Why did John F Kennedy make such a hash of the Bay of Pigs and his summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna?
And how could the same man have dealt so competently with the Cuban Missile Crisis slightly over a year later?
The usual theory is that Kennedy gained experience and a healthy scepticism for official advice. Now a new book offers an alternative explanation.
In his riveting volume In Sickness and In Power, former Foreign Secretary and medic David Owen reviews the health and medication of leaders over the last century. The chapter on Kennedy is jaw-dropping.
Owen starts by convincingly asserting that Kennedy was much sicker than is commonly appreciated and certainly much sicker than was appreciated at the time. His Addison's disease was very debilitating and needed constant attention.
And there were other health troubles. During the Bay of Pigs fiasco Owen writes that Kennedy had: Constant and acute diarrhoea and a recurrence of his urinary tract infection.
Central to Owen's account is the idea that the administration of drugs to Kennedy for these various ailments was out of control.
In particular, without the knowledge of his other doctors and at the same time as they were giving him other drugs, he was being tended to by Max Jacobson, a doctor known as "Dr Feelgood" because of his reputation as a provider of amphetamines and pep pills. In time Jacobson's drug treatment became almost a recreational drug for Kennedy. Jacobson was later struck off.
Owen shows that is quite likely that Dr Feelgood, specially flown to Vienna, injected Kennedy with intravenous amphetamine just before he met Khrushchev.
Then later in the year Dr Hans Kraus took control of Kennedy's medication. He demanded total control and began using massage rather than injections to treat the President. He also got rid of Jacobson, telling Kennedy: If I ever heard he took another shot, I'd make sure it was known. No President with his finger on the red button has any business taking stuff like that.
By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was back on an even keel.
Owen has produced a compelling book. And even if drug use was only a part the story, it's a pretty convincing theory.
Dazzled by the selection of books on offer?
Some recommend skimming page 69 as a test. William Buiter prefers this theory.
What's your trick?
 Back in November 2006, when Jim Webb was fighting it out for the Virginia Senate seat, I recommended a magnificent book - The Nightingale's Song by Robert Timberg.
Now I want to recommend it again.
Timberg's book - a group biography of a handful of Vietnam vets who became prominent figures - contains a thrilling extended history of John McCain.
This is unmissable reading if you want to understand McCain, but also if you want to understand the continuing role of the Vietnam war in US politics. Indeed if you want to understand the role of war.
The military is much more politically important in the US. For more than fifty years, at least one of the candidates in the Presidential general election has been someone who has seen military service in a time of war. McCain's story and its themes of honour, courage and duty are bound to be a big part of the coming campaign.
Tool up by reading Timberg.
Or just read it anyway because it is a first class tale.
 In August 1973, having just finished reading Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a 502 page edition published in 1902, Art Garfunkel, one half of the Simon and Garfunkel singing duo started reading Irving Bieber's Homosexuality, a Psychoanalytic Survey. This is a 319 page book published in 1955.
History doesn't record if Mr Garfunkel found this book interesting. But I do know that later in the month he turned to The Immoralist, Gide's 171 page book.
I know this because, together with a fan based in Levittown, he has compiled a list of every book he has read since June 1968. And the Garfunkel Library is available on the internet for you to browse.
Odd it may be. But also, I must say, pretty compelling.
Incidentally the picture that accompanies this post was taken in July 1981. I know this because he is reading The Powers That Be by David Halberstam.
 The new book by Oliver James, The Selfish Capitalist, has arrived. My criticisms of his previous book Affluenza - I think it is possibly the worst book I have ever read - did not prevent it becoming a bestseller.
So I don't suppose he'll be all that bothered that I only reached page four of his new volume before dropping it on the desk, awestruck.
On page three James asserts that: The second fact substantiated by this book is that the advent of Selfish Capitalism in English-speaking nations since the 1970s has caused a high increase in the amount of emotional distress.
That seems pretty clear. He says that distress is caused by Selfish Capitalism, it is not merely that their growth is correlated. He says that this is a fact. And he promises to substantiate it.
Fair enough. Since that is precisely the question I raised about Affluenza (is it a causal link or mere correlation?) he had grabbed my attention.
Then over the page he says this: To be absolutely clear my new assertions are:
Selfish Capitalism led to a massive increase in the wealth of the wealthy, with no rise in average wages
and
there has been a substantial increase in emotional distress since the 1970s.
