very Sufi characteristic, as the word “Sufi,” by definition, means purified. Sufis do not answer hate, anger, and other negative emotions with the same emotions. A Sufi master once pointed to a mill and said, “A Sufi should be like that mill in taking coarse grains and returning soft flour.“ In this way, Sufis purify themselves and the world around them. And this same truth is revealed in Martin Luther King’s words when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.“

Rumi, the poet of my land, is also one of the children of this light. To Rumi, the fact that light reveals no apparent color makes it the symbol of unification among humans. Rumi believed that the reflection of light from various objects creates colors, and perpetuates an illusion of differences among us. If we free our minds from these reflections of worldly objects, and focus on the light itself, we will reach the unity that our poets and mystics dreamed for us.

Rumi says: “Away from all allusions and illusions, it is only the light of the light of the light of the light.” With each repetition of the word “light,” Rumi distances us farther from colors, shams, and reflections. Later, this unity culminates in love, for as Rumi says, “Love is the whole thing. We are the pieces.“

The light of Thoreau’s sunny doorway also becomes a part of this light of the light as the actual sun disappears in the horizon, clouds fill the sky, and evening darkens the day. as he writes in the Spring chapter of Walden. “Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain.”

Eventually, this light of light permeates Thoreau’s whole world wherever he goes:

“I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose.”

Even after forty years of bitter separation, representing the failure of our politicians, our poets succeed in uniting our souls. The ultimate destination of the light in Rumi’s and Thoreau’s words is the souls of their readers in America and Iran, and around the world. As we ruminate on Rumi’s poetry, this light is the thread that sews our souls together. And Walden is indeed a sunny doorway of profound thought for the readers who will pause for a bit of a revery.

Alireza Taghdarreh is but one among the 90+ million citizens of Iran. But he is among the people the American president has threatened to kill.

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In the mid-1980s, this was one of the most recognizable faces in the world. In 1987, then-USMC Lt. Col. Oliver North was the star witness during 40 days of televised Congressional hearings about the “Iran-Contra” scandal, which led to indictments of 14 Reagan administration officials, and convictions for 11. In today’s US, the episode is barely mentioned or remembered. Not so in Iran. (Photo Bettman/Getty.)

This post is the promised Part 2 follow up to my preceding item, about the gaps between one country and another in “public memory,” or how people think about their country’s place in the world. As events have unfolded in these past few days, I realize there’s a lot more to cover on the US-Iran version of this gap than will fit into just one installment. So there will be at least one more entry in this series.

This post takes us through the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s time in office, and the transition to what came afterwards.

Why so much about Reagan? Because the more I looked back on it, the clearer it seemed that his time as president offers the starkest illustration of the US/Iran memory gap in nearly 80 years. (That is, since the US-UK coup that removed Iran’s elected prime minister in 1953, an event that is common knowledge in Iran but rarely mentioned in the US.)

Ronald Reagan has been dead for more than 20 years, and out of office for close to 40. That’s long enough that most of today’s Americans have no personal memory of him as president.1 But Reagan is still a first-tier reference—positive and negative—in political discussions and public memory.

People think wildly different things about Reagan, as illustrated by even a very short list. People who think big tax cuts for the rich make all Americans richer, think that is why Reagan’s big tax cuts for the rich were good. People who think big tax cuts for the rich just make America more unequal, think that’s why Reagan’s big tax cuts for the rich were bad. (As a step toward the modern Age of Plutocrats, and to permanent budget deficits.2) People who think that immigrants are America’s superpower cite Reagan’s positive and welcoming speech on that theme.3 People who see Reagan as the tone-setter for today’s resentment-driven GOP still recall his use of racist political dog-whistles.4

This kind of list—things Americans still remember about Reagan—could go on forever. The point for now is that people are still talking about him, and that memory of his record should include more of his consequential actions about Iran. Those in Iran’s current leadership surely remember some major events of the 1980s. Those in current MAGA leadership don’t seem to have a clue.

I’ll set this up in three sections. First, a little more about the whole issue of “public memory,” with some very recent examples of how deep this problem is on the US side.

Then, a short list of some major Reagan-era actions that are largely forgotten in the US but resonate in Iran today.

And finally, an under-appreciated way in which Reagan’s Iran dealings led to one of America’s deepest, ongoing domestic problems.

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I. When does ‘history’ begin? The different stories we tell ourselves.

As a reminder, by history I mean scholars’ best-available-evidence about what happened in the past, and why, and with what consequences. Of course scholars exist to find new angles on the what-and-why of past events. But there’s a certain baseline agreement on the major events that must be noted.

And by public memory, I mean the stories that families, religious or ethnic groups, and entire nations tell about their own past. These have always varied. School children in Russia hear a different version of “who really beat the Nazis” than do school children in the US. I have seen first-hand how starkly at odds “public memory” of the 1930s and 1940s is in mainland China, as compared with Japan—and in Japan, as compared with South Korea, and so on. This happens everywhere.

Most of these disagreements turn on “who started this?” disputes. Which are just another way of asking: When does “history” begin? We’ve seen new evidence of the enormous gap on this point between MAGA and Iran.

Do we count back 47 years? Or 73? Or one century? Or five?

As mentioned last time, Trump and his team—notably Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and JD Vance, and notably not JCS Chief Daniel Caine or other senior military officials—believe they are sounding like history professors when they say they are “finishing the fight that Iran started 47 years ago.” This refers to the capture of US diplomats held hostage for more than a year in Tehran, during the anti-Shah Islamic revolution in 1979.

Many Iranians, by contrast, would say that they’re continuing a fight that the US (and UK) started 73 years ago. That would be in 1953, with the coup that ousted Mohammad Mosaddegh as prime minister and replaced him with the more Western-compliant Shah.

Some people in Iran would look back more than a century. These are not people on the street, I assume, but scholars for sure, and probably those in roles comparable to Hegseth, Rubio, or Vance. This version of history’s clock would start in the early 1920s, when the Treaty of Versailles and other post-WWI settlements left Britain as the dominant power over the ancient kingdom of Persia. This WWI-centric timeline is laid out in David Fromkin’s indispensable A Peace to End All Peace.

And perhaps some of Iran’s leaders see today’s conflicts as beginning much earlier than that, from the 1500s onward, through the centuries when Persia’s rulers negotiated an ever-shifting buffer-state strategy among the other ambitious Great Powers in their vicinity. At different times these included Russia, the UK, France, and others, plus Ottoman potentates—all of which shaped circumstances for today’s Iran.

From interviews over the years, I know that professional American diplomats can discuss these varying timelines of forces that made Iran what it has become. I doubt that many MAGA figures could even tell you what the Ottoman Empire was, and whether it included Persia. (Answer: No.)

The point here is not which timeline is “correct” or complete: MAGA’s 47 years, or Iran’s many variations of the “long view.” It is that today’s US officials show no evidence of grasping the very first principle of negotiation—and of collaboration, and of conflict. Namely, trying to imagine how the world looks through the other side’s eyes.

And what if we try to count back more than 2000 years?

Bizarrely, in recent weeks, some MAGA officials have tried to dip “deeper” into relevant history. Alas, they have done so in ways that only make them seem shallower:

-Pete Hegseth, no one’s idea of an angelic figure, explicitly likened the rescue of a downed F-15 crew member to the Easter miracle of Christ’s resurrection. This was just before Donald Trump circulated the notorious image of himself as Jesus. Both references reached back into history, but not in ways likely to endear them to Iran. (Or anyone else.)

Islam of course recognizes Jesus as a prophet, but not as a prop. Indeed, in what sounds like an Onion story but actually occurred, the president of Iran (!) took to Elon Musk’s X (!!), to send a message addressed to the Pope (!!!), declaring that “the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person. (!!!!) I wish you glory by Allah.”

-The recent Catholic convert JD Vance has scoldingly warned the first American-born Pope to “be careful” when offering his thoughts about Christian Gospel. Trump himself posted that the Pope was “soft on crime.” This was part of what Iran’s president was responding to.

-And last week Hegseth offered another glimpse of his Biblical-era knowledge by angrily likening skeptical members of the Pentagon press corps to the Pharisees, who in the Bible are reported as casting doubt on Jesus, while in a synagogue.

Let’s skip past the dog-whistle aspects of the Pharisees comparison— delivered to a media audience, and coming from a man who routinely concludes Pentagon prayers by invoking “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” and referring to “Christ the King.” In case you are wondering, the names Jesus and Christ do not appear in the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.5

And let’s skip past the literal insanity of Trump portraying himself as Jesus, and the operational stupidity of any president getting into a public fight with any Pope on the meaning of Christian gospel.6

The point of this set-up is: The only thing worse than not knowing any history, is relying on a comic-book or action-movie version of it.

II. What Reagan did.

Here are parts of the Reagan-era heritage as remembered in Iran, starting with the one that is still vaguely familiar to some Americans.

The ‘October Surprise.’

This comes first in any chronicle of Reagan actions, because it involved his first moments in office.

As mentioned last time, I don’t claim independent expertise on this theme. But both Gary Sick, whom I knew and worked with in the Carter White House, and Craig Unger, whom I know in DC journalism, have made strong prima-facie cases that the 1980 Reagan campaign team cooperated with the Ayatollah’s leadership in Iran, to be sure the American hostages stayed captive as long as Jimmy Carter was in power. And that both sides did so specifically to hurt Carter’s re-election chances and thus empower Reagan.

As it happened, Iran released the hostages just moments after Ronald Reagan was sworn in. What a coincidence! Sick argues the case for secret Reagan-Iran collaboration in October Surprise, and Unger in his recent Den of Spies.

Some Iran experts have disagreed7. My point is that from Day One of his time in office, in ways rarely mentioned these days in the US, Iran was more than just another country to Reagan and his team.

And—whatever the ultimate truth about the October Surprise—the secrecy of the alleged dealings matched many subsequent, proven interactions between Reagan and Iran. As in….

The Iran-Iraq war.

Through nearly all of Ronald Reagan’s time in office, the longest conventional war of the 20th century was underway. The death toll likely exceeded 500,000. It was carnage.

Officially, Reagan’s administration and the US could not favor either side: Not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and not the Ayatollah’s Iran. Officially, the US opposed them both. And the Reagan team had a lot of other things to handle in those years, including Soviet warfare in Afghanistan.

But backstage, the US was an ongoing secret participant, and shifted back and forth between the sides. Initially it helped Iraq—Saddam’s Iraq!!!—with intel and other support, mainly to contain Iran’s influence in the region. Gradually, and again in secret, it shifted diplomatic and military support to Iran, for reasons we’ll get to. Then near the end of Reagan’s time, it tilted toward Iraq again—and among the reasons was protecting oil-shipment lanes from possible Iranian blockades. Gee, does this ring a bell?

Here’s my “public memory” point: Few people in today’s United States could tell you why or when this enormously bloody warfare took place. Few would recall it happening on Ronald Reagan’s watch. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it mentioned in retrospectives on the Reagan era.

But today’s Iranian leaders would remember it very differently: As an example of US officials operating in the dark, saying one thing and doing another, and switching “loyalties” whenever expedient. And this was under a generally popular US president, surrounded by genuinely competent advisors and staff.

And now… Iran-Contra.

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What a difference two years can make: In first photo, from Washington in 1951, Dean Acheson (on left), as US Secretary of State, warmly greets Mohammad Mosaddegh, the recently elected prime minister of Iran. Then in 1953, the CIA engineered a coup to overthrow Mosaddegh and replace him with the Shah. Mohammad Mosaddegh spent the rest of his life in prison or house arrest, as shown in second photo. Most people in today’s Iran know this story. Few people in today’s America do. (Pictures From History/Universal Images Group/Getty Images.)

This post is the first of a two-part series, with the second coming. They’re both about the path in modern US/Iranian relations that led to the current debacle. [Update: See correction below, about my mis-reference to Mark Bowden’s excellent Black Hawk Down. And another correction in the footnotes, about Jimmy Carter’s toast to the Shah. Never write in a hurry!]

The theme connecting these accounts is memory. By that I mean the part of “history” that endures not just in books or classrooms but in people’s consciousness and attitudes.

Of all the “asymmetries” between the US and Iran in this wholly unnecessary, ever-more-destructive confrontation, the gap in public memory is one of the most dramatic. And probably the least emphasized, on the US side.

I make no claim as an Iran expert. But I’ve lived through much of this US/Iranian history, read about and interviewed experts on much more of it, and—as I’ll describe below—was personally part of one dramatic and significant episode.

Together these influences and insights have given me a sense of the widening gap between “public memory” in Iran—what many Iranians think is the story of their relationship with the United States—and the counterpart “public amnesia” on the same topic in the United States. Obviously such a gap is most dangerous when it involves near-total historical ignorance on the US-leadership side, which our situation now.

