September 24, 2007 Vol. 170 No.

13

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY MICHAEL ELINS

COVER

The Real Running Mates

By KAREN TUMULTY

Elizabeth Edwards prides herself on her ability to explain the fine print of

her husband's energy plan and the details of how John Edwards would

respond to the next Katrina-size natural disaster. She can rattle off the

number of people who lack health insurance in New Hampshire (about

127,000), how many schools there have failed to meet the Federal

Government's standards for "adequate yearly progress" (191) and where

the state ranks in teacher pay (24th). "I think it's important to learn policy,

so that people don't have to dumb down their questions because I'm the

spouse," she says. Nor, for that matter, does she feel a spouse should have

to sand down her edges. When a woman at a house party in Bow, N.H.,

asked her one recent morning how her husband's campaign would respond
to "the inevitable horrible mudslinging" that is part of presidential politics,

you might have thought she was the one in the family who had grown up in

a brawling mill town. "It's a question of being prepared and not having any

hesitation," she said. "You go straight to the nose because then they walk

away bleeding. And that's the point."

It's hard to imagine Laura Bush saying something like that. There is no

handbook for the spouse of a presidential candidate, but the expectations

have always been pretty clear. She (yes, that was the presumption) should

first do no harm. Her safest bet: stand silently at his side, beaming with

admiration and awe, the well-coiffed testament to a home life that was

tranquil, drama-free and utterly traditional. When the spouse became the

story, it was seldom good news for the principal.

Take what happened in 1992, when a certain Governor from Arkansas

started throwing around quips like "Buy one, get one free" and musing

about the possibility of giving his outspoken lawyer wife a Cabinet post. In
no time, people were working out their own conflicted feelings about

feminism and family by arguing over Hillary Clinton ̶ the influences she

would bring to the White House, the state of her marriage, even her

headbands. No less a political scientist than Richard Nixon, whose own

spouse had been a paragon of cloth-coat humility, warned, "If the wife

comes through as being too strong and too intelligent, it makes the

husband look like a wimp."

Fast-forward four presidential cycles, and Hillary is leading the field for the

Democratic presidential nomination, while Bill is the one learning to fit

himself into the supporting role. With a spouse who can be counted on to
outshine the candidate, her campaign has had to handle the former

president as carefully as a tactical nuclear weapon. "A lot of people might

have expected him to be out immediately, and instead, he's sort of behind

the scenes and on the phone and doing fund raising," says Elizabeth

Edwards, 58. "It is clearly more complicated for them ... I'm just glad that's

their problem, not mine."

But Bill is far from the only spouse rewriting the rules of the road in

presidential politics. Of the 2008 candidates ̶ and particularly among

those in the top tier ̶ more than a few are married to outspoken,

opinionated, professional women who are neither accustomed to nor

inclined toward melting into the background. They are comfortable with,

even eager about making news in their own right. Since the 2008 campaign

promises to be more competitive, more expensive and more prolonged

than any we've seen, the spouses are playing roles more typically

associated with the running mate than the mate of the person who's

running. In fact, the reality of today's politics seems to have turned Nixon's

premise on its head. A strong, smart, fully engaged spouse is practically a

prerequisite if you want to win. Sit down and talk to some of them, and you

will realize that while they all are charting the terrain ahead in their own

ways, they do so with the conviction that their partner can't get there

without them. As Cindy McCain, 53, put it, "He and I are the only two in it in

the end."

The Gladia t ors

One reason campaigns are relying more heavily on spouses as surrogates is

simply practical: two people can cover far more territory than one. "It's

obviously different. Not only am I going out and speaking, but I'm also
doing fund raising on my own," says Ann Romney, 58, whose five sons too

are being deployed across the map. "There are so many states in play now

that you can't possibly cover them all with the asset of just one candidate."

As the competition gets hotter, we'll see whether the traditional attack-dog

role played by vice-presidential nominees falls to the spouses as well ̶ and

whether they are given leeway to say things that their husbands wouldn't

dare. There was no mistaking what Elizabeth Edwards meant when she said

Hillary Clinton is "divisive and unelectable." She has blasted Barack Obama
for being "holier than thou" on the Iraq war, contended Hillary Clinton has

had to "behave as a man" and "is just not as vocal a women's advocate as I

want to see," and complained that her husband is not getting as much

media attention as either of them because "we can't make John black; we

can't make him a woman."

Edwards allows that she occasionally thinks, "Golly, I wish I hadn't said it

that way." And she insists that she is merely being herself, not part of a

campaign strategy. "There is no, and I mean zero, campaign discussion,

calculation, anything with respect to this. The second thing is, I don't usually

volunteer this," Edwards says of these comments about her husband's

front-running rivals. "When I am specifically asked, I simply answer the

question, and it's not a matter of attacking in particular."

But that doesn't mean all this is random. "My job is to move voters,"

Edwards says. "If you're not moving votes or moving voters to see the

candidate himself or herself, then you're not using your time very wisely."

And that highlights another poignant and uncomfortable reality of the

unique situation in which Edwards now finds herself. What she calls "my

precious time" is even more so since it was revealed in March that her

breast cancer, first diagnosed in the final days of the Kerry-Edwards

campaign in 2004, had recurred as Stage IV and is incurable. Statistics

suggest only 20% of patients in her situation live for five years. Is Edwards

getting a sympathy pass? Rival campaigns think so, though they won't say

so publicly. As one strategist puts it, "She's bulletproof."

Reporters are primed to hear an attack even when none is intended. When

Michelle Obama, 43, mused last month in Iowa that "if you can't run your

own house, you certainly can't run the White House" ̶ an innocent enough
observation, the full context of her remarks shows, about the challenges of
juggling her children's schedule with her husband's ̶ it was immediately

interpreted as a dig at the Clintons. "The claws come out," screamed a

caption beneath her picture and Hillary Clinton's on Fox News. "That's a

totally different context," Obama now says. "So that's one of those things

where I take it, I learn a lesson, I say, 'O.K., let me be clearer' ... All I'm trying

to do is talk to the American people about who we are, our shortcomings,

our challenges. What I don't want to feel like is that we can't have any

conversations about this ̶ values or morals or all of that ̶ because

somebody's feelings might get hurt. This is tough stuff."

An important thing to remember about the extraordinary lineup of smart,

savvy, engaged campaign spouses in the 2008 race is that none of this is

entirely new. What's new is knowing so much about it.

First Ladies have been deeply involved in politics all through history. In

1776, even as John Adams was helping invent the Republic, Abigail was

warning him, "Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the

husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could." Mary Todd

Lincoln had such strong views about Cabinet members and Supreme Court

nominees that some White House aides called her "the Hellcat." Edith Wilson

secretly held the government together for her stroke-incapacitated

husband, though she opposed giving women the vote. Rosalynn Carter was
basically in charge of mental-health policy. As her husband staggered

through 1979, columnist Jack Anderson dubbed her the "co-President."

"Many, many women have brought to the table so many different things,"

says Cindy McCain. "It just depends on how deeply you want to look."

McCain ̶ whom voters got to know as a smiling, beautiful, St. John-suited

presence in her husband's 2000 campaign ̶ played a hard-knuckled

tactical role this time around by engineering the shake-up of a high-priced
campaign organization that had spent itself into near insolvency. In large

part at Cindy McCain's instigation, her husband's longtime political

strategist John Weaver was fired; his 2000 campaign manager Rick Davis

was brought back from internal exile to take over. "Truly, the only person

my husband can trust is me," McCain says. "I don't have anything to lose by

telling him not only what I think but what I think he did wrong."

In the pre-Hillary age, with different expectations for gender roles, that kind

of influence was wielded privately ̶ over everything from policy to

personnel to political strategy ̶ more than publicly. With the conspicuous

exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, who was an outspoken and polarizing

figure in her own right, the modern era saw a procession of generally pliant

First Ladies: Bess, Mamie, Jackie, Lady Bird, Pat. It really was Betty Ford,

arguably the archetype for today's aspiring First Spouses, who changed the

rules. Faced with a traumatized electorate and an omnivorous press corps

after Watergate, she responded in the way that came naturally ̶ which is

to say forthrightly, answering whatever questions were thrown at her

because her Midwestern manners precluded the idea that you could just

ignore a question you didn't like. There was Betty on 60 Minutes saying she

wouldn't be surprised if her teenage daughter Susan were having sex or if

her kids had tried pot. When she observed to a columnist that the only

question she hadn't been asked was how often she slept with her husband,

the reporter came back with: "Well, how often do you?" Her answer: "As

often as possible!" The Fords "flung open the White House windows and

declared there are real people living here," says journalist Kati Marton, who

wrote Hidden Power, a book on presidential marriages, and who herself is

married to former Clinton Administration official Richard Holbrooke.

But then, Betty Ford got the First Lady's job without ever having to

campaign for it. And not everyone was charmed by her candor. Some of
the President's aides wanted to muzzle her, and his pollsters said she could

cost him 20 points with conservative GOP voters. First Lady aspirants have

more typically acted as fabric softener. Tipper Gore made her husband

look looser, as did Kitty Dukakis, though in both cases that wasn't saying

much. Laura Bush has almost always been a more popular figure than W.,

though most people could not name a policy position that she's passionate

about.

The current class of candidates' spouses has plenty who still fit the

traditional mold ̶ like Mary Brownback, 49, who married Sam while she

was in law school and proudly declares that she's never worked outside the
home. "Basically," she says, "I live in the kitchen." Ann Romney calls herself

the CFO ̶ chief family officer ̶ and her husband Mitt's campaign website

says she "places primary importance on her role as a wife, a mother and a

grandmother." Mike and Janet Huckabee were high school sweethearts; now

52, she was 18 when they married, and they renewed their vows in a

covenant marriage on Valentine's Day, 2005. Jill Tracy Biden, 56, was a

student teacher when she and Joe Biden married in 1977, and has dropped

off the campaign trail now that the school year has begun again.

In fact, for a politician's spouse, some things never change. This is how

Barbara Richardson, 58, a veteran of her husband Bill's successful

campaigns for the House and the New Mexico governorship, summed it up

before a debate in South Carolina: "While Mr. Wonderful is out there

campaigning, the rest of us as spouses are still schlepping through the

airport to a commercial plane with kids in tow. We miss our connections.

We're standing in grocery-store lines, and frankly, we're just trying to keep

body and soul and house and home and family together, while they go out

and make nice Mr. Popularity!"

Have voters really adjusted their ideas and expectations of a First Mate?

The spouses themselves don't sound so sure. "As much as it may sound a

little archaic, I think the American voter wants a traditional situation," says

Cindy McCain. "In other words, I don't believe they want a spouse who is

involved in day-to-day politics. And I'm not criticizing any former

Administration. I'm just telling you what people have told me. They still kind

of want the traditional-looking family."

Even Elizabeth Edwards, for all her outspokenness, agrees. "There are

certain baseline things people require in a First Lady ̶ a graciousness," she

says. "There is sort of a sense of maternal capabilities that we might be

looking for. I don't think that in any way disqualifies Bill, but I do think that

if it's a woman, they're looking perhaps for something like that."

Marria ges Under the Micr osc ope

Many a first marriage has been the subject of rumor and speculation, but

the Clinton presidency put political marriage under the microscope in a way

it never had been before. In this new season of full disclosure, there's

Elizabeth Kucinich, 29, who told the Associated Press that a lazy day at

home consists of getting up for brunch and then going back to bed until

4:30 p.m., "John Lennon and Yoko Ono-style." But it's hard to think of

another spouse who has taken openness as far as Michelle Obama. Her idea

of managing her husband's image seems to begin with knocking him off his
pedestal.

In a Glamour magazine interview, Michelle Obama said her husband is so

"snore-y and stinky" that her daughters won't cuddle with him in bed. She

tells voters how he leaves his dirty socks around and invites them to tattle

if they see him violating their deal in which she would allow him to run if he

would stop smoking. Barack Obama has written with startling candor about
the strains that his political career has put on their marriage, particularly

when both were in their formative years. "Leaning down to kiss Michelle

goodbye in the morning, all I would get was a peck on the cheek," he wrote.

"By the time Sasha was born ̶ just as beautiful, and almost as calm as her

sister ̶ my wife's anger toward me seemed barely contained."

But you could argue that her acknowledgment of his flaws makes her more

effective when she turns that anger on his critics. "Don't be fooled by

people who claim that it is not his time," she exhorts. "We've heard this

spewed from the lips of rivals ... every phase of our journey: He is not

experienced enough. He should wait his turn. He is too young. He is not

black enough. He is not white enough."

Michelle Obama says she is betting that voters will not only accept that

frankness but embrace it. "You win with being who you are and with being

clear and comfortable with that," she says. "I'm finding that people

completely understand me. For the most part, I think the women and the

men and the families and the folks that we are meeting on the campaign

trail understand the realities of families of today."

Oddly enough, it is the republican spouses who are stretching the limits of

traditional values in ways they never have before. Ann Romney's story line

̶ the high school sweetheart and sunny stay-at-home mom who produced

a close-knit, picture-perfect family ̶ actually sets her apart among the

leading contenders' wives. Which doesn't hurt when you are trying to

persuade voters, particularly evangelical conservatives, to consider putting

a Mormon in the White House. "I think that people have seen Mitt and me.

They certainly know we have a very strong marriage and very strong

family," she says. "I think that is clearly helpful to him in breaking down
barriers that people have had in the past." But, she adds, "I don't know if

they've seen enough."

For the others, the question may be whether voters have seen too much.

The public displays of affection that front runner Rudolph Giuliani and wife

Judith put on for Barbara Walters ̶holding hands and calling each other

"baby" and "sweetheart" ̶ only served to remind viewers that this first

blush of love is also the third marriage for each, and that wife No. 3 is one

of the reasons his children with wife No. 2 won't campaign for him. "I have

just recently begun ̶ I think they call it in the political world ̶ being

'rolled out,'" Judith, 52, told Walters, but the process has been anything but
smooth. A scathing profile of Judith Stish Ross Nathan Giuliani in Vanity

Fair pored over her two failed marriages (one of which she acknowledged

only recently), the requirement that a separate seat on her plane be

provided for the Louis Vuitton handbag that is known around Giuliani

headquarters as Baby Louis, and the inconvenient timeline of their

courtship, which started while he was still living with second wife Donna

Hanover.

Through all this, Judith Giuliani is trying hard to keep her game face on. "It's

a steep learning curve. It's all been new to me," she says. "What's really

important is, it's my husband who's running for office. He is the one. I do
think that is important for us to focus on. We aren't electing a spouse." And

while Rudy Giuliani told Walters he would be "very, very comfortable" with

having his wife, a nurse, attend Cabinet meetings ̶"I couldn't have a better

adviser"̶ Judith downplays her influence and her interest in his campaign

and in any future Giuliani Administration. "My role is really to support my

husband in the ways I have always supported him. I love to take charge of

his personal health needs, make sure he's exercising, getting the right food,
which is a real challenge on the campaign trail," she says. "I do attend some

meetings, but more often than not, it's for my own edification."

For Fred Thompson's wife Jeri, 40, who is a quarter-century younger than

he is, it's hard to figure out which female stereotype is more toxic: the siren

whose tight, low-cut outfits had cable-television commentator and former

gop Congressman Joe Scarborough speculating that she "works the pole"

̶ a phrase usually associated with strippers ̶ or the conniving Lady

Macbeth who has been blamed for sending his campaign into disarray even

before it was launched. She was a major force in persuading him to run but

also a major one behind a series of shake-ups that had the campaign on its
second manager and its fourth spokesman before Thompson even

announced his candidacy.

Her defenders note that Jeri Thompson has worked for years as a political

operative. "She gets Republican politics. She gets conservative politics. But

most of all, she understands where this man is and how best to help him,"

says Mark Corallo, a well-respected strategist who helped launch the

campaign. But then, on the eve of Thompson's much delayed

announcement, Corallo himself resigned.

