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ABCDENATIONAL WEEKLY

PoliticsBill Clinton’s lucrative deal 4

WorldLiving among the lions 11

Q&AThe creative spark behind Apple 16

5 MythsLabor unions 23

NIGHT IN A ‘KILL ZONE’Officers in Dallas’s close-knit Foxtrots recall the deadly summer eveningwhen an unseen shooter opened fire on them in the streets PAGE 12

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nary passage, in which Trump not only cites Putin’s approval rating but goes on to say Putin “is really very much a leader. I mean, you can say, ‘Oh, isn’t that a terrible thing — the man has very strong control over a country.’ Now it’s a very different system, and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.”

It’s possible Trump is saying that Putin’s control of Russia is the “terrible thing” some might say can happen in a “different system,” one led by a former KGB agent who runs a country that stifles dissent and a free press. But consider Trump’s past statements, and a more likely interpretation seems to be that he’s instead calling Putin’s “strong control” evi-dence of his leadership.

To wit: Late last year, “Morning Joe” host JoeScarborough asked Trump why he welcomed a compliment from Putin, and Trump responded that “he’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this coun-try.” In his convention speech in July, Trump said “nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” reflecting a hier-archical, dominant leadership style.

Back in March during a primary debate, Trump explained that he could get military of-ficials to follow his orders simply because “I’m a leader. I’ve always been a leader. I’ve never had any problem leading people. If I say ‘Do it,’ they’re going to do it. That’s what leadership is all about.”

Clinton’s talk of “listening” and Trump’s talkof “control” should surprise no one. They rein-force what is already said about both candi-dates and how they might lead. They are but two words in a sea of thousands from Wednes-day’s forum. Yet if there were ever a simpler way of representing the vast chasm in leader-ship styles that seems to exist between these two candidates, it’s hard to see it.n

Clinton. “It sounds like a caricature of what we would say about a female politician,” he wrote. Yet in the course of the primary, “Clinton proved the more effective listener — and, par-ticularly, the more effective coalition builder.”

Meanwhile, that word didn’t show up in theTrump half of the forum. When asked a similar question by Lauer about experiences that have prepared him to be commander in chief, Trump cited his business and his judgment. Later in the discussion, he bizarrely heaped praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin, something the GOP nominee has repeatedly dished out.

The word “control” falls in that extraordi-

BY JENA MCGREGOR

There was a lot of talk about leadershipin Wednesday night’s televised townhall with presidential candidates Hil-lary Clinton and Donald Trump. Giv-en the billing — NBC touted it as the

Commander-in-Chief Forum — that’s to be ex-pected. The word “leader” was used at least 26 times; the word “decision” was uttered exactly as many, according to a transcript by The Wash-ington Post, and both White House hope-fuls used “judgment” to describe a key trait for being commander in chief.

Yet there were two words — “listen” and “control” — that were used just once, and each time by only one of the candidates. And no, it’s not hard to guess who used which one. Still, the stark opposition in those words not only helps to illustrate how Clinton and Trumpdefine leadership, but how incredibly different they appear poised to treat the job.

In Clinton’s case, she was asked by modera-tor Matt Lauer to describe what she sees as the most important characteristic of being this country’s commander in chief.

“When you’re sitting in the Situation Room,as I have on numerous occasions, particularly with respect to determining whether to rec-ommend the raid against bin Laden, what you want in a president, a commander in chief, is someone who listens, who evaluates what is being told to him or her, who is able to sort out the very difficult options being presented,” she told Lauer.

The word recalls how Clinton’s leadershipstyle is not only repeatedly described but how the candidate herself has structured her cam-paigns. She’s started off efforts at elected of-fice with “listening tours.” In a lengthy analysis in Vox this summer, Ezra Klein said “listening” came up over and over again as the explana-tion for what people misunderstand about

WEEKLYKLMNO

ON LEADERSHIP

WEEKLYKLMNO This publication was prepared by editors at The

Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail [email protected]. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department.© 2016 The Washington Post / Year 2, No. 48

CONTENTS

POLITICS 4THE NATION 8THE WORLD 10COVER STORY 12Q&A 16BOOKS 18OPINION 20FIVE MYTHS 23

ON THE COVER Police cars sit onMain Street in Dallas after the sniper shooting that killed five officers July 7. Photograph by LAURA BUCKMAN/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images

Listening vs. controlling

MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

Presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton participate in a forum hosted by “Today” show co-anchor Matt Lauer in New York on Wednesday.


president can make millions in theprivate sector. Bill Clinton has proved particularly marketablebecause of his global celebrity, en-hanced by his foundation, his con-tinued visibility on the politicalscene and his wife’s stature as asenator, Cabinet official and po-tential president.

The Laureate arrangement illus-trates the extent to which the Clin-tons mixed their charitable work with their private and political lives. Many of those who paid Bill Clinton to consult or speak were also foundation donors and, in some cases, supporters of political campaigns for one or both Clintons.

Becker, for example, donated toHillary Clinton’s 2008 presiden-tial campaign and last year donat-

ton assumed her post at the State Department. Laureate was the highest-paying client, but Bill Clin-ton signed contracts worth mil-lions with GEMS Education, asecondary-education chain based in Dubai, as well as Shangri-La Industries and Wasserman Invest-ment, two companies run by long-time Democratic donors. All told, with his consulting, writing and speaking fees, Bill Clinton was paid$65.4 million during Hillary Clin-ton’s four years as secretary ofstate.

Details of Bill Clinton’s com-pensation are found in the cou-ple’s tax returns, which were madepublic by his wife’s presidentialcampaign and provide an unusualglimpse into the way a former

discussion itself is irrelevant. . . . Itgets you very high-level contacts,and it gets you to the right people.”

While much of the controversyabout Hillary Clinton’s State De-partment tenure has involved do-nations to her family’s charity, theClinton Foundation, a close exam-ination of the Laureate deal re-veals how Bill Clinton leveragedthe couple’s connections duringthat time to enhance their person-al wealth — potentially providinganother avenue for supporters togain access to the family.

In addition to his well-established career as a paid speak-er, which began soon after he left the Oval Office, Bill Clinton took onnew consulting work starting in 2009, at the same time Hillary Clin-

BY ROSALIND S. HELDERMANAND MICHELLE YE HEE LEE

The guest list for a privateState Department dinneron higher-education pol-icy was taking shape when

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a suggestion.

In addition to recommendinginvitations for leaders from a com-munity college and a church- funded institution, Clinton want-ed a representative from a for-profit college company called Lau-reate International Universities, which, she explained in an email toher chief of staff that was releasedlast year, was “the fastest growingcollege network in the world.”

There was another reason Clin-ton favored setting a seat aside forLaureate at the August 2009event: The company was startedby a businessman, Doug Becker,“who Bill likes a lot,” the secretarywrote, referring to her husband,the former president.

Nine months later, Laureatesigned Bill Clinton to a lucrativedeal as a consultant and “honor-ary chancellor,” paying him$17.6 million over five years untilthe contract ended in 2015 as Hil-lary Clinton launched her cam-paign for president.

There is no evidence that Laure-ate received special favors from theState Department in direct ex-change for hiring Bill Clinton, butthe Baltimore-based company hadmuch to gain from an associationwith a globally connected ex- president and, indirectly, the Unit-ed States’ chief diplomat. Beingincluded at the 2009 dinner, shoul-der to shoulder with leaders frominternationally renowned univer-sities for a discussion about therole of higher education in globaldiplomacy, provided an added lev-el of credibility for the business as it pursued an aggressive expan-sion strategy overseas, occasional-ly tangling with foreign regulators.