These assertions are not in themselves political, they are either true or false. Chapter 3 presents the evidence for them.
The cause of these changes is presented as being Selfish Capitalism and this, of course, is not a fact but a theory.
Hang on a minute! On Page Three he said it was a fact. He promised the causal link would be substantiated.
Who edited this book?
Doris Lessing blamed the Internet for our dwindling interest in books. But is she right? Norm gets to grips with the relationship here. And Stumbling and Mumbling adds an interesting comparison with gambling. Both worth a read.
Alice Fishburn
Want to be in early on one of the next big idea books? Then you could do worse than go here.
Chris Anderson, author of the Long Tail, has signed up to write a book entitled Free. His intention is to examine the economics of giving things away.
A summary of his thinking is provided in his latest post. But if you want it all in one sentence here it is: You can make loads of money by giving things away. The key is who you're making money from.
 Want to understand why Gordon Brown does not appear to have vision? Then answer this movie question.
Have you seen Adaptation, the film by Charles Kaufman, starring Nicholas Cage?
If you have, perhaps you remember Brian Cox's portrayal of a screenwriting guru. The guru in question? Robert McKee.
McKee's classes on screenwriting have become famous. And not just for his irascible personality. It's his contention that story, narrative, is at the centre of everything and that trying to build a film on character or photography won't work.
A superb interview in The New Yorker will introduce you to McKee if you haven't see Adaptation. But I recommend you go one step further and read his book Story.
What's this got to do with Gordon Brown?
McKee exposes the structure of a successful story, the way you move from one event to the next, the way the character changes through the plot. And his lesson doesn't just work for film writers. A politician trying either to demonstrate character without narrative or to be an action hero without a connecting story will fail.
Brown's problem isn't lack of vision, it's lack of a story.
I had just finished reading McKee's book when I was consulted by William Hague about whether to hold a referendum on his single currency policy. McKee's explanation of how to make a narrative compelling was one reason (as I told William at the time) that I advised him to take the risk.
Film buffs will enjoy this book, but it's got a great deal to give even if you hardly ever go the cinema.
 Are you, like me, a fan of journalist Malcolm Gladwell?
If so, I have good news.
Both the Tipping Point and Blink were flawed works, but compelling and brilliant. Now he has almost finished work on a third book - about the future of the workplace. There will be some reflections on the nature of genius too.
If you can't wait, Gladwell's back elsewhere, too. There's a piece on police profiling in this week's New Yorker to be getting on with. and he's promising a blogging return too.
 Richard Ben Cramer's book on the 1988 Presidential primaries, What It Takes, is one of the best books on American politics. He exposes the wiring brilliantly and it is still worth reading now as we approach the 20th anniversary of the events.
So when I heard that Ben Cramer had written a sports book on the enigmatic baseball giant Joe DiMaggio, I was excited. DiMaggio was portrayed by David Halberstam as a symbol of a lost America, his stoic silent dignity contrasting with today's brashness.
I was right to be excited, for Ben Cramer's Joe DiMaggio is a magnificent piece of work.
The legend is made flesh. His silence explained as a strategy to hide the fact that he had nothing to say. His brilliance as a player undimmed by his failings as a man.
One of the most famous pictures of Joltin' Joe caught him leaving the area of a San Francisco earthquake with all the possessions he felt he needed in one black plastic sack. Through such images DiMaggio became a symbol of American simplicity.
Ben Cramer found that the sack did not contain a few necessities. It was full of cash that had been left in DiMaggio's attic by a murdered Mafia boss.
In Halberstam's Summer of '49, he talks of DiMaggio's role in the Paul Simon song Mrs Robinson. The words "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" were used to show that a simpler America had disappeared.
When that other great, Mickey Mantle, discovered that he was Simon's favourite player he asked the player why DiMaggio, not Mantle, was the star of the song. Not wishing to offend Mantle by explaining DiMaggio's iconic status, Simon simply told him that Joe DiMaggio scanned better than Mickey Mantle.
Great story. But Ben Cramer caps it.
When DiMaggio was introduced to Simon and told that he was the author of Mrs Robinson, he was unimpressed. "What do you mean, where have I gone?" he complained. "I just did a Mr Coffee commercial."