I’ll present this as a timeline, organized by US presidential administration. This first installment starts with Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, and ends with the presidency that was itself ended largely because of conflict with Iran. That was, of course, Jimmy Carter’s. (For whom I worked as White House speechwriter, including on his trip to Iran.) Part two will begin with the presidency that began largely due to Carter’s Iran troubles—Ronald Reagan’s, which was soon ensnarled in its own, different Iran scandals and disasters—and will continue through Donald Trump and his ruinous decision to attack.

This account is a summarized overview, but along the way I’ll link to academic, journalistic, think-tank, and other accounts that give a fuller story.

1) The Cold War era: Truman, Eisenhower, and the 1953 Coup.

Almost as soon as World War II ended, the US began sizing up regimes around the world on whether they were “with us or against us,” in the struggle against the Soviet Union and global communism. This eventually led to open or covert US alliances with the likes of the Diem family in Vietnam, the Marcoses in the Philippines, Batista in Cuba, Somoza in Nicaragua, Syngman Rhee in Korea, Chiang Kai-Shek in mainland China and then Taiwan, and many more.

In Iran, this global struggle led the US to a fateful turn in 1953. In the early 1950s, Iran had a nascent democratic moment. A Western-educated lawyer, professor, politician, and government official from a prominent family, named Mohammed Mosaddegh, was elected prime minister in 1951. Soon some of his “reform” efforts upset the US and the UK. The most dramatic was his nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, then largely controlled by British companies.

Thus in 1953, the CIA, with help of British intelligence, orchestrated a coup to overthrow him, and transfer governing power to the Shah. The CIA’s role in this coup is not speculation or conspiracy theory. It’s spelled out in all journalistic and academic histories of Iran in this era, for instance The Eagle and the Lion by the scholar James A. Bill.1

As Jimmy Carter later said of this era, when announcing his own new human-rights-based foreign policy, the all-consuming early Cold War fear of communism had “led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear … sometimes abandoning our own principles for theirs.”2 He wasn’t calling the Shah a dictator, but he was alluding to the logic of those days.

Some 56 years after the Mosaddegh coup, in his speech in Cairo during his first year in office, Barack Obama formally acknowledged that the US “played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Declassified CIA documents later clarified what that role had been. “For many years,” Obama said in that Cairo speech, “Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is in fact a tumultuous history between us.”

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Why does this matter now? Boosters of Trump’s Iran war think they are sounding history-minded when they say they’re finishing a battle that has been going on “for 47 years.” Meaning that, in their minds, the first strike was when Iranian students and protestors took US diplomats hostage, under Jimmy Carter, in 1979.

Very few of today’s Iranians would have any living memory of the CIA-Mosaddegh coup. But in my experience, and based on everything I have heard and read, the date “1953” remains as resonant in Iran now as “9/11” still is for most Americans, or “December 7, 1941,” for my parents’ generation.

When did the US-Iran war “start,” from most Iranians’ perspective? Not 47 years ago, but 73.

And this is despite the rich person-to-person, cultural, academic, immigrant, and other close ties connecting people in both countries, as attested by most Americans with experience in Iran, and vice versa. I gave a glimpse of that, via profiles of an Iranian writer who has devoted his career to translating Thoreau’s work, here and here. I’ll say more about this theme next time.

Also from this era: A few years after the Shah took power, Dwight Eisenhower approved an “atoms for peace” agreement, designed to help Iran develop a non-military nuclear-energy program. Ordinary Iranians probably aren’t aware of this. I bet no one in the Trump cabinet is. But the memory of many Iranian officials would stretch back to their country’s first introduction to nuclear power.

Public memory point: “1953” has vanished from mainstream US memory of Iran. It looms large on the other side.

2) Kennedy and Johnson: Other things on their mind.

US policy in these years was not mainly Iran-centric. From Berlin to Cuba, from then-Czechoslovakia to other frontiers along the Iron Curtain, from Mao’s China to Indochina, these presidents had so many other emergencies to deal with.

The JFK administration placed some pressure on the Shah for land-reform and other “liberalizing” measures, as long-term protections against communist activism. These became part of the Shah’s “White Revolution” in 1963. By the end of the LBJ administration, the US was equipping the Shah’s Iran with US-made military equipment, with the idea that it would be a pro-Western bulwark and stalwart in the region.

The Kennedys welcome the Shah and his wife to the White House for a state dinner in 1962. (Leffler/Library of Congress/Getty)

Also in these years, the cleric who would be known as Ayatollah Khomeini, then in his mid-60s, began protesting the Shah’s subservience to the US. He was arrested and exiled, mainly to Iraq, where he built his following and movement. By the late 1970s, he would of course emerge as leader of the Islamic revolution.

Public memory: The US was all-in with the Shah, even as domestic tensions were beginning against him. This pattern matched what was happening in many other quasi-client states, notably in the Philippines, South Korea, and of course Vietnam.

3) Nixon and Ford: Military partners, and early nukes.

These presidents, like their immediate predecessors, had other, urgent claims on their attention and time. More and more these came from Vietnam (and Cambodia and Laos). But it was also a time of arms negotiations with the Soviet Union, and the first openings to China, and the coup in Chile, and many other emergencies. Plus Watergate and a presidential resignation!

As for Iran, US policy boiled down to what you could put in Trump-style terms: Weaponize, baby, weaponize! Nixon visited Tehran in 1972 and assured the Shah that Iran could buy any non-nuclear weapon it wanted from the US arsenal. Nixon also followed up on Eisenhower’s “atoms for peace” program by dispatching US nuclear technicians to help develop Iran’s reactors. Today’s officials in Iran would be aware of both these steps.

The Arab oil boycott and strengthening of OPEC, which overlapped the Nixon-Ford eras, greatly enriched Iran and other oil-producing countries. By the end of Gerald Ford’s time Iran had bought a huge fleet of US F-14 fighter planes, making it the major power in the region. (To jump ahead in the narrative, in the late 1980s, the US warship Vincennes thought it was being attacked by one of those Iranian F-14s—and mistakenly shot down instead a fully loaded Iran Air jetliner, killing 290 people. This remains part of public memory in Iran, as we’ll get to next time.)

Public memory: Iran was mainly absent from US media and political consciousness in that era. Within Iran, both those loyal to the Shah, and members of the growing resistance, know that the US tripled-down on his side.

4) Jimmy Carter: The revolution, the hostages, the failed rescue mission.

Jimmy Carter toasting the Shah on New Year’s Eve in Tehran, as 1977 became 1978. Carter said at the gala dinner that the US still regarded the Shah’s Iran as an “island of stability” in troubled part of the world. A year later, the Ayatollah’s Islamic revolutionaries took power. I was on Carter’s staff for that trip and was standing a few feet behind the photographer when he captured this moment. (Photo Bettmann/Getty.)

This is the most familiar part of the modern saga. But’s the one part of US/Iranian “history” that looms much larger in US memory than for Iran. Which is the root of many of today’s problems.

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Talk about one picture being worth 6,000 words: Detail from an illustration by JC Suares, for my Atlantic article 45 years ago. (Image from home archives.)

As mentioned in my post last night, for paid subscribers here is the full text of my Atlantic article about being taken for a ride in an F-15, 45 years ago. I still have the before-and-after photos from that day. Before, I’m jauntily going up the ladder to the cockpit in my fresh flight-suit. After, I’m being ladled out of the aircraft, my flight suit charmingly dappled in vomit and drenched in sweat. Fun times! But, seriously, it’s an experience I vividly remember and am very fortunate to have had.

The original headline and subhead of the piece are below, followed by the article itself. I have updated it on only one point of detail: Clarifying that “the men” who fly these powerful aircraft are now “the men and women.” That change went into effect soon after the Clinton administration took office, twelve years after this article came out.

Enjoy.

“You want to fly with the Eagles, you got to pay the price,” Dick Anderegg told me on the phone. Anderegg is an Air Force major in his middle thirties, a fighter pilot so proficient that until recently he was an instructor at the Air Force’s Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas. Now he works at the Pentagon, as an aide (or “action officer,” in the current phrase) to a general, and it was in that capacity that he became my chaperone for a time early this fall.

The Air Force is well-known for embracing its antagonists with hospitality and with technical displays. I had become eligible for such embrace by writing (in the May issue of The Atlantic) about the harmful consequences of the American military’s progression toward more complex, sensitive, and expensive weaponry—of which one of the most complex, sensitive, and expensive specimens is the fighter plane known as the “Eagle,” or F-15. After the article was published, the Air Force arranged several meetings with pilots and other authorities who testified about the Eagle’s capabilities. At the end of one such session, I commented that if the plane was so phenomenal, it would certainly be interesting to take a ride.

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“Done,” said John T. Chain, the major general who was at the time the Air Force’s director of operations. He passed me into the hands of Major Anderegg, with whom I spent many hours in the following weeks.

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Official Pentagon photo of an F-15E “Strike Eagle,” like the one that was shot down over Iran yesterday. The F-15 was designed in the 1960s and went into service in the 1970s. (Air Force photo.)

So much is going wrong, so catastrophically, on so many fronts, that it’s hard to find a point of traction.

So for the moment, this post is a quick guide to the US warplanes most frequently mentioned in news involving Iran. I’m skipping many workhorse models and concentrating on those whose problems you’re most likely to have heard about, including the two shot down in the past two days.

1) The F-15E ‘Strike Eagle.’

History: The F-15 was designed in the 1960s, during the Vietnam war, and went into service in the mid-1970s, replacing the F-4 as the US Air Force’s lead air-to-air combat plane.

As with any aircraft, but especially those intended for the high-G-force, second-by-second maneuvering of aerial combat, the F-15’s design involved tradeoffs among weight, complexity, cost, and other factors. The story of those tradeoffs was a central theme in my early-1980s book National Defense.

Critics of the plane, including members of the then-famed “Fighter Mafia,” argued for “quantity over quality.” They argued that it would make more sense to invest in a larger number of smaller, lighter, cheaper, and more maneuverable airplanes—rather than concentrating on a smaller force of individually more capable aircraft.

The debates over the F-15’s design occurred long before the age of drones. But they presaged circa-2026 arguments about the tradeoffs between numerous, cheap weapons, like Iranian Shahed drones, and more sophisticated but expensive interceptors, like US-made Patriot missiles. Cost estimates for today’s weapons vary. But as a ballpark figure, Iran could build well over 100 Shahed attack drones for the cost of each Patriot used to shoot them down. (Roughly $20,000-$50,000 per Shahed, versus $3 million-$5 million per Patriot.) Also as a ballpark figure, the per-airplane cost for F-15Es is around $90 million.

Function: The original F-15 was designed for a single pilot, and for air-to-air combat only. (One design mantra was “not a pound for air-to-ground.”) The current “Strike Eagle” model, like the one just shot down over Iran, has a flight crew of two: Pilot and weapons officer. It carries weapons for both air-to-air combat and to destroy targets on the ground. As a practical matter, USAF planes have not engaged in aerial dogfights in more than a quarter-century. Adversaries concede US supremacy in aerial combat, and attack in other ways. As we are seeing now in Iran.

Losses: So far the US has lost four F-15Es during the Trump war on Iran. In the first days of the war, three F-15E’s were shot down by a Kuwaiti F/A-18, in a “friendly fire” incident. All six US crew members ejected safely. Yesterday another F-15E appears to have been intentionally shot down by Iran.

2) The KC-135 ‘Stratotanker.’

Pentagon photo.

Function: As the name would suggest, these KC-135s are essentially huge flying gas tanks, meant to refuel bombers and other planes that have flown long distances toward their targets in the Middle East. Although tankers are obviously much bigger than fighter planes like the F-15 or F-35, their simpler avionics, lack of weaponry, and lower-G-force structural demands make them relatively less expensive. But they’re still enormously costly. As a ballpark, replacement cost for a current model KC-135 is around $80 million.

Losses: So far the US has lost at least four Stratotankers, with damage to several more. On March 12, two of the planes collided in flight, apparently as they were in formation to refuel others. One plane landed safely; the other crashed, killing all six crew members aboard. The next day, March 13, an Iranian missile attack damaged five other KC-135s at a base in Saudi Arabia. (I don’t know whether any have returned to service.) On March 27, an Iranian drone and missile attack destroyed at least one other KC-135, at Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia.

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3) The E-3 ‘Sentry’ AWACS.

Air Force photo.

History: AWACS stands for Airborne Warning and Control System. The AWACS are essentially flying weather, radar, and air-traffic-control stations. They’re based on the Boeing 707 air frame; they’re topped with a large radar antenna; they first went into service around the same time as the F-15, in the mid-1970s; and they are extremely complex, strategically important, and valuable pieces of machinery. As a guide: The E-3 Sentry will soon be phased out, possibly to be replaced by the E-7 Wedgetail. (The decision is complicated and controversial.) This new model will be based on a Boeing 727 737 airframe and would cost around $1 billion per aircraft.