“A lot of these private-educationguys, they’re looking to get intoevents like this one,” said SamPitroda, a higher-education ex-pert who was representing a pol-icy commission from India at theState Department dinner. “The

WEEKLY POLITICSKLMNO

College firm paid Bill Clinton millions

For-profit system touted ex-president’s role as it expanded globallyJAVIER SORIANO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Bill Clinton speaks in Madrid at the Laureate International Universities Summit on Youth and Jobs in Europe in 2013.


lic through a records request by adifferent conservative group, Ju-dicial Watch, but descriptions ofClinton’s exact consulting role were blacked out in the publiclyreleased document and labeled astrade secrets. Laureate and Clin-ton aides declined to release anunredacted copy of the contract.

Based on appearances on Lau-reate’s behalf by Clinton and pub-lic statements by the company, itseems that part of the strategy inhiring the former president was tobolster Laureate’s image by align-ing it with the former president’sfamous charitable efforts — there-by portraying the company as aforce for good in the world.

News releases about Clinton’spaid campus appearances ofteninvoked his work on educationissues with the Clinton Founda-tion. And every news release dur-ing Clinton’s time with the compa-ny carried his name and his title ofhonorary chancellor.

In 2013, Clinton recorded amessage to Laureate students and,without mentioning his financialties to the company, said he joinedLaureate because he admired its“dedication to helping the nextgeneration of leaders be truly edu-cated and well prepared for yourfuture.”

Also that year, Laureate promi-nently featured its associationwith Clinton as part of its effort topurchase the Thunderbird Schoolof Global Management, a 70-year-old private business school in Ari-zona that was struggling finan-cially.

Karen Longo, a graduate of theschool who was on the board ofdirectors at the time, recalled thatBecker specifically referenced theClinton tie when he pitched theboard on the deal. She providedThe Washington Post with bro-chures Laureate gave out at thetime, featuring a letter from Clin-ton praising Laureate students forworking to improve the world anddeclaring himself “proud to be apart of their efforts.”

“His face, his name was in alltheir brochures,” Longo recalled.“It was a very big sell for them.”

She and other alumni were con-cerned that Laureate would lowerthe school’s admissions standardsto expand its enrollment in aneffort to make more money fromthe campus.

“The more students they got,the more money they got from

continues on next page

making often grand but unfulfilledpromises of valuable degrees.

Laureate has clashed at timeswith regulators in other countries, such as Chile, where the law forbidsfor-profit education and Laureate operates by acting as a contractor to local nonprofit institutions.

Clinton sometimes mingledwith foreign government leadersduring his appearances on Laure-ate campuses, such as a 2013 Laureate-hosted conference onyouth unemployment in Madridfeaturing top European officials.

Urena said the former presi-dent “never sought to influenceany foreign or U.S. official on Lau-reate’s behalf.” Smith said Clintonplayed an active role as honorarychancellor, visiting 19 locations,meeting with students and deliv-ering speeches that were broad-cast to tens of thousands of stu-dents around the world. He saidClinton’s role was not related tothe company’s business prospects.

Clinton’s contract with Laure-ate was approved by the StateDepartment’s ethics office, in keeping with an Obama adminis-tration agreement with Hillary Clinton that gave the agency theright to review her husband’s out-side work during her tenure. Anethics official wrote that he saw“no conflict of interest with Laure-ate or any of their partners,” ac-cording to a letter recently re-leased by the conservative groupCitizens United, which received itthrough a public-records request.

The contract itself became pub-

education issues in the troubled nation, a Clinton aide said.

Laureate had grown rapidly un-der Becker, a college dropout whobecame wealthy in the 1980s afterinventing a card that could storepersonal medical information. Helaunched Laureate in 2003, trans-forming an old tutoring companycalled Sylvan Learning Systemsinto a network of for-profit collegecampuses.

The company has been inter-twined over the years with theglobal financial elite. Once public-ly traded, it was bought out for$3.8 billion in 2007 with invest-ments from, among others, aprivate-equity firm founded by liberal philanthropist George So-ros, as well as the investment firmKohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Laureate, which is taking stepsto become publicly traded again,has in recent years been largelyfocused on growing international-ly. Typically, it has purchased fi-nancially struggling colleges andvocational schools and improvedmanagement while boosting prof-its through expanding enroll-ment. The company has said inregulatory filings that it enrollsmore than 1 million students on 87campuses in 28 countries. It hasfive U.S. campuses.

Laureate hired Clinton as scru-tiny of private colleges was in-creasing in the United States andinternationally. Congress in 2010launched an investigation into for-profit schools, which critics sayprofit from needy students while

ed $2,700 to her current effort.Laureate has given between $1 million and $5 million to theClinton Foundation, according tothe charity’s website, and mademillions of dollars of charitablecommitments through the Clin-ton Global Initiative, an arm of thefoundation that arranged for cor-porations to make public pledgesto their own philanthropic proj-ects. Meanwhile, Laureate por-trayed its association with the Clintons as a symbol of its legiti-macy rather than the result of abusiness deal.

“People know that somebodylike President Clinton, the most im-portant thing to him is his reputa-tion,” Becker said in a 2010 appear-ance at a Laureate campus in Ma-laysia. “And to attach himself to an organization that he doesn’t believein, he would never do it. It wouldn’tmake sense — not just with his ownlegacy and history but, in his case, being the spouse of the U.S. secre-tary of state, for example.”

When Becker introduced Clin-ton at an event at the same campusthe next year, he read a statementfrom Malaysia’s education minis-ter declaring that “there must besomething very special about Lau-reate that has inspired PresidentClinton to devote his energy tosuch an endeavor.”

Aides to Clinton and represen-tatives of Laureate characterizedthe arrangement as one that ad-vanced global access to education.

Angel Urena, a Clinton spokes-man, said the former president“engaged with students at Laure-ate’s campuses worldwide and ad-vised Laureate’s leadership on so-cial responsibility and increasingaccess to higher education.” AdamSmith, a Laureate spokesman, said Clinton “was paid to adviseLaureate, inspire students and vis-it the campuses and communitiesthey serve, and that’s what he did,with great conviction and energy.”

Becker declined to be inter-viewed for this report. Laureate officials said that the Baltimore businessman first met Clinton through Laureate Vice President Joseph Duffey, a former Clinton administration official, at a 2007 Clinton Global Initiative event in Hong Kong.

Clinton became familiar withthe company after giving a few unpaid speeches on its internation-al campuses and then grew closer with Becker when they traveled to Haiti together in 2009 to explore

POLITICS WEEKLYKLMNO

OBTAINED BY THE WASHINGTON POST

Clinton, who received $17.6 million over five years to serve as Laureate’s honorary chancellor, was featured prominentlyin the for-profit college chain’s marketing material.

Doug Becker founded Laureate International Universities, a for-profit college firm.


agrees with me, they’re right,”Thornberry said jokingly.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan(R-Wis.) has often been at oddswith his party’s nominee, but hesupports spending more on de-fense along with the rest of theGOP leadership. Many Republi-cans have long wanted to lift thecaps on defense without simulta-neously raising the caps on do-mestic spending — a position thatis a nonstarter with Democratsand the White House.

Senate Majority Leader MitchMcConnell (R-Ky.) responded to areporter’s question on Wednesdaythat “yes” he trusts Trump to havehis finger on the nuclear button.But he was noncommittal whenasked how Republicans would ac-tually bust the defense caps asTrump urged.