 A couple of readers of Comment Central have suggested to me that they would like more book recommendations. I intend to oblige. So every so often these "Books to Read" posts will appear. They won't be new books, just good ones that I think you will find stimulating and worthwhile.
Let me kick off with a volume I have only just finished myself - and thought was truly superb.
Sam Tanenhaus's biography of Whittaker Chambers, An Un-American Life, is the story of an extraordinary man in extraordinary times.
The book tells the tale of Chambers the spy and Chambers the defector before following the course of the famous Alger Hiss trials. The narrative is gripping - murder, espionage, perjury, it's all there.
And the evidence that the upstanding liberal apparatchik was a communist spy is laid out in detail. Some of the great figures of the American left, from Adlai Stevenson to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, appeared as character witnesses for Hiss. And he was defended from the President down.
But it is obvious from Tanenhaus's book that Hiss was guilty and that his guilt was quite plain at the time. The insistence of liberals that in any great historical drama the liberal must be the hero, blinded these great men to the truth.
A fabulous book.
Here's what Jonah Goldberg had to say in the National Review about Andrew Sullivan and his book on The Conservative Soul, now out in paperback: Once a voice of restraint and reason, Sullivan now specializes in shrill panic: mercurial ranting full of operatic arguments, steeped in bad faith, aimed at people he once praised (including yours truly). There are many theories about what "happened" to Sullivan. They vary wildly in charity. But it’s fair to say that for many conservatives, Sullivan has become the intellectual equivalent of a write-off... Which is why most conservatives won't buy, or read, his book.
Well I did buy it and I did read it. And I think you will find it worthwhile doing the same.
Sullivan writes against a rather dangerous conservative utopianism and in favour of that intellectually attractive, but politically rather difficult, idea of doubt.
As the Republicans start a rethink such ideas may prove powerful whatever Jonah thinks.
 A quite wonderful book is being republished next month: Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II. The guidebook was made to inform American troops stationed in Iraq in 1943 how best to assist the British guarding it against Nazi infiltration – and much of the advice holds true today.
But the preface of the book, written by Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl, reveals in a small way, how underprepared today’s US troops were to “win the peace” in Iraq.
Nagl writes that he wishes: …that we had listened to lessons already learned but long forgotten, advice such as: “The nomads are divided into tribes headed by sheikhs. The leaders are very powerful and should be given great consideration.” A policy that showed greater consideration to the Sunni sheiks and to their interests in the immediate aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 might have prevented the fervent insurgency from being raised to the fever pitch it has taken recently – for, as the 1943 guide warns in stunning understatement, “The Iraqis have some religious and tribal differences among themselves.”
Really? American troops were really not given basic information on the internal mechanics of Iraqi culture? The instructions in this guidebook were to inform the military about Iraq in 1943, but it’s not like America hasn’t fought a war in that country since then - the first Gulf War ended just 12 years before the 2003 conflict. Did the US military learn fail to learn any lessons in 1991 – or were they just not passed on to the military and political leaders who prosecuted this war?
 This is just a small example of the mismanagement of the current war. The big picture can be gained from reading Bob Woodward’s excellent book, State of Denial. Woodward thinks that the current Iraq war could have been won, but is being lost because of strategic errors made in the first year after invasion.
So Woodward would probably agree with this (amazingly frank) assessment from Lt Col Nagl in the Iraqi guidebook: It is almost impossible, when reading this guide, not to slap oneself on the forehead in despair that the Army knew so much of Arabic culture and customs, and of the importance of that knowledge for achieving military success in Iraq, six decades ago – and forgot almost all of those lessons in the intervening years. It is a sad fact of history that armies all but invariably forget the lessons of prior campaigns and have to relearn them from scratch when war begins again, at the cost of too many soldiers’ and civilian lives.
Murad Ahmed
I've long argued that anyone wanting to understand the Blair years, indeed anyone wanting to understand political strategy full stop, should read Dick Morris's book Behind the Oval Office, the history of his years as adviser to Bill Clinton. (I particularly recommend the edition with the original memos, but that's not essential).
But this morning Gavin Esler's excellent BBC radio show, The Clinton Years, (which you can find and listen to here) made me realise that even so, I had underestimated the importance of the Clinton-Morris relationship to UK politics.
The documentary reprised the battle between Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" and Morris's triangulation, culminating in the victory for Morris and Clinton.