Losses: In that same March 27 Iranian attack on Prince Sultan air base, one E-3 Sentry was destroyed. This has not gotten as much press attention as the other incidents, but it is an enormous loss, in both financial and operational terms. Again, replacing the plane could cost around $1 billion. For perspective, that’s about the cost of each day’s US combat in Iran.

4) The F-35 ‘Lightning.’

Air Force photo.

History: The bureaucratic, technological, strategic, international, and commercial struggles that gave rise to this aircraft are the most intense, and highest-stakes, in the history of military contracting.

The plane grew out of a vision called the “Joint Strike Fighter,” with the idea of simplifying operations (ha!) and saving money (ha! ha!) by building an aerial Swiss Army Knife that could do three different things at once. The Navy would have a version that could take off and land in the tight conditions of an aircraft carrier. For the Air Force, there would be one for normal runway operations. And for the Marines, there would be a version equipped for straight-up vertical takeoff and landing, to get in and out of tough combat zones. Meanwhile the whole plane would be super-“stealthy,” to escape notice by any opposing force.

It went about as well as you would imagine.

Nearly 25 years ago, I did a big Atlantic story on the hopes and promises behind the program. (“Uncle Sam Builds an Airplane.”) Eleven years ago, I did another big Atlantic story about the over-budget, under-performing reality. (“The Tragedy of the American Military.”) Today we have an airplane that goes for around $100 million per copy. The total program costs for the US will be around $2 trillion.

Losses: On March 19, for all its stealth, an F-35 was struck by ground fire over Iran. The pilot was wounded by shrapnel but landed the plane safely. At last report, the plane was still out of service.

5) The A-10 ‘Thunderbolt II’ (née ‘Warthog’).

Air Force photo.

History: Here’s a great dividing line in discussing weapons design and military porkbarrel in the modern era:

• Either you think the A-10 is a crucial, instructive example of function over finance, of payoff over payola, of “warfighting” over contract padding (etc etc). And you’re likely to call the plane the ‘Warthog,’ rather than its prettied-up official name.
  or

• You think the A-10 is outmoded, outdated, as behind the times as the Blockbuster store vs. streaming video, a Blackberry vs. an iPhone, etc.

As you will have guessed, I’m in the first camp. And have been since I wrote about the same dividing line back in National Defense.

But here are two up-to-the-minute refreshers of why this still matters.

The first comes from my friend Mike Lofgren, in a new article in The Washington Monthly. As he says in the headline and sub-head:

The Air Force Tried, But The A-10 Is Too Good to Kill

America’s unsightly but effective Warthog jet is being heavily deployed in the Persian Gulf, decades after the service wanted to retire it.

As Lofgren explains in his piece:

The A-10 is back from the dead once again. Officially designated the A-10 Thunderbolt II, but universally dubbed the Warthog because of its ungainly looks, it is a close air support (CAS) aircraft that has been in the U.S. Air Force inventory since the 1970s. It has proved its mettle in numerous conflicts, and after each one, the Air Force has tried to retire it. Yet now it is back in the fight in Iran, targeting fast-attack boats and mine-laying vessels. As of April 1, another 12 A-10s have been reported en route to the Gulf to join the dozen already there, and they could be supplemented by six more.

The second is a quote from the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, that leads Lofgren’s article:

The A-10 Warthog is now in the fight across the southern flank and is hunting and killing fast-attack watercraft in the Straits of Hormuz.

There’s a lot more in Lofgren’s piece. The point for now is: This is among the least expensive parts of the US arsenal. The current per-airplane cost is around $20 million. And even as it ramps up spending on everything else, the Trump-Hegseth team is again trying to zero out the A-10 and move money to new pet projects.

Losses: None. Just now as I am typing, I see news that an A-10 has been shot down by Iran. For context: Only one A-10 was shot down during the US war in Iraq, and none over Afghanistan. Depending on details, this may be the first A-10 combat loss in more than 20 years. More to come on this as the news clarifies.

There are lots of other American aircraft in the skies over the Middle East. B-52s, F-16 and F-18s and F-22s, Blackhawks, many more. But those on today’s list are there because the “devastated” and “nonexistent” Iranian air-defense system managed to take them out.

6) ‘I Fly With the Eagles.’

A final word about the F-15. Because National Defense had publicized the “Fighter Mafia” figures who considered the plane too complex, costly, and cumbersome, back in 1981 the Air Force gave me a demo ride for a “mock-combat” drill in the rear seat of a F-15.

Everyone involved understood that the whole point of the ride was to put me in my place. “You call this plane ‘cumbersome’? We’ll show you, tough guy!” The commanding general at the Air Force base, no fan of mine but a huge proponent of the F-15, made sure an Air Force photographer was on hand to take a picture of me at the end of the flight—vomit on my flight suit and all. Again, I knew what the deal was, and willingly accepted. And I have stayed in touch with some people I met then—other than the general himself.

I wrote about the experience in “I Fly With the Eagles,” published in The Atlantic in 1981. Copyright to the article is mine. Tomorrow I’ll send its text to paid subscribers of this site.

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Last night at LaGuardia. The two Air Canada pilots died; many other people were injured or will have their lives changed forever. (Photo Spencer Platt/Getty Images.)

It takes a long time to know the why and how of aviation disasters. The purpose of this post is to point to several early sources that clarify the what of last night’s fatal collision at LaGuardia airport, LGA.

For reference I offer the diagram below. It’s an official FAA chart of the runway and taxiway layout at LGA. The annotations are by me.

Here’s the user-guide:

—Light green, coming in from the southwest corner, is the approach path of the Air Canada regional jet. This is the one that hit the fire truck, and whose two pilots were killed. In the air-traffic discussion it’s addressed as “Jazz 646.” It had been cleared to land and, as the drama begins, was touching down on Runway 4, heading roughly northeast.

—The red box on the left shows the LaGuardia fire station. All big airports have them. The red arrow headed to the right is the route of a group of fire trucks dispatched to help a United airplane (shown in magenta) at the other side of the field. The United plane needed to get its passengers out of the plane in a hurry, because of an odor that had sickened its flight attendants. The fire trucks, with ladders aboard, had been cleared to cross Runway 4 at Taxiway Delta, at the point where the red and green arrows touch.

—This precise point is where the collision occurred. The plane, just beginning to slow after touchdown, crashed directly into the lead fire truck that was crossing its path. The plane’s momentum carried the truck-plane wreckage further up the runway, roughly to Taxiway Echo, marked E.

—The small blue arrow to the right of the impact point, is the approximate location of Frontier 4195, which was waiting its turn to be cleared across Runway 4 so it could taxi for takeoff.1 I mention this Frontier flight, and the other from United, because, as you’ll see, each played a role in the drama. United, because the reason the fire trucks left the station was to help that aircraft. Frontier, because the controller’s first urgent “Stop! Stop!” call appeared to be addressed to Frontier, followed by many Stop! STOP!!! calls to the lead fire truck.

Now, the guides and videos.

VASAviation with its illustrations.

I frequently refer to videos from VASAviation, run by a professional pilot based in Spain. These do an excellent job of matching audio with images, to give an idea of where pilots and aircraft are, and what they’re saying and doing, at crucial moments of flight. Sometimes the images and maps are approximations, but they stand up well in offering a general perspective.

You can dig right into this six-minute VASAviation re-creation below. I very highly recommend it. People who follow aviation will find it full of inside-baseball cues and details. I think almost anyone will find it compelling. Below the video, I’ll give a summary of the participants and the dialogue.

-The airplanes.

You’ll hear controllers address or refer to United 2384, the flight that declares an emergency before takeoff because of the unknown odors. And Frontier 4195, an outbound flight that is being directed toward what becomes the collision zone, as part of its progress toward its planned takeoff point. And Jazz 646, the Air Canada flight that touches down into tragedy. Later in the audio you’ll hear instructions to many other flights in and around LGA, mainly telling them to go elsewhere or “go around” after the crash, because the runway is closed (and then the whole airport).

You’ll also hear discussion with Truck 1, the lead fire truck.

-The controllers.

You’ll hear a number of voices, including managers at LGA trying to find an empty gate for the distressed United flight; “approach” controllers handling planes that are being told to go around; and what I think are two or more distinct voices in the LGA control tower.

But mostly you will hear one LGA controller, who has many claims on his attention all at once.

-The incredible juggling act.

Through most of the recordings, this one LGA controller appears to be doing many jobs. He is working both “Tower” and “Ground” frequencies late at night at a busy airport. Which means, listening to two separate radio frequencies at the same time, and broadcasting on them in turn. On the tower frequency, he is clearing planes for takeoff and landing, and is in charge of them while they’re on the runways. On the ground frequency, he tells pilots where to taxi, and what runways or taxiways they may cross.

The same controller is also talking on a land line with other LGA officials. He is dealing with the crew in the fire truck. This means that he is, as a partial list, simultaneously in charge of:

(a) the normal, busy inbound/outbound traffic at LGA;

(b) the United 2384 crew that has a sudden problem to solve;

(c) the airport officials trying to find a place for United passengers to disembark;

(d) the team in the lead fire truck;

(e) Frontier flight 4195 as it taxis for departure;

(f) inbound Jazz 646 as it prepares to land; and

(g) other stuff we probably can’t see or hear.

Controllers excel in multi-tasking. But even for a busy airport this is extreme. Imagine doing this yourself. With such high stakes.

-The crucial moment.

The controller, in his “ground” role, clears Truck 1 to cross Runway 4, on taxiway Delta, to go help the United flight.

In his “tower” role, he clears Jazz 646 to land on that same runway.

Then, back in “ground” role, he tells Frontier 4195 to “stop” as it is heading toward this same taxiway Delta/Runway 4 intersection, presumably until the inbound flight has landed and the lead fire truck has cleared.

At the last minute, he sees what is happening. He yells “Stop! Stop!” initially addressing this to the Frontier flight. Then he starts staying “Truck 1, Stop! Stop! Stop!” And by that point it is too late.

Watch, again, the VASAviation video with that in mind. Or the one below, from Pilot Blog. I recommend starting this second one at about time 2:30. It goes in detail into possible mis-communication issues, especially why the fire truck crew might not have realized that the urgent STOP!!! was meant for them.

And here is an audio-only rendition:

Also I see just this moment that the reliably expert Juan Browne has put up an analysis on his Blancolirio site.

We don’t know what we don’t know. But we do know this.

First-day assumptions about any air disaster tend to be wrong. We don’t know what the next days or weeks or months might reveal.

But we know two things about implications for commercial aviation, with its decades of exceptional safety. And one more thing about the different world of military aircraft.

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Robert Mueller, 1944-2026, as a young Marine Corps officer preparing to be a platoon leader during the bloodiest year of combat in Vietnam, 1968. He was wounded in action, received a Purple Heart, and was awarded a Bronze Star with ‘V’ for valor among other decorations. It was the beginning of a long career in public service. (National Archives/Getty Images.)

Robert Mueller died today, at age 81. Decent people around the world mourn his passing. Americans who know about public service recognize him as a stellar example. If the phrase “with privilege, comes responsibility” can apply to any Americans of recent history, the list might start with him.

And today, the person who is now on his 24th golfing trip to Mar-a-Lago of his second term—the actual number, at millions of dollars per trip in public expense, while the world reels from a war he started on a whim, while families he promised to help are struggling with medical expenses and gas prices and tariff increases and everything else—today that same person wrote publicly of Mueller:

Good, I’m glad that he is dead.

This is the most despicable public statement by an American public official in my lifetime.

It needs to be recognized as such.

Any head of state who can say this in public about a countryman, even about a political adversary, is a moral monster. Either he has no ability whatsoever to empathize with others; or he has no sense whatsoever of a leader’s duty; or he has no remaining cognitive ability whatsoever to “filter” what he says. Or all three.

If I thought Trump had ever heard of John Donne, I would remind him of “no man is an island.” If I thought he had ever been seriously in any place of worship, I would remind him that none teaches being “glad” at another person’s death. If I thought he had a soul, I would recommend that he attend to it.

Just while I’m at it, here is how Donne’s most famous passage ends:

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

Whatever your political views, including about “the Mueller report,” respect Robert Mueller’s example of service. And stand up against Trump’s example of depravity.

‘I have been very lucky. I should spend time paying it back.’

Let us consider, briefly, former FBI director Robert Mueller—before, and apart from, his past two decades in the news.

—He grew up in privilege, son of a DuPont executive. For high school he went to the elite St. Paul’s boarding school in New Hampshire.

—At St. Paul’s he was a renowned athlete: Captain of three teams—soccer, hockey, lacrosse—and winner of the school’s medal as outstanding overall athlete.

—He went to Princeton, where he played varsity lacrosse. A lacrosse teammate one year ahead of him was another notable athlete named David Spencer Hackett.