“We all, on our side of the aisle,almost everyone feels that de-fense is underfunded, and we’ll bedealing with that challenge andothers as we decide how to allo-cate federal spending for nextyear,” McConnell said.

On other defense and nationalsecurity issues, GOP lawmakershave recoiled from Trump’s sug-gestion that NATO is obsoletewhile he moves to embrace Rus-sia. Some congressional Republi-cans have publicly repudiated hisplans to ban Muslim immigrantsand visitors, and questioned hiscasual proposals to use nuclearweapons and modernize the mili-tary on the cheap.

Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), a member of the HouseArmed Services Committee whoalso serves as president of NATO’sparliamentary assembly, has en-dorsed Trump but also called thenominee’s past comments aboutNATO “naive.”

On Wednesday, Turner con-gratulated Trump for “stepping tothe plate” by outlining a nationalsecurity strategy and calling foran end to sequestration, also ex-pressing confidence that Trump“is coming around” on recogniz-ing that NATO is important to theU.S.’s geostrategic interests.n

BY KAROUN DEMIRJIAN

Capitol Hill Republicans fi-nally found somethingthey can love about Don-ald Trump — an end to the

freeze on defense spending.Trump’s full-throated call to

stop defense sequestration came as welcome news to both his sup-porters and skeptics in the GOP, where lawmakers are more accus-tomed to distancing themselves from Trump’s comments thancheering him on. In a major na-tional security speech in Philadel-phia on Wednesday, the GOP presi-dential nominee — who is known for his more isolationist views —advocated for a bigger Army, Navy and Air Force, as well as improvedmissile defense.

“The way he articulated it, it’sonly going to help him,” said Rep.Duncan D. Hunter Jr. (R-Calif.),who sits on the House ArmedServices Committee and has en-dorsed Trump.

The embrace of the GOP’s de-fense platform comes at a criticaltime for Trump, who has a 19-point lead among voters who areserving or have previously servedin the U.S. military, according to anew NBC News-Survey Monkeypoll. But Democratic nomineeHillary Clinton is trying to closethat gap, hitting her rival in a newad called “Sacrifice” for his com-ments that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is not a war hero.

But Trump’s call for ending thedefense sequester, which was setin motion by the Budget ControlAct of 2011 and formally put inplace in 2013, allows the GOPpresidential nominee to findsome welcome common groundwith Hill Republicans, who areworrying about their own pros-pects in November should the topof the ticket become a drag.

House Armed Services Com-mittee Chairman Mac Thornberry(R-Texas), who has refused to en-dorse Trump, welcomed the de-tails in Trump’s national securityspeech.

“To the extent any candidate

largely a result of the receipt ofmultiyear grants awarded beforeshe entered office. There is noevidence Hillary Clinton played arole in the grants, and the group’spresident, William Reese, said nogovernment money went to Lau-reate or Becker.

Though some Republicanstried to draw parallels betweenLaureate and Trump University,the real estate seminar companyfounded by Trump that faces mul-tiple fraud investigations, Laure-ate is a different sort of business.

Unlike Trump University, Lau-reate’s campuses are fully accred-ited and offer graduating studentsvalid diplomas. Compared withother universities, including itsfor-profit competitors, Laureatehas a relatively low percentage ofstudents who default on theirloans, seen as an indicator of stu-dent financial success after gradu-ation. A 2012 Senate report onfor-profit colleges said that Laure-ate’s flagship U.S. school, WaldenUniversity, was the best of 30 cam-puses studied and that studentsthere generally “fared well.”

Still, the company has facedsome complaints. A group of stu-dents at Walden, a Minneapolis-based online school, sued Laure-ate in 2015, arguing that the insti-tution unnecessarily dragged outtheir education so they wouldhave to pay more. Laureate deniedthe allegation, and the lawsuit wassettled out of court.

As of July, three of Laureate’sfive U.S. schools were included ona government list of 500 schoolsthat receive additional financialoversight after being found out ofcompliance with the require-ments of federal student aid pro-grams.

People who participated in the2009 State Department dinnersaid they remember a high-levelconversation about using educa-tion to boost diplomacy.

Kevin Kinser, who studies for-profit colleges at Pennsylvania State University, said that given Laureate’s rapid growth, it was not unreasonable to include a companyrepresentative in that setting. But he said Laureate’s inclusion just months before Bill Clinton began being paid by the company does notlook good.

“They were clearly a legitimateparticipant in this sort of event,”he said. “But knowing what weknow now, it does seem unseem-ly.” n

student-loan funds,” she said. “Itwould have been a dilution of theThunderbird brand.”

Longo and four other alumni onthe school’s board protested thepurchase to the school’s accredit-ing agency, the Higher LearningCommission. In 2014, the commis-sion refused to sign off on thepurchase. Thunderbird has sincemerged with Arizona State Uni-versity.

Laureate, meanwhile, pursuedclose ties with the Clinton Founda-tion. The company paid to send agroup of international studentseach year to the Clinton GlobalInitiative (CGI) conference in NewYork, where they conducted videointerviews for broadcast to fellowLaureate students around theworld.

The Clintons’ Laureate connec-tion emerged as a campaign issuethis summer, when Republicanpresidential nominee Donald Trump charged that Hillary Clin-ton “laundered money” to her hus-band by funneling tens of millionsof dollars in federal grants to Lau-reate while she was secretary ofstate.

By all accounts, Trump’s claimwas false, and his campaign didnot respond to requests for docu-mentation.

The company says its campuseshave received about $1.4 milliontotal over the years in grants fromthe State Department and its in-ternational aid arm, USAID. Ofthat amount, only $15,000 camewhile Clinton was secretary ofstate — student scholarships funded by USAID, Laureate said.

Publicly available grant recordsare not detailed enough to corrob-orate Laureate’s exact numbers.But the records do show that nei-ther Laureate nor any of its cam-puses has received any individualgrants larger than $25,000 fromthe State Department or USAID.

Trump appeared to be drawingon — and misrepresenting — a report in the 2015 book “Clinton Cash” that grants from USAID to a separate charity chaired by Becker, the Laureate founder, increased during the Clinton years.

Founded in 1989, the Interna-tional Youth Foundation has part-nered with Laureate campuses insome of its charitable educationwork. The group has received USAID funding since 1999, and itspresident said the increase in USAID funding under Clinton was

from previous page

WEEKLY POLITICSKLMNO

Defense spending unites Trump, GOP

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, “Almost everyone feels that defense is underfunded.”


tive, while African Americans,Hispanics and Asians are moreoptimistic than whites.

The question of whether theAmerica of today reflects people’sown values produced split results.On one hand, there is broad agree-ment across the states that thecountry reflects people’s personalvalues less today than in the past.On the other hand, it’s clear thatnot all parts of the populationview the country through thesame negative lens.

Overall, 72 percent of regis-tered voters nationwide say theAmerica of today reflects theirvalues less than it has in the past,while 26 percent say it reflectstheir values more than in the past.In every state, at least 65 percentexpress that conclusion.

Among age groups, the young-est are more likely to say thecountry reflects their values thanthe oldest, and the progression issteady across the age spectrum.African Americans are more like-ly than whites to say the countryincreasingly reflects their values,40 percent vs. 23 percent — al-though a 58 percent majority ofblack voters nonetheless say theopposite.

The biggest differences comewhen the electorate is viewedthrough partisan and ideologicallines. Among Republicans,93 percent say the country re-flects their values less today thanin the past. Democrats, however,split evenly — 49 percent to49 percent. Independents are lesspessimistic than Republicans butfar less optimistic than Demo-crats.