It reminded me that it wasn't just the impact of the Morris-Clinton strategy on Brown and Blair that was important. It was also the intensely strong impact of Gingrich's victory on the Conservative Party.
Just at the moment when the Republican's swept the board with a populist small government, right-wing campaign, Major's Conservative Party was floundering, trailing very badly indeed. The lesson seemed obvious. Become more rigorous and more radical, make clear small government promises and you can defeat a third-way politician like Clinton. The Right was convinced. And this led, in time to the Redwood leadership challenge.
But Clinton did not lie down under his 1994 defeat. He moved to the centre and, with Morris, gave real content to his Third Way rhetoric. Within a year he had turned the tables on Gingrich and shown the superiority, in strategic political terms, of his position.
Bush won in 2000 by using a similar triangulation technique.
The Conservative Party continued along the Contract line for years and much of the Right still hankers after it. And Gordon Brown appears to have decided that he can't abandon Blairite triangulation even though many of his supporters wish him to.
The Contract v Dick Morris really was one the defining fights of the era.
 Peter Riddell explains clearly this morning why Gordon Brown is likely to resist the temptations of an early election. He doesn't mention cash constraints, and he's right not to. If Mr Brown needs the cash, it will be there. And, in any case, the role of cash in election campaigns is greatly over stated - this is not America.
There is a further reason why I think Peter is right. It is provided by Alastair Campbell in his diaries. Twice Campbell writes about Brown's preferred method of fighting elections. He repeatedly urges the Blair team to decide where they want to be, politically, when an election is called and then work backwards, putting in place the changes necessary.
This doesn't, of course, entirely rule out an early election. But it confirms that Brown is a planner and that a dash for the polls is not really in his nature.
None of this means that going for broke in the Autumn is a bad idea, of course.
Politicians hate taking a risk, assuming that if they wait things will get better. John Major's team felt that waiting was best, since we would lose if we went early. In retrospect, it is obvious that the longer we waited the worse things got.
I think you would have to be a very optimistic Labour supporter to believe that you will ever be able to go to the polls certain of keeping a majority. If I were Brown, I would conclude that the risk now was less than risk of holding on.
But I'm not Brown.
The story of the man who sent Jane Austen's work to agents and publishers has been all over the place today. We were invited to laugh at the recipients who sent back polite rejection letters.
But, really, how silly were they?
There are two perfectly reasonable explanations which don't make them look so foolish.
The first is that upon receiving a book that began: It is a truth universally acknowledged
The agents and publishers sighed, thought "not another one" and sent a polite rejection note without reading all that much more.
The second, even more likely, explanation is the manuscripts were not read at all.
These were books sent, entirely unsolicited, by a man they didn't know. To read all such scripts the companies involved would have to employ extra staff. The number of times such unsolicited material leads to a blockbuster is, I am sure, sufficiently small to make this extra staff a waste of money.
So in most cases a polite rejection will be sent. Most of the respondents avoided an explicit claim that they had actually read the submissions.
I am looking forward to your summer reading lists. Here are five really rewarding non-fiction books, that I have found tremendously worthwhile:
 1. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. The author has pulled off a difficult trick. This is a serious academic book that is tremendously easy to read and very entertaining. He sets out the basic principles of persuasive techniques using anecdotes and experiments. You will really enjoy this book and, if I am right and how to persuade people becomes an important part of the political debate, you will also be really pleased you read this.
 2. Fear No Evil by Natan Sharansky. This is the story of nine years spent as a KGB prisoner. It is a great read, and an inspiring one. Sharansky's strength of mind and his spirit are extraordinary.
 3. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee. The author gives a famous class on screenwriting, but you can save thousands by purchasing this book. Dogmatic, witty and innovative - it looks at the structure of stories. Since narrative is now the basis of politics, you don't have to be a film buff to find this well worth reading.
 4. The Lyndon Johnson books (Path to Power, Means of Ascent, Master of the Senate) by Robert Caro. More than a million words on LBJ and he hasn't even launched his 1960 Presidential run? You're kidding, right? No, I'm not kidding. These are magnificent books and essential for anyone who wants to understand American politics. Practitioners - Gordon Brown, Michael Howard, William Hague and George Osborne - have all told me they regard these books as the finest political history books they have read. I agree.