Their family portrait ̶ a man who qualifies for Social Security with a 40-

year-old blond, a toddler and a baby ̶ is a far cry from that of Ike and

Mamie. "He sadly now looks like their grandfather," says Marton. "It's not
what women want the presidential family to look like. No doubt

unintentionally, but to a lot of women it's almost a rebuke. It's too unsubtle."

The New N ormal

In this campaign, which has produced so much buzz about political

marriages, the challenge for the Clintons has been a different one: making

the most remarkable situation of all look normal.

The first time his wife ran for office, Bill Clinton was in the White House,

which kept him safely off her stage and minimized the amount of public

distraction he caused. But behind the scenes, he was her political

consultant in chief, reworking her speeches, stepping in when her staff was

putting too much on her schedule, rehearsing her for debates and

demanding she step up her ad buys.

That was two successful Senate campaigns ago. Now the man who jokes

that he wants to be known as "First Laddie" downplays his role as she

reaches for the biggest prize of all: his old job. He has joined his wife in a

couple of campaign swings and is her star fund raiser. But he has yet to

show up among the spouses in the audience at any of the Democratic

debates. As for his role in any future Clinton Administration, both she and

he have talked about the possibility that she might make him an unofficial

emissary. "I think she will ask me and former President Bush and other

people to go help the country. We have got to restore our standing in the

world," Bill Clinton told CNN's Larry King recently. "I wouldn't be surprised if

she [asked] every former President to do something."

But in the meantime, there's an election to win. And while Hillary Clinton has
the best political strategist of her generation at her disposal, Bill is by all

accounts keeping his obtrusions to a minimum. Campaign officials say that

while the couple talks several times a day, he rarely gets involved with the

workings of her campaign. "He's doing what he's asked, and he's doing what

he can," says an aide, "but he's certainly not meddling." In part, that's
because his own work his foundation and a tour to promote his new book
̶ keeps him plenty busy. And it also reflects the fact that she has an

enormous political machine around her that seems to be doing pretty well

on its own.

"If she's writing an important article or giving an important speech, she'll ask

me to read it," the former President told Oprah Winfrey. "And once in a

while she'll ask me for some advice on something strategic. But she knows

so much more about a lot of this stuff than I do because I'm far removed

from it." Occasionally, he says, he gets a call from her while he's on the golf

course, and she reminds him that she's 15 years older than he was when he

did it, "and I say, Well, nobody made you run.'"

Bill Clinton, 61, is also making a conscious effort to stay out of the fray,

though when Elizabeth Edwards attacked Hillary as not vocal enough on

women's issues, he rode to his wife's defense. "If you look at the record on

women's issues, I defy you to find anybody who has run for office in recent

history who's got a longer history of working for women, for families and

children, than Hillary does," Clinton said in an interview with ABC's Good

Morning America. As for Edwards' contention that Hillary had behaved "as a

man," Clinton retorted, "I don't think it's inconsistent with being a woman

that you can also be knowledgeable on military and security affairs and be

strong when the occasion demands it."

But he has steered clear of criticizing Hillary's opponents. "This is a good

time for us Democrats," he says. "We don't have to be against anybody. We

can be for the person we think would be the best President." Of course,

that's easy to say when your candidate is safely ahead in the polls. If their

situation and that of the Edwardses were reversed, "would he be her

biggest attack dog like Elizabeth Edwards is? Maybe," concedes a

strategist. "But he gets to be the big guy ̶ at least for now." Then again,
he's in a supporting role that doesn't come with a script. No one knows that

better than a Clinton.

̶ With reporting by Nancy Gibbs/New York and Jay Newton-

Small/Washington
Illness On the Tra il
By KAREN TUMULTY/WASHINGTON

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards

Brooks Kraft / Corbis for TIME

To follow her for a day on the campaign trail is to see an Elizabeth

Edwards who looks the picture of health. Her hair is full, and her blue eyes

as bright as ever. She has slimmed down since the 2004 campaign, but

insists that is the hard earned badge of dieting, not disease. Still, every now

and then, there comes a reminder. Before taking off her jacket recently in

an uncomfortably warm living room in Bow, N.H., she asked a local

television crew and a TIME photographer to move and shoot her from her

left side, because her right arm is swollen from the treatment of her lymph

nodes. Losing her train of thought in trying to answer a multi-part question

someone asked her at a school in Manchester, she joked: "I call it chemo-
brain; I could blame it on the fact that I'm 58."

When it comes to the never-ending debate over Elizabeth and John

Edwards' decision to continue his campaign after her diagnosis with

incurable breast cancer, much of the blame has been directed at her. In

devoting herself to her husband's goal, was she ignoring what might be

best for her children? Earlier this month, Edwards got into a public spat

with a Clinton supporter, who had blogged that she was a "terrible mother."
Elizabeth, a lifelong insomniac who spends her wakeful hours surfing the

internet, came across the post and wrote back: "You don't get to judge me

because you think you know exactly what you would do if you had my

disease. I want to be really clear: you don't know."

But there is at least one person who did know. Ann Romney, who was

diagnosed in 1998 with multiple sclerosis, called Elizabeth shortly after the

Edwards made their announcement in March. "I totally understand why

you're still fighting," Romney told her. "I totally get it."

It is an axiom of American politics that you've got to really, really want it

before you decide to run for President, but there is a whole other

dimension to the decision when one member of the family is also struggling

with a debilitating, even life-threatening illness. This year, there are not one

but two women on the campaign trail in that situation. Edwards calls

Romney "a lovely woman." And while their husbands are of two different

parties, pitted against each other for the biggest prize in politics, "the

spouses are not at war with each other," says Edwards. "It's much easier to

do this if you do not think of these other women who also making these

sacrifices as the enemy. And in particular, we are both suffering from

conditions that are likely to stay with us forever, so we have that

connection."

While Romney is vigorous, and looks at least a decade younger than her
age (like Edwards, she's 58), the disease has limited what she can do on the

campaign, she says. Romney tries to travel no more than three days at a

time, and keeps alert for signs that she is pushing herself too hard. "I've

learned, even within myself, I can start telling when I'm wearing down,"

Romney says. "What happens to me is I almost can't talk. I get to the point
where my brain doesn't even work, and I can hardly get words out and I
look at everyone with this glassy stare, like, "I'm done. I've hit empty. Bye. I

don't care what you've got on my schedule.'" At that point, she goes home

to the things that "recharge my batteries": her horse, acupuncture,

reflexology and "a slower rhythm."

Her illness has meant she can't be campaigning with her husband as much

as he would like, given how his mood lightens when she is around. "They call

me the Mitt Stabilizer," she says. "I'm able to just make him laugh, and get

more lighthearted about the whole thing, and not take it so seriously." But

her limitations have also allowed her to touch voters in a way she couldn't

otherwise. "Nine times out of ten, when someone comes up to me

afterwards, they are encouraged by me being out there and giving hope to

other people," Romney says. "They are grateful and their lives have been

touched in an impactful way."

Elizabeth Edwards has an additional challenge, given that she must also

factor in the needs of two young children. But she says her family has

found a balance that works for them. Emma Claire, 9, and Jack, 7, are

being home schooled, and join their parents on the campaign trail when

they are going to be out for a while, or when they are going somewhere the

children would find interesting, educational or fun. Sometimes that means

upending their schedule: a few days on the road in the middle of the week;
school on the weekend. Their parents make sure there is also time for

friends, and for Jack's tae kwon do class.

Though there are plenty who wouldn't have done any of this the way she

did ̶ and have said so ̶ Edwards seems not to have any doubts. "The

choice we had to make was a very public choice, but the choice didn't

belong to the public. The choice belongs to us," she says. "Around the
country, every place that I've gone, people who have been in the same
shoes that I've been ̶ sadly ̶ have all made the same choice, to live, to

embrace the things they care about."

As for herself, Edwards insists that the life she is living now is not being

defined by the death she knows is coming sooner than it should. "I think

about the cancer on my way to the doctor, while I'm in the doctor's office,"

she says. "I get back in my car and I'm not thinking about the cancer. "I

don't talk about it. I don't think about it," she adds. "I'm just pushing on."
Life: Educa ti on - Fashion - Hist ory - Fo od - En vir onment - Health

The Grand Tra d ition of Flip -

Flopping
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By RICHARD BROOKHISER

The grand tradition of flip-flopping: Politicians change their minds for all kinds of reasons.
Lyndon Johnson spoke out against Truman s early efforts on racial equality and as Senate
majority leader helped pass a civil right bill in 1957.
Donald Uhrbrock / Time & Life Pictures / Getty

The line of politicians who have had a change of heart about the war in Iraq

keeps getting longer. Republican Senator John Warner, who voted in

October 2002 to authorize the use of force there, now wants the troops to

start coming home. Democratic Congressman Brian Baird, who opposed

the war, wants to give the surge a chance: "Progress is being made and

there is real reason for hope." But politicians are often anxious about
changing their minds. They know opponents are waiting to hammer them as

opportunists or just plain confused, as Mitt Romney, dogged by

accusations of flip-flopping over abortion, and John Kerry, who ineptly said

he had voted for a supplemental funding bill before voting against it, can

attest. Yet our nation's leaders often change their minds. If they didn't, we

might still be slave-owning British subjects. When and why they do so can

be instructive.
Wanting to be seen as responsible and practical, many politicians often

claim to be reacting to new information. In 1966, during his first race to

become Governor of California, Ronald Reagan pledged not to raise

income taxes, declaring that his feet were "in concrete" on the issue. State

income taxes were collected by withholding, and Reagan believed taxes

should be obvious and painful. But once in office, he found that there was

no other revenue stream that could balance the state budget, and so he

submitted an economic plan that called for higher withholding taxes. "The

sound you hear," he said at a press conference, "is the sound of concrete

cracking."

Reagan wasn't the first pol to reverse himself when a new office brought

with it a new worldview. When James Madison was a Congressman, he

argued for a stronger Federal Government and took a lead role in creating

one as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. But in 1798, as a

leader of the fight against the war measures of President John Adams, he

became an advocate of states' rights, urging his native Virginia and its

fellow states to resist "dangerous" exercises of federal power. In 1815,

when Madison was President, he had to fend off a threat by New

Englanders to wield the power of their states against his war measures,

which they found "dangerous." Madison had a supple mind--supple enough

to reconcile his shifting position, which he attributed to changing

circumstances. "The state of things at the time," he explained, was "always a

key to the arguments employed." The most important circumstance,

however, seems to have been where he sat.

Sometimes the desire for a job makes a politician see the light. For the first

two decades of his career, Lyndon Johnson was a New Deal liberal, with

white Southern views on race (he called Harry Truman's early efforts on civil

rights "a farce and a sham"). This combination made him a popular Texas
Congressman and Senator, but he also wanted to be President. After a

stumbling run as Texas' favorite son in 1956, he realized that his ambitions

required him to change his profile on civil rights. The next year, after epic

wheeling and dealing as Senate majority leader, he produced the first

successful civil rights bill since Reconstruction. It was weak enough to be

supported by fellow Southerners, who constituted his political base, yet it

offered Northern liberals the prospect of future progress. This balancing

act did not win him the Democratic nomination in 1960, but it allowed John

F. Kennedy to make Johnson his running mate.

At their best, politicians change their minds because their principles tell
them to. John Quincy Adams, son of Founding Father John Adams, became

a national figure in his own right by working with Southerners. President

George Washington, a Virginian, gave him his first job. President James

Monroe, another Virginian, made him Secretary of State. And Speaker of

the House Henry Clay, a Kentuckian, helped him win the presidency when

the election of 1824 was thrown to the House of Representatives. For most

of his career, Adams believed the South would handle slavery on its own,

wiping the great blot from national life. By his 60s, however, he had heard

too many Southerners praising slavery as a good thing. When elected to

Congress after losing the White House in 1828, Adams spent the remainder

of his life flaying slavery, supporting the mutineers on the slave ship

Amistad and the right of citizens to deluge Congress with antislavery

petitions.

No decision, of course, is ever the result of one pure motive. Johnson, his

biographer Robert Caro argues, always had reservoirs of genuine

compassion that his ambition finally allowed him to tap. John Quincy

Adams became a principled scourge only after his ambition to be elected

President had been gratified (and his ambition to be re-elected denied).

Concrete cracks for many reasons. The sound you hear is politics--and

human nature--at work.

ESSAY

Hi ding Behind the General

Wednesday, Sep. 12, 2007 By JOE KLEIN

Bush has made Petraeus the arbiter of Iraq policy when it should be set by the President.
Illustration for TIME by Stephen Kroninger, Petraeus: Susan Walsh / AP

California Senator Barbara Boxer almost asked a good question at the

Petraeus-Crocker festivities on Capitol Hill this week. She was reminiscing,

as most of her colleagues did, about time spent on the ground in Iraq with

General David Petraeus, but it was not a recent visit. It was back in 2005,

when Petraeus was in charge of training the new Iraqi army. An aide pulled

out a blown-up photograph of the Senator and the general. "You were so

upbeat, General," Boxer said. "You said, 'You're about to see some terrific

troops.'" There were 100,000 of them "ready to go ... You were as

optimistic as anyone I've seen on the planet ... and I believed you!" The

stage was set for Boxer to point out that the Petraeus effort to train the

Iraqi army had failed and to ask, "So why should we believe your optimism

now?" But she wandered off into an antiwar diatribe and never got around

to asking it.

The unasked question was so profound that Petraeus, a proud man, chose

to answer it anyway. "I believe that my optimism back when I showed those

very fine Iraqi forces to Senator Boxer was justified," he said. The good
work was undone, though, in 2006, when Shi'ite militias "hijacked" whole

units of the Iraqi military. But, he insisted, we are back on the right track

now. Petraeus may well be right̶or maybe not. The nature of military

leadership is congenital optimism; officers are trained to complete the

mission, to refuse to countenance the possibility of failure. That focus is

essential when you go to war, but it lacks perspective. That's why civilian

leaders̶the Commander in Chief̶are there to set the mission, to change

or abort it when necessary. The trouble is, George W. Bush's credibility on

Iraq is nonexistent. And so he has placed David Petraeus, an excellent

soldier, in a position way above his pay grade. He has made Petraeus not

just the arbiter of Iraq strategy but also, by default, the man who sets U.S.

policy for the entire so-called war on terrorism.

The cleverness of Bush's strategy was apparent when Senator Russ

Feingold asked Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker a very important

question: Which should have the higher priority in the war against al-Qaeda,

Iraq or the rebuilt al-Qaeda leadership and terrorist camps, festering on the

Afghanistan-Pakistan border? Feingold had forced Crocker, the elusive

former ambassador to Pakistan, into a corner and then, inexplicably, let him

off the hook and turned to Petraeus, who rightly claimed a lack of

knowledge or authority to answer that question. The nonanswer stood as

the Bush Administration's response to an essential strategic issue.

It seems clear the President has won this round. An optimistic general will

trump a skeptical politician anytime. Even when Petraeus gave sketchy,

disingenuous answers̶expressing hope about the three-way Shi'ite gang

war in the oil-rich port city of Basra̶not even the most knowledgeable

Senators had the facts to dispute him. The general was armed with the

modern military's deadliest weapon, the PowerPoint-presentation-serried

ranks of bar charts marching toward victory, which provided camouflage

for the gaping holes and contradictions in the Petraeus-Crocker story.

Crocker, for example, seemed particularly insistent on roping Iran into the

scenario. "The Iranian President has already announced that Iran will fill any

vacuum in Iraq," the ambassador testified. But Crocker also testified that

the Iraqi Shi'ites were Arabs who had fought fiercely against the Iranians in

the eight-year war and were very unlikely to cede control to their Persian

neighbor without a fight. Petraeus described al-Qaeda in Iraq both as the

greatest threat to stability and as the greatest loser in the struggle, its

brand of Islamic extremism decisively rejected by the Sunni tribes.