—At Princeton, Hackett had been in ROTC, and after graduation in 1965, in those early days of the Vietnam war, he was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer. Early in 1967, leading a platoon in Vietnam, he was killed in action. You can read about his life and death here.

—After his own graduation from Princeton in 1966, Mueller spent a year getting a master’s degree. And then he enlisted in the Marine Corps, in part because of his teammate Hackett’s death. As he said years later in an interview, with emphasis added:

I have been very lucky. I always felt I should spend some time paying it back. One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there.

—Before Vietnam, he trained at Army Ranger school and Army Jump school. In Vietnam he led combat platoons through the carnage of 1968; he was wounded; he received numerous decorations. Decades later he told my friend Garrett Graff that among his achievements, he was “most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines.” Combat bravery is far from the only mark of civic courage. But Mueller displayed both kinds. You can think of examples a generation older than Mueller: The first George Bush, who was an 18-year-old combat aviator during World War II. William Webster, Mueller’s predecessor at the FBI, who served in the Navy during both World War II and the Korean war.

—Mueller left the military to go to law school. He spent the decades that followed mainly in public service, including 12 years as director of the FBI. He was appointed by a Republican president (GWB), and re-appointed by a Democrat (Obama).

And this is kind of person the country’s current “leader” says he is “glad” has died.

I don’t know when I have ever felt more disgusted by an elected leader than right now.

I’ve disagreed with people, often. But this is beneath contempt.

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What can any of us do?

A national leader, who celebrates any prominent citizen’s death, is not fit to lead.

Of course we know this already about the morally empty vessel who at this moment is lolling or dining in Florida, while others serve and suffer and die.

But what can anyone do?

—One week from today, the next “No Kings” mass protest will occur. The preceding one, last October, was the biggest one-day demonstration in the nation’s history. And that was before the ICE murders in Minnesota, the war-on-a-whim in Iran, the surge in gas prices, the “glad he’s dead” post.
Next Saturday’s should be bigger. Find out more about it here.

—Call and write the White House and leave messages of outrage about this vile expression from a serving president. The address as always is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC 20500. The main phone number is the same one I remember: 202-456-1414. They now have a comment line, 202-456-1111. Flood them with outrage.

—Call and write your Senators and Representative, especially if they are Republican. You can look them up on their websites. But the main Capitol switchboard number, as always, is 202-224-3121. They notice when people call and write.

—Insist that those who presume to hold the same positions Robert Mueller once did, notably including Kash Patel at the FBI, issue statements of sorrow and sympathy at Robert Mueller’s death, and apologies for their leader’s offensive message. Reporters: Make Kash Patel answer, “Are you also ‘glad’ that Robert Mueller has died?” Citizens: The FBI’s main phone number is 202- 324-3000.

—Make every single Republican office holder, at every single press availability, answer the same question. Do they agree that the country should be “glad” to have lost a man like Robert Mueller? Don’t let them try to eel their way out, with evasions like Mike Johnson’s trademark “I haven’t seen that yet” or “no comment.” It’s a simple question: “The president says he is glad Mr. Mueller is dead. Do you agree?”

They stand up to this moral monster now. Or they stand with him. It’s a bright line.

—Also for reporters: If I were running your news organization, I’d avoid honorifics like “Mr. President” or even “Sir” in association with this abysmal moral example. He has forfeited his right to all terms of respect. It’s a favor to call him even “Mr. Trump.”

My personal note.

I had no official or personal dealings with Robert Mueller during his long career. I never interviewed him or went to hear him testify.

Bizarrely, I shared physical space with him on two occasions, both from local life in DC. Once was in the waiting room for colonoscopies at a medical center several years ago. (Apparently we both were fine.) The other was at DCA airport’s then-notorious “Gate 35X,” which was like a rundown bus station for regional airline flights. I did not approach or speak with him either time.

These both were in periods when Mueller’s face was almost nightly on the TV news, and he could expect to be recognized. But he carried himself as just another citizen. Once he sat reading a newspaper. The other time, reading a hardcover book. He did not look around to check whether people noticed him. He comported himself as a normal, decent man—aware of his good luck, and the responsibilities that placed on him.

Let us remember him as an exemplary American. And learn from him rather than the monster who now controls the airwaves.

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Government leaders at the ‘dignified transfer’ of remains of the first six US troops killed in the war on Iran. By custom and military regulation, everyone, including presidents, stands bare-headed at these solemn occasions, except for service members in uniform. This time a president wore a baseball cap, saying “45-47” on the side. (Anna Moneymaker/ Getty Images)

Last week I wrote that the preceding few days had been the most wantonly self-destructive period for the United States in my lifetime, and perhaps the country’s whole history. At the whim of one man … well, you can finish that sentence on your own.

Since then, things have gotten worse.

It is simply impossible to keep up with the torrent of deceit from the administration, damage to the world economy, destruction of lives and communities and structures, disorder everywhere. Especially if, like any “normal” person, you have interests or obligations beyond staying glued to the news.

Even as I type: Warfare is spreading through Lebanon; Israel says it has killed more leaders in Iran; ships and refineries are in flames; oil prices gyrate wildly, taking all economies except Russia’s along with them; and casualties mount everywhere, especially in Iran. Several million people have already been displaced. And meanwhile, nearly three weeks in, the man who by himself set this chaos in motion has not addressed the public, even once, on why he did so, and where it will lead. Not once has he gone to Congress for advice, consent, or even discussion. Nearly everything he has said, in response to shouted questions at press gaggles, has been a delusion or a lie.

So my own small step toward finding order in chaos, for the moment, is to look again at the five questions and maxims I mentioned in the preceding post and see how they apply now. Here we go:

1) ‘How does this end?’

As I wrote last week, “It’s the question everyone is asking, except those in control.”

This week, we’re even farther away from a plausible answer to the question.

That’s because official stories about why the US and Israel started this war keep shifting. Regime change? Imminent threat? Inspiring the oppressed Iranian public? Donald Trump’s “feeling” that the time was right? These are all different beginnings to the story, which imply different endings. It doesn’t help that our only partner in the war, Israel, keeps offering shifting stories of its own. These range from eliminating once and for all the “existential” threat of Iranian nuclear forces, to “severing the head of the snake” of Iranian-sponsored terrorism, as Benjamin Netanyahu recently put it, with Hegseth-like grace.

And meanwhile the damage keeps spreading, in new ways, to more places, with more victims. The eternal unpredictability of warfare makes everything harder than expected, and keeps closing options that might have been there before.

Every current military leader has heard the Sun Tzu maxim that “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Through history the most respected military leaders have planned carefully for combat, but viewed it as a last resort. That is in part because they know wars are so much easier to start than to end.

That is not the Trump-Hegseth way. “For 47 long years, the expansionist and Islamist regime in Tehran has waged a savage, one-sided war against America,” Pete Hegseth said in the heady first days of the bombing:

We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it… We will finish this on 'America First' conditions of President Trump’s choosing—nobody else’s.

Even as he spoke, Iranians were closing the Strait of Hormuz—their most predictable countermeasure, with ever-expanding and still unknowable effects. And the “America First conditions” for “finishing” this job will be … what, exactly? Or even what, approximately?

The closest we have come to an authentic-sounding answer was when Donald Trump said on Fox last week, “I’ll know it’s over when I feel it. When I feel it in my bones.” That quote was chilling because we know that in those few seconds he was, atypically, speaking the truth. And revealing his blindness to the other side’s role in determining when a war is over.

1A) A very stupid statement. And a very wise one.

That Trump quote will be remembered because it was so stupid. A different comment on “how this ends” should be remembered because it was so wise. It came last week from Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, now commander of US forces in Europe, who spent most of his career as an F-16 fighter pilot and instructor.

You’ll never meet a fighter pilot or an Air Force general who doesn’t believe in air power. But—admirably, and amazingly—General Grynkewich warned a Senate committee about the limits of air power in attaining nearly any of the goals the current war was supposed to achieve.

As he put it, with emphasis added:

We must be clear-eyed about what strategic bombing can and cannot do. Historical data—from the Second World War to more recent campaigns—demonstrates that bombing campaigns rarely, if ever, break the will of a population or force a government to surrender. In fact, they often harden domestic resolve and allow regimes to unify the public against a foreign 'aggressor.'

While we are effectively destroying Iranian military infrastructure, we are not necessarily achieving the political goal of regime submission.

In simpler terms: Bombs and drones can blow things up. But on their own they have almost never “finished” wars. (“Almost” because of the horrific, complicated exception of Japan, 1945.)

The larger question of the limits of airpower spawns endless debate within the military. For the moment the point is: Trump and Hegseth exult in seeing things blow up, as in a video game, and crowing like teenagers because they’ve “won.” That is not how this story is likely to end.

Also: It is important to note over these troubled months the people who have chosen to be brave, versus those who capitulate or compromise. Let us note and remember this form of valor from General Grynkewich. I’ll return to him at the end of this post.

2) ‘In war, the moral is to the material, as three is to one.’

As noted before, this familiar quote from Napoleon refers both to the morale of troops, for reasons ranging from supplies to leadership, and to the moral aspect of their cause.

On the morale front, I keep noticing a small but significant tell. When presenting any briefing of the ongoing war, military figures will almost always begin by acknowledging and honoring US troops in action. Especially if some of them have just been killed. It’s a solemn duty to comrades. It shows that respect flows both up and down. It’s all the more important in this “chickenhawk” era, when so many Americans “support the troops” but so few spend time in uniform.

For example, listen to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, at the next regular briefing. He will begin this way, by paying respect to the troops.

Donald Trump never does this. (Except when forced to read from a script, as at a State of the Union.)

Last Sunday, when asked aboard Air Force One about the six Air Force members killed in a KC-135 crash, Trump clearly heard the question. He flashed a look of annoyance, ignored it, and turned to other reporters, saying “Who else?”

Trump is visibly uncomfortable talking about or even being near people who have paid gruesome physical prices for serving the nation. Remember when he mocked John McCain for having been captured and made a prisoner of war (and then being tortured). Remember how furious he was at the Atlantic report, later confirmed, that he considered American war casualties to be “losers” or “suckers,” and that he thought it looked bad for him to be near disabled veterans. Now his administration is notably slow in releasing information about this war’s casualties.

The picture at the top of this post is of Trump at a “dignified transfer,” a ceremony at which a president’s demeanor is meant to signal the entire nation’s respect. He manages to makes it all about him.1 No previous president has ever behaved in a remotely similar way.

Does this directly affect the morale of troops at war? Maybe not. But it’s wrong. And as casualties and disruptions go up, more and more people who are bearing the burden will notice. Parents, who have lost sons or daughters. Husbands or wives at home, while their spouses are at risk overseas.

2A) Which brings us to morals.

-No representative of the US government has yet apologized to anyone in Iran for the slaughter of some 175 school children, by a US missile. No apology could undo the damage or erase the memory. But its absence is deeply immoral. As are a president’s continued lies about the tragedy.

-While noting people who stand up and speak up for moral principles, let us recognize Ryan Clark, former defensive back with the Pittsburgh Steelers. On The Pivot podcast last week, he was asked about the White House video that used clips of him and others delivering “hard hits,” alongside film of bombs exploding in Iran.

In the three minutes below, you’ll hear more serious discussion from Clark about the morality of war, and of what 99% of Americans owe to the 1% in uniform, than you have heard from anyone in today’s administration. This video has gotten a lot of attention, but in case you haven’t seen it, it’s worth spending those three minutes listening to Clark:

Here are some samples of what Ryan Clark says about dignity, respect, and demeanor, again with emphasis added.

War is not a comedy. And for these people to be risking their lives … [and] for our regime to be as unserious, as unprofessional, as laughable and as illegitimate as our leadership is right now, is embarrassing

And it tells you the difference between a public servant and a reality star. Because the reality star needs everybody to know at all times. “Oh, look at me! Look at the attention I’m garnering! We’re doing this for me.”

And the public servant stands at attention for 45 minutes in a salute. Because he understands what those soldiers who gave their lives have done for our country.

He concludes this section:

And I think we’ve lost 100% any credibility. We’ve lost all decorum. We’ve lost all integrity. We’ve lost all character. And I believe that the latest White House post, involving myself and other NFL players, is absolutely disgusting and despicable.

A man of character. I think he speaks for more of us than he may realize. And certainly more than Trump or Hegseth can imagine.

3) ‘The persistence of memory.’

Two months ago, at Davos, Donald Trump was ridiculing European countries as “parasites,” whose leaders were “weak” and “stupid,” and whose countries “would not even function without the United States.” Writing off NATO as a joke. Saying that the US “had to have” Greenland, no matter how much a pipsqueak country like Denmark might whine.

Now he demands that these same countries support his Iran war effort—which none of them were consulted about. He wants NATO countries to pay a “protection fee” to the US Navy for operations in the Strait of Hormuz. He wants them to send ground troops to Iraq and Syria, to relieve Iran-related strain on US forces there.