5. The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam. The story of how America became embroiled in the Vietnam War gives a fascinating insight into how political decisions are made. Like the Caro, it's long. But it is compelling.
The Summer holidays are nearly upon us and I think we should all start exchanging reading lists. Rebecca Blood has been collecting lists. Now Comment Central is joining in.
Tomorrow I will give you a list of five must-read books for you to enjoy. Today, I list five books I am looking forward to reading.
I hope you will reciprocate, listing in the comments here the books you have stacked up and waiting to be read and then, tomorrow, five recommendations.
Two things. The books I intend to list are going to be non-fiction (my particular vice) and I have a bias towards those advancing an interesting central idea. But your non-fiction selection may be different.
Here goes:
1. Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter is in my bag already to take home. Caplan argues that the Wisdom of Crowds theory is wrong. The holders of irrational ideas do not cancel each other out. There are systematic biases.
2. Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment concerns the early days of FDR. I've read the first few pages and he seems to be suggesting that it was FDR's style, not his policies that rescued America. It puts the case for spin over substance in other words.
3. Drew Westen's The Political Brain was the subject of Jonathan Freedland's Guardian column this week. It suggests that politics is about emotion and Freedland saw it as a warning to Gordon Brown. Jonathan is a very good spotter of intellectual trends so I obtained the book on his say so.
4. William Hague's William Wilberforce is bound to be worth reading. I am particularly interested in the Tory social reformers and a book on this topic from my former boss is irresistible.
5. David Owen's The Hubris Syndrome is the product of a number of years of thinking about the impact of ill health on political leadership. The book concerns the mindset of George Bush and Tony Blair. Owen is always fascinating.
Marriage works. It keeps relationships together and children benefit hugely from stable two parent families. The evidence is overwhelming. I've never seen it seriously disputed.
It is a serious sociological observation, not a right-wing cliché. Indeed, the first time I was introduced to the idea was an article, Dan Quayle was Right by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, originally printed in The Atlantic Monthly. I was given it by Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, the intellectual driver of the Clinton-Blair third way.
But it still leaves two questions. Why does it work? And can Government do anything to promote it? I think the answers are linked.
The reason why married couples stay together longer than cohabiting ones is not a mystery. Marriage makes use of a very strong principle of social psychology - that humans strive very hard to remain consistent to their commitments. Robert Cialdini deals with this in one section of his unmissable book Influence.
Marriage works for the same reason that Weight Watchers get you to announce your goals in public and weigh yourself in public, and for the same reason that the Chinese insisted that prisoners of war write their confessions down. Once a commitment is made publicly, even in front of a few people, it becomes much harder to escape from.
Understanding that marriage works through social psychology is important when considering policy.
The suggestion that tax breaks might encourage marriage seems laughable. One Brown spin doctor when asked why he cohabited replied "I would have married, but Gordon abolished the married couple's allowance". Yet this laughter is inspired by a misconception about the tax policy - that the idea is to pay people a small sum to wed. How could the sum ever be big enough for that, scoff the critics.
They've missed the point. The idea is to establish that marriage is a social norm, once again. That it is socially approved of and looked on with favour. Just as they work hard to be consistent, people tend to conform to social norms. Quite a small sum could prove powerful.
One of the hot books in American political debate at the moment is Bryan Caplan's Myth of the Rational Voter.
Caplan's theory is, essentially, that James Surowiecki was wrong in his book The Wisdom of Crowds. Ignorant opinions do not cancel themselves out, producing truth. There are systematic biases reflecting a general misunderstanding of markets.
Now Daniel Casse, the Republican speechwriter and strategist has taken issue with Caplan. In a piece for the Wall Street Journal, Casse takes as an example Caplan's complaints that voters don't understand free trade. He points out that despite this deficiency most politicians have been allowed by voters to pursue free trade policies.
Dan is making an important distinction, I think. Voters have opinions that they don't necessarily want their elected representatives to replicate. They want their instincts to be taken heed of, but not their ignorance. Being able to distinguish between the two is a rare but indispensable political skill.
 I am waiting for my copy of Alastair Campbell's diary and doing so with more anticipation than Nick Robinson, who complains that they have been filleted.
This is not just because a friend has called to read me a hilarious section in which Peter Mandelson starts a fight, throwing punches at Alastair during a speech-writing session, with Tony Blair moving to pull the two men apart.