No doubt Crocker and Petraeus believe they were merely stating the
complexities of a difficult situation. But in a war, there is a need for

executive decision making when it comes to priorities and contradictions:

With al-Qaeda in Iraq on the run and, as Petraeus insisted, no need for

American forces to resolve the Shi'ite chaos in the south, what was the

rationale for keeping so many troops in Iraq? Why wasn't there a clearly

defined strategic path for dealing with the country's political collapse?

Those issues̶the strategic ones̶were beyond the reach of Petraeus and

Crocker. And the Senators were left with bland assurances that the two

patriots would continue to do their considerable best to work really, really

hard on the situation.

That's not nearly enough, of course. There was an important follow-up that

Boxer didn't ask either: Without a strong, credible central government, for

whom exactly is the re-retrained Iraqi army fighting? How can any Iraqi be

loyal to a government that doesn't exist? And, finally, now that the Sunnis

have decisively rejected the extremists, why should any American trooper

sacrifice even a pinkie in this sectarian catastrophe?

C ommentary

The Rule-Breaking Campaign

Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By WILLIAM KRISTOL

The Rule-Breaking Campaign. Most elections produce a surprise or two. Here is why this one
could upend all assumptions.
Illustration for TIME by Dave Wheeler

What a way to begin the fall! Perennial college-football power University of

Michigan was ranked No. 5 in the preseason polls. It paid little Appalachian

State University of Boone, N.C., about $400,000 to have its football team

visit Ann Arbor to serve as a season-opening tune-up for the Wolverines. In

a stunning upset, Appalachian State won 34-32-- kicking a field goal with

26 sec. left, then blocking a Michigan field-goal attempt on the game's last

play.

Lesson: the improbable sometimes happens. And what's true in sports is

true in politics. There hasn't been a major upset in a presidential-nomination

race since Jimmy Carter's victory in 1976. We're due. And the 2008

presidential campaign is an especially good candidate to provide a

surprise. Why?

1. It's an open-seat election. For the first time since 1952, there will be no

incumbent President or Vice President on the ballot. As we know from state

and local elections, nonincumbent races are more volatile and less

predictable than those with incumbents, which tend to be reasonably

predictable referendums on the party in power. But in 2008 there won't be

an incumbent, and there won't even be someone who resembles an

incumbent: none of the leading Republicans have worked in or been

particularly close to the Bush Administration. Indeed, the three leading

Republicans and two leading Democrats have never run for national office

before. Much more depends in such circumstances on unpredictable

factors like candidates' errors, campaign dynamics and external events than

in a traditional incumbent contest.

2. It's a wartime election. Wars are volatile. Eight months ago, we were

losing in Iraq. Now it's not so clear. Where will Iraq stand four months from

now, at the time of the Iowa caucuses--or 14 months from now, in

November 2008? As wars are unpredictable, so are the politics of war. The

fact that we were a nation at war helped the Republicans in 2002 and

2004. It hurt them badly in 2006. What about 2008? George W. Bush

recently compared Iraq to Vietnam. Well ... is this 1968, when the party in

power got punished, or 1972, when a dovish challenger got clobbered?

3. The primary schedule will be newly front-loaded and compressed. Will

that make Iowa and New Hampshire more or less important? No one is
certain. I suspect that the slingshot effect out of Iowa and New Hampshire

could be greater than ever. In fact, in recent years Iowa has become an

increasingly good predictor of the nominee: Bob Dole and Bush won Iowa

in 1996 and 2000, respectively, and went on to win the GOP nomination; Al

Gore and John Kerry won Iowa in 2000 and 2004 and prevailed on the

Democratic side. But in a multicandidate field in Iowa, which it looks as if

we'll have for both parties, a few thousand votes--a few hundred votes--

could well mean the difference between first place and second and third or,
for that matter, third and fifth. And such a small difference could be utterly

decisive for who survives and who gets knocked out, who has momentum

and who falters.

4. The Democratic front runners are a woman and an African American--the

first members of either group to have a good chance to win the

presidency. Do the polls accurately reflect hidden support for--or hostility

toward--such trailblazer candidates? And the woman in question happens to

have as her husband a former President of the U.S. Will the prospect of

having Bill Clinton back in the White House help or hurt Hillary Clinton when

voters cast their ballots?

5. The leading Republican contenders are a Mormon from Massachusetts, a

pro-choice New Yorker and a late-starting TV actor. Some Protestant

churches teach that Mormonism is a cult. No pro-choice candidate has

been able to compete seriously for the GOP nomination since 1980. No

one has gone straight from the studio to the presidency (Ronald Reagan

had long ago given up his acting career and had served two terms as

Governor of California). This is a very unusual bunch of Republican front

runners.

And what about a real Appalachian State--style upset? New Mexico

Governor Bill Richardson is in double digits in current polling in Iowa, within

hailing distance of the three Democratic front runners. What if the leading
candidates whack away at one another in TV ads and the personable

Richardson sneaks into first or second? On the Republican side, John

McCain is having something of a rally. If the situation in Iraq continues to

improve and the other Republicans slip and slide, couldn't the old warrior

pull off an upset? And what happens to a front runner once he or she
stumbles? The week after its defeat by Appalachian State, Michigan was

still favored by a touchdown over Oregon. Michigan lost 39-7.

Every presidential election, it's been said, breaks one political rule. This one

may break them all.

Pen Pal
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By STEVE RUSHIN

One morning in March, while pulling out of the driveway, I saw a large

manila envelope bound by a rubber band to the post of my mailbox, whose

broken door hangs open in a permanent expression of disbelief.

The envelope rode shotgun beside me for several miles until I opened it at

a red light, using a tire-pressure gauge from the glove box, at which time

my jaw, like my mailbox door, fell open in astonishment.

Pressed for posterity between two slabs of cardboard--on stationery the

color of New England clam chowder--was a handwritten fan letter from the

President of the United States. I was touched and flattered--my ego swelled

like a self-inflating raft. But more important, the letter has served in the

months since as a Rorschach test for everyone who reads it: a

minireferendum on the presidency, a war in Iraq writ tiny--but legibly, and

even grammatically, with impeccable spelling.

"GW Bush," as he signed the letter, was writing to congratulate me on

hanging up my column after two decades at his favorite weekly sports

magazine. "Dear Mr. Sports Illustrated," he began, consecrating me with a

presidential nickname, like Turd Blossom or Pootie-Poot or the immortal

Brownie. "I read your final ... article in your literary home of 19 years. Like

many who enjoy your work, I'll miss your humor, your style, and compassion

..."

I read these words to my wife, who is obstinately oblivious to my humor,

style and compassion, and was surprised by her immediate reaction: "How

did he get our address?" I'm sure Dick Cheney, in his undisclosed location,

had no trouble finding our undisclosed location, I told her.

My wife, unblinking, said, "But seriously. We're not listed." I turned to our 2-

year-old and said, "They can't find Osama, but they tracked down yo'

mama." The toddler adhered a Cheerio to my face and walked away.

What was supposed to be a celebration of my place on the President's

reading list had turned into a debate about the Patriot Act.

As the days passed, I began shamelessly showing the letter to everyone I

encountered, as if I were a strip-joint leafleteer on a New York City street

corner.

My father, who framed a copy of the letter, said with pride, "The President

of the United States took the time to write you."

But others sometimes inflected the same sentence for maximum disdain:

"The President of the United States has the time to write ... you?" Whether

this is meant as a criticism of the President or as a criticism of me, I'm

never able to tell. Both, I suspect.

Many blue-staters have made the same joke, each one thinking he is the

first to do so. "He can write?" they say, always followed by, "He can read?" I

have now passed the letter to countless Americans and a few non-

Americans--so many people that I ought to have the letter laminated, like a

Waffle House menu. And the one thing that everyone agrees on--red-staters
and Greenpeacers--is that he does come off on paper as funny and self-

deprecating.

"Please don't worry about the mud in the West Wing," he wrote to me, a

reference to our brief meeting five years earlier, when I absentmindedly

tracked mud from the Kentucky Derby track onto antique carpeting in the
White House prior to an interview. "After a lot of scrubbing, I have finally

cleaned the mess."

I had written in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED that the President didn't know my

name during our interview (even though it was written in inch-high letters on

a nameplate in front of me). And so he affixed a P.S.: "Good luck, Steve"--

with my name boldly underlined to say, "I do too know your name, and I'm

in on the joke, by the way."

And while the President no doubt forgot about the note the moment he set

his pen down, I'll always remember it as a kind and humanizing gesture. And

here I am, ungallantly airing it in public. For Presidents, no good deed goes

unpunished.

I've put the letter away for now, back in its tattered envelope, where it will

probably remain for the next 100 years, until some distant descendant has

it appraised on Antiques Roadshow. However history judges this

presidency, I'm confident it will be kind to me. "This was my great-great-

grandfather's," that descendant will say to some bow-tied document dealer.

"He was apparently a man of humor, style and compassion, the

Shakespeare of his day."

WORLD

Is This Musharraf's Final

Chapter?
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By ARYN BAKER / ISLAMABAD

A disappointed Sharif supporter participates in a demonstration against the deportation of

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Stephanie Sinclair for TIME

Like a Shakespearean tragedy, the final chapter of General Pervez

Musharraf's reign began with an echo of the original sin of its first pages:

the October 1999 coup by which he overthrew Nawaz Sharif, the

democratically elected Prime Minister. Sharif's highly publicized return from

exile on Sept. 10 lasted just four hours; Musharraf had him deported again.

But if the general's first expulsion of Sharif--then an unloved head of an

inept and corrupt government--brought Musharraf to power amid

widespread acclaim, the second may well hasten the President's downfall.

Musharraf's early departure is not guaranteed. He could drag things out by

declaring martial law, but that would be highly unpopular, even within the

military, which doesn't want a confrontation with an angry populace. Sharif's

party faithful, undaunted by their leader's absence and the arrest of many

of his aides, are planning mass protests. They are likely to be joined by a

wide swath of Pakistani society, from Islamist parties to liberal lawyers and
professors. Al-Qaeda and other extremist militants in the tribal areas

bordering Afghanistan, meanwhile, are capitalizing on popular discontent to

reinvigorate their jihad against Musharraf's regime: terrorist attacks, once

confined to tribal areas in the north, have spread across the country. Some

of Musharraf's political allies and fellow military officers are backing away,

and his enemies sense his vulnerability. "This is the death spasm of the

general's rule," says Supreme Court lawyer Iftikhar Gilani. "He can't survive

anymore as a political entity."

The most immediate threat to Musharraf comes from the Supreme Court,

which can block his bid to remain in power by enforcing a constitutional

ban on elected officials holding military rank. Musharraf previously got

around that by obtaining an exemption from tame judges. That exemption

expires on Nov. 15, and Supreme Court justices, who resent the general for

trying to sack an independent-minded top judge earlier this year, are

unlikely to give him another. If Musharraf sheds his uniform, they can block

him with another constitutional provision: retired soldiers must wait two

years before standing for office.

This is all alarming news for the Bush Administration, which regards

Musharraf as a key ally in a highly unstable part of the world. The

Administration is backing a power-sharing deal with another exiled former

Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, as the best way for the general to regain

popularity. But Bhutto's own standing has plummeted since she started

dealing with the dictator. Now negotiations are stalled over her demands

that he resign as head of the military, drop corruption charges against her

and give up the power to dissolve parliament. U.S. officials predict Bhutto's

popularity will spike if she returns to power in an alliance with the general

because she'll be seen as a counterweight to Musharraf. "The conventional

wisdom is that would be enough to steady her numbers," says a U.S. State

Department official.

U.S. officials are counting on Musharraf to retain control over the military--

Pakistan's most powerful institution--even if he gives up his uniform to keep

the presidency. "The hope is that Musharraf will continue to influence policy

in the war on terror as President," says the official. That may be wishful

thinking. Lieut. General Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistani intelligence,

says the Americans are "naive" for thinking that Musharraf will have any

clout once he steps down as military chief or that Bhutto will be able to

control the army as Prime Minister. "The Pakistani army is a one-man show,"
he says. "Whoever is chief gets to call the shots ... no civilian leader can tell

them what to do."

If a Musharraf-Bhutto deal were in fact to leave both leaders discredited

and weakened, then U.S. interests in Pakistan--continued help in the war

against al-Qaeda, protection of the country's nuclear arsenal and the

strengthening of the moderate majority against the extremist fringe--might

be better served by the man both leaders despise: Sharif. The Bush

Administration is skeptical. The State Department official describes Sharif

as "a player with a mixed record." As Prime Minister, he had a good

relationship with the Clinton Administration, allowing the U.S. in 1998 to use
Pakistani airspace for missile attacks against al-Qaeda bases in

Afghanistan. He also invited the CIA to train Pakistani commandos to

capture Osama bin Laden: 60 soldiers started training, but the program

was aborted when Sharif was deposed. Sharif's record in other areas is less

than reassuring. His two stints as Prime Minister were marked by

mismanagement and corruption. In 1998 he tested a nuclear bomb, earning

the country devastating economic sanctions that were not lifted until 2001.

He dismissed a Supreme Court chief justice--shades of Musharraf--and a

President, and he promoted Islamic law. A senior Bush Administration

official says Bhutto's party "has historically been more popular and closer

to the moderate center than Nawaz's party."

What Sharif does have going for him is a groundswell of public support.

Unofficial polls conducted by government agencies show that even before

his deportation, Sharif's numbers were climbing. Many of the groups that

demonstrated across the country this summer when Musharraf tried to

sack the Supreme Court justice have thrown their support behind Sharif. As

a center-right politician, he also has close ties to religious parties, which

would allow him to build a broad coalition. He lacks support in Washington,

but as Musharraf and Bhutto continue to fade, that could--and should--

change.

with reporting by Massimo Calabresi / Washington

Who Killed Madeline McCann?
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By JOHN CLOUD

The parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann, Kate, background, and Gerry, carry their
two-year-old twin children Sean and Amelie as they return to England four months after
going on vacation on September 9, 2007. They deny any role in her disappearance.
Rui Vieira / AFP / Getty

On May 3, nine days before her fourth birthday, Madeleine McCann, a

British girl on vacation with her parents in Portugal, disappeared. She hasn't

been found in more than four months despite one of the most intensive

and far-flung missing-person searches in history. This past spring and

summer, Europe and much of the rest of the globe became fixated on the

disappearance, which carries both the international breadth of the Diana

tragedy and the hypersentimental, at times prurient fascination that

Americans brought to the unsolved case of another little blond girl,

JonBenét Ramsey.

The Pope and even bigger global celebrities--David Beckham and J.K.

Rowling among them--have taken an interest in the search for Madeleine.

People around the world have given more than $2 million to a private

investigative fund begun by Drs. Kate Healy McCann and Gerry McCann,

Madeleine's parents. Yet many Americans have only a vague sense of

Madeleine's case and why it has mesmerized so many for so long. Only in
the past few days, when it emerged that her parents might be charged with
accidentally killing her, has Madeleine's image begun to appear with

regularity in the U.S. media.

And so here are some answers--frustratingly blurry and contradictory as

they are--to some key questions in the wide-open case.

1. Where's the girl?

THE MCCANNS, WHO LIVE IN CENTRAL England, had gone on vacation

with a few friends to Praia da Luz (Beach of Light), a tourist town in

southern Portugal. The resort they chose, the Ocean Club, had a reputation

for being kid-friendly. On May 3, the group was dining at the resort's tapas

bar while the kids slept. At about 10 p.m., Kate McCann has said, she went

to check on Madeleine and her siblings, 2-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

Madeleine was gone. The McCanns were not initially suspected; they have

consistently denied any role in the disappearance.