The allies’ memory reaches back two full months. They have told him, in essence: Go to hell. The way Germany’s prime minister put it was, “This is not our war.”

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4) What if the war comes home?

I asked that question ten days ago. The answer has become almost too obvious, and painful, to discuss. The violent episodes of the past week will almost certainly not be the last.

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This week I realized that over the past 45 years I’d been preparing for the news of the past nine days. I’ll list the reporting steps I’ve taken, because they set up the questions and reactions I have now.

-In 1981 I published a book called National Defense, which was serialized in the Atlantic.1 Its purpose was to interview people who’d spent their lives waging war, or studying warfare, and ask what realities of combat they think the rest of us misunderstand.

One of its messages was that the ability to think many steps ahead of the adversary—if we do this, they’ll probably do that, and then we’d have to imagine something else—distinguished the victors from the defeated. This applied on the battlefield and in other arenas of competition. So did the related-but-different ability to re-orient and change plans more quickly than the adversary, when circumstances inevitably changed.2 These points may seem obvious, but you’ll see why I’m returning to them now.

Another message involved “quantity vs quality.” The historians, combat veterans, and technologists I spoke with also emphasized that in warfare, having more weapons, could sometimes matter more than having “better” weapons. One gruesome example from Vietnam was the cheap but reliable AK47 rifle used by the Vietcong, versus the more “advanced” American M16, prone to deadly jams in the arms of US troops.

Drones did not exist in those days. But since 2022 Ukraine has shown how a $2,000 “first-person-view” drone can destroy a $5 million Russian tank. Right now, Iran can buy at least 150 of its Shahed “suicide missiles” for the cost of a single US-made Patriot missile to defend against them.

-In 2002, I published a series of Atlantic pieces applying this logic to the upcoming war in Iraq, and arguing that the US should not invade, unless it was thoroughly prepared for the decades-long consequences.3 The main message of a pre-war piece, based on interviews with historians of combat and of the Middle East, was: Do not choose to begin any “war of choice,” unless you have exhausted all other possibilities, and thought through everything that could go wrong. The main message of another article a year into the chaotic post-war scene was, Here’s what happens when you fail to ask, What if? What next?

-In 2004, I published a long Atlantic story applying this logic to Iran. It was called “Will Iran Be Next?,” and it was based on a formal, Pentagon-style “war game” about the long-term moves and counter-moves that were foreseeable (and unforeseeable) if the US, or Israel, decided to bomb Iran’s nascent nuclear facilities out of existence.

The retired Air Force colonel Samuel Gardiner, who had managed many “real” Pentagon war games, assembled participants of varying political views and military and strategic experience, and led them through a series of what-ifs.

The main message of the piece was in these concluding lines:

This is how the war game turned out: with a finding that the next American President must, through bluff and patience, change the actions of a government whose motives he does not understand well, and over which his influence is limited. "After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers," Sam Gardiner said of his exercise. "You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work."

-In 2015, on return from years of living in China, I published an Atlantic piece whose official title was “The Tragedy of the American Military.” But our in-house working title was “Chickenhawk Nation.” That is because its main argument was that it had become far too easy for political leaders to strut and posture about “honoring the troops”—the Hegseth term “warfighters” was not yet in common use—but then to commit them in half-thought-through “forever” wars, since so much of the public was so insulated from the consequences.

One of its conclusions was in this passage:

The vast majority of Americans outside the military can be triply cynical in their attitude toward it. Triply? One: “honoring” the troops but not thinking about them. Two: “caring” about defense spending but really viewing it as a bipartisan stimulus program. Three: supporting a “strong” defense but assuming that the United States is so much stronger than any rival that it’s pointless to worry whether strategy, weaponry, and leadership are right….

I interviewed retired Admiral Mike Mullen, appointed by George W. Bush and then re-appointed by Barack Obama as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

Mike Mullen thinks that one way to reengage Americans with the military is to shrink the active-duty force, a process already under way.

“The next time we go to war,” he said, “the American people should have to say yes. And that would mean that half a million people who weren’t planning to do this would have to be involved in some way. They would have to be inconvenienced. That would bring America in. America hasn’t been in these previous wars. And we are paying dearly for that.”

His closing words to me were:

“It’s become just too easy to go to war.”

The article also quoted recommendations from a panel commissioned by then-president Barack Obama, and led by former Senator (and defense-reform pioneer) Gary Hart, about managing combat in the “chickenhawk” era. One of the points from its report is haunting now:

Clarify the decision-making process for use of force. Such critical decisions, currently ad hoc, should instead be made in a systematic way by the appropriate authority or authorities based on the most dependable and persuasive information available and an understanding of our national interests based on 21st-century realities.4

That is, something other than a serving president having a “feeling” that it was time to attack.

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Where does this leave us, in March, 2026?

Below is a set of five questions, and quotes, and even clichés that have stayed with me since first writing about Vietnam-era debacles. And that together make me view the past nine days as the most wantonly self-destructive for the United States in my long life time.

This has seemed in a way worse than the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Or of the multiple horrific assassinations of the 1960s. Those previous tragedies were things done to America. Now the people at the controls have taken every hard-earned lesson about war and peace and set it ablaze.

Here are some questions and sayings that come to mind for me:

1) ‘How does this end?’

It’s the question everyone is asking, except those in control.

• It’s the question the most powerful single military commander in US history—Dwight D. Eisenhower, in charge at D-Day—asked as president, in 1954, about supporting the French effort at Dien Bien Phu. And in 1956, about supporting the British effort in Suez. And, most cold-bloodedly, again in 1956, about supporting the Hungarian freedom fighters in their doomed uprising against the Soviet Union. Eisenhower, who had planned so carefully for the war against Hitler, looked three moves ahead and did not like what he saw. He asked “how does this end?” and decided not to commit the US.

• It’s the question John F. Kennedy was reportedly preparing to ask about the trickling-upward commitment of US forces in Indochina, at the time he was killed

• It’s the question the first George Bush asked about extending Gulf War combat from Kuwait all the way into Baghdad. He knew the bloody consequences of leaving Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq. But he did not see how an invasion of Iraq could end well. So he stopped.

• It’s the question the second George Bush did not ask seriously enough about invading Iraq, ten years later.

And it’s a question that appears not to have been taken seriously by the top of our current chain of command.

2) ‘In war, the moral is to the material, as three is to one.’

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The scene in the Capitol two nights ago, as imagined by Hieronymus Bosch more than 500 years ahead of time. (From panel depicting Hell, in ‘Garden of Earthly Delights,’ at Prado Museum in Madrid. Photo Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images.)

-I didn’t write about Donald Trump’s performance at the Capitol on Tuesday night, because I couldn’t stand to watch the whole thing. I turned it off when it still had 45 minutes to go. For context: All presidents from Richard Nixon through the first George Bush kept their SOTU addresses near or below 45 minutes, total. One of Nixon’s lasted only 28 minutes. One of Reagan’s, just 31. Two of Carter’s, just 32 each.

-And I didn’t write about it yesterday, after going back to watch those last, lost 45 minutes, because after doing so I thought: This is too horrible to deal with.

-But today is a new day. So here, in listicle form—which, as it happens, matches the “structure” of Trump’s rambling two hours on stage—are a few points that struck me about what we’ve been through.

For a little more context: Before the speech, I’d done a set-up article about how SOTU’s “normally” work, and where I thought Trump’s might diverge. It turns out that my imagination was not nearly dark enough.

Thus the listicle.

1) No one will be talking about this speech next week. But it still matters.

The speech is already moving into the “old news”/ “asked and answered” category, driven out by the latest, smoking-gun Epstein cover-up revelations, and the possibility of unauthorized, open-ended, politically motivated war with Iran. And whatever tomorrow brings.

But the speech “matters” in the way several other also-terrible, also-mostly forgotten performances by Trump still do. For instance: Less than five months ago, Trump gave a 70-minute rant to a captive audience of some 800 US admirals and generals, dragooned from around to world to hear their Commander in Chief and “Secretary of War” boast and preen. That speech is hardly mentioned now. But I know it lives in the minds of military leaders. I can imagine future histories of US civil-military relations, or the excesses of the Trump years, built around this event and its aftermath.1

Similarly: Just last month Canada’s Mark Carney gave a speech at Davos that is still cited in the news and will also, I think, play a role in histories of our times. News stories no longer bother even to mention Donald Trump’s resentful, incoherent response from the Davos stage the very next day. But I can imagine future histories of the Trump-era “rupture” in world order built around that two-speech, back-to-back Carney-Trump sequence.

As for what we heard two days ago? People writing about our times will, I think, say it “mattered” mainly as a signifier. As an illustration of the state of the Republican party, it showed how utterly servile the Congressional GOP had become. At normal SOTUs, members of the president’s party pop up for planned applause lines every few paragraphs. This week, JD Vance and Mike Johnson were like marionettes or seals, popping up to lead vigorous applause every few sentences. Future historians will also consider this a window into the state of the president. That is, of how many of his character flaws and cognitive struggles were on display.

2) The speech had different modes: Bad. And also bad.

As mentioned in the previous dispatch, SOTUs are hard for presidents. Partly because so much “policy stuff” usually has to be crammed into them. Partly because most of the delivery has to be read from a prompter.

—The prompter part of this week’s speech sounded bad, because Trump has never mastered this harder-than-it-looks skill. He still stumbles on big words. When reaching the “writerly” parts of the speech, like the intro and the conclusion, he still sounds like a reluctant schoolboy, called on to read aloud from an assigned book in class. He never sounds like someone expressing thoughts that had occurred to him, in words he would naturally use.

—Those “writerly” parts sounded all the worse, because of … well, the writing. Look at the beginning, or the end, of this full AP transcript. To me, they combined the verbal grace of a middle-school speech-team contestant, with the tact and humility of a Pam Bondi when testifying, with the rigorous honesty of a Karoline Leavitt or Kristi Noem in the briefing room. With the open-heartedness of a Stephen Miller connecting them all.

—And those were the “prepared” parts of the speech. The parts that together were supposed to be “on message” and “inclusive,” and offer Trump a “reset.” All the rest, nearly half by tonnage, was recycled rally material. “I am the greatest.” “Everyone is unfair to me.” “Anything that’s wrong is Joe Biden’s fault.”

And all of it met with rapturous GOP applause.

3) The act is getting old.

An enormous part of Donald Trump’s appeal is that he’s been interesting. Precisely because people never knew what he might say or do next, they watched to see what that “next” might be.

This speech was racist, full of lies, narcissistic, divisive, and so on. The examples and details have been reported everywhere. By now, all of that is baked in.

The difference this time is that the speech was boring.

Trump himself seemed bored with the “policy” parts. And during the “riff” parts, he was performing as if he had to, with low energy. And unlike riffs before a rally crowd, he couldn’t vibe-surf with the audience, and play up the parts they liked best. The on-scene GOP audience gave him little guidance, since they cheered for whatever he said. He could get no real-time sense of how it was all playing on TV.

As pointed out previously, some of Bill Clinton’s longest SOTUs were distinctive in that the TV audience kept growing through the course of the speech. People liked hearing about the details. I haven’t seen figures for this latest Trump extravaganza. But I bet they’ll show that viewership went down, down, down as the speech went on, on, on.

The act is getting old.

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4) Divisiveness and hostility.

An obvious point, but for the record: A SOTU is any president’s best opportunity, once a year, to reach a broad national audience, beyond the hard-core base.

Trump barely even pretended to care about anyone but MAGA loyalists. “These people are crazy,” he said about Democrats as a whole, when they refused to stand for one of his lines. And continued:

We’re lucky we have a country. With people like this—Democrats are destroying our country. But we’ve stopped it just in the nick of time, didn’t we?

Another time he tried to “trick” the Democrats, with a question that boiled down to “stand up if you care about real Americans.” They didn’t take the bait. Trump then theatrically paused and surveyed the seated part of the audience: “You should be ashamed of yourself for not standing up,” he said, shaking his head back and forth in a scolding, “I’m so disappointed” way. He paused again, for the obviously planned kicker: “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Ah, yes, the healing power of a lecture on shame, from a veteran of the Access Hollywood tapes and Epstein files.

In SOTUs presidents rarely call out their predecessors by name. Four separate times Trump said that the country’s remaining problems all traced back to Joe Biden.

5) A creepy obsession with gore.

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Samuel Alito, at the upper left, is not liking what he is hearing from Barack Obama, when Alito and five other Supreme Court Justices attended Obama’s 2010 SOTU. Days earlier, the Court had issued its disastrous Citizens United ruling, which Obama correctly said would “open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.” While his black-robed colleagues sat poker-faced, Alito frowned, shook his head back and forth, and said loud enough for microphones to pick up, “Not true!” He has not attended any SOTU since then.