It's because the complaint about filleting doesn't stand up.
Yes, as a historical record they are spoilt by political editing. But as a memoir they aren't. If the author had turned the diary notes into continuous prose, they would be less immediate and accurate but Nick wouldn't have been able to make the same criticism.
Asked why he had chosen to remove entries that dealt with the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Alastair Campbell said: I’m not going to deny there were times when relations were pretty tense and some pretty harsh things were said; they were. What I’m not going to do is publish a book that leads David Cameron to think that he’s got a goldmine to use against the new Prime Minister.
This, of course, is an admission that the behaviour was so bad that if Alastair had published his true record they would have been a goldmine.
So what about the Apprentice then?
Sir Alan Sugar chose the twentysomething candidate over the thirtysomething finished article. Did this make any sense?
Not to anyone who has read Moneyball, Michael Lewis's riveting book on the Oakland Athletics baseball side.
Billy Beane, the A's manager, pursues a different strategy in the annual draft than his rivals (the moment in the year when baseball clubs pick new players). Other managers pick those who the scouts say have potential. They pick high school players with promise. Beane waits for the players to mature. He picks college graduates much of the time.
Sure, that way he misses some of the very best players, but on average his strategy proves far superior. The confidence of scouts and managers that they can shape players with promise is strong but unjustified by the results.
So Simon Ambrose might prove a good hire or a bad one, but the long-run expected outcome from Sir Alan's strategy of choosing the junior, less well-formed candidate in each series of the Apprentice, is inferior to the outcome he could expect from choosing the better formed candidate.
Which is a long winded way of saying that Kristina was robbed.
(picture: Ian West/PA wire)
 Just in case you care about the publication of Alastair Campbell’s diaries (I admit it, it’s on my Amazon list), you might be interested in his “diary of a diary”, a series of articles that he’ll be writing before the publication of his memoirs, about the publication of his memoirs, to promote the publication of his memoirs.
His first entry was published today, and has the following stunning revelations:
Alastair Campbell prefers writing longhand to typing: I am basically a pen and ink person. There is something more intimate, more satisfying, about sitting down with pen and paper to record your thoughts than banging away at a keyboard.
He reserves the right to criticise Tony Blair: it is a diary, not a paeon [sic] of praise.
Alastair Campbell’s diaries are pretty long, but won’t have a lot about his dealings with the media (you know, the day
job)… The biggest cuts of all were made by me and my editor, Richard Stott, before I took it to the Cabinet Office, as we went from more than 2 million words to around 350,000 – still a very large book, well over 700 pages, with a very long index, which is still in preparation.
I think people will be surprised – as indeed I have been – at how little has survived about my day to day engagement with the media.
…but the media is to blame for most things: It has been a constant theme of mine over the past decade that much of the modern media distorts the real process of politics.
He is all about the full and complete truth of politics: I hope and believe that a diary, even an edited one like mine, presents a fuller and more complete truth about politics, and about Tony Blair, than many other accounts are able to.
Alastair Campbell just can’t wait: Of course I could have waited. But judgements about TB are being made now. Analysis is instant, comment permanent.
And he should have started earlier so we could have got more details on revelations like this: In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the occasional articles and diary entries I put up here. If only I had started a few days earlier, I could have told you all about my 50th birthday last week, going with my partner Fiona to see Mick Hucknall at the Albert Hall; then with my sons to see the golf at Wentworth at the weekend, not to mention the speech I made at the Foreign Office on Tuesday at an event to promote the work of educational charity Shine.
Juicy stuff. So don’t forget. Alastair Campbell’s Diaries. The Blair Years. July 9th. The political event of the year.
Murad Ahmed
 What should Americans expect from Gordon Brown? Who knows? The Left’s dislike of George Bush is so intense that Mr Brown will be under pressure to distance himself at least from this incumbent.
But it would be a mistake to see Brown as less pro-American than Tony Blair. Brown loves America. It wouldn’t be putting it too strongly to see that our next Prime Minister is obsessed with the United States.
Here are five reasons why Brown is more American than Blair:
1. He is far better read on American politics. Brown likes to spend his leisure time with his nose in the Lyndon Johnson biography by Robert Caro, or reading the speeches of Robert Kennedy.