Relations between the family and the Portuguese police were difficult from

the first hours. Police believed that, like most missing young children,

Madeleine had simply wandered off and would soon be found. Crucial time

was lost to that assumption. The Spanish border is less than two hours

from Praia da Luz, yet authorities did not search cars leaving Portugal or

distribute a description of the girl.

Police have since investigated thousands of leads and theories, some quite

elaborate, including the much discussed idea that an international ring of

pedophiles stakes out children for days and then extracts them with

military precision. Another possibility explored was that a desperate

childless couple paid a professional kidnapper to find a child. The rise of

Hollywood theories--a cabal of James Bond pedophiles?--stemmed from

the lack of physical evidence.

2. So, did the parents do it?

ON SEPT. 7, PORTUGUESE AUTHORITIES named the couple as suspects.

Three days later, officials apparently leaked word that Madeleine's DNA had

been found in the trunk of a car her parents rented 25 days after the girl

went missing. (The parents were still in Portugal at the time. Vowing not to

return home without Madeleine, they stayed there until two days after

being named suspects, when they returned to England.) At first, the DNA

news seemed the first real break in the case in months, and a new theory

presented itself: the McCanns wanted a night out with friends, so they

drugged their little ones with painkillers or sedatives. Madeleine's dose was
mismeasured, or she had an unexpected reaction. The parents somehow hid

her corpse for weeks and then got the body out in the trunk of their rental

car even though a phalanx of reporters was camped in Praia da Luz.

The McCanns called the theory ludicrous, and this time they got some help

in their denials from Portuguese authorities: police chief Alipio Ribeiro said

on Portuguese TV that DNA tests on the car were not conclusive.

3. At the very least, aren't the McCanns guilty of negligence?

MADELEINE AND HER SIBLINGS WERE ALONE in their room while Kate and

Gerry ate and drank with seven friends. How much the nine vacationers

drank is another point of dispute; the amounts range from the just over

four bottles of wine claimed by the McCanns to the 14 bottles alleged in

some Portuguese news reports. The Ocean Club offers babysitters, but

neither the McCanns nor their friends hired one. Instead, they apparently

agreed to check on their kids every half hour. Once again, there are

conflicting reports about whether the checks were carried out with precise

regularity.
The tapas bar is roughly a 400-ft. (120 m) walk from the apartment where

the McCann kids were sleeping. But the view from the bar to the

apartment--a residential building occupied by locals as well as Ocean Club

guests--is obscured by a wall, and the walk requires a circuitous route

around the pool. What's more, the McCanns' apartment was on the ground

floor, and the couple had left the place unlocked.

4. How did the case of one missing girl become so well known?

WITH ALL THE RUMORS THESE DAYS ABOUT the McCanns, it's hard to

recall the early days in May and June when they were granted much

sympathy, particularly in Britain. They are an attractive, accomplished and

devout couple. They were also savvy about our particular media moment,

quickly launching a website and posting YouTube videos about Madeleine.

They expressed regret for leaving the kids alone. Gerry started a blog, and

they traveled as far as Africa to publicize Madeleine's case. The couple had

a brief audience with the Pope, and Gerry flew to Washington to meet with

then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

5. What happens next?

THE PORTUGUESE POLICE HAVE HANDED 3,000 pages of evidence to the

district attorney, who in turn submitted them to a judge who must decide

whether to bring charges against the parents. Given the usually glacial pace

of the Portuguese justice system, the decision may not be quick.

Meanwhile, the McCanns are back in England, surrounded by a resolutely

supportive family. Some in Britain have called for the other McCann

children to be removed to protective custody. Kate and Gerry won't allow

that without a fight. They have hired top lawyers, including one who barred

the extradition of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. It was probably a bad

p.r. move, but after months of global Madeleine news, it's clear it will take

more than p.r. to figure out what happened to her.

with reporting by Martha De La Cal / Lisbon, Adam Smith / London

Postcard: Diego Garcia
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By WRITTEN BY MASSIMO CALABRESI, DIEGO GARCIA

Satellite image of airstrip on Diego Garcia, an atoll located in the heart of the Indian Ocean,
some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south off India's southern coast. Since the enforced
depopulation of Diego Garcia in the years leading up to 1973, it has been used as a military
base by the United States.
GeoEye Satellite Image

Here's a mental exercise: picture a tropical paradise lost in an endless

expanse of cerulean ocean. Glossy palm fronds twist in the temperate wind

along immaculate, powder white beaches. Leathery sea turtles bob lazily

offshore, and the light cacophony of birdsong accents the ambient sound
of wind and waves.

Now add concrete. Lots and lots of concrete. And B-2 bombers. Toss in a

few high-value terrorists, disembarking from an unmarked CIA jet, most

likely hooded, shackled and headed for days and nights of the closest thing

to torture that American interrogators can come up with while still claiming

not to have violated the Geneva Conventions.

Welcome to Diego Garcia--6,720 acres (2,720 hectares) of restricted

military base on a depopulated atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean,

1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the nearest continent. Back in 1966, the U.S.

signed a secret agreement with Britain allowing the Pentagon to use the
territory as an air base in exchange for a big discount on Polaris nuclear

missiles. Five years later, hundreds of Navy Seabees arrived by ship and

began pouring the 12,000-ft. (3,600 m) runway that would become a

bulwark of American cold war strategy and a key launchpad for the first

and second Gulf wars and the invasion of Afghanistan.

When I touched down aboard Air Force One with President George W. Bush

recently for a 90-minute refueling stop en route from Iraq to Australia,

Diego Garcia looked drab: think early-'70s industrial park. But as a 1,700-

man springboard for the projection of military might to the far reaches of

the world, it rivals anything 18th century Britain or Augustan Rome ever
came up with.

Unfortunately, construction of the base in 1971 crossed the line from

efficiency to cruelty. First, the British and Americans had the islanders'

dogs loaded into sealed sheds and gassed, according to Professor David

Vine of the American University in Washington. Then the British packed the

inhabitants, known as Chagossians, onto ships and sent them off to

Mauritius and the Seychelles, 1,200 miles (1,900 km) to the west across the

Indian Ocean, where many live to this day. A court case seeking right of

return is under way in Britain, and last year the Chagossians were allowed

to visit their relatives' graves for the first time. Defense Department
spokesman Commander Jeffrey Gordon says the U.S. gassed some dogs

but only for humanitarian reasons and denies Diego Garcia is used for

interrogations.

But its history and sensitive security role have helped keep the island

pretty much off-limits to journalists. That has made it something of a holy-

grail dateline for reporters covering the military. Not that I saw much of it.
After Bush deplaned, he was greeted by an honor guard on the tarmac. We
were taken to an auditorium while Bush met the base commander and

troops elsewhere on the grounds. When I tried to leave the building to look

around, some courteous airmen said I didn't have the proper clearance.

But if I wasn't going to do any reporting on the expulsion of the

Chagossians or on terrorist suspects like the Indonesian al-Qaeda leader

Hambali, who is believed to have been held on the island, I at least wanted

proof I'd been there. Some 20 years ago, TIME's chief of correspondents,

Dick Duncan, offered a case of fine Bordeaux to the first correspondent

who filed a legitimate story from Diego Garcia. The equivalent in 2007

media dollars is probably a box of Chablis, but I still wanted evidence.

I mentioned this to a civilian contractor, William Corke, who disappeared

and came back with a bag of T shirts with pictures of scantily clad women

and mermaids, bearing the words FANTASY ISLAND, DIEGO GARCIA.

Before we were hustled back onto Air Force One, I managed to file a story

for TIME.com on Bush's surprise visit to Iraq. I'd rather have had something

on CIA detainees or the last remnants of Chagossian villages. Maybe next

time.
NOTEBOOK

Global Warning
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By NANCY GIBBS

In a week when cable screens were split among solemn ceremonies, falling

governments, the first serious congressional debate over a war now in its

fourth year and an economy with a nervous twitch, it was even harder than

usual to catch the sirens in the distance--to hear the sounds of ice melting,

species vanishing and cities choking the people who live in them. You can't

really cover a story that hasn't happened yet, but sometimes the news

about the future is the biggest story of all.

was a week for warnings. U.S. government scientists announced that the

Arctic ice cap is melting even more rapidly than they had feared; by 2050,

40% of the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean could be gone, a loss that wasn't

supposed to happen for 100 years. One scientist called the news

"astounding." Since greenhouse gases linger for decades, even drastic

reductions in emissions won't be enough to prevent further decline.

The 2008 Old Farmer's Almanac predicts that the coming year will be the

warmest in a century. It turns out that years ending in 8 are known for

meteorological mischiefsupersize hurricanes, heat waves, floods and

droughts. The World Conservation Union released its annual red list of

threatened species and warned that a "global extinction crisis" looms as

sprawling cities press deeper into habitats once left alone. The group

tracks 40,000 of the planet's 15 million species; of these, more than

16,000 are at risk of extinction.

All this news is bad for polar bears. Bad for western lowland gorillas. And

very bad for people as well. When the winter freeze comes later in China, a
disease-carrying water snail will have all kinds of new opportunities to make

people sick. By 2085 an extra billion people will be at risk of contracting

dengue fever because of changes in temperature and rainfall. And in yet

another grim award ceremony, the Blacksmith Institute released its list of

the world's most polluted places; it should not surprise anyone that people

die faster in such spots.

"Earth, earth, riding your merry-go-round toward extinction," the poet Anne

Sexton wrote. How fearsome must the headlines be about tomorrow before

people change their ways today?

Japan's Leader Resigns
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By BRYAN WALSH

The political deathwatch on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began

minutes after his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) suffered a historic

defeat in elections at the end of July, leaving the opposition in charge of

the legislature's upper house for the first time in Japan's postwar history.

Abe resisted immediate calls for his resignation and seemed ready to battle

for his job in the face of public antipathy. But on Sept. 12 the "fighting

politician," as Abe liked to call himself, suddenly lost his stomach for the

fight and submitted his resignation to a shocked Japan. "The people need a

leader whom they can support and trust," Abe told a national TV audience.

The LDP will choose a new leader--and the next Prime Minister--on Sept. 19,

and the odds-on favorite is former Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who

emerged as Abe's most influential Cabinet member. That decision could be

followed by early legislative elections, and unless the LDP can quickly turn

its fortunes around, it could find itself out of power for only the second

time in its 52-year history. "The true nature of the LDP--a dying body on life

support--has been exposed by Abe's resignation," says political analyst

Hirotada Asakawa.

Once the dust clears, Abe's departure could also signal a return to the old

Japan. Abe was elected less than a year ago, promising to centralize power

in the Prime Minister's office--traditionally weak compared with those of

other countries--and promote a more assertive Japan abroad. Instead, the

influence has shifted back to behind-the-scenes power brokers, and the

country appears to be retreating from the world stage. At this uncertain

point, it seems Japan could go any way but forward.

Milestones
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007

DIED

THOSE FAMILIAR WITH the cognitive skills of African gray parrot Alex will

never again use birdbrain as an insult. With help from researcher Irene

Pepperberg, Alex learned to communicate, fueling debate over other

species' ability to learn human language. He knew 100 words and could

count, express frustration and differentiate among some colors, shapes and

textures. His last words to Pepperberg: "You be good. See you tomorrow. I

love you." He was 31.

NOW IT'S COOL TO BE GREEN, but in 1976, when Anita Roddick launched

her eco-friendly Body Shop in Brighton, England, she was just odd. Taking

cues from myriad cultures, the former U.N. worker infused her moisturizers

and cleansers with natural ingredients, opposed animal testing, helped

develop Third World communities and used her visibility to protest human-

rights abuses. Roddick, who saw her company expand to 2,000 sites in 50

countries, died of a brain hemorrhage. She was 64.

FEW EUROPEANS CAN SAY they changed American jazz. But with his

innovative electronic-piano playing and composing, most notably for Miles

Davis in the 1960s, Vienna-born keyboardist Joe Zawinul pioneered the

electrified genre of jazz fusion. He wrote the title song on Davis' first

electric-jazz album, In a Silent Way, and later co-founded the seminal jazz-

rock band Weather Report, which he led for 15 years. Zawinul was 75.

AFTER several of her friends died within a short period, author Madeleine
L'Engle aimed to make sense of her pain by writing about the universe.

Result: her iconic 1962 children's novel, A Wrinkle in Time, which follows
angst-ridden adolescent Meg Murry and her brother on a quest through

time and space to rescue their imprisoned father on a planet governed by

the sinister Dark Thing. With its mythic struggles, biblical and literary

references and themes of good and evil--Dad is saved with the one gift

Dark Thing lacks, the power of love--Wrinkle was seen by some as anti-

Christian and was often banned. (The spiritual author called it "great

publicity.") Wrinkle, which won the 1963 Newbery Medal, has sold more

than 8 million copies. L'Engle was 88.

BABY BOOMERS KNOW HER AS the icy matriarch on TV's hit prime-time

soap Falcon Crest, as Ronald Reagan's first wife and as mother of Maureen
and Michael Reagan. Yet in the 1950s, the unpretentious Jane Wyman was

one of Hollywood's most respected stars. She broke out of B movies in

Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend and went on to vibrant performances in

such films as 1948's Johnny Belinda (her portrayal of a deaf and mute rape

victim won her an Oscar) and Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright. She broke

her long silence on Reagan after his death, calling him a "great President

and ... gentle man." Wyman was 90.

"YOU SEE THAT BLACK MUD? Put a little sugar in it ... add a little water,

and you can paint all day." So said American folk artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth,

who got his start in mud painting as a toddler, accompanying his healer
mom through the Alabama woods. Using his fingers as a brush, plywood as

canvas, and sugar, berries and turnip greens for color and texture, Sudduth,

a star of the folk-art explosion of the 1980s, painted his life--his dog, farm

animals and, after traveling, the U.S. Capitol. Sudduth's works are in the

permanent collections of a number of museums and the Smithsonian. He

was 97.

APPRECIATION
An Opera King's Final Curtain Call

His family declined a state funeral in Rome, but the spirited, emotional

farewell to singer Luciano Pavarotti in his hometown of Modena looked a

lot like one

THE CASKET The bow-tied Pavarotti's white maple coffin was lined with the

maroon velvet used for the seats in La Scala and other houses. He held a

rosary and the trademark white handkerchief he carried to mop his brow.

TRIBUTE The Pope sent a eulogy referring to the tenor's "divine gift of

music"; 10 air-force planes flew overhead, trailing green, white and red

smoke; in the two days before the funeral, 100,000 visited the open casket.

CONTROVERSY Some local priests decried giving the divorced Pavarotti a

public viewing and funeral as a "profanation of the temple"--despite the fact

that higher officials, including the Archbishop of Modena, approved.

FINALE As the service came to a close, a recording of Pavarotti and his

baker father singing a duet--César Franck's hymn Panis Angelicus--brought

tears and a last, several-minutes-long standing ovation.

With reporting by Harriet Barovick, Martha Bedford, Gilbert Cruz, Joe

Lertola, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre, Kate Stinchfield, Nathan

Thornburgh
New Clinton, Old Woe
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By MARK HALPERIN

Who is Norman Hsu, and why does he matter? He has turned into major

trouble for Hillary Clinton's campaign, which fears the revival of Clinton

scandal fatigue. After all, even if people don't remember Travelgate, they

probably recall the Lincoln Bedroom theme from the Clinton

Administration: a reckless pursuit of political cash that led to shady

Talented Mr. Ripley types turning up as major donors. Hsu fits the model:

he came out of nowhere just a few years ago and quickly became a

Democratic fund-raising hotshot, attaining the status of a "HillRaiser," which

is how the top financial "bundlers" for the Democratic front runner are

described. Hsu, 56, raised an extraordinary $850,000 from 260 donors on

her behalf. He is also a two-time fugitive from justice, who fled a 1992

California fraud conviction in which he pleaded no contest to conning

investors out of $1 million to allegedly purchase and resell nonexistent

latex gloves. Then earlier this month, he skipped out on $2 million bail and

eluded state officials who tried to corral him after learning his whereabouts

from press reports about his role in the Clinton campaign. Federal

investigators are looking at whether Hsu illegally reimbursed some of the

Clinton donors, who include a postal carrier and a homemaker.