Now Alito has been called out by Donald Trump as one of the “good” judges, for his pro-Trump vote in last week’s tariff ruling. Might he show up this time? Which of his colleagues will decide to go? Will John Roberts abide by his tradition that The Chief should always be there? These are some of the many details to look for on Tuesday night. (Photo Alex Wong/Getty Images)

In a normal four-year term, a US president can count on exactly four occasions to reach a live TV audience of at least 40 to 50 million people, for uninterrupted airtime of an hour or more. These four chances are the president’s State of the Union addresses, or SOTUs, which come early in each year, usually between late January and early March.1

These addresses are rarely remembered for their rhetoric. The presidential lines that go down in history are mostly from inaugural speeches: “With malice toward none.” “The only thing we have to fear.” “Ask not what your country can do for you.” Probably the most memorable line from a modern SOTU has gone down in history in ways its authors would rather forget. That was George W. Bush’s SOTU declaration in 2002 that Iraq was part of an “axis of evil,” whose “weapons of mass destruction” had to be removed by force.

But SOTUs stand alone in the platform and attention they provide a president. Bill Clinton still holds the SOTU record for the biggest live TV audience, of more than 66 million in 1993. Since Clinton’s time, live TV audiences have ranged from the low-40 millions to the low-60 millions. Those may seem small by Super Bowl standards (around 120 million) but are much larger than the TV audience for anything else a president does, including inauguration speeches or Oval Office addresses.

Clinton also normalized the pattern of SOTUs lasting an hour or more. For comparison: One of Ronald Reagan’s SOTUs was 31 minutes long. One of Jimmy Carter’s, 32 minutes.2 But most presidents who followed Clinton have spoken for an hour, or a little more. In this as in other areas, Donald Trump has been an outlier. Last year he spoke for nearly 100 minutes, by far the longest SOTU ever, padded by rally-style improvisations, and ending near 11pm Eastern time.

Bill Clinton’s example is relevant in another way for Trump’s upcoming speech. The first time Clinton broke the one-hour barrier, media pundits made fun of his long-windedness. But TV ratings soon showed that his audience had steadily grown as the speech went on. People were telling their friends to tune in. Most of his later speeches matched this pattern: He wanted to talk about policy details, and that’s what many viewers wanted to hear.

Donald Trump’s speeches, especially last year’s, have shown the opposite pattern. According to Nielsen, his audience peaked in the first 30 minutes of his speech, at around 38 million, and steadily fell after that. People had heard the riffs before.

That’s the back story on why these speeches matter. Now, here’s what I’ll be listening for, two nights from now:

1) ‘What makes this SOTU different from all others?’

Administrations come and go. One internal struggle never changes: That is the battle between the vast majority of officials and departments in the government, on one side, and a tiny little tribe of speechwriters on the other. Both sides know the speech “matters,” because of its audience. But they think in different ways about how it should matter.

—Most of the government spends a year trying to cram details into the SOTU. Their arguments boil down to: “If we don’t mention [this spending program or tax cut or treaty], then [this Senator or Congressman or donor or voting bloc or allied country] will be pissed at us, and we might lose [this crucial midterm or upcoming Senate vote].” Thus a growing stack of “must include” sentences, paragraphs, and commitments to fit in somewhere.

—Meanwhile the little team of speechwriters keeps saying, “But this is the administration’s one big chance per year to present a Big Idea! To re-introduce ourselves to America! To have our version of ‘New Deal’ or ‘Morning in America’! To avoid the clichéd ‘laundry list’ of SOTUs and concentrate on one uplifting theme!”

The writers also know that Bill Clinton was the exception, For most presidents, the more they get into the weeds, the more the audience tunes out.

We all know how this David-v-Goliath battle turns out. The Goliath of the Laundry List prevails. That’s why the speeches are so long. And for Trump speeches, the battlefield is especially complicated because of his fondness for the impromptu stylings he calls “the weave.”

Is there any hope of the pattern changing in this next speech? That this Trump speech will be different from all others? We can all guess. We’ll know within the first five minutes, which is when any “thematic” speech needs to declare itself.3 That is my first viewer-tip.

2) Way harder than it seems: The weird formalities of a scripted speech.

Most people who end up as president are good at in-person presentations to live audiences. That’s how they got ahead in politics to begin with. Eye contact, reading the room, improvising—at fund-raisers, at rallies, during informal Q-and-As.

But certain parts of being president involve surprisingly different communication skills. There are presentations you can’t just wing—formal ones like inaugural speeches or SOTUs.4 There is specific legal, diplomatic, and legislative language you have to state precisely, which means exactly following a prepared text. There are many circumstances where you can’t possibly read an audience’s reaction—because you’re sitting there looking at moving text on a prompter, with a TV camera behind it. In person, you can tell what lines are boring people, and which are making them sit up. Speaking to a camera, you can only see those scrolling prompter words.

Learning to do these things effectively is hard!

—Ronald Reagan came to office knowing how to do all this. That was not so much because he’d been an actor. Mainly it was because he’d been an announcer, and a radio commentator.

—For most other presidents, this kind of communication is new, and they must work to develop ease with it. George W. Bush started out quite awkward at “set speech” presentations, and got much better. Jimmy Carter was brilliant as an extemporaneous small-crowd speaker but resisted mastering the artifice of TV. (For the record: I was Carter’s chief White House speechwriter at the time.) Barack Obama was already skilled by the time he came to national attention with his 2004 Democratic Convention speech. Most other presidents are somewhere in between.

The challenge and problem for Donald Trump is that his natural speaking style is the exact opposite of what these formal occasions require. To the best of my knowledge, he has never once delivered a speech in the style that works best for SOTUs :

• Trump loves the ramble, the ‘weave,’ the ‘sir’ stories. He loves the lines he’s used a million times. He loves the boasts. He loves the personalized attacks. These make up the heart of his rally speeches, and they are “greatest hits!” favorites with his base. But the entire point of a SOTU is the once-per-year chance to reach beyond the base.

• Trump doesn’t like reading from scripts and prompters, and is comically bad at it. He stumbles over “big” words or “hard” names. When sticking to a script, he will offer commentary—“You know, that’s so true”—after reading a line he is obviously seeing for the first time. You have to practice to sound natural in these structured settings. He does not appear to have put in that work.

• Trump loves to rile up audiences he knows are on his side. He loves riling them up with resentment, with complaints about unfairness, with warnings about how evil the other side is. This creates a problem with both segments of his audience for a SOTU. The in-person audience within the Capitol has only a slight MAGA majority, and includes people Trump has called out as “low IQ,” “losers,” “RINOs,” and “Communists.” Trump is most animated and “interesting” when on the attack, or in pro-wrestling-style kayfabe. But (except at press conferences) he’s not used to attacking people to their face. Meanwhile, the vastly larger audience watching on TV will not be MAGA-only.

You get the point. Here the viewer-tip will apply to the first 15 minutes of the speech. That’s usually as long as Trump can stay “on message”: Sticking with the script, reading the prompter as if he’s seen the words before, omitting the “like nobody has seen before” or “prices down 800%” marginalia, sounding as “big tent” as MAGA policies allow.

If he lasts that long, it will be a sign of a different kind of speech from what we’ve come to expect. But if he reverts to form in this opening stretch, when the audience will be largest, even with a few casual riffs that make him feel comfortable but aren’t in the script, we’ll know what the rest of the speech will be like.

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3) Who will be ‘Lenny Skutnik.’

Not long before Ronald Reagan’s 1982 SOTU, there was a terrible airplane crash outside National Airport in Washington. Lenny Skutnik, a federal employee in his late 20s, was one of the civilian-heroes who jumped off a bridge into the frozen Potomac to rescue a passenger who was about to drown.

At Reagan’s SOTU, Lenny Skutnik was in the First Lady’s Box, with Nancy Reagan. Ronald Reagan called him out as an example of American heroism.

Ever since then, invited guests have played the role of inspiring examples, or sometimes just props, for a president’s message.

Which guests will Donald Trump choose to sit alongside Melania? (Assuming that she attends.) Might it be someone “inclusive”—from Ukraine, perhaps? Or perhaps a Latin American or African immigrant who struggled to reach America and has enriched our culture?

Or, by contrast, someone whose story is aimed at “the base”? The victim of crime from a “worst of the worst” immigrant? An ICE or CBP member injured in the line of duty? A small business owner helped by tariffs?

Viewer-tip: Watch who is placed in the Lenny Skutnik seats, and the rhetorical use Trump makes of them.

4) And what about SCOTUS?

Supreme Court attendance at SOTUs is a relatively modern “tradition,” starting mainly in Lyndon Johnson’s era. Over the years, individual Justices have made a point of attending, or not. However many come, they’re in the front row at the Capitol, unavoidably in the president’s immediate line-of-sight.

Whatever these nine people decide—individually, and as a group—will carry exceptional weight this time.

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Closing scene in Robert Redford’s classic 1972 movie The Candidate. Redford’s long-shot candidate stages an unexpected victory. As the returns come in, he asks his advisors: What do we do now? Winning is one thing. Governing is different. Dems hope they’ll be in a position to ask—and answer—this question one year from now. (JF screenshot.)

The past year’s political energy for many Americans has mainly, and necessarily, been anti. As a reminder, here are some examples of people bravely working against what Trump/Doge/MAGA/ICE/CBP and all their lackies have tried to do:

-Citizens standing together, from Los Angeles to Minneapolis to Portland to Charlotte and beyond, against thugs from ICE and CBP who are killing their neighbors and making Kavanaugh Stops.

-Grand juries standing together against bogus indictments of fellow citizens. Judges at every level except the Supreme Court standing together against assaults on the rule of law.

-Legislatures from California to Virginia standing together to offset Trump/Abbott gerrymanders.

-The Chairman of the Fed, the president of Harvard, the leaders of major foundations, and other people with great influence standing together against assaults on their independence.

-Canada, Mexico, and traditional US allies as a whole standing firm against Trump-era aggression.

-Late-night comedians standing up against censorship. Librarians and museum directors doing the same in their realms.

-Scores of Epstein survivors standing together against Trump/ Bondi/ Blanche efforts to shield a vile pedophile.

-Millions of “ordinary Americans” turning out to say “No Kings!” and stand against infringements on their liberties. The same happening on a smaller scale around the country, at teach-ins, town meetings, organized volunteer citizen groups, and other gatherings against un-American governmental over-reach.

This is the anti energy and courage called for at the moment. This will stand as history’s counter-example to the cowardice, subservience, and corruption of the Congressional GOP as a bloc, and much of today’s powerful financial and corporate leadership. The latter range from the flagrant cases like Musk and Thiel, to full-on collaborationists like Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Tim Cook.

But at some point, MAGA will be gone. Who has a plan for what comes next, beyond repairing what has been destroyed?1

Some Practical Q-and-As, about preparing for post-Trump times.

There are reasons not to get ahead of ourselves. Some are listed in the footnotes below.2 But recently I talked with a longtime friend who has long experience in planning for presidential transitions, about what Democrats regardless of faction could and should be thinking about now.

This friend is Derek Shearer. He is a veteran professor at Occidental College, in California. He is a former US Ambassador to Finland. And he is a longtime political participant, including as a major figure in Bill Clinton’s victorious 1992 campaign. By all accounts it was Derek Shearer who came up with the slogan “Putting People First” for Clinton’s economic platform.

Recently Shearer has been working with two colleagues who are economics professors—Martin Carnoy, of Stanford, and Michael Reich, of UC Berkeley—on a plan that they hope will begin discussion among Democrats about what they should do, whenever they gain power again. And what they should do, to hasten that moment.

Last week I spoke with him about the results of their work so far, mostly a 100-page document called “A Bold Economic Program for America.” (Available here.) The program they lay out is both highly detailed and intentionally flexible. It has precise cost/revenue assessments for each of its proposals. But it also, in explicitly first-draft form, invites additions, corrections, improvements, and evolutions by other experts, plus future candidates and their staffs.

I spoke with Derek Shearer about the obvious questions. Why now for such a proposal, when the party’s momentum was mainly anti. Why such details, when it’s at least three years until a Democratic president could propose any of them? Why suggest anything that might be divisive within the party, when solidarity against MAGA was the paramount goal?

He addressed all those questions, in ways I find interesting and provocative. I’m offering the results in three forms:

-Here is a 45-minute podcast discussion, which you can listen to or download and hear later.

-For subscribers, after the paywall, I’ll have an edited transcript of our talk.

-Just below, I’ll highlight some of the main points.

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Why Democrats need to start talking about what they’re for, even now.

Some main points Derek Shearer makes about Dems beginning a discussion about their specific and detailed how-to-do list, for if and when they regain power:

• Democrats in Congress need to start talking about these ideas now—for instance, with bills about corporate accountability, and changes in the minimum wage and Social Security funding—to “normalize” them, and prepare the ground for when they can enact them.