This Washington Post-Survey-Monkey 50-state poll sample wasdrawn among the respondentswho completed user-generatedpolls using SurveyMonkey’s plat-form from Aug. 9 to Sept. 1, andresults are weighted to matchdemographic characteristics ofregistered voters in each state. Nomargins of sampling error arecalculated, as this statistic is ap-plicable only to randomly sam-pled surveys. For full questionwording and methodological de-tails, visit wapo.st/pollarchive.n

Clinton is more likely to be seenas a threat by men, those in ruralareas and whites, particularlythose with less education.

Pessimism about the aftermathof the election is broad and deep.Nationally, 68 percent of regis-tered voters say the election willdo little or nothing to reduce thedivisions that have marked Amer-ican politics for years now, while30 percent say it will do “a goodamount” or “a great deal” to re-duce them.

Across every state, at least54 percent offer a gloomy progno-sis of the impact of the election onthe political divisions. Ironically,on this question, Republicans andDemocrats are united in theirsense of foreboding about the fu-ture, with more than 6 in 10 ineach party taking a dim view.Independent voters are evenmore pessimistic, with independ-ent men the most acidic in theirassessments.

Ideologically, those who identi-fy themselves as very liberal arefar more pessimistic than thosewho say they are very conserva-

Nationwide, 55 percent of reg-istered voters say that a Clintonpresidency would threaten thenation’s well-being, according tothe survey, while 61 percent say aTrump presidency would threat-en the country’s well-being.

Only 4 percent nationally sayneither would threaten the coun-try’s well-being.

For some voters, the prospect ofeither Trump or Clinton providesa similar sense of alarm. National-ly, 21 percent say both candidatesrepresent a threat to the nation’swell-being. That number peaks inUtah, where 38 percent cite bothcandidates as a threat.

Overall, majorities in 40 statessay Clinton would be a threat tothe country’s well-being, whilemajorities in 44 states say thesame of Trump.

The pattern across the statesfollows some predictable red-bluedivisions. Those most likely to sayTrump represents a threat in-clude women, younger voters,nonwhites, voters with at least acollege degree and voters living inurban areas.

BY DAN BALZAND EMILY GUSKIN

The presidential campaignhas intensified long-standing political divi-sions, but there is one

area of broad agreement amongvoters in both red states and bluestates — a pervasive pessimismthat no matter the outcome, theelection will do little to unify thecountry, according to a Washing-ton Post-SurveyMonkey survey ofall 50 states.

Americans also say they fearthat they are being left behind bythe cultural changes that aretransforming the country. Askedwhether the America of today re-flects their values more or lessthan it did in the past, large ma-jorities of registered voters in ev-ery state say the country reflectstheir values less.

But almost hidden behindthose broad findings is anotherstriking reality of America at theend of President Obama’s tenurein the White House. Those groupsthat fall roughly into the coalitionthat helped elect Obama to suc-cessive terms are more likely — insome cases significantly so — tosay the country reflects their val-ues more than it did in the past.Obama has pushed policies andtaken executive actions that haveplayed directly to that coalition.

The survey is the largest sam-ple ever undertaken by The Post,which joined with SurveyMonkeyand its online polling resources toproduce the results. The findingsfrom each state are based on re-sponses from more than 74,000registered voters during the peri-od of Aug. 9 to Sept. 1. The exten-sive sample makes it possible notonly to compare one state withanother but also to examine theattitudes of various parts of thepopulation, based on age, gender,ideology, education and economicstanding.

Hillary Clinton and DonaldTrump have lower favorabilityratings than previous major-par-ty nominees, and a sizable majori-ty has said consistently that thecountry is seriously off track.

POLITICS WEEKLYKLMNO

In election, pessimism is real unifierIn every state, most say neither Clinton nor Trump will reduce divisions

In every state, most say “America today reflects my values less than it has in the past”

78

75 77

66 74

68

74

73

73

77 73

7875

78

81

76

71

65

697370

72

77

78

78

72

75

71

71

67

75

80

76

82

66 73 72

74

77

77

74

76

66

70

69

83

78

83

7167

CA

ID

ME

NV

NH

NM

OK

OR

TX

VT

WA

WI

TN

AL

AR

CO

CT

DE

FL

GA

IL

INIA

KS

KY

LA

MD

MAMIMN

MS

MO

MT

NE

NJ

NY

NC

ND

OH PA RI

SC

SD

UT VAWV

WY

AK

AZ

HI

60 -70% 71-78%

Percentage that agree

Over 78%

In the Post-SurveyMonkey poll, 72 percent nationwide said America today reflects their values less than it has in the past, while 26 percent say it reflects their values more.

Source: Washington Post-SurveyMonkey 50-state poll THE WASHINGTON POST

Washington Post-SurveyMonkey 50-state pollPOLL


equipment in a “lockdown” pro-test. Others hung a large whitebanner that read “Water is ourfirst medicine” on a bulldozer.Police watched from afar but didnot make any arrests, according toa tribe member.

Attorneys for the Corps haveargued in court that there was astandard review process for thepipeline and that the StandingRock Sioux Tribe was consultedon the project.

Representatives of Dakota Ac-cess, a subsidiary of Texas-basedEnergy Transfer Partners, de-clined to comment for this articleand directed a reporter to thecompany’s website.

Large labor unions, includingthe Laborers’ International Unionof North America, have supportedthe pipeline and in a statementcharacterized protesters as “ex-tremists.”

Even as the battle over the pipe-line was playing out in court, sup-port for the tribe’s positionpoured in from all over. The U.N.Permanent Forum on IndigenousIssues has called on the UnitedStates to provide the tribe a “fair,independent, impartial, open andtransparent process to resolvethis serious issue and to avoidescalation into violence and fur-ther human rights abuses.” Morethan 200 Native American tribeshave declared their support, andmany have sent food and supplies.

On social media, activists haveused the #NoDAPL hashtag tospread information about the pro-test and provide live video feedsfrom the campsite and from pro-tests. Actors Leonardo DiCaprio,Shailene Woodley, Rosario Daw-son and Susan Sarandon have of-fered to support the tribe’s efforts.

Environmentalists also havejoined the fray, hoping to haltconstruction of the pipeline andmake it go the way of the KeystoneXL oil pipeline project, which ulti-mately was killed by an orderfrom President Obama last year.Obama and first lady MichelleObama visited the Standing Rockreservation in 2014. The tribesand environmental groups haveappealed to the president to usehis authority to halt the Dakota

the action, they were stopped byprivate security workers for Dako-ta Access who used guard dogsand pepper spray to drive themback. Photos of the encountershared online showed snarlingGerman shepherds lunging atprotesters. A spokesman for thetribe said six protesters were bit-ten. The Morton County Sheriff ’sDepartment reported that foursecurity guards and two dogswere injured.

That incident prompted thetribe’s attorneys, from the non-profit legal organization Earth-justice, to request a temporaryrestraining order on further con-struction on the pipeline in thatlocation. U.S. District JudgeJames E. Boasberg granted theorder Tuesday. Boasberg plannedto issue a ruling late this past weekon the tribe’s request to halt allwork on the project until permit-ting issues and the tribe’s disputeswith the Corps have been properlyaddressed.

On Tuesday, several pipelineopponents attached themselves toDakota Access construction

The tribe says it also is fightingthe pipeline’s path because, eventhough it does not cross the reser-vation, it traverses sacred terri-tory taken away from the tribe in aseries of treaties that have beenforced upon it over the past 150years.

The reservation sued the Corpsin July, saying that the agency hadnot entered into any meaningfulconsultation with the tribe as re-quired by law and that the Corpshad ignored federal regulationsgoverning environmental stan-dards and historic preservation.