The Clinton campaign has blamed a faulty background check for its failure

to scrub Hsu's past and says it will return the $850,000--the largest such

single giveback in presidential-campaign history. And while there is no

evidence that Hsu received any special governmental access for his

largesse--either from Clinton or Barack Obama or any of the other

numerous Democratic candidates he enriched--the role of bundlers like him

will certainly come under more scrutiny from the press and the campaigns.
Clinton's advisers have already promised to take a close look at any future

mysterious strangers bearing gifts.

Life: Educa ti on - Fashion - Hist ory - Fo od - En vir onment - Health

Beepocalypse Now?
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By BRYAN WALSH

Hanging on: The honeybee is built for hard work, but it's no match for colony-collapse
disorder.
Getty

In late 2006, whole hives of honeybees began dying overnight--victims of

an unknown syndrome. Though the die-offs have afflicted nearly a quarter

of U.S. beekeeping operations, scientists still aren't sure what causes them,

but they've narrowed down the suspects:

A VIRUS

A team of scientists chiefly from Penn State and Columbia universities and
the U.S. Department of Agriculture took samples from hives that had been

afflicted with colony-collapse disorder (CCD)--the term for the syndrome

wiping out the bees--and decoded the genetic material inside them. In a

paper published in Science Express on Sept. 6, the group reported that one

pathogen-- the recently discovered Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV)--was

present in more than 90% of the samples, indicating that IAPV might be at

least a good marker for CCD, if not a direct cause.

What the Doubters Say: Another group of researchers, which collaborated

with the U.S. Army, has done its own studies on CCD-afflicted hives and

found no clear links with IAPV. Also, the virus came to the U.S. from

Australia, but there's been no CCD Down Under.

PARASITES

A host of microscopic bugs afflicts honeybees, including the vampiric

Varroa destructor, which sucks the blood of bees. The mites first appeared

in the U.S. in 1987, and they've taken a severe toll on honeybees, which had

been in decline even before CCD. The bites of the mites don't kill the bees,

but they produce open wounds that leave the insects prone to further

infections. Tracheal mites, which attack the respiratory system, are also a

suspect.

What the Doubters Say: If Varroa is the sole cause, why did CCD not

appear until late 2006? It's more likely that Varroa is working in concert

with other parasites or pathogens to wear down bees' immune systems until

the slightest thing can kill them. One reason to believe this: many hives

have experienced CCD without the presence of the vampire mite.

PESTICIDE

Pollinating bees may be a farmer's best friend, but that doesn't save them
from being accidentally dosed by the pesticides used to rid fields of less

welcome insects. One suspect is Imidacloprid, an insecticide ingredient

discovered by Bayer. Now banned in France, it's been blamed for triggering

a decline in bee populations. (Bayer denies that Imidacloprid is behind

CCD.)

What the Doubters Say: Despite France's 1999 ban, bee numbers there

continued to drop. Studies of CCD have found no common environmental

factor, meaning that Imidacloprid too could be simply one of many causes.

All the unanswered questions have beekeepers buzzing. "Something out

there is ruining my livelihood," says David Hackenberg, the Pennsylvania

beekeeper who first reported CCD. "And there's nothing I can do about it."
Hyper Kids? Check Their Diet
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By CLAUDIA WALLIS

Color crazed: Some kids got revved up after consuming the amount of food dye contained in
two 2-oz. (57 g) bags of candy — hardly a mega-dose.
White Packert / Getty

Parents have long observed that some kids go bonkers after eating foods

with a lot of artificial ingredients or neon-bright colors. Medical

researchers--not to mention the food industry--have been skeptical; there

was no proof of this effect, at least nothing like a double-blind, controlled

study.

As so often happens, however, the parents turned out to be a step ahead

of the pros. A carefully designed study published in the British journal the

Lancet shows that a variety of common food dyes and the preservative

sodium benzoate--an ingredient in many soft drinks, fruit juices and salad

dressings--do cause some kids to become measurably more hyperactive

and distractible. The findings prompted Britain's Food Standards Agency

to issue an immediate advisory to parents to limit their children's intake of

additives if they notice an effect on behavior. In the U.S., there hasn't been

a similar response, but doctors say it makes sense for parents to be on the

alert.
The study, led by Jim Stevenson, a professor of psychology at England's

University of Southampton, involved about 300 children in two age groups:

3-year-olds and 8- and 9-year-olds. Over three one-week periods, the

children were randomly assigned to consume one of three fruit drinks daily:

one contained the amount of dye and sodium benzoate typically found in a

British child's diet, a second had a lower concentration of additives, and a

third was additive-free. The children spent a week drinking each of the

three mixtures, which looked and tasted alike. During each seven-day

period, teachers, parents and graduate students (who did not know which

drink the kids were getting) used standardized behavior-evaluation tools to

size up such qualities as restlessness, lack of concentration, fidgeting and

talking or interrupting too much.

Stevenson found that children in both age groups were significantly more

hyperactive when drinking the beverage with higher levels of additives.

Three-year-olds had a bigger response than the older kids did to the drink

with the lower dose of additives, which had about the same amount of food

coloring as in two 2-oz. (57 g) bags of candy. But even within each age

group, some children responded strongly and others not at all. Stevenson's

team is looking at how genetic differences may explain the range of

sensitivity. One of his colleagues believes that the additives may trigger a

release of histamines in sensitive kids. In general, the effects of the

chemicals are not so great as to cause full-blown attention-

deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Still, the paper warns that "these

adverse effects could affect the child's ability to benefit from the

experience of school."

The Lancet paper may be the first to nail down a link between additives

and hyperactivity, but as long ago as the 1970s, the idea was the basis for

the restrictive Feingold diet, popularized as a treatment for ADHD. Some

clinicians still routinely advise parents of kids with ADHD to steer their kids

away from preservatives and food dyes. "It matters for some kids, so I tell

parents to be their own scientist," says psychiatrist Edward Hallowell,

author of several books on ADHD. While a similar link between

hyperactivity and sugar remains unproven, Hallowell cautions parents to

watch the sweets too. "I've seen too many kids who flip out after soda and

birthday cake," he says. "I urge them to eat whole foods. They'll be healthier

anyway."

The food industry has responded cautiously to the study, calling for further

research. The food dyes used in the study "have gone through substantial
safety evaluations by government bodies," notes Cathy Cook of the

International Association of Color Manufacturers.

The Lancet study will probably encourage other researchers to conduct

food-additive work of their own. People with disorders ranging from autism

to atrial fibrillation (a heart condition) have claimed that preservatives

worsen their symptoms. "My guess is that if we do similarly systematic work

with other additives, we'd learn they, too, have implications for behavior,"

says Dr. James Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard. "Kids drink

crazy things with colors that are almost flashing," he says. The study is one

more reason to cheer the trend toward less processed, more natural fare.
BUSINESS

The Well

Coping With a Real-Estate Bust

Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By JUSTIN FOX

The real estate slump has no quick fix, and could expand into a full-blown recession. Here, a
For Sale sign stands in front of a home in Lee's Summit, Mo., on September 5, 2007.
Charlie Riedel / AP

The housing market in Detroit is a mess. Such a mess that nobody tries to

deny it, not even the real estate agents. "The market is very, very bad,"

laments Jennifer Weight, hosting a deserted Sunday open house in the

suburb of Bloomfield Hills. "It's terrible."

Across the country, in the anti-Detroit that is San Diego, real estate is also

slumping. The gloom, however, is far less pervasive. "Yes, it's a troublesome

market, but it's not terrible," contends broker Leona Kline.

The reason for the difference in attitude is pretty simple. In metropolitan

Detroit, the 11% drop in home prices over the past year was just one more

sign of a local economy in decline thanks to the troubles of the auto

industry. In San Diego, the drop of 7.3% came out of the clear blue sky.

The city still has jobs to offer. Beaches too.

But it is the downturn in sunny San Diego that poses the far bigger risk to

the U.S. economy. Detroit, Cleveland and some smaller Rust Belt cities are

experiencing a traditional bust, in which economic woes spread to housing.

In San Diego, the housing decline seems to be a self-generated

phenomenon, the product of too-high prices and too-crazy lending

practices. Now the "housing market is dragging down the rest of the

economy," says Alan Gin, an economist at the University of San Diego. The

same is true in and around Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Las Vegas,

Miami, Washington, New York City and Tampa, Fla.--all metro areas where

house prices skyrocketed until 2006 and have since fallen in the face of

otherwise positive economic news. Nationally, house prices dropped 3.2%

in the 12 months ending in June, while the economy grew 1.9%.

For much of this year it was tempting to see this disconnect as a good

thing: strength elsewhere was compensating for the slowdown in housing.

But when the Labor Department reported in September that job creation

had lurched into reverse after four years of gains, the tune on Wall Street

and elsewhere shifted abruptly. Economists began fretting that, for the first

time, a real estate bust would throw the country into recession--a sustained

period when the economy shrinks instead of grows and lots of people lose

their jobs.

Forecasters are, as a group, notoriously bad at predicting inflection points,

so you shouldn't take this dire talk to the bank just yet. At the Economic

Cycle Research Institute, an outfit with a good record of at least noticing

when recessions have begun, the indicators still point toward growth--albeit

less convincingly than two months ago. "Having a jobs report come in

negative does not mean that a recession has started," says managing

director Lakshman Achuthan. But the risk is there, and Achuthan guesses it

will worsen if loan markets fail to calm down. If a month from now a
borrower with good credit still can't get a jumbo mortgage at a reasonable

rate, a recession will be much likelier.

HOUSING'S TRAPDOOR

THAT A REAL ESTATE BUST MIGHT LAND US IN a recession is in a way

fitting because it was a real estate boom that kept the last recession, in

2001, so brief and shallow. Trying to stave off deflation in the wake of the

stock-market crash, Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve cut the short-term

interest rates that determine what homeowners pay on adjustable-rate

mortgages. Meanwhile, investors desperate for someplace other than the

stock market to put their money piled into mortgage securities, driving

down the cost of fixed-rate loans. Housing markets, already doing well amid

the strong economic growth of the late 1990s, exploded.

To a remarkable extent, housing drove the entire economy. Real estate,

residential construction and three other housing-related Labor Department

job categories together add up to 6.6% of U.S. employment. But they

accounted for 46% of the new jobs created in the U.S. between January

2001 and May 2006, when the sector peaked.

The main reason for the boom's doom was that in the nation's San Diegos,

double-digit annual price increases put most homes out of the reach of

middle-income buyers. The mortgage industry and its funders on Wall

Street responded with laxer lending standards and creative loans (no

downpayment, teaser rate, interest only, etc.) that really made sense for

borrowers only if prices kept going up and they could sell at a profit or

refinance. When prices stopped rising last year, the edifice began to

crumble.
It's in the nature of real estate that the crumbling may continue for a while

yet. "It's way too premature to be talking about light at the end of the

tunnel--it's still pitch black," says Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at

High Frequency Economics, a research firm. Shepherdson, not a

congenitally bearish sort, was one of several prominent forecasters who

began warning of housing troubles in 2005. Now he sees huge quantities of

unsold inventory, which will lead to more cutbacks in construction, which

will lead to more job losses and so on. "I don't want to call it an endless

loop, because it will end," he says. "But not anytime soon."

IT'S NOT LOCAL ANYMORE

WHEN CONFRONTED WITH SUCH GLOOMY talk, many in the real estate

business offer a classic response. "People don't buy real estate on a

national basis," says Tom Kunz, CEO of real estate giant Century 21. "They

buy it on a local basis." Sure enough, many parts of the country aren't in

trouble. Prices are still rising in Seattle and Portland, Ore. In Atlanta, Dallas

and Charlotte, N.C., prices never went up all that much, and they're not

falling now. The same appears to be true in many smaller cities and towns.

But most of the country's big metro areas are caught in the downdraft.

With mortgage lending now very much a national business--and a troubled

one--real estate may not be as local as it used to be. It may not even be

national: house prices have been rising sharply in Europe, Australia, South
Africa and China. Two countries at the leading edge of this boom, the U.K.

and Australia, saw housing markets sputter in 2004 and 2005 but then

recover. This may indicate that a quick recovery is possible in the U.S. It

could also mean that the global boom will end only in a global bust--and

U.S. mortgage troubles are now ominously making themselves felt around
the world.
HOUSING'S MIXED HISTORY

THESE ARE THE KINDS OF THOUGHTS THAT occupy Yale economist

Robert Shiller, who with Karl Case of Wellesley has done more than anyone

else to document the postmillennium real estate boom and warn about the

inevitable bust. Shiller first made his name in the early 1980s attacking the

notion, then widely accepted, that the stock market rationally reflects the

true value of the companies whose shares are traded on it. He and real

estate specialist Case then teamed up to show that home prices are even

more subject to booms and busts than stocks. They did it by measuring

repeat sales, which give a better picture of price movements than the
figures published by the real estate industry. In 1991 they turned this into

the business that supplied the price data used in this article.

After publishing a best-selling critique of the stock bubble, Irrational

Exuberance, just as the market peaked in March 2000, Shiller set to work

adding a chapter on real estate for the second edition. As part of that

effort, he cobbled together an inflation-adjusted index of home prices

going back to 1890, which showed that a) the price runup from 1997 to

2006 was by far the biggest on record and b) home prices can fall for

decades. Put those two together, Shiller argues, and it's at least possible

that we're due for an epic decline in prices. "People think that home prices
go up a lot," he says. "But home prices in 1990 were at about the same

level as in 1890." Shiller allows that the scarcity of property near the coasts

might mean prices there will remain high, but then notes, "We can't make

any more of the land, but we can build huge high-rises on the beach."

Huge high-rises on the beach, in fact, played a major role in Florida's boom

and bust. There are 40,000 condominium units being built right now in
greater Miami, and consultant Lewis Goodkin estimates it will take five to
seven years just to work through all that inventory. That's five to seven

years of downward pressure on local housing prices, construction

employment and the like. The great test of the coming months and years is

whether the U.S. economy is strong enough to withstand that kind of

pressure without buckling. Right now things aren't looking good, but this is

an equation with too many variables--Fed rate cuts, congressional bailouts,

the ebb and flow of the global economy--to solve in advance.

Apart from the risk that it will bring a recession, though, a housing boom

turned bust is far from an unmitigated disaster. Some buyers will get great

deals on Miami condos, that's certain. And in the San Diego suburb of La
Mesa, the downturn has allowed Amy and John Tuttle to finally buy a house.

"We tried to buy homes a few years ago, but the homes were too

expensive," says Amy, 31, a clinical psychologist. "We put three bids on

three different houses, and I think we were simply outbid." In August they

closed on a recently foreclosed house priced at $405,000--less than they

had been willing to pay three years ago.

If Shiller is right that house prices are subject to bouts of irrational

exuberance--and he seems to be--this is the happy flip side. Somewhere

along the path to and from irrational pessimism, this real estate bust may

deliver the place you've been looking for.

with reporting by Elizabeth Keenan / Sydney, Joseph R. Szczesny / Detroit,

Jill Underwood / San Diego
What Homeowners Can Do
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By BARBARA KIVIAT

The eternal question in response to any market volatility — be it up or down, in stocks or real
estate — is a simple one: How does this affect me? In housing it depends, of course, on which
rung of the real estate ladder you occupy.
Illustration for TIME by David Goldin

Buyers: Maximizing The Advantage

1.With the number of homes on the market up 19% from a year ago,

buyers (finally) hold the best cards. To play them, start entertaining all the

offers homebuilders and real estate agents are hurling your way. How

about a finished basement? Or having the seller pay your closing costs?