• Democrats in Congress also need to force votes on these issues now, to put themselves—and Republicans—on the record.

• Dems need their own, “non-evil” version of Project 2025. Donald Trump’s second administration hit the ground running, with the destructive playbooks of DOGE and Project 2025, even though they had not raised these in the campaign. Democrats need to be similarly prepared. But they shouldn’t be secretive or deceptive about their ambitions, as Trump was about Project 2025. On the contrary, they should be transparent about their goals—as Bill Clinton was—to build support and trust.

• The time to start talking about specifics is, again, now—before proposals are tied to any one candidate, and when there’s time to refine and evolve ideas. And what has to happen now is an iterative process—saying this idea could be improved in X or Y way, without tying it to any candidate.

• One specific-specific that Derek Shearer is looking for is a 2028 counterpart to his 1992 Clinton label, “Putting People First.” Proposals welcomed.

• Some of the problems that seem “impossible” to solve, especially housing, actually have a track record of practical solutions. Others—notably the eons-long struggle to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes—remain fundamental struggles. And, why as a progressive he is skeptical of California’s “billionaire tax” proposal.

• The “abundance agenda” has gotten a lot of attention in Democrat-world. Shearer says: Not so fast. '

• For scale and readability reasons, the transcript below is condensed in several points. (The audio is the full, original conversation.) One point I boiled down was a list of politicians and groups with whom Shearer and his colleagues have been in touch about the plan. They include the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the Center for American Progress (CAP). He names a lot more.

The specifics of the Shearer/Carnoy/Reich plan have been carefully thought-through, notably for job-creation and economic fairness, and deserve consideration at least as a starting point. You can see them here. He, and I, welcome questions, comments, and suggestions for improvement.

Now, the transcript.

Here is a transcript of what Derek Shearer told me last week, edited and condensed in some places:

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The area the FAA hastily declared as a ten-day “no fly” zone over El Paso this week, in response to what appears to have been a party balloon floating across the border from Mexico. The episode posed no immediate risk to people in El Paso or elsewhere but revealed profoundly dangerous attitudes.

This post is a Q-and-A about the sudden closure of the El Paso airport two days ago.

Based on evidence available so far, it appears that a combination of arrogance, ignorance, and sheer incompetence lay behind a potentially major disruption in air travel, and potentially bigger problems in the future.

Here’s my sense of what we know now.

1) What was this all about?

Two days ago, late on Tuesday evening, the FAA issued an emergency NOTAM, or Notice to Airmen, prohibiting all commercial and general-aviation flights to or from the El Paso airport, in far west Texas. The shutdown was originally announced to last ten days, until February 21. During that time no passenger, cargo, medical, or other flights would be allowed to operate in or out of this city of nearly 700,000 people.

As detailed below, this was more drastic than most other emergency flight restrictions in most other cities, which have generally allowed airline and emergency aircraft to operate under close supervision from Air Traffic Control (ATC).

The reliable VASAviation site, using audio from LiveATC.net, captures the moment when a Southwest crew has just landed on Tuesday night, and learns that it won’t be able to leave the next day. The exchange occurs in the first minute of the clip below:

The El Paso tower controller asks the crew, which is taxiing toward the gate, if they’re planning to take off again quickly. The crew says No, on the contrary, they’re headed to the hotel for the night. The controller says, “just be advised” that quite soon the airport will be completely shut down—and will remain closed for the next ten days:

Pilot: “So the airport’s totally closed?” [A question he has never had to ask before.]

Tower: “Apparent-ly! We just got informed 30 minutes or an hour ago.” [Affable, with a “we’re all in this together” tone.]

Pilot: “So — for ten days, you guys are not open?” [Tone of: Let me be sure I’m hearing this right.]

Tower: “Well, we’ll be here [ATC controllers], but no air traffic!” [Jokingly].

Pilot: Laughs, at the absurdity of it all. Then “OK! Thanks for that heads up.”

The controllers in El Paso were taken by surprise. The Southwest crew was taken by surprise. The controller guessed that Southwest Airlines as a whole might also be taken by surprise, and she asks the pilot to pass word on to his company. (The rest of the recording is similar exchanges with other surprised pilots.)

2) Are pilots used to dealing with no-fly zones, restricted airspace, and so on?

Sure. If you look at an aviation chart of the US, you’ll first be impressed by the sheer beauty of the topographic display.1 Here’s the big picture, from an FAA flight-planning map you would see in most flight schools around the country:

FAA flight-planning map. Most flight schools and FBOs (small-airport offices) have one of these on the wall, which pilots can use in planning and imagining flights. (FAA chart.)

Then the closer you look, the more you’ll see the intricate patchwork of airspace designations, each with its own regulations, flight rules, restrictions, or cautions. For instance, here is a close-up of the area around Palm Beach. The red circles are “Temporary Flight Restrictions,” or TFRs, which accompany a president wherever he goes. One of these shown is centered on Mar-a-Lago, for the times Donald Trump is there. The other is centered on the Palm Beach airport, for when he is getting on or off a plane. And, again, notice the density of info shown on these charts, all of which pilots must understand.

Some of the airspace regulations involve the orderly flow of traffic into big airports. Some of them are warnings about military-training areas, with info on finding out whether they are currently “hot,” with artillery or aircraft fire. Some of them are strict no-go instructions, either permanent or temporary.

For instance, there is a permanent “prohibited” airspace zone over most of downtown Washington, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol and Supreme Court. Not even airliners taking off or landing at DCA are allowed to fly in that space. There are similar permanent prohibitions over nuclear submarine bases, the homes of former presidents, and a few other places. The prohibited zone over Camp David gets bigger or smaller, depending on whether a sitting president is visiting there. For nearly 25 years, since the 9/11 attacks, much of greater DC has been under a very large “Special Flight Rules Area,” with strict limits on ingress, egress, and routing.

Then there are TFRs—Temporary Flight Restrictions. These can pop up for a variety of reasons. During wildfires or after hurricanes, TFRs can limit normal traffic, to clear the way for emergency crews. During big outdoor sporting events, from MLB games to the Super Bowl, TFRs keep aircraft from flying over crowds. During political campaigns, you can tell where the nominees and the president are headed, by following the rings of red TFR circles forecast for their campaign stops.

For people working toward a pilot certificate, knowledge about airspace is right up there with knowledge about weather, and learning how to take off and land. If you take everything a student driver needs to learn about road signs before getting a driver’s license, and multiply it by 1,000, that approximates what every pilot needs to learn about reading an airspace chart.

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3) So what’s the big deal with this one?

Here is a screen shot of the original NOTAM, or Notice to Airmen2, which the FAA issued announcing the 10-day El Paso lockdown. This was different from anything I had seen before. It stood out in three ways.

Its suddenness. Safe flight involves planning—weather, airspace, fueling, maintenance, and so on. You want to think through the journey in your mind and on your charts, long before you take off.

Thus everything about the FAA is organized with planning in mind. Most “special” airspace has been there for a long time. (For instance, the specific altitudes and routes private planes can take around major hub airports.) When TFRs pop up, the authorities give you as much advance word as possible, usually several days ahead.

That was the first oddity about this measure. It was issued at “0332 Universal Time” (“Greenwich time”) on February 11. That means 8:32pm in El Paso on Tuesday night. And it was slated to go into effect just three hours later, at 11:30pm local time. Why did this short notice matter? Imagine an airliner or private plane on a four-hour flight to El Paso. It might have taken off with no sign of trouble, only to learn en route that it would not be allowed to land.

The only remotely comparable episode I can think of was the 9/11 mass grounding of planes, leading to aircraft and passengers stuck in place for a number of days. (As depicted in Come from Away.)

Its vagueness. TFRs are usually accompanied by an explanation of the reason. E.g. “the Super Bowl.” Or “VIP movement,” of a president or others. This one simply said “Special Security Reasons.” That is boilerplate language for some TFRs, but this one was unusual in the fast-changing public explanations of the reason behind it.

Its severity and duration. TFRs usually last for a few hours (for a sporting event or VIP arrival) or at most a few days (natural disasters, etc). This one was scheduled for ten days. Again, the only comparison would be after 9/11—and that, of course, was after a historic mass-casualty attack, rather than an undefined issue on the southern border.

The initial order also said that greater El Paso was “national defense airspace,” and that the military would use “deadly force” against offending aircraft if need be. All of this was unusual.3

4) Was this lockdown dangerous?

Not directly, or immediately. Planes inbound to El Paso would proceed safely and normally—unless they were scheduled to arrive after 11:30pm, in which case they would be routed elsewhere. Planes leaving from El Paso would take off before the deadline—or similarly miss the deadline, and have to stay on the ground.

The indirect safety hazards are a different story. At face value, the NOTAM would have forbidden all Medevac or other emergency flights. Would this have cost lives? Not just passenger flights but also cargo shipments and UPS/FedEx deliveries would be stalled. It’s easy to imagine the ripple effects of medicines, medical equipment, manufacturing supplies, perishable goods, and other items being delayed for more than a week. To say nothing of people planning trips for vacations, weddings, funerals, family visits, or other time-sensitive events.

This is why officials in El Paso were quick and passionate in their objections, and were relieved when the “ten-day” restriction was shortened to one day.

5) So why should we care?

I care—as a long-time aviation practitioner, and as an even longer-time American—because the Administration’s handling of this event appears to have displayed its contempt for the two cardinal rules of aviation safety.

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White House staffers, “clarifying” Donald Trump’s latest midnight decree. (Or more precisely: A woman sweeping up horse manure after a Hyde Park event in London ten years ago. Photo Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

It’s hard to be in Washington DC at this moment and react to anything except the devastating news that Jeff Bezos, with more than $250 billion at his personal disposal, and Will Lewis, the discredited Murdoch/Fleet Street refugee Bezos brought in to run (and ruin) the Washington Post, have today announced what is effectively the Post’s demise. Their statement starts out by announcing the elimination of two of the paper’s strongest and most popular sections—Sports, and Books—and goes downhill from there.

The paper’s stellar, and usually tight-lipped, former editor Marty Baron—successor to Ben Bradlee, Len Downie, Marcus Brauchli—put out a blistering statement this morning. Baron said that “This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations.”

It seems to me that this day stands alone.

Its only rival would be whatever day it was on which Jeff Bezos converted himself from the man who stood by Baron in his toughest calls at the Post (as Baron detailed in his autobiography), and once sponsored an extraordinary pro-journalism Super Bowl ad, narrated by Tom Hanks, to the courtier who grovels before Donald Trump and parades around at fashion shows with his new wife.

Jeff Bezos could have done absolutely anything in the world. He has chosen to destroy. And to spend $75 million on the Melania movie, including the $28 million payoff directly to her.1

Unlike this era’s other great destroyer, Bezos does not even have the excuse of being insane.

There will be more on this front. For now let’s move quickly to three other illustrations of the risk of putting so much power into the hands of so few.

‘White House officials clarified…’

Donald Trump has clearly lost control of his emotions, his contact with reality, and such fidelity to truth as he ever had.

This is a problem for everyone on Earth: That a furious 79-year-old has asserted one-man authority to disrupt the world economy, destroy historic alliances, sell pardons to criminals, and conceivably start a nuclear war.

It’s a problem in a specific way for the subset of people on Team MAGA—within the White House and on Capitol Hill—who realize that much of what Trump says each day is literally insane.

This is a for-the-record post, to note three recent examples of Trump saying and ordering things that his own people know are insane, and where this leaves the rest of us.

1) February 3, about elections: States are ‘agents’ of the federal government.

Yesterday in the Oval Office, as part of his standard “stolen election” riff, Donald Trump said that if “Democrat” states couldn’t clean up their elections, then federal authorities would exercise their right to step in. As he put it:

If you think about it, the state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway.

If you think about it, the states are in fact not an agent for the federal government in elections. If you don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway, it is because the US Constitution explicitly says that this is a job for the states.

To wit, from Article I, Section 4, Clause 1:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.2

Everyone else in the US government knows this. Nearly everyone on the MAGA team realizes it’s a problem that the sitting president either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, how the Constitution works. And so could never pass a naturalized-citizenship test.

Thus they pirouette around this awkward reality. Last week, they had to pretend not to have heard Trump’s comment, after the Alex Pretti murder, that no one should be allowed to carry a loaded gun to a public rally. (Notwithstanding the Second Amendment, the NRA, Kyle Rittenhouse, and many others.)

This time, the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, tactfully said after Trump’s comment that he personally was “not in favor” of “nationalizing” elections. Karoline Leavitt used her trademark huffy deflection to say, reassuringly, that Donald Trump “believes in the Constitution.” And that his real point was concern about “election integrity” and the desirability of “nationwide standards” toward that end.

Fine. But that’s not what he said. And apparently not what he thinks, or knows.

2) January 29, about aircraft: How to cut off travel throughout much of the US, via one nighttime tweet.