Dean DePountis, the tribe’s at-torney, said: “This pipeline is go-ing through huge swaths of ances-tral land. It would be like con-structing a pipeline through Ar-lington Cemetery or under St.Patrick’s Cathedral.”

Tensions flared about a weekago when Dakota Access workersplowed under two locations adja-cent to the pipeline path that justa day earlier the tribe had identi-fied in a court filing as sacred andhistoric sites. When tribe mem-bers and others tried to prevent

BY JOE HEIMCannon Ball, N.D.

The simmering showdownhere between the Stand-ing Rock Sioux Tribe andthe company building the

Dakota Access crude-oil pipelinebegan as a legal battle.

It has turned into a movement.Over the past few weeks, thou-

sands of Native Americans repre-senting tribes from all over thecountry have traveled to this cen-tral North Dakota reservation tocamp in a nearby meadow andshow solidarity with a tribe theythink is once again receiving a rawdeal at the hands of commercialinterests and the U.S. govern-ment.

Frank White Bull, a member ofthe Standing Rock Sioux TribalCouncil, was overcome with emo-tion as he looked out over theocean of brightly colored tepeesand tents that have popped up onthis impromptu 80-acre camp-ground.

“You think no one is going tohelp,” said White Bull, 48. “But thepeople have shown us they’re hereto help us. We made our stance,and the Indian Nation heard us.It’s making us whole. It’s makingus wanyi oyate — one nation.We’re not alone.”

At issue for the tribes is the1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline,or DAPL, which runs through North and South Dakota, Iowaand Illinois and has a capacity totransport more than 500,000 bar-rels of oil a day. The $3.8 billionpipeline now under constructionwas approved by the U.S. ArmyCorps of Engineers to cross underthe Missouri River a mile north ofthe reservation.

That river is the source of waterfor the reservation’s 8,000 resi-dents. Any leak, tribal leaders ar-gue, would cause immediate andirreparable harm. And tribal lead-ers point to what they consider adouble standard, saying that thepipeline was originally going tocross the Missouri north of Bis-marck, the state capital, but wasrerouted because of powerful op-position that did not want a threatto the water supply there.

WEEKLY NATIONKLMNO

Pipeline fight sparks tribal movement

Thousands of Native Americans from all over have come to North Dakota to show support

ANDREW CULLEN/REUTERS

Protesters stand on bulldozers after interrupting work on the Dakota Access oil pipeline Tuesday near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.


ty are big drivers of each other, too. States with more money can spend more on better education, which leads to higher wages, which leads to more education, in an ongoing virtuous cycle. Unfortunately, the reverse holds true as well.

Rates of participation in thearts are a powerful and underap-preciated proxy for human well-being. “Self-actualization,” includ-ing creative activities, are at thetop of Maslow’s famous hierarchyof needs. If you’re able to spend thetime and resources necessary to,say, practice with the local theatergroup or join the local communityband, it’s highly likely that you’vegot all the basics like food, shelterand safety taken care of.

The NEA numbers suggest thata lot of folks in Southern states arefalling behind their Northern counterparts on some of those measures. This mirrors what re-searchers see in other domainstoo, such as child well-being.

Geography, again, is destiny. Sta-tistically speaking, a kid born in a state such as Florida is likely to have a harder time reaching the pinnacle of Maslow’s pyramid thanone born in, say, Minnesota.n

(by chance, the line that delineat-ed the boundary between newslave and free states in the Mis-souri Compromise).

In no state to the south of thatline do a majority of people saythey personally create or performart. Conversely, in only three statesabove that line — Kentucky, Dela-ware and West Virginia — do fewerthan 40 percent of residents createor perform art.

What’s driving these differenc-es? A separate analysis by the NEAhas some answers. Education is abig part of it. The percent of stateresidents with a bachelor’s degreeor higher is positively correlatedwith creating artwork: in otherwords, more education, more art.

This relationship is even stron-ger in some of the other categoriesthe NEA looked at, such as attend-ance at art exhibits or performingarts events.

Conversely, poverty rates are astrong negative driver of arts par-ticipation. If you’re working threeminimum-wage jobs, you’re prob-ably not going to have a lot of timeto indulge in crochet or creativewriting.

Of course, education and pover-

BY CHRISTOPHER INGRAHAM

Urbanist Richard Floridapopularized the term “cre-ative class,” describing themillions of workers in

fields such as the arts, sciences and technology whose work largely in-volves coming up with new ideas and innovating on old ones.

The creative class has, for betteror worse, primarily been associat-ed with big American cities alongthe coasts: out of Richard Florida’stop 20 creative-class cities in 2015,only one — Dublin, Ohio — waslocated in a non-coastal state.

But new data recently releasedby the National Endowment forthe Arts suggests that there’s anawful lot of creativity happeningfar inland from America’s coastaltech and arts hubs.

Among other things, the NEAworked with the Census Bureau topoll residents of all 50 states ontheir participation in the arts, par-ticularly whether they performedor created works of art in 2014.

That data reveal a somewhatsurprising pattern: America’s Great Creative Divide isn’t be-tween the coasts and the centerbut between North and South.

Nationwide, 45 percent ofAmerican adults said they person-ally performed or created artworkin 2014. “Art,” in this case, wasdefined by a wide variety of activi-ties, including pottery, playing amusical instrument, acting, danc-ing , painting and creative writing.

As you can see from the map, thestudy found a surprisingly wide range of arts participation between states. At one end of the spectrum, folks in places such as West Vir-ginia, Oklahoma and Florida seemed to have little interest in doing art — participation levels there hovered around 30 percent.

By contrast, people in statessuch as Colorado, Vermont, Mon-tana and Oregon were roughlytwice as likely to personally createor perform artwork.

You can see that the states areheavily sorted by geography, withthe dividing line at parallel 36°30’

NATION WEEKLYKLMNO

Access project, but they have re-ceived no response from the White House.

For Native American environ-mentalists, the cause extends be-yond the boundaries of the reser-vations.

“The goal is to stop the pipeline,and it’s not just for us,” said NickTilson, 34, of the Pine Ridge Indi-an Reservation in South Dakota.“We know there are 17 millionpeople downstream from us. Theproblem is bad for whatever com-munity is near this pipeline. It’snot going to be if it breaks — it’sgoing to be when it breaks.”

At the growing campsite, a miledown the road from the pipeline’splanned route, a sense of ruralvillage life is emerging. There is acentral kitchen where meals areprepared morning, noon andnight. Another huge tent providesclothing, food and toys. Water andother supplies arrive by the truck-load. Children run about kicking abasketball and squealing. Thewhinnies of horses blend with thewhir of a chain saw cutting fire-wood and the far-off beat of adrum. Smoke fills the air.

Many of the Native Americanswho have come here speak of aspiritual reawakening takingplace.

As morning broke Tuesday, Jef-ferson Greene, a member of theConfederated Tribes of WarmSprings in Oregon, greeted theday with a song in Ichshkiin, hisvoice carrying across the slowlystirring campground. The songwas giving thanks for the lightcoming over the horizon and forthe strength it provides, he said.Greene had arrived the night be-fore with his aunt and young son.

“There’s such a feeling of unityhere,” he said. “When tribes putthe call out for help, we need tosupport them. We all need to behere for each other.”

Jo Kay Dowell, 59, of Tahl-equah, Okla., was beginning herthird week at the camp in a tentshe shares with her daughterAnna Walker, 25, and grand-daughter Kyah Vann, 6.