The downturn has yielded less obvious opportunities too. John Mead, a

teacher in Calhoun, Ga., paid $120,000 for the three-bedroom house he

found on Foreclosure.com a solid $40,000 less than similar offers he was

considering from people not as desperate to sell. (Don't feel guilty about

buying a foreclosure; it helps move inventory.)

True, lenders have tightened standards, and some buyers qualify for less

house. Yet rates are still relatively low--though loans of more than

$417,000 have gotten pricier faster.

Just keep in mind that the housing market hasn't hit bottom. Looking at the

gap between how much it costs to rent a place or to buy one, Deutsche
Bank research analyst Lou Taylor concludes that in the bubbliest markets,

renting is still the better short-term deal. Consider Sacramento, Calif.,

where rent runs about 40% of the monthly cost of buying, half of what it

did a decade ago. Of course, not everyone can wait for the trough to

become a homeowner. "If you just got married and your wife is pregnant

with twins, you've not got much of a choice," says Taylor. "Just buy

carefully and plan to stay for a number of years, because it may take that

long for home prices to increase again."

Sellers: How to Limit the Damage

2. Real estate is largely a local matter. People selling houses in Bismarck,

N.D., or Binghamton, N.Y., might find they have a relatively easy time of it,

but in big chunks of the country, putting a home up for sale hurts.

The best way to avoid the fate of sellers who watch their property languish

(the average sell time is eight to 10 weeks) is to hit the field with a bang;

the house should look sharp (fresh paint, fresh flowers) and be priced to

move. "People used to try a higher price and see what happened," says

Realtor Judy Moore, based in Lexington, Mass. "Today, when the buyer has

so many choices, you don't want to sit on the market for 30 days and then

reduce your price. That buyer is long gone."

So sellers are sweetening the deal. Paying closing costs is common, as is

ponying up cash for expenses like condo fees and renovations. If you fix

the place up before you sell, stick to the kitchen and bathrooms, since

renos in those rooms (along with new siding and windows) return the most,

says a survey in Remodeling.

And try not to feel bad: there are larger forces at work, after all. "House

prices are falling back in line with economic fundamentals," says

Economy.com housing economist Pat McPherron. Even granite countertops

can't change that.

Debtors: Facing Up To Foreclosure

3. First, know that you are not alone: 1.4% of mortgages are now in

foreclosure, which translates into roughly 730,000 homeowners. And that

doesn't count the 5.1% (2.6 million) simply behind on payments.

The most important thing is to call your mortgage servicer--which may not

be the outfit that made the loan--and talk to the loss-mitigation department

as soon as you sense trouble. The more temporary the help you seek--a

forbearance, say--the more likely you are to get it. Lenders prefer workouts

to foreclosure, but attitude is key. "It's not easy to be polite when you feel

dragged through the mud, but this is an art, not a science," says Scott

Thompson, president of the realty group Mortgage Resolution Services. If

you seek relief for an investment property or second home, more will be

asked of you, such as tapping family for money.

A housing counselor can help with the process. HUD provides names at

hud.gov or 800-569-4287. One option is to declare Chapter 13

bankruptcy, which forces a lender to accept a negotiated repayment plan.

Chicago bankruptcy attorney David Siegel says that saves a house about

30% of the time.

Investors: Heading Into Vulture Mode

4. In a typical year, about 250,000 foreclosures are scheduled for auction

at county courthouses nationwide; so far this year there have been

440,000, according to RealtyTrac. Investors once lured by the prospect of

flipping houses at ever inflating prices are now (if they sold in time)

focused on scooping up distressed houses on the cheap and turning them

into rentals. "There's a whole crowd of people who say, 'Wow, what an

opportunity,'" says William Bronchick, president of the Colorado

Association of Real Estate Investors.

Sales of bank-owned repossessions like the one auctioneer Hudson &

Marshall is hosting in Detroit later this month are sellout events (700

properties will be on the block, vs. 130 this time last year), but the real

money is made by people who get their hands on houses before the banks

do. By outbidding the bank at a courthouse foreclosure auction, return on

investment can get as high as 25% to 35%. Make sure you are incredibly

well versed in your state's real estate laws and prepared for tasks like
evicting a family.

However you get your hands on a house, it's important to remember that

foreclosures are often cheap for a reason, like having a cracked

foundation. Says Terry Dunkin, president of the Appraisal Institute: "Just

because it's priced less than other houses in the neighborhood doesn't

mean it's a great deal."

Renters: In the Perfect Spot

5. Even though home ownership peaked during the boom, landlords didn't

suffer, nor did renters benefit. Why? So many buildings were going condo,

the apartment stock actually fell in 2005.

Now, with sales slowed, builders are reverting to rentals. In the second half

of 2007, some 62,300 apartments will be added, double that of the first six

months, according to real estate tracker Reis. In the short term, that gives

renters the advantage, since their numbers aren't growing as fast as the

apartment count is. "In some cases, vacancy rates are going up," says Reis

chief economist Sam Chandan. Unless you're in a tight market like New
York City or San Jose, Calif., you might be able to win a free month or

other concessions.

There's another upside playing out in slack markets. When Karin NeJame

couldn't sell her Bethel, Conn., house after a year, she decided to rent it.

Now, for about $2,000 a month, her tenants get three bedrooms, a Jacuzzi

and a landlady who gladly does the gardening.

* Source: S&P/Case-Shiller ® U.S. National Home Price Index

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Nature Boys
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By LEV GROSSMAN

Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder, left to right, photographed at the Regency Hotel in New York
City on September 6, 2007.
David Johnson for TIME

They're both rich and famous, they're both notoriously earnest and left-

leaning, they both have reputations for being emotionally tortured. So it

makes a kind of cosmic sense that Sean Penn and Pearl Jam front man

Eddie Vedder would be friends; they have been since 1995, when Vedder

wrote music for Dead Man Walking, in which Penn starred. Both are
currently experiencing second acts, Penn as a director and Vedder as a film

composer. The duo have now collaborated: Vedder has written the sound

track for Penn's movie Into the Wild, based on the book by Jon Krakauer.

Later this month Vedder will release a CD of songs written for or inspired

by the movie, the closest thing to a solo album he's ever done.

Into the Wild is the true story of Chris McCandless, a good kid from a

prosperous but unhappy family, who left home, burned his money, changed
his name to Alexander Supertramp and in 1992 walked off into the Alaskan

wilderness. He died there of starvation 16 weeks after he arrived. What was

he looking for? Penn and Vedder--who are a lot funnier than they get credit

for--talked to TIME'S LEV GROSSMAN about this and other profound

questions, like how you keep a huge grizzly bear happy on a movie set.

TIME: What made you pick up Krakauer's book?

PENN: The cover grabbed me--the bus, the image of the bus with the title

Into the Wild on it. I've made a lot of decisions in my life that you could call

judging a book by its cover. And I've become a real advocate of it. So I

took the book home, and I read it cover to cover twice, and I went to sleep

in the wee hours and immediately got up in the morning, and I saw in

essence the movie that you saw last night.

What was it about what McCandless did that got to you?

PENN: I really think that we shouldn't just accept rites-of-passage

opportunities as they come, because what we'll find is that they don't come

in our world anymore. And we shouldn't look at them as a kind of luxury or

romantic dream but as something vital to being alive. McCandless quotes

somebody else in the movie: "If just once you put yourself in the most

ancient of circumstances ..." This is where nature comes into it--and I think

that Eddie and I share this feeling--that every sober-minded person of any

belief would probably agree that the biggest issue is quality of life. You've

gotta feel your own life to have a quality of life, and our own inauthenticity,

our corruptions, get in the way of that. The wilderness is relentlessly

authentic.

Have you ever gone through anything like that? A rite of passage?
PENN: Formatively the experience I had, where I found the beginning of the

map to figure out how to feel my own life, would have come from surfing

as a kid. My wilderness is the ocean, and my experience with risk and

conquering fear was the ocean.

Being alone like that can help people find themselves, but it can also make

them fall apart.

VEDDER: See, I love it. I need it. I'm a better person because of it. I mean, I

feel really blessed even to have had the opportunity of disappearing on an

island or something and not seeing anybody for weeks. It makes me

somebody that somebody else could live with. That's another thing, when

you talk about the environment and how precious it is: it makes us better

people.

How did you get into doing sound tracks, what with being a huge rock star

and all? Is it a lot different from doing Pearl Jam?

VEDDER: Yeah, it's easy. Really. I almost don't remember a thing. It was like

I kinda went into some weird space for a week or two, and then I woke up

out of this daze, and it was done. I don't really remember it.

That doesn't even sound like work.

VEDDER: I was thinking about it yesterday. I don't trust art that was made
easy. If there's not some kind of pain involved, then I don't trust it. And I

thought, Well, how can I be honest and tell people that it was easy? But

what I figured out is that the hard part was 25 years ago, when I went

through what this kid went through. I went through pain, but it was just a

long time ago. And I guess what's a little bit worrisome to me is how easy it
was to access it. You know? That I just had to barely put my finger in. It
was right there on the surface. I thought I'd grown up much more. I'm glad

there was a use for it, but now I've got to tuck it away again.

So how does it work? Sean, do you just go to Eddie and say, "Here's a bit

with a guy hitchhiking. Write a song that would sound good with that"?

PENN: Well, I'd written the script originally structured for songs. I love that

kind of thing in movies. I was born in 1960, so you can do the math and

figure out that I was just coming into my own with Harold and Maude, and

earlier than that, Simon and Garfunkel and The Graduate, and Coming

Home. It just added something, letting your songwriter be a co-author of

the script in many ways.

VEDDER: It was like a factory, where I would sit in a chair and they'd hand

me instruments. We'd just keep going, and I didn't have to teach anybody

the part or talk them into the idea, the theory, the soul of whatever the

piece was. I'd just sit in the chair, and they'd hand me a fretless bass, and

they'd hand me a mandolin, and they'd take a second to do the rough mix,

and then I'd write the vocal, and it was just quick. It was as in the moment

as you could be, and in that way it's like a great feeling of being alive. You'd

hear two pieces at the end of the day--or three--and feel like you were

actually doing something on this planet while you were here.

Some of the vocals were wordless, just these howling chants ...

VEDDER: That was all stuff I did not-to-picture. In a way--like the music for

the scene on the mountaintop--I don't think I would have done that [if I had

seen the footage]. I would have felt too--like if you could be both

vulnerable and pretentious at the same time?

PENN: [Laughs.] Leave that to me!

Emile Hirsch [who plays McCandless] goes through a truly shocking

physical transformation to show McCandless starving to death. How'd you

achieve that?

PENN: Turns out he has phenomenal willpower. A 21-year-old kid, who just

got the right to go drinking with the guys in the bar, and he is by choice

sober. By choice a monk for eight months. He was in a room watching his

feet roll under him on a treadmill or doing pushups or eating another glass

of water with lemon in it for dinner every night for eight months. You know,

that's really, really hard.

He has a scene with a bear that got some audible gasps.

PENN: He was an 8-ft. 6-in. grizzly bear, and if he wasn't a good bear, I

wouldn't be here right now. But no flinching from Emile--he just stood there,

six inches away from that thing.

What do you do when the bear's not being a good bear?

PENN: You say, "Good boy," all day long. Or the trainer does. And he gives

him a lot of chocolate whipped cream.

McCandless doesn't come off as a saint in the movie. I mean, he won't call

his parents even though they're desperate to hear from him. He's angry.

PENN: You know, this is subject to a lot of personal stuff on anybody's

part--yours, mine. My answer to "He should have called his parents" is "Who

says?" I understand it, but I walked in my shoes, not his shoes. What I do

know is that if you're not feeling your life, you are obligated first to do

everything it takes to feel your life. I've done many things without the

intention of hurting people that have hurt people. And I'm saying this
knowing that I've got two kids that are coming up to that age myself right

now.

Eddie, you talked before about how much you have in common with

McCandless. [Vedder has a famously difficult relationship with his

stepfather, as McCandless did with his father.] Did doing the movie help

you get over that pain at all?

VEDDER: Not enough. But it'll do for now. I don't think it's gonna go away. I

think in the last 10 to 15 years, I've just been able to not let that person

and that part of me be in charge--that guy is in the car, but we just don't let

him drive. That's something Springsteen told me once, and it really works.

He'll be talking in your ear in the backseat, but just don't let him get behind

the wheel. And you can be proud of it. I've talked to the people that raised

me, and I've thanked them for giving me a lifetime's worth of material. I was

talking to Bono in Australia last year, and we mentioned something about

family histories, and he was like, Wow, they really gave you some good

stuff to write about. It was like he wanted to hug them and thank them.

PENN: My mother was reading this article about me in Esquire last month,

and she called me up, and she said [Penn does his mother's voice], "Well, I

thought it was an interesting article, but you know, the one thing, every

time I'm sitting with you, you have a Diet Coke. Why is it that you're an

alcoholic? I'm the alcoholic!" It was as though I'd stolen her mantle!

The thing I can't figure out about Into the Wild is if it's a happy story or a

sad one. McCandless experiences so much joy, but then he dies in the end

...

PENN: Let me tell you what I think. My Uncle Bill, who was dying--with 13

cousins that he had all with my Aunt Joan, they had a great, happy
marriage for all their years. So there he is on his deathbed. He'd been in a

coma a couple of days, and a priest has come in to give last rites. This was

the first time, Irish that they are, that my aunt let a tear fall, trusting that his

coma would make him unaware of it. Well, open come the eyes, and he

sees. He catches her--she can't get away with it. And his last words were

"What're ya crying about? You're gonna die too." Chris McCandless lived

too short, that's true, but he, in my view, put an entire life from birth to the

wisdom of age into those years.

Arts: Movies - D owntime

A Kid Nation Divided

Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By JAMES PONIEWOZIK

Go West, young 'uns: Kid Nation put its kids to work in a frontier town, far from parental
doting.
Monty Brinton / CBS

If the measure of a successful reality show is how many people it ticks off

before airing a single frame (think Joe Millionaire), then CBS's Kid Nation is

one of the most successful reality shows of all time. The series, in which 40

children, ages 8 to 15, create their own society in a New Mexico ghost

town, has been accused of violating child-labor laws. Various publications

have reported that several kids mistakenly drank bleach from an unmarked

bottle, and one was spattered with hot grease while cooking.

Embarrassment-wise, CBS is only lucky that the cast is by definition too

young to have DUI histories.

After Kid Nation debuts on Sept. 19--assuming it does--the hubbub could

fade or snowball. (As of press time, CBS wasn't screening the program to

critics, perhaps to keep the hype building.) But even without injuries, the

show was bound to be controversial, and not just for putting kids in the TV

spotlight. Rather, the show's premise--sending kids off on their own, to take
risks, experiment and possibly fail, without parental intervention--runs

against the spirit of modern child rearing.

We are, after all, in the age of the involved parent, or the overinvolved

parent. The theory of "attachment parenting" espouses sleeping in the same

bed with Baby for early bonding. Schools complain of hovering "helicopter

parents," a label that some moms and dads wear proudly. The amount of

time candidates spend with their young kids is even an issue in the

primaries. For the enlightened 21st century mom and dad, quality time has

met quantity time. Never mind the bleach: the idea of having kids care for

themselves, separate from parents, rings faintly abusive in itself.

As the hyperinvolved parent of two, I realize there are worse phenomena

than people spending a lot of time with their kids. But it's also exhausting,

and pop culture has started asking if kid life has overwhelmed adult life. In

the book Perfect Madness, Judith Warner worries that a "total motherhood"

culture makes moms feel inadequate, while in The Death of the Grown-Up,

Diana West argues (hyperbolically) that the eroding distinction between

kids and adults is "bringing down Western civilization."