2. He is more heavily influenced by the neo-cons. Tony Blair has been called a neo-con because he believes in spreading democracy across the globe. But it is Brown who is steeped in the writings of people such as Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb. In a brilliant column in the Daily Telegraph, a year or so back, Rachel Sylvester showed how Brown’s domestic agenda has been shaped by neo-conservative thinking.
3. He holidays in America. Almost every summer, Britain’s Prime Minister elect can be found in Cape Cod, a choice which indicates a cultural affinity. Tony Blair does not usually holiday in the United States.
4. He has Bob Shrum in his inner circle. This may suggest other political problems, but indicates his familiarity with the world of American politics. Brown has a network of contacts in the Democratic Party that easily rivals Blair.
5. He initiated the links with the Clinton team. The first contact between thinkers at the Democratic Leadership Council and the New Labour group came when Gordon Brown was the senior partner in the Brown-Blair duo. Brown’s trademark welfare and work policies were heavily influenced by the thinking of writers like Mickey Kaus. Brown’s tax credit policy is based on the earned income tax credit.
Alastair Campbell’s “The Blair Years” is released on July 9th.
There’s no news yet when Tony Blair’s “The Campbell Years” will be released.
Keep your suggestions on what Blair should name his memoirs coming.
Here's a list: Chain from top left closet shelf
Folding knife & combination padlock
Compaq computer from desktop
Assorted documents, notepads, writings from desktop
Combination lock
Dremel tool and case
Nine books, two notebooks, envelopes, from top shelf
Assorted books & pads from lower shelf
Compact discs from desktops
Items from desktop & drawers: winchester multi tool, 3 notebooks, mail, checks, credit card
Items from 2nd door: Kodak digital camera, Citibank statement
Two cases of compact discs from dresser top
Drive: Seagate: 80 Gb
Six sheets of green computer paper
Mirror with blue plastic housing
Dremel tool box with receipt
Dell Latitude service tag
What is it? A list of items found in the dorm room of Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung Hui according to Gameworld Network.
Their point is to rebut claims that violent video games were responsible for his killing spree.
Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad is Good for You, notes on his blog that even if they had found video games it would prove nothing about their impact. Correct. But not finding them proves nothing about their impact either.
 David Blunkett had this to say this morning:
Those who see Nicolas Sarkozy as some kind of miniature Margaret Thatcher or a hardline right-winger, would be very wide of the mark.
His instincts are those of international capital but his understanding is, crucially, that globalisation means that France, like Britain, has to face the world as it really is. In other words he is a modernist, a pragmatist and, yes, a committed progressive.
No.
In his recent book, Testimony, Mr Sarkozy is very clear that he is on the Right and wishes to describe himself as on the Right. He goes so far as to take issue with his colleagues on the Right who shun the label.
Mr Sarkozy is a progressive if you think right-wing ideas are progressive. I do. It seems from his comments that Mr Blunkett does too. Mr Blunkett's statements about the French election are more eloquent about his own politics than about those of the new French President.
 Whatever you think of the Iraq War, you just have to be impressed by John McCain’s cojones by going on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in front of a vehemently anti-war crowd and host, to argue in favour of the Surge.
You should watch the interview in full by clicking on the two videos below. It’ll give you a good understanding of why he’s already in trouble in the race for the 2008 presidential election.
His stance means he’s being bashed by both sides over Iraq. Twack - Democrats attack McCain for supporting the War. Twack - Republicans attack him for then criticising the Bush Administration’s mismanagement of the War. Twack – Democrats bash him again for supporting the Surge, as that identifies him with the Bush Administration.
McCain’s noble attempt to keep a principled middle course on the War has meant that he’s seen on the wrong side of the argument by almost everyone.
McCain argues, like this article on the Foreign Policy website, that now the Surge has begun, it has to work, and setting a withdrawal date (as the Democrats are currently trying to do) would undermine it. After reading Bob Woodward’s excellent book, State of Denial, my own feeling is that this conflict was lost by the mistakes made in the first year of the invasion – and that the Surge may be too little too late. I hope I’m wrong. Murad Ahmed
 Magnus Linklater in his column this week referred to an article by Judith Rich Harris in Prospect magazine. She is a truly original thinker who in her books, The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike, has turned the prevailing wisdom about how children develop their personalities on its head.