Dowell, a member of the Qua-paw and Cherokee tribes, said shehas become frustrated hearingfrom so many Native Americansthat “there’s nothing we can doabout it” when it comes to stand-ing up for tribes’ rights.

“To see this many people comefight for something like this is adream come true,” she said. n

The stunning geographic divide in American creativity

The north-south divide in American creativity% of adults who say they personally perform or create art works, 2014.

Source: National Endowment for the Arts WAPO.ST/WONKBLOG


career choice in Japan. The dayrate for a mascot is about $100.

“I was just a salaryman,” saidShinji Kumamoto, 51, who wastaking off his gorilla suit after arecent lesson. “When I quit mylast job I thought, ‘Why don’t I dosomething I always wanted todo?’ ”

So for the past eight years, hehas been making a living in a furrycostume. “I really enjoy beingsomething else or someone else,”he said. “I really enjoy doingthings like jumping up and downin the street. Things you can’t doin regular life. I can come out ofmy shell.”

That’s a pretty universal refrainamong mascots in usually re-strained Japan. “I enjoy doingsomething that I can’t do normal-ly,” said Yuko Mura, 19, who workspart time in a fast-food restaurantand started taking lessons in Jan-uary. “Of course, if you’re out onthe street no one comes up andstarts talking to you, but whenyou’re a character, people — evenadults — want to talk and high-five you.”

Indeed, as Kumamoto andMura and their classmates prac-ticed dance routines withouttheir costumes, they studiouslyignored two reporters in theroom. But the moment they puton their costumes, they were allhandshakes and selfies with theoutsiders.

Megumi Iwata was boundingaround the room during the classwhile she had her fox suit on,posing for photos and joking withthe other mascots. But as shedisinfected her costume after thelesson, she was the definition ofshyness. “I don’t want to be inter-viewed,” she said, looking down.

Some people enjoy being mas-cots because it offers some escapefrom ordinary life, said AkihikoInuyama, a character consultantand author of the book “Yuru-kyara Theory.”

“You can be detached from asociety and become a differentyou. In normal life, you don’t getadmired by strangers, but whenyou put on a mascot costume, youare popular in an instant,” hesaid.n

bear who’s the king of Japanesemascots.

Thousands of “yuru-kyara” —or “laidback characters,” asthey’re called here — attend theYuru-kyara Grand Prix each year,vying to be crowned the mostpopular mascot in Japan.

The mascot industrial complexis so huge in Japan that the Fi-nance Ministry launched a cam-paign last year to cut the numberof mascots to save unnecessaryspending.

There are no official figures,but Masafumi Hagiwara, a re-searcher at Mitsubishi UFJ Re-search and Consulting, estimatesthat there are about 4,000 local-government-related mascots inJapan. The prefecture of Osakaalone had about 92 mascots, but itgave pink slips to 20 of themduring the Finance Ministry’scampaign.

An additional 6,000 charactersare probably at central govern-ment agencies, companies andother organizations, Hagiwarasaid.

That makes “mascot” a viable

a satsuma mandarin.If you’re using the facilities in

Yokohama, especially on Nov. 10,also known as Restroom Day, youmight encounter Toilet-kun, a lov-able character with a toilet-seatlid for a face and a bowl for a belly.Toilet-kun (“kun” is the Japanesesuffix used with boys’ names) rep-resents the city’s waste recyclingbureau.

And who better to representthe Defense Ministry than PrincePickles, from a country called Pa-prika, and his girlfriend, PrincessParsley, who hails from the coun-try of Broccoli.

No self-respecting town, busi-ness or ministry in Japan wouldbe without a mascot. The U.S.Embassy in Tokyo even has one —an Alaskan jelly bean called Tomwho’s a freshman in college. (He’sorange-flavored but turns lemonwhen he’s nervous.)

According to the embassy’stale, while he’s doing an exchangeprogram in Japan, Tom promotesAmerican culture as well asU.S.-Japan relations, often withKumamon, the black-and-white

BY ANNA FIFIELDTama, Japan

When Michiyuki Aranowas between jobs as achef two years ago, hedecided to take a trial

lesson at the Choko Group MascotActors’ School here, just outsideTokyo.

For $60, he put on a pig suit andbumbled around. He was hooked.

“I really loved it,” said Arano, ashort, round 35-year-old with alisp. “Once you have a differentlayer on, you become somebodyelse, not your normal self. Youbecome a pig or a squirrel, andyou see people react to you, andthat makes you want to help themeven more.”

Now Arano is a regular at theMascot Actors’ School, whereChoko Ohira, who has been in themascot business for almost 40years, teaches her craft.

“Some people come to becomeprofessional; some come in forfun, for the stress relief,” Ohirasaid before a group lesson on arecent day.

During years as a freelancemascot — yes, that’s a thing — sheplayed Porori, a popular televi-sion mouse pirate, for a decade.Then she opened the school, “rais-ing the next generation of mas-cots,” she said.

Now, for $270 for 12 two-hourlessons, Ohira teaches people howto move so that the characterlooks alive and drills into thestudents that they must nevershow any skin in case they giveaway the secret that there’s aperson inside the costume. TheChoko Group also makes cos-tumes and acts as an agent forcompanies needing mascots andmascots needing work.

In Japan, it’s hard to go any-where without encountering amascot, a cute and fluffy creaturedesigned to make you feel allwarm and fuzzy in some of themost unlikely situations.

Visiting the Wakayama prison?Waka-P, an orange mascot with ahuge citrus-fruit head and a letterP (for prison), will be there to giveyou a hug and remind you to aimfor a crimeless society, bright like

WEEKLY WORLDKLMNO

In Japan, ‘mascot’ is a viable careerThere are thousands of cuddly characters that represent a mix of agencies — even prisons

PHOTOS BY ANNA FIFIELD/THE WASHINGTON POST

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Shinji Kumamoto does reps as a gorilla at the Choko Group Mascot Actors’ School in Tama, Japan; mascot heads at the school; Megumi Iwata, as a fox, with Kumamoto; and Choko Ohira, who runs the school, helps Yuko Mura dress as a squirrel.


lights that could be attached topoles and huts to scare off theanimals. But they didn’t seem towork.

“In one of the fastest-growingcities in the world, it’s inevitablethat humans and wildlife are go-ing to increasingly come into con-tact,” said Kahumbu, the conser-vationist.

In 2013, the Kenyan govern-ment passed a law guaranteeingcompensation for those whose rel-atives or livestock were killed bywild animals. Sometimes thatcompensation arrived, but oftenin Maasai Village, it did not.

Some officials dispute the num-ber of lion attacks in the village.

“It’s a rare occurrence,” said Al-fred Mutua, the governor ofMachakos County, where MaasaiVillage is located. But he said hewasn’t sure how often the animalshad stolen into the village. Otherofficials suggested villagers mightexaggerate their claims to gaincompensation.

Kenyan officials are debatinghow to protect the humans andanimals on both sides of the fence.

“There are efforts underway todecide whether lions should bemoved to other parts of the coun-try,” said Paul Uduto, a spokesmanfor Kenya Wildlife Service. “Thisfrequency of lion attacks can’t besustained.”n

Ocean. When that constructionstarted more than a year ago, theelectricity along stretches of thepark’s fence suddenly disap-peared, making it much easier forlions to escape.

And they did, over and over.“When they [lions] figure out

how easy it is to kill livestock,they’re going to keep doing it,” saidKahumbu, of WildlifeDirect.

Kenyan wildlife officials saidthe power goes out only for shortperiods because of the railway construction and vandalism. Butduring repeated visits by a report-er to the village, the fence alwayslacked electricity.