For parents, one of the more fascinating facets of AMC's period

advertising drama Mad Men is its picture of child rearing in pre-

childproofed, pre-co-sleeping 1960. There is a sense here that parents and

kids have separate lives, and the kids' lives seem as alien, independent and
dangerous as in caveman times: they ride in cars un-seat-belted, play with

dry-cleaning bags and get sent off to shoot BB guns while the grownups

have cocktails.

Like the adult characters' smoking and sexism, this is not model behavior.

But does it make you a terrible parent to pine, just a little, for a time when

the job was less all consuming? Contrast Mad Men with HBO's couples-
therapy drama Tell Me You Love Me, in which, despite the buzz over its

explicit sex scenes, the most interesting couple is the pair who never have

sex. Dave (Tim DeKay) and Katie (Ally Walker) are devoted parents who

haven't been intimate in a year--in part, simply because of the exhaustion of

everyday chores and staying close to the kids emotionally and physically.

(Katie, we learn, breastfed them until they were 2 1/2.) "I guess, yeah, I

should be in the mood every time I clean out the gecko cage!" Dave yells,

ranting sarcastically about the erotic stimulation of bedtime stories and

minivan shopping. "Our entire life," Katie tells him, "that's what you just

trashed."

Our entire life. Granted, it's a false choice to say that it's either sexless

marriage or shipping the runts off to CBS reality camp. But beyond the

cheap shock, I suspect Kid Nation has touched on a real anxiety in the era

of extreme parenting: the horror, and yet the appeal, of children having

lives separate from Mom and Dad's. Because even to a good parent,

sometimes "kid nation" can sound like America by another name.

Geography Lessons
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By KATE BETTS

Geography lessons: The coolest designers redefine the idea of American style in an
increasingly global business. Here, models present creations from the Diane Von Furstenberg
spring 2008 collection during New York Fashion Week September 9, 2007.
Keith Bedford / Reuters

The sidewalk surrounding Manhattan's Bryant Park is lined with posters

promoting a new image of Lord & Taylor, the U.S.'s oldest department-

store chain. In the pictures, members of some mythical extended suburban

family smile as they frolic in their vintage Mercedes convertible or slide into

a wooden canoe.

Despite their beauty, the photos and the inference that they epitomize

American style seem jarringly anachronistic. At a time when fashion has

become global thanks to the Internet and the access it provides to ideas,
resources and products, American style is becoming increasingly difficult

to define. At New York City's Fashion Week there were 259 designers of

different nationalities--including Chinese, Thai, Brazilian, Japanese and

Turkish--showing their spring 2008 collections.

"Fashion is no longer regional, and the notion of American sportswear is no

longer valid, nor does it look current," says Robert Burke, a luxury

consultant. "I've seen shows this week that could easily have taken place in
Paris or Milan." More and more, it is the itinerant lifestyles of multinational

designers--many of whom frequently travel around the world to visit

factories, stores and suppliers--and the global reach of the Internet that

inspire the clothes they send down the runway.

Take Tia Cibani, the Canadian-born designer of Ports 1961, a line that is

produced in southern China and shown in New York. While Cibani commutes

between New York City and Xiamen, inspiration can come from as far away

as East Africa, as it did this season. Her collection, called Safiri, pays

homage to African women's spontaneous sense of style and their

imaginative fabric treatments such as tie-dyeing, rolling and wrapping.

Other popular destinations for spring included Rome, with Vera Wang

excavating ideas from the city's ancient polycultural society and translating

them into toga-like dresses, and Bali, where Diane von Furstenberg found

bold floral prints. Japan--specifically its traditional folded-and-dyed fabric-

printing technique, shibori--turned up on the runways of designers like

Narciso Rodriguez, Proenza Schouler and Thakoon Panichgul.

"We grew up in a time of complete globalization," says Lazaro Hernandez,

28, who, along with Jack McCollough, designs the label Proenza Schouler,

"so the boundaries are not as strict. We're young, and we don't have the

money to travel that much, but we travel in our heads. We go online. With

technology, you can go anywhere on the Internet." This season they found a
trove of vintage kimonos in McCollough's parents' attic, and the trapezoidal

sleeve shape became a major motif of their collection.

One of the reasons designers look so far afield for ideas is to stay one step

ahead of the mass-market manufacturers that copy trendy fashions and sell

them for much less. Designers like Hernandez and Panichgul say

craftsmanship is what sets their clothing apart. "I don't think we could have
survived in the late 1990s because minimalism, which was so popular then,

is so easy to copy," says Hernandez. Indeed, consumers who want to buy a

black sweater or a pair of black pants are inclined to go directly to H&M

for the best price. As a result, Hernandez and McCollough feel the pressure

to make their clothing even more ornate. This season, for example, they

employed the French haute couture supplier Lemarie to embellish their

clothing with rows and rows of tiny feathers.

"You have to develop a cult customer," says Panichgul, "someone who is

looking for this kind of elaborate work every season." And someone who

can afford it.

SOCIETY

Video Games That Keep Kids Fit

Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By CAROLYN SAYRE

Road warriors: Racing on video-game bikes wins fans at Kirksey Middle School in Rogers,
Ark.
Marc F. Henning for TIME

Gym teachers and video games have never been a happy mix. While one

side struggles to pull kids off the couch, the other holds them fast. But Kim

Mason, a phys-ed director in Rogers, Ark., with 28 years of experience

selling kids on the virtues of sweat, did something unlikely last year: she

persuaded her public-school district to invest $35,000 in brand-new video-

game equipment.

That would be more surprising if students in Rogers were the only ones

plugging into interactive workouts, but they're not. Some 2,000 schools in

at least 35 states have begun to set up exergaming fitness centers with

motion sensors and touch-sensitive floor mats to allow kids to control the

action onscreen not just with their thumbs but also with their bodies. Do

enough dancing or kung-fu kicks, and you just might get the same level of

exercise as from chasing a soccer ball. What's more, this is a workout kids

don't try to duck. "Physical education used to be a joke," says Dr. John

Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and

author of Spark, an upcoming book about exercise. "That has changed

simply because we are catching up with the gamer generation."

Finding a way to help this most sedentary age group is more important

than ever. Nearly 17% of U.S. kids are considered overweight or obese, and

many more are struggling. Meanwhile, as scale numbers are climbing,

school budgets for P.E. are falling. As a result, fewer than 10% of

elementary schools meet the National Association for Sport and Physical

Education's standard of students spending 150 minutes a week in gym

class.

The high-tech answer to the problem came two years ago when West

Virginia University studied the health effects of an exergaming system

called Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)--interactive games that instruct kids

to use their feet to tap buttons on a sensor mat. After a pilot program

found the games were beneficial, the state vowed to install consoles in all

its public schools by next year. (It didn't hurt the study's credibility that it

was funded in part by an insurance company, not by the gamemaker.) Since

then, other districts have climbed aboard, helped by video-game makers

like Nintendo and Sony, which are designing systems to meet the demand;

small companies like Expresso Fitness that donate equipment; and federal

grants and private donations that bankroll the purchase of equipment. "The
old system is failing kids," says Phil Lawler, director of training and

outreach at PE4life, a nonprofit based in Kansas City, Mo., that helps

modernize P.E. "We are tricking them into exercising."

A gaming system, which can cost up to $4,000 a pop, is more expensive

than, say, a kickball, but the fact is, it may work just as well. In January the

Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found that obese kids burned six times as
many calories playing DDR as they did with a traditional video game. And in
July the wonderfully named Alasdair Thin, a researcher of human

physiology at Heroit-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, found that

college students burned twice as many calories playing an active video

game in which they dodged and kicked for 30 minutes as they did walking

on a treadmill. Studies have not yet shown how the new games measure up

against a real session of, say, soccer or wind sprints.

Of course, since a child told to hustle around a track pretty much has to do

it, critics argue that there's no need for video games in gym classes even if

they do have some health benefits. But there's a physical difference

between an hour of exercise enthusiastically pursued and one that's merely

plodded through. And, Lawler says, "most kids aren't volunteering to do

pull-ups after school." Develop a taste for aerobic video games, however,

and you just might carry the habit home.

But can anything hold the fruit-fly attention span of kids? "Video games are

not the answer," says Warren Gendel, founder of Fitwize 4 Kids, a chain of

traditional children's gyms. "Kids will get bored and be back on the couch."

Maybe, but that won't stop the games from coming. Fisher-Price just began

selling a video-game bike for toddlers. No word yet on a version for the

prewalking crowd--but don't bet against it.

No Gifted Chil d Left Behind ?
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By JULIE RAWE

First, the good news: it turns out, millions of kids from low-income families

are acing standardized tests. According to the first nationwide analysis of

high-achieving students based on income, more than 1 million K-12

students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches rank in the top

quartile. Expand the category to include children whose families make less

than the median U.S. income, and the total rises to 3.4 million--more than

the entire population of Iowa. Now the bad news: nearly half of lower-

income students in the top tier in reading fall out of it by fifth grade. As
economically disadvantaged brainiacs get older, 25% of them drop ranks

in math in high school, and 41% don't finish college. "We're losing them at

every stage in education," says Joshua Wyner, executive vice president of

the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which wrote the report with public-policy

development firm Civic Enterprises.

These groups are trying to get the No Child Left Behind Act to at least

start keeping tabs on advanced learners. One proposal on Capitol Hill

would go a step further by giving schools credit for moving kids from

proficient to advanced levels. But how to spot early potential?

To help increase opportunities for students from all socioeconomic

backgrounds, Miami- Dade County public schools last year began testing all

23,000 first-graders using a culture-neutral, language-free assessment that

requires no reading, writing or speaking. The result? The number of first-

graders screened for gifted placement shot up from some 100 the

previous year to nearly 3,000. Says deputy superintendent Antoinette

Dunbar of the decision to start testing every first-grader for giftedness:

"Sometimes we overlook the very obvious."

Forget Morton's Salt
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By ANITA HAMILTON

Finishing salts aren’t meant for cooking. To get the most bang for you buck, use just a
sprinkle on top of your favorite foods. Here, a saltshaker filled with six different types of salt.
From top to bottom: Fleur de Sel, Alderwood Smoked, Bolivian Rose, Cyprus Black,
Hawaiian Red and Australian Pink.
James Worrell for TIME

Salt is back. Blamed for everything from high blood pressure to hijacking

the true taste of food, this essential chemical compound is once again

welcome on the table. Step into any upmarket restaurant or food shop, and

you'll discover a love affair with the flavor enhancer that was once on every

nutritionist's hit list.

"Salt is the most important seasoning ingredient there is," says Thomas

Keller, owner and chef of swanky eateries Per Se in New York City and

French Laundry in Yountville, Calif. Keller offers diners nine varieties--

including an ancient Jurassic salt extracted from a Montana copper mine

and the jet black Molokai salt, which gets its color from volcanic ash and
pairs well with foie gras. He even tops his chocolate caramel dessert with

fleur de sel from Brittany.

Many of the flavor differences from one salt to another derive from the

mineral deposits in its region, the shape of the crystals and the way the salt

is harvested. For example, fleur de sel comes from the top of sea-salt

marshes on the northwest coast of France, while the sharper-tasting

Himalayan pink salt comes from ancient seabeds in Pakistan.

Selling for about 50 times as much per ounce as your basic Morton's,

specialty salt comes in a mystifying array of colors, grinds and shapes. To

help buyers choose the perfect one, some stores, like Williams-Sonoma and

Whole Foods, offer tasting bars that allow you to try out different varieties.

If you still can't decide, the online gift company Red Envelope sells a 24-jar
sampler of salts whose origins range from Italy to India for $165.

But wait--isn't salt bad for you? Yes and no. "It is the huge amount of

sodium in processed food that's a problem," says Eve Felder, a dean at the

Culinary Institute of America. Artisanal salts are meant to be used sparingly

atop prepared food, so chances are those few extra sprinkles won't do you

in. Although, at $6 for a 3-oz. jar of your basic fleur de sel, the price just

might.
PEOPLE

10 Questions for 50 Cent

Monday, Sep. 10, 2007 By NATHAN THORNBURGH

50 Cent pulled the title for his new disc from his birth name, which is Curtis James Jackson
III.
Patrick Fraser / Corbis Outline

He was born Curtis Jackson, but he made his mark on the rap world

performing under his childhood nickname. His third album, Curtis, debuted

Sept. 11. 50 Cent will now take your questions

Is it Curtis or 50 Cent? ̶Maggie Shaw, New York City

It's 50, but the album title is Curtis. It made perfect sense for me to title it

Curtis, considering my grandfather is Curtis Sr., his firstborn is Curtis Jr.

and I'm his first grandchild, so my mom named me after him. I'm Curtis III,

and this is my third album. 50 Cent was a name that kind of stuck. For me,

it was a metaphor for change. That's what made me utilize it when I actually

started rapping.

What should we expect fr om y our new al bum? ̶Ignacio Meza, Los

Angeles
You should expect a lot of surprises. For my last two albums, I isolated

myself to working with only members of G-Unit [50 Cent's original rap
group]. On this album I worked with Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, Mary

J. Blige, Akon, Nicole from the Pussycat Dolls, Dr. Dre and Eminem. I'm in a

place where I'm secure enough to have all these other talented people

around me because I've proven myself, with my first two projects selling

over 21 million copies.

Why d on't y ou do m ore hard-c ore stuff like y ou di d on Get Rich

or Die Tryin' [in 2003]? ̶Raveen Bhasin, Dallas

I take into consideration what the music business is facing with things like

the Don Imus situation. I think it would cause a full uproar if I wrote [hard-

core] lyrics from that perspective all the way through my album. That's why
I released Curtis instead of my next project, Before I Self Destruct. It's more

of a hard-core sound, and it would be too aggressive for this period.

Is y our beef with Kanye [West] for real? ̶Erika Ramirez, Houston

I said I would retire if his album [Graduation, also released Sept. 11] sold

more than mine. I think people would like for it to be a beef. Then it would

be really uncomfortable for Kanye, wouldn't it? I'm already conditioned for

those things, but he'd have to adjust. My car's already bulletproof.

Why d o rap pers use so much slang that the avera ge 50-year- ol d

can't understand them? ̶Gabriel Goldenberg, Montreal

Some audiences have to come to you. You can't cater to everybody. Kanye

West's record is aimed at a straight pop audience. It may work for him now,
but I don't believe that will exist long. That base has no loyalty at all.

You t o ok a bullet t o y our face. Has that changed y our rapping

style? ̶Ravi Rami, Houston

It changed my voice. I still have a fragment of a bullet inside my tongue.

And I have a hole in the back of my mouth. This is the voice that works,
though. This is why I believe it happened for a reason. The voice before I

got shot was the one that not many people listened to.

You have a home in suburban C onnecti cut. Why di d y ou m ove

ou tside the cit y? ̶Susan Ashley, Houston

I generate a lot of interest in New York City, so it's difficult. If I was going

to a nightclub or if I was just getting out of the car to go to the store, it'd

be difficult. It's way different here, because it's a country setting. I don't

even leave my house to go to the store. I send somebody else to do it.

I kn ow y ou li ke t o w ork hard and p l a y hard. What's y our fa v ori te

pla ce t o vac a ti on? ̶Janelle Robison, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Vacation's at home. I do so much traveling that when I just stay at home, it

feels like I'm on vacation. All you have to do is turn the phone off. The

house is big as a country club anyway.

Are y ou endorsing a part icular candi da te in the '08 electi on? ̶

Haren Para, New York City

No, but I like Hillary. I think she was already our President once. [Laughs].

Any pl ans for another mo vie? ̶Conor Egan, Belmar, N.J.