Crudely put, she doesn't believe that parents, other than through the genes they endow their offspring with, have that much effect on their child's character and personality. Whether the home is headed by one parent or two, whether the parents are happily married or constantly rowing, whether they believe in pushing their children to succeed or leaving them to find their own way in life, whether the home is filled with books or sports equipment, whether it is orderly or messy, a city flat or a farmhouse—the research shows, counterintuitively, that none of these things makes much difference. The child who grows up in the orderly, well-run home is, on average, no more conscientious as an adult than the one who grows up in the messy one. Or rather, he or she will be more conscientious only to the extent that this characteristic is inherited.
Her argument is compelling. It should cheer up parents that their ability to f*** up their children is pretty limited (the screwing up can be left to their peer group). Therapists wouldn't like it if her thesis became the prevailing wisdom; it's easy for them to coin money from saps who want to blame their own unhappiness and failings on Mum and Dad.
Robbie Millen
 There are many people who didn't much admire David Halberstam, the New York Times journalist who died in a road accident on Monday.
Lyndon Johnson, for instance, thought him a traitor for his reports from Vietnam. Others thought him a media insider with a pompous view of its institutions, as reflected in his book The Powers That Be. And even his elegies to baseball have their critics. Richard Ben Cramer paints a much more realistic Joe DiMaggio, and has a much harsher view.
But while acknowledging that Halberstam was too much the romantic (although even this was not always a fault), with too much respect for the myths of a bygone age, I am among those who thought him a true great and mourn his passing.
His book The Best and the Brightest, in particular, is sparkling. And important. It is a classic study of the way political decisions are made, with an importance far beyond its subject.
Halberstam shows how politicians often commit themselves to a course of action before they realise it and are then tugged along by a need to remain consistent. If you haven't read it, I recommend it strongly.
One aspect of the Virginia Tech tragedy that makes me despair is the gruesome inevitability of it all. As Gerard Baker wrote in his superb piece on Tuesday: It’s so familiar you could write the script yourself. Only the names change — Jonesboro, Columbine, Lancaster County and now Virginia Tech. And the numbers
Gerard believes, and it’s hard to disagree, that such slayings will keep happening again and again. But why? Maybe, Virginia Tech happened because the Lancaster County massacre happened before that and the Columbine massacre before that.
In the The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell points to a situation in Micronesia in the 1970s and 1980s where the islands had the highest rate of teen suicide in the world – ten times higher than anywhere else on the planet. Gladwell traced this rise back to the first ever teen suicide in Micronesia, which became romanticised and repeated by the islands's susceptible young.
In a now spookily prophetic post, he says: Teenagers were literally being infected with the suicide bug, and one after another they were killing themselves in exactly the same way under exactly the same circumstances. We like to use words like contagiousness and infectiousness just to apply to the medical realm. But I assure you that after you read about what happened in Micronesia you'll be convinced that behaviour can be transmitted from one person to another as easily as the flu or the measles can. In fact, I don't think you have to go to Micronesia to see this pattern in action. Isn't this the explanation for the current epidemic of teen smoking in this country? And what about the rash of mass shootings we're facing at the moment - from Columbine through the Atlanta stockbroker through the neo-Nazi in Los Angeles?
Even the deranged learn their behaviour from somewhere – in this case, from each other.
So how does America deal with this deadly virus? Will gun control laws help? Maybe. But not if the controls are as half-hearted as they are now. Currently in Virginia, if you’re over the age of 18 you can buy an Uzi or an AK-47 assault rifle if you pass a background check into your suitability to hold such arms. Surely wanting an Uzi or an AK-47 in the first place is a bad sign? Limiting your quota to one gun a month, as Virginia does currently, is merely playing lip-service to gun control.
As Magnus Linklater concludes in his piece today: Banning the use or possession of weapons may be a useful palliative, but it is not the solution. Any government that wants to be seen to be taking action after a violent event can reach for legislation, but it is likely to discover that the social malaise that led to the violence is more deep-seated and intractable. There are strong arguments to suggest that American states such as Virginia should begin copying the reforms adopted by, for instance, California, which has tightened up its gun laws; and they must move against the glorification of the gun, which encourages not only the ownership but the use of arms.
In the end, however, that will not be enough. What is needed is a wholesale shift in the national culture — and that will take rather longer than an arms ban.
Murad Ahmed
UPDATE: Making sense of the senseless - Why did Virginia Tech happen?
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