Six days ago, something brought an arcane aspect of aircraft regulation to Donald Trump’s attention. It is arcane, not worth going into here, and not the kind of thing a normal president would be bothering with. The issue involved certification standards and timetables for private-jet aircraft in the US, versus those in Canada. Some explanatory links are below.3

However he got wind of this issue, Donald Trump apparently decided that it was one more way in which Mark Carney and his Canadians were showing him up, and one more instance of foreigners cheating Americans.

Therefore Trump declared, online, an immediate grounding in the US of “all Aircraft made in Canada.” Plus a 50% tariff on imported Canadian jets that sell for tens of millions of dollars.

As Trump put it in a social media post last Thursday night. (Emphasis added.)

Based on the fact that Canada has wrongfully, illegally, and steadfastly refused to certify the Gulfstream 500, 600, 700, and 800 Jets, one of the greatest, most technologically advanced airplanes ever made, we are hereby decertifying their Bombardier Global Expresses, and all Aircraft made in Canada, until such time as Gulfstream, a Great American Company, is fully certified, as it should have been many years ago…. If, for any reason, this situation is not immediately corrected, I am going to charge Canada a 50% Tariff on any and all Aircraft sold into the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

As I write, Trump’s post is still online. And it is still insane.

Why? Because “decertifying” means that planes could no longer legally fly in the United States. And if implemented, this decree would have effectively ended air service to hundreds of medium-sized and smaller-city destinations across the country.

The “major” carriers like United, Delta, American, and Southwest carry people among the big hub cities, on big Boeing and Airbus planes. But at least 400 other US communities—Wichita, Dayton, Duluth, and so on—get most or all of their air service from a “regional” carrier. These flights are usually ticketed and branded as American, Delta, or United. But they’re operated by separate smaller companies, and nearly all of their service is via smaller jets or turboprops.

Bombardier is one of the two globally dominant suppliers of these planes. The other is Embraer, based in Brazil. Boeing and Airbus don’t make planes like these. On a typical day, more than 600 Bombardier CRJ regional jets are in flight over the US. Bombardier itself employs in the US some 3,000 people directly, and says it buys from 2,800 suppliers. (The aircraft-building business is globally integrated, and very complex.)

This means that Trump’s edict, if anyone took it seriously, would cut off all but the biggest cities in the US from crucial business, medical, touristic, and other transport ties.

Of course Trump did not know this, just as he doesn’t know about elections or gun laws. Of course he had not thought through this whim. But how could the rest of the world know that this was just ranting, even though it came from a sitting president?

The CBC in Canada had an immediate followup, based on talking with people who had thought through the consequences:

John Gradek, a lecturer on aviation and supply chain management at McGill University in Montreal, told CBC News he was “flabbergasted” by Trump’s outburst, given the ramifications for the industry…

“There’s probably been some misunderstanding about the impact that such a decertification of Canadian aircraft would have on the U.S. domestic air services currently operated by U.S. carriers,” he said…

It does not appear the FAA has the legal authority to revoke certifications for planes based on economic reasons, as it can only do so for safety ‍reasons under existing regulations.

Eventually Reuters got an unnamed source “in the White House” to clarify that the statement would apply only to future planes from Canada, not the ones already going to Montgomery or Fresno. Phew! The New York Times reported the “clarification” clown show this way. Emphasis added.

The president said on social media that he would decertify “all aircraft made in Canada,” a move that would ground thousands of planes and upend air travel in the United States. But industry officials said federal regulators clarified that his statement was meant to apply only to new aircraft certifications….

The Federal Aviation Administration, which issues aircraft certifications in the United States, referred questions about the statement to the White House, which did not respond to a request for clarification… Two industry officials said that federal regulators had advised that the statement was intended only to refer to new certifications. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the government’s guidance.

In short: The president is insane. And we’re left with “officials” who are afraid to be named, to serve as grownups in the room.

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3) February 2, about Harvard: How the word ‘backtracked’ infuriated Trump.

For nearly a year now I’ve chronicled the MAGA assault on Harvard—so famous, so fabled, so rich. And Harvard’s rock-ribbed determination, starting last April after some initial hesitation, to resist. Some early entries in this series were here and here.

I also chronicled the “Harvard about to cave” series in the NYT, as detailed here. In short, I thought many items in this series gave too much weight to unnamed sources on the Trump team, who wanted to promote the idea that not even Harvard could stand up to them—and made its capitulation seem ever-imminent. And gave too little attention to the commitment by the university’s leadership and community to stand up on behalf of higher eduction as a whole.

Thus I did a double-take two days ago, on Monday evening, at this headline on the Times’s web site.

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Slide from the NTSB’s public hearings this week, charting the paths that led an Army Black Hawk helicopter (path in yellow) to fly into a commercial airliner (in blue) in the skies over Washington DC. (NTSB graphic.)

This post is about aviation safety, based on the deadliest US airline crash since 2001. This was the 2025 collision, over the Potomac, between a US Army Black Hawk helicopter, on a night training mission, and a Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet, inbound from Wichita, Kansas, and about to land at National Airport in DC. In that crash, which happened one year ago this week, all 67 passengers and crew aboard both aircraft were killed. These included 14 young figure skaters, returning from a competition and training camp in Wichita, and 14 more of their coaches and family members.

The National Transportation Safety Board has not yet released its full, official, “final” report on the incident. But this week it held a day-long public hearing that was a preview of nearly everything likely to be in that final report.

It included dramatic new illustrations, re-enactments, and data, and strong indications of who and what, in the end, would be judged most responsible for allowing the “holes in the Swiss cheese” all to line up.

The Swiss cheese metaphor is a common aviation parlance for times when small vulnerabilities in multi-layered, redundant safety systems—the holes in slices of cheese—all happen to align, and allow disaster to occur. In this case, as in most air disasters, there were missed opportunities to avert tragedy all around. But to me it looks as if the crew in the Army helicopter missed the most chances to prevent a deadly alignment of holes.

My purpose in this post is mainly to direct attention to several parts of the hearing that deserve broad public attention, as well as a new magazine article that also adds significantly to our understanding. And then I’ll add some of my own conclusions about things we’ve all learned.

I really do hope you’ll take to time to look at some of the presentations and discussions listed below. They’re detailed and compelling and range beyond what I can cover here,

This is a preview of the themes that struck me from the hearing:

• The entire air-travel system over the Potomac—with the White House and Capitol sitting immediately on one side, and hyper-busy National Airport (plus the Pentagon) immediately on the other—had long been operating on a high-volume, high-stress, zero-margin-for-error basis. It had avoided crashes for decades, but its reliance on good luck, and round-the-clock hyper-competence by all involved, couldn’t last forever.

• The “Swiss cheese” margin for error became paper-thin, and then disappeared, on that night over the Potomac, through a combination of fateful factors. They include but were not limited to:
  
  Crucial details in radio transmissions that were blocked, because of aviation’s antique CB-style radio system—which, among other problems, kept the airplane crew from hearing what the controller was telling the helicopter, and vice versa. This limited each aircraft’s “situational awareness” of where the other was. An apparently defective altimeter in the Black Hawk, which could have made its crew think it was flying much lower than its real altitude. The crew apparently thought they were staying below the mandated ceiling of 200 feet as they neared National Airport. In fact they were flying much higher, and straight into the path of airliners, rather than safely below them. (The altitude at collision was 278 feet.) A crosswind that forced the helicopter to fly at a “crabbed” angle to maintain its course along the Potomac, and therefore pointed the cockpit away from where controllers expected the pilots to be looking. An air traffic control decision at National that led the doomed airplane to take a different final approach course from what the helicopter was likely expecting. Routine traffic-flow practices at National, to keep planes taking off and landing as frequently as the physics of runway space allow. The sheer visual chaos of nighttime landings at National, with city lights, airplane lights, helicopter lights, and other distractions. And many decisions by those in the helicopter that created new holes in the cheese. These started with the fundamental choice to operate a night-training mission in some of the most congested and tightly controlled airspace in the country, when they could have taken other routes or stayed away from the city altogether.

  More details on these points and others in the hearings and initial report.

• There is no suggestion, in any of the data I have seen, that the regional airline crew created any new “hole” in the safety structure. To judge by the recordings of in-cockpit discussion between those two pilots, they were doing everything by the book in setting up for a safe landing at DCA. There is virtually nothing they could or should have done differently. The airline pilots had almost no way to avoid this tragedy.

• There is zero suggestion in the data that Donald Trump and his then brand-new Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy (who has zero aviation experience), were correct in their immediate, despicable suggestions that the crash was caused by “DEI practices” at the airlines and the FAA.
  The day after the crash, Trump said at a press conference that the Obama and Biden administrations had hurt the FAA with diversity programs, and that they had considered it “too white.” By contrast, he said, “We want the people that are competent.” As it happens, it appears that the person who missed the most opportunities to prevent this crash was a white male.

But we’ll get to that. First a review of what we learned at this week’s hearings.

1) How things looked inside the cockpits.

I strongly encourage you to begin with this eight-minute NTSB video presented at the hearings. It very carefully shows what it would have been like, inside the cockpit of each aircraft, in the minutes leading up to the crash. Mainly it conveys how difficult it would have been for either of them to see the other.

Technical note: The NTSB videos mentioned here are all on YouTube, which means that you can speed up their replay to 1.5x or even 2x the real-time rate. I encourage you to do that except if you’re listening for messages from Air Traffic Control. In busy airspace like DC’s, these can sound like 3x speed even in normal circumstances. You should hear those at the same pace the pilots did, to get a sense of how busy this whole arena was.

My reaction to this video—having flown a small plane over DCA at night during training in the 1990s, when such things were possible, and having dealt with night landings at several major airports over the years—is that it reinforces how fraught these moments of flight were, for everyone involved. The controller, for instance, is dealing with several helicopters, many inbound and outbound planes, and some other duties, in a nonstop rat-a-tat. Inside the Black Hawk, both pilots were wearing night-vision goggles. These would be useful during night missions in theaters of war. But in the crucial moments as they neared National Airport, these goggles significantly narrowed the pilots’ range of view. (As the video demonstrates.)

The first four minutes of this video simulate the view from inside the helicopter. You’ll see it flying right down the river toward downtown DC, with the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and other landmarks clearly visible. You’ll also hear the DCA controller asking, twice, whether the helicopter crew had the regional jet in sight. Twice—immediately, confidently, almost by rote—the “instructor pilot” in the helicopter said “traffic in sight” and asked the controller’s approval to “maintain visual separation.” This apparently had become a routine request in this airspace, and was routinely granted. Unfortunately the pilot was looking at the wrong plane.

The second half of this video shows the view from inside the airliner. Again I’ll say: Its crew seemed to be doing everything by the book.

This is a high level of explanatory video work by the NTSB.

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2) The ‘overview’ NTSB explainer.

Next, I encourage you to watch the overall introductory video with which the NTSB opened the hearing. It’s 12 minutes long; you can speed up parts unless you want to hear the real-time cadence of ATC broadcasts; and you will see a tragedy in the making.

Every fundamental what/why/how/who issue is covered in this video. Including the crucial fact that the helicopter crew knew that they had to stay below 200 feet altitude as they neared National, but they were almost 100 feet too high. In cross-country flight, a 100-foot altitude error is minor sloppiness. Crossing the final-approach path for a major airport, it left 67 people dead.

3) An NTSB briefing on helicopter practices.

Next, I encourage you to look at one of the NTSB’s staff presentations on what the helicopter crew was doing, and how they could have missed so many cues.

The whole hearing is nearly 8 hours long, and you can see it and links to all other relevant documents at the NTSB’s index page, here.

But I encourage you to see or listen to the several-minute presentation that starts around time 3:19 of the full board meeting presentation. It should come up if you click on the image below, which is linked to that part of the full-session video.

Among the important parts of this presentation: “Expectation bias,” from the Black Hawk crew. They didn’t expect a plane to be lined up for landing on Runway 33 at National (as opposed to the longer Runway 1, with a different final approach, straight from the south), and so they weren’t looking in that direction. Also habituation, especially in the request for “visual separation.” To re-emphasize: When the DCA controller asked, twice, whether the helicopter crew had the airliner in sight, the “instructor pilot” in the Black Hawk instantly answered that he did, as if by reflex, while looking at the wrong plane. He must have done that many times before, and it had always worked out. Until it didn’t.

This part of the NTSB assessment gets into the “situational awareness,” “human factors,” and “aeronautical decision-making” that lie behind most modern aviation tragedies. It’s well worth your time.

4) ‘The Last Flight of PAT 25.’

This recommendation is to a new article, by Jeff Wise, in New York magazine’s Intelligencer section. It’s here, and is a minute-by-minute dissection of what the two pilots aboard the helicopter were doing and saying in the two hours before they flew directly into the regional jet’s path.

Some details that stood out for me:

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