I've got a film called Righteous Kill. It's myself, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino,

Donnie Wahlberg, John Leguizamo. [Laughs]. If you ask me, I'm the next

Denzel Washington.
SPECIAL SECTION

New Zealand's Great Performer

Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By MARION HUME / QUEENSHEAD

Sam Neill, with his wife, Noriko Watanabe Neill, and daughter, Elena, tends the land at Two
Paddocks, their Central Otago family-run winery.
Peter Hunt for TIME

Call it a sideways moment. New Zealand vintners Sam Neill and Adam Peren

are surveying a rugged hillside vineyard and discussing why Pinot Noir is

the most sensuous and elusive of wines. "If Pinot were a woman, she'd be

Audrey Tautou in Amélie," says Neill. "Kristin Scott Thomas," offers Peren.

"No, Kristin's a dry Riesling," Neill insists.

One guesses Neill might know, given that he co-starred with Scott Thomas

in 1998's The Horse Whisperer (although he did not appear in the Oscar-

nominated 2004 Sideways, which established Pinot Noir as the grail of

grapes to a global audience). Neill, who has more than 60 movie credits

under his belt and who recently appeared on TV as Cardinal Wolsey in

Showtime's The Tudors, leads something of a double life. Back in his native

New Zealand, this son of three generations of importers of French vintages

planted his first five acres (two hectares) of grapes in 1993. Neill has

poured heart and soul not only into such successes as The Piano and the

Jurassic Park movies but also into the alluvial-schist soil of the South Island
of New Zealand, where his great-grandfather settled in 1859 and where

Neill helms Two Paddocks, which is dedicated to the quest for what he calls

"the seductive Pinot Noir."

Those who recall the debates of Miles and Maya in Sideways (which,

winemakers concur, has had a considerable influence on the popularity of

Pinot) might remember that Pinot Noir can be unpredictable yet potentially

spectacular. Part of the appeal lies in the fact that the vines thrive only on

such steep slopes as Burgundy's 2-mile-wide (3 1/2 km), 30-mile-long (50

km) stretch of Côte d'Or (Burgundy and Pinot Noir are synonymous) and in

just a few rocky pockets in such places as Australia, Canada, South

America and Europe, along with Oregon's Willamette Valley and the coolest

spots in California. As for New Zealand's Central Otago Pinots, the pioneers

who planted this epic landscape with vines in the 1970s were deemed

madmen.

With its craggy peaks and glacial valleys, Central Otago would appear to

be the last place you could grow grapes. Located below the 45th parallel

near the tip of New Zealand's South Island and with elevations of 650 to

1,475 ft. (200 to 450 m) above sea level, this is extreme-sports country.

The world's top snowboarders compete on mountains buffeted by winds

from Antarctica. In fact, Pinot vines don't mind a blanket of snow as long as
summer temperatures are warm enough for the slow ripening needed for

intense flavors and complexities to develop. "Pinot Noir is not one of those

grunty, stand-a-spoon-up-in-it wines. It's fickle and voluptuous and

complex," says Neill. "People say there's a lot of wine in the world, but

there's not a lot of Pinot Noir, and admirers are looking for regional

differences."
Worldwide, Pinot Noir's uniqueness is that it seems to carry in the most

pronounced way the taste of the land from which it hails. (The French refer

to this as the goût de terroir.) "Pinot from here does seem to reflect the

mystery of this place," says Neill, whose merchant great-grandfather arrived

during Otago's gold rush and grew wealthy from selling supplies, including

alcohol, to miners. "So your family have been peddling hooch around here

for 150 years," jokes Peren, who hails from such quintessentially Kiwi stock-

-as New Zealanders would call it--that his grandfather even had a breed of

sheep named after him. Peren launched the Peregrine Wines label in 1998

in partnership with oenophile oncologist Murray Brennan of Memorial

Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. (Brennan visits for

vacations.) Peren's connection with the land that Peregrine has under vine

comes through his wife's grandfather, who won a small plot in a card game.

The Peren family also has a single-vineyard Pinot Noir called Two Sisters.

A great Pinot may taste heavenly, but it's a devil of a job to get it into your

glass. Birds love the sugar-laden grapes (hence the surreal sight in early fall

in Central Otago of what appear to be snow-filled valleys, which are in fact

a vast expanse of white nets). If the grapes aren't picked exactly as they

reach maturity, the thin-skinned berries shrivel on the vines--which, because

they thrive on steep slopes, demand that harvesting be done by hand.

Yields are low--about 2 tons per acre (5 metric tons per hectare, which

translates into about 350 cases of wine). Sauvignon Blanc vines would yield

three times as much. Add to that the risk that the fruit will be unstable

during the fermenting process (although we'll forgo the science lesson on

the effect of Pinot's native yeasts and 18 amino acids).

But the greatest enemy of all needs just one night to destroy everything.

While vines don't mind snow, grapes hate frost, and the only reliable way to

stop cold air from killing a crop is expensive and terrifying. Neill and Peren,
along with the other winemakers in a region that features such wine stars as

Felton Road and the well-named Mt. Difficulty, are all too familiar with frost

watch, which means helicopter flying at night. To keep the air moving,

squadrons of choppers fly low, a maneuver rendered yet more perilous

because the valleys are crisscrossed with electricity cables. "It scares the

hell out of me," Neill admits. "We're desperate to find an alternative. We do

use windmills too, but the problem is, on one night your windmill might not

be in the right place."

It was the Sauvignon Blancs of the Marlborough region farther to the

north--including Cloudy Bay, now owned by French luxury group Moët

Hennessy Louis Vuitton--that really put New Zealand wines on the map. Yet

plenty of wine connoisseurs remained skeptical about Central Otago Pinot

Noir. Neill makes sure to credit his mentors: the late Rolfe Mills of Rippon

winery, who started to plant in 1976, and Alan Brady, who today co-helms

a two-man boutique winery called Mount Edward. "It's a small region, and

we cooperate with each other," says Neill. "Everyone helps everyone else

and pools their knowledge."

Rippon, now operated by Rolfe's son Nick Mills, is also significant because,

situated on the banks of Lake Wanaka, it has what must surely be the most

spectacular cellar-door point of sale on earth, attracting some 15,000 wine

tourists a year. Peregrine Wines, too, has a robust cellar-door business, as

do other wineries in Central Otago. But don't turn up at Two Paddocks. "We

discourage it by being hard to find, because I like wandering around with

my shirt off," says Neill, who prefers to drum up sales via a terse and

amusing blog.

As for how he splits his time, Neill notes that both his professions are "very
chancy and very weather dependent." But wine can be much harder work. "I
certainly wouldn't turn down a great acting gig so I could be on my hands

and knees putting grapes in a bucket," he says with a laugh.

The Most Exclusive Vintage Is
Yo ur Own
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007 By LISA MCLAUGHLIN

It's the secret dream of every oenophile: give up the desk job, move to a

vineyard and spend the days crafting wines. Then reality sinks in--bills,

obligations, bills--and the dream becomes a passing fancy.

But it's actually never been easier to make your own wine, often from the

comfort of your nonvineyard home. Today's garagistes (French for the

enthusiasts who create vintages in, well, garages) have upscale equipment
and packaged kits to help them make their wines. Wineshops and vineyards

are offering blending seminars, tutored tastings of grape varietals where

you can create your own blend and take home a bottle of the mix. But for

those who want the full winemaking experience, Crushpad, a San Francisco

urban winery, allows clients to create a custom wine, from vine to

uncorking, without having to move to wine country.

Crushpad is the creation of Michael Brill, a former home winemaker who

once ripped up his San Francisco backyard to plant Pinot Noir and Syrah

vines. He found that lots of people shared his desire for a wine-country

lifestyle but lacked the millions of dollars needed to make their dream

come true. Tired of his career in software marketing, he quit his job and

created Crushpad in 2004 to connect amateur winemakers with West Coast

vineyards. It's the best of both worlds. Customers get access to far finer

grapes than they could grow themselves, at a fraction of the cost, along

with on-site expertise to guide them through the process.

At Crushpad's new 30,000-sq.-ft. (2,800 sq m) warehouse headquarters,

customer involvement varies. Purple-fingered zealots sort through the

grapes, while others sit at home in foreign countries fine-tuning their wine

plans on the Web. Using Crushpad's online services and consultations with

the staff winemaker, home enologists select grapes from specific vineyards

(or provide their own) and are then led through the Crushpad 30, a list of

options and decisions about the winemaking process: Duration of skin

contact? Natural or cultured yeasts? What type of bottle closure?

Customers must commit to at least one barrel of wine, which ranges in

price from $5,000 to more than $10,000, depending on the wine they

make. One barrel produces about 25 cases, or roughly $17 to $40 per

bottle.

Once the process has begun, home winemakers can remain in daily contact

with their products via CrushpadWine.com where the Crushpad staff posts

regular and contagiously enthusiastic fermentation updates and harvest

reports ("From Southern California to Eastern Washington we're seeing

grapes turn from green to red--the sign of veraison and a warning that the

picking dates are only 40-60 days away").

The process continues remotely with online chats with Crushpad employees

and a webcam that allows customers to keep a watchful eye on their wine.

They are also encouraged to visit Crushpad's processing center whenever a

major step in the winemaking--such as grape crushing, bottling or labeling--

takes place.

After a slow start, Crushpad is blooming. In 2004 it produced 200 barrels.

This year there will be more than 1,000. And Brill hopes to create more

Crushpads to take the winemaking process closer to urban enologists. First

up is Tokyo, where Crushpad Japan recently opened, bringing West Coast

winemaking to the Far East.

LETTERS

Inbox
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007

Putting Ideals Into Action

Managing Editor Richard Stengel is right: Americans are hungry to be

asked to do something [Sept. 10]. During World War II, we all were asked to

do something, and we did. Back then, we were joined in a common cause.

Today there is a void. We need to resurrect a sense of obligation to our

country besides taxes and voting. One way to help accomplish this would

be to institute a draft. Everyone should be obligated to serve the country

in some fashion. Maybe then we would stop identifying ourselves with

narrow labels such as liberal, conservative, Democrat and Republican and

move toward what Patrick Henry expressed in saying "I am not a Virginian,
but an American."

Bud Nielsen, San Miguel, Calif.

I am a sophomore in high school, and this article captured perfectly my

hopes for this country and its citizens. I was in a state of euphoria as I read

about some of the programs I had visited during a Civicweek in the Bronx,

N.Y., co-sponsored by the Civic Education Project and Northwestern

University. I fell in love with City Year, Teach for America and the Harlem

Children's Zone during that amazing, eye-opening week. I hope that our

national leaders will integrate service opportunities into our government

and thus boost national pride.

Lily Austin, Springfield, PA.

Maybe it's because I'm one of those fringe libertarians, but it seems to me

that there are ways to encourage volunteerism without the dubious help of

state and federal governments. Significant growth of volunteerism and the

proliferation of nonprofit start-ups are good signs that people have

already found avenues for service without burdensome bureaucracy or tax-

funded carrots. Even if a national-service system ends up costing only the

relative pittance Stengel cited, the cost would be in addition to those of

the Iraq war and federal prisons, not in their stead. Whether through

conscription, graduation requirements or bonds funded by income or

corporate taxes, a national-service system would be a drain on everyone

and would cheapen the sacrifice of those who serve willingly.

Eric Dzinski, St. Louis, MO.

I wholeheartedly support Stengel's call for national service. I have written

my Representatives proposing an idea, to no avail. I suggest that instead of

creating elaborate laws to solve the problem of illegal immigration, we

should require that illegal aliens spend a year in national service--defending

the country in the military, rebuilding infrastructure or combating climate

change in a green corps--to become eligible for citizenship.

Dick Ehrle, Barrington, Ill.

I'm a Gen X mother of two and a volunteer, and I see many peers also

performing volunteer services that are making a difference locally and

globally. I love my country, but the current Administration is operating so

poorly, it will take generations to undo the damage. To offset this, I try to

do my part to improve social conditions and the environment, which will

affect generations to come.

Jennifer G. Morgan, Boise, Idaho

Stengel's national-service plan would butcher the very Republic he seeks to

preserve. His proposal would require funding and create organizations for

any number of corrupt officials to exploit. Such a plan would also obliterate

the spirit of volunteerism, whose very nature and definition mean

participation without incentives--monetary or otherwise. Americans do need

to band together for the betterment of our delicate Republic' but

amplifying the government's already expansive role and excessive

expenditures is no answer.

Virginia Shields, Pittsburgh, PA.

As a retired Chicago inner-city teacher and principal, I have long felt that

conscripting high school dropouts in national service might reduce gang

activity. Perhaps we should send teens who quit school to training camps

that, like F.D.R.'s Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, would be far

from cities so that gang ties would be cut. Do we need help in the national

forests with multiple projects? You bet we do.

Roger Vernon, Elgin, Ill.

Edwards Edges Toward '08

John Edwards is wasting his time campaigning, since Clinton is the anointed

one [Sept. 10]. And unless Barack Obama attacks her more, he'll be wasting
his time too. The Democratic field is terrified of the Clinton machine, which

is expert at personal destruction and will stop at nothing to get her the

nomination. It might be Obama's strategy not to attack Clinton because he

wants to be on the ticket as V.P.

Joe Spehar, Springerville, Ariz.

I guess we know whom Pooley is voting for. But if Edwards is elected

President, Pooley can just keep soaking in that sweet-tea voice while

Edwards raises taxes again--and again and again.

Eddie Tencza, San Antonio

It is outrageous for Elizabeth Edwards to attack Hillary Clinton's

electability. After all, the Clintons have a long track record of winning

tough elections by comfortable margins, while John Edwards certainly can't

make the same boast.

Reba Shimansky, New York City

Healing Currents

Congratulations to Jeffrey Kluger for his article "Rewiring the Brain," about

how deep-brain stimulation with electric current can help treat the tremors

of Parkinson's disease, among other possible applications [Sept. 10]. I've

had Parkinson's for nearly 12 years, so I know the crazy ways the incurable

disease chips away at my brain's control center. Stories like yours give all

of us with Parkinson's hope. With the help of a charismatic personal trainer

at my local ymca fitness center, I've learned to face this awesome disease

by fighting back to reclaim my balance and range of motion. It's not easy,

but it is satisfying when the hard work pays off.

David H. Anderson, Sarasota, Fla.

Embracing the Silver Strands

Thanks to Anne Kreamer and TIME for the article on whether women should

color their hair [Sept. 10]. I'm 57 and started dyeing my hair in my mid-30s.

When I turned 50, I decided that since I'd been a grandma from age 39, it
was time I looked like one. Coloring your hair is a pain in the arse, as the

Irish say. Your roots grow out in a week or two, and you have to touch

them up or look like a skunk. Surely women have become liberated enough

to do what they want. But if they decide to fake it, they should use a lighter

dye to make it look more natural.

Lisa Singer-Hamilton, Cincinnati, Ohio

I am 38 years old, and I don't understand what the big deal is over going

gray. I've been getting steadily balder since I hit 30, and my remaining hair

is turning gray. When I was growing up, my father made and serviced

toupees. I thought they were ugly and reflected the wearer's incredible

insecurity. I feel the same way about hair dye for men and women. Being

who you are rather than putting up some kind of façade shows much

stronger character. By all means, dress well, and stay healthy and fit. But

dyeing your hair is right up there with dressing like a teenager when you are

40. For those who claim it's different for women, I respectfully reply that it

shouldn't be--and perpetuating the supposed difference won't help.

Steve Rummel, Chicago

I read "The Gray Wars" with smug amusement. When my glorious mane of

auburn hair started turning gray more than 15 years ago, I tried to maintain

it artificially and was mortified by the black-and-purple results. Today I am

51, long divorced, gray-haired and chunky, but I'm still very sexually active.

Boomers need to realize that if we fulfill our life expectancy, we will be gray

much longer than we were brunet, blond or auburn. Embrace the silver.

People will choose to be around you if you are adventurous and love life.

You can't buy that in a bottle.

Kathy Pippin, Cookeville, Tenn. MAILBAG Biggest mail getter: Universal

national service 76% A government call to service would enrich the nation

24% A government call to service would only violate the definition of

volunteerism