Nairobi residents were un-nerved by a spate of attacks thatgalvanized local media attentionin the spring. One lion jumped thepark fence and killed Prisitu’s 96sheep in Maasai Village before running back into the reserve. An-other lion, named Mohawk for hisdistinctive mane, escaped into nearby Kajiado town and was shotdead by Kenyan wildlife officials.

“The ease with which the lionsare leaving the park is alarming,”said an editorial in Kenyan news-paper the Standard.

The media attention soonwaned, but residents of MaasaiVillage watched as the lions keptcoming. Kenyan officials distrib-uted “lion lights” — high-beam

bringing in more than 100,000visitors annually.

Urban development “makesthis city like any other. But thepark sets Nairobi apart. It plays akey role in defining the identity ofthe city,” said Paula Kahumbu, thedirector of WildlifeDirect, an in-ternational conservation groupbased in the Kenyan capital.

For years, the villagers’ proximi-ty to the park’s wildlife was rarely aproblem. Then a few things changed. At the southern edge ofthe park, which is unfenced for 12miles and once bordered a vastsavanna, developers started build-ing houses and shopping centers.Suddenly, when animals movedsouth, they encountered people,often armed. Their domain hadeffectively been reduced.

That was a particular blow tothe park’s lions. Male lions are veryterritorial, and each requires aswath of land that can be as largeas 100 square miles. With less land, the lions began to look else-where. One of the places theylooked was Maasai Village, whereresidents had been raising live-stock for more than a half-century.

Meanwhile, alongside the vil-lage, a Chinese firm had begun tobuild a 300-mile railway line, oneof the biggest infrastructure proj-ects in Kenya’s history, that wouldstretch from Nairobi to the Indian

BY KEVIN SIEFFNairobi

The last time the lionscharged through SimonSaigilu’s village, he wasready. He jumped out of

bed with a flashlight and a spear,emitting a high-pitched screamthat was the closest thing anyonehere had to an alarm.

He’d had time to practice. Everymonth or two, the lions appeared,after sneaking through the fencethat runs between the village andNairobi National Park, at the edgeof this city of 3 million. The barrierwas supposed to be electrified, butit wasn’t. The animals — includingthe park’s 35 lions — were sup-posed to remain in the park, butthey didn’t.

The collision between humansand wildlife is nothing new in much of Africa, where millions of people have flocked to cities in re-cent decades and skylines rise in places that were once savanna or forest. But Nairobi has come to represent the extreme difficulty in-herent in trying to preserve wildlifewhile an urban population booms. The number of residents on the outskirts of the reserve has grown more than tenfold since it was es-tablished in 1946 as the first nation-al park in East Africa.

Saigilu’s hamlet, called MaasaiVillage after the tribe that livesthere, provides a glimpse into theclash between the human and ani-mal ecosystems. On one side of thesmattering of huts and sheet-metal homes is the city’s industrialarea, a neighborhood of ware-houses and factories surroundedby near-endless traffic. On the oth-er side is a 45-square-mile stretchof undisturbed greenery, theworld’s only major game reservewithin a capital city.

“We are caught in between,”said Jackson Prisitu, whose 96 sheep were slaughtered by a lionone night in March.

Both wildlife advocates and theKenyan government see the parkas a national treasure, a symbol ofcoexistence between humans andthe big-game animals that havelived here for centuries. The parkis also a massive tourist attraction,

WORLD WEEKLYKLMNO

Lions move into the Kenyan suburbs

Predators from nearby reserve have killed livestock, rattled nerves

A young lion rests on its haunches at Nairobi National Park outside the Kenyan capital. Some safeguard failures have allowed lions to encroach on neighboring villages.

TONY KARUMBA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY JAMIE THOMPSON in Dallas

Sgt. Ivan Gunter climbed the stairs, sweating beneath a ceramic-plated tactical vest, his finger

resting beside the trigger of his 9mm handgun. He could hear the suspect’s muffled voice

above, between thunderous cracks of gunfire. ¶ Gunter, 49, led a specially trained team of nine

Dallas police officers called the Foxtrots. In the July twilight, beneath the city’s skyscrapers, a

gunman had taken aim at his officers as they stood along Main Street policing a protest rally.

¶ One fell, then a second, and a third. After helping to drag one of his wounded men into a

patrol car, Gunter followed the gunman’s trail of broken glass and blood. ¶ As sirens wailed

across downtown, Gunter paused in a stairwell of El Centro College. He was part of a small

group of police officers closing in on the shooter. ¶ “Hold your positions,” a supervisor ordered

over the radio. Gunter crouched in the stairwell, waiting. After a few minutes, his cellphone

buzzed. ¶ “Where you at, Gunter? You okay?” asked Sgt. Alan Villarreal, a longtime friend,

calling from the hospital. He spoke the names

of two of Gunter’s Foxtrots. ¶ “Pat and Krol —

they didn’t make it.”¶ “What?” Gunter said. ¶

“I’m sorry, Gunter,” Villarreal said. “You need

to get over here, now. Your guys need you.”

Acrackin the

air,then

chaos

SMILEY N. POOL/DALLAS MORNING NEWS VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Black Lives Matter protesters march in Dallas on July 7 before a gunman opened fire. Senior Cpl. Lorne Ahrens and Officer Michael Krol stand in the crosswalk at the top of the photo. Officer Patrick Zamarripa, in a yellow shirt, is at the bottom of the image. The three were among five officers killed.


foot 5, weighed more than 300 pounds andcould rip burglar bars off a house with his barehands. Friends called him “Meat” and lovedsummoning him as backup. But those whoknew him well considered him a softy. They’dseen him roll around with his two children, 8and 10 years old.

Officer Krol was 40 with a boy’s face andgoofy grin. He was the only member of theteam — maybe the only officer on the force, hiscolleagues joked — who loved working trafficaccidents. Most cops consider them tediousand loathe the paperwork. But Krol enjoyedthe meticulous task of figuring out who hadcollided with whom, and at what speeds andangles.

Krol, like Ahrens, towered over 6 feet. Whenthe pair climbed into a patrol car, officers likedto watch and laugh as it drooped toward theground.

That afternoon, Gunter led the caravan inhis patrol car filled with supervisors’ tools,crowbars, rifles, a gas mask and two medicalbags. The Foxtrots headed north to policeheadquarters to receive their assignments.

A bout 6:45 p.m., the Foxtrots parkedtheir patrol cars near the intersection ofCommerce Street and Interstate 45.

Their job would be to block protesters whomight try to march onto the highways.

Officer Gretchen Rocha sat in the passengerseat of a patrol car. At 23, Rocha was a recentpolice academy graduate three weeks into herfield training. She was married with an 11-month-old and had wanted to be a policeofficer since she was a girl. One of the Foxtrots,Senior Cpl. Ivan Saldana, 44, had been as-signed to train her.

As Rocha waited for orders, she glanced in aside mirror and saw a man who looked home-less approach a patrol car behind her. Hebanged on the window, visibly upset. Shewatched as another Foxtrot, Patrick Zamarri-pa, stepped out of his car. Rocha and her trainer climbed out to see what was happening.

Someone had stolen his potato chips, saidthe homeless man. He was near tears. Zamar-ripa walked toward a convenience store, theman following. Inside, they headed toward thechips. The man looked at Zamarripa, thenpicked out a bag.

“Want two bags?” Zamarripa asked.The man shook his head. “Just one.”Zamarripa paid for the chips, then led the

group back to their patrol cars. The homelessman thanked Zamarripa the whole way. Heasked whether he could sit next to Zamarripa’scar as he ate, worried that someone mightsteal the chips again. Zamarripa nodded. Theman sat cross-legged on the pavement andripped open the bag.

That interaction made an impression on therookie, Rocha. Such a small gesture, but shecould tell it made the man’s day. She wasimpressed with Zamarripa, a 32-year-old fa-ther who had served in Iraq before joining thedepartment.

continues on next page

ing black men shot dead by police.A black man born in Dallas and a 25-year

department veteran, Gunter sympathizedwith the Black Lives Matter movement. He’dhad his own run-ins with police as a boy. Heonce got stopped while riding his bike to afriend’s house in a largely white, affluentneighborhood. The city’s activists were notgiven to violence, and Gunter wasn’t expectingtrouble at the rally. Still, he needed to beprepared.

As his team members filed into the stationaround 3 p.m., he instructed them to “gear up,”standard protocol for rallies and protests.They climbed the stairs to the second floor andgrabbed black bags filled with riot gear — shinguards, batons and helmets. Gunter alsorequired all Foxtrots to have military-gradeballistic vests that could protect them fromhigh-velocity gunfire. The officers had boughtthe vests for about $300 each because thedepartment did not provide them.

The team walked out into the sweltering91-degree heat carrying their bags and bottlesof water. Several officers paired up to ridedowntown together. Among them were SeniorCpl. Lorne Ahrens and Officer Michael Krol.

Ahrens, 48, was one of the most experiencedinvestigators on the team, known for his guileand ability to get suspects to talk. He was 6

Gunter felt a wave of anguish, then rage.Two of his men dead, others gravely woundedon what would become the single deadliestday for U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11,2001. Gunter couldn’t leave the stairwell, notwith the gunman still alive, still firing.

“You’re going to have to take care of themfor me, brother,” Gunter said. “I have to see thisthrough.”

S even hours earlier, at 2:30 p.m., Gunterhad arrived at a two-story brick buildingoff West Illinois Avenue in southwest

Dallas. He swiped his security card andwalked to his desk, passing rows of cubiclesfilled with sergeants who supervised theSouthwest Division, one of seven patrol dis-tricts at the Dallas Police Department. About300 of the department’s 3,375 officers workedthere.

Gunter’s team of Foxtrots handled specialassignments requested by supervisors acrossthe department. The group had been formednearly a decade earlier to respond to high-priority calls on third watch, from 3 p.m. to11 p.m. Some of its founding members weremilitary veterans who picked the name Fox-trot, which signifies the letter F in radiocommunications.

The Foxtrots were trained in combat medi-cine, fugitive apprehension and tactical sur-veillance. They responded to shootings, car-jackings and armed robberies, as well as tolower-priority calls if a need arose. They operat-ed radar guns on high-traffic roads, investigat-ed clusters of vehicle break-ins and tracked robbers snatching women’s purses in parking lots. Some officers considered them a minia-ture version of the department’s elite SWAT team, responsible for the district’s 75 square miles. The unit had demonstrated success and been replicated at other stations in Dallas.

Gunter needed a team with a variety ofskills, and he helped pick his nine officers,choosing one seasoned robbery detective forhis knowledge of sophisticated computer pro-grams to help track suspects. He chose an-other for his enthusiastic tenacity in locatingdrug houses and cultivating informants.

They were a close-knit group who ate togeth-er, spent long hours on surveillance together,knew each other’s girlfriends and wives andchildren. One officer’s mother invited themover for Sunday barbecues. The departmentdid not allow units to have their own logos, butthe Foxtrots quietly created one anyway, sketching a picture of a red fox with a menacingstare, a lightning bolt shooting behind it. Gunter had the drawing made into a patch.Some of the men Velcroed it onto their heavyballistic vests, marking them as Foxtrots.

Gunter arrived at work that Thursday,July 7, wearing his Class B uniform — navycargo pants and a police button-down —already informed that his team would helpwith crowd control that night at a protestagainst shootings by police. Tensions werehigh across the country again; that week, twovideos had gone viral in as many days, show-

COVER STORY WEEKLYKLMNO

COOPER NEILL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Top, Sgt. Ivan Gunter, right, meets with members of the Foxtrots on Aug. 11. Above, a Dallas Police Choir member passes photos of five slain officers before a July 12 memorial service. They are, from left: Michael Krol, Brent Thompson, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Smith and Patrick Zamarripa.

ERIC GAY/ASSOCIATED PRESS


cars. Fillingim felt several bullets fly past hishead, as if a wasp were buzzing beside his ear.

Fillingim rose and looked out. He saw Kroland Ahrens lying in the street. He stood therestaring as everything fell quiet. Then bulletsripped down the street, jolting him back.

The rookie, Rocha, stood across the inter-section near El Centro. She had lost sight ofher trainer. She took cover behind a patrol car.Three weeks into her training, she had no ideawhat to do. She heard her trainer’s voice in herhead: Just keep moving.

Rocha saw the wounded officers lying in thestreet. Patrol cars screeched toward them, bullets flying all around. Several officers began dragging the three wounded toward the cars.

Rocha ran over to help. On the way, she feltbullets whizzing by.

After they loaded Krol into a car, Rochanoticed the driver’s seat was empty. Shejumped in. Another officer climbed in the backand started CPR. “Do you know how to get tothe hospital?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “Go!”She slammed the door, pressed the gas and

jumped a curb. Bullets slammed into the car asshe sped away. As she gripped the steeringwheel, she noticed a throbbing in her rightarm. She looked down and saw a growingcircle of blood. She, too, had been hit. As theofficer in the back pumped on Krol’s chest,Rocha pressed harder on the gas, watching thespeedometer climb to 118 mph.

At Parkland Memorial Hospital, medicalstaffers heaved Krol onto a stretcher andrushed him inside. Rocha ran in beside him.“Don’t give up,” she told him.

Nurses noticed blood on Rocha’s arm andforced her to sit. As they began treating herwound, Rocha reached for her phone to callher husband.

A s the wounded officers were beingrushed to two hospitals, whoever wasshooting was still near the intersection

of Lamar and Main streets. Gunter, still at thescene, shouted to the officers around him:“Get your heavy vests on, now!”

He pulled his on and joined a couple ofothers racing toward El Centro College, lessthan a block away from his patrol car. The ragethat filled him was of a sort that he had neverbefore felt.

“Where is he?” Gunter shouted at otherofficers.

Officers followed the gunman into thecollege. Inside, Gunter helped clear the firstfloor. Then he entered a stairwell. The college’ssecurity alarm wailed as the gunman ex-changed fire with police. An officer on theradio gave the gunman’s location, about 18 minutes after the shooting started: “Secondfloor, body armor, just reloaded, assault rifle.”

A minute later, “We may have the suspectpinned down, northwest corner of the build-ing, on the second floor.”

“We have dialogue going with the suspect.We need the sirens in the building off tocommunicate.”

the back of his patrol car. Barrientos raised hishead, felt the bullets speed by. He couldn’treach the kit without exposing himself.

Gunter tugged on Zamarripa’s shirt, tryingto remove it. Trained in combat medicine,Gunter feared his officer had a sucking chestwound, one that might fill his thorax with airand cause his lungs to collapse. He needed toplug the hole.

“What do you have?” Gunter asked Barrien-tos.

Barrientos reached into his pocket andpulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights. Guntergrabbed them, slid off the clear plastic wrap-per and placed it over Zamarripa’s wound,pushing down.

Zamarripa flinched. Good, Gunter thought.He’s with me.

“I’m sorry, bro — I know it hurts,” Guntertold him. “You’ll make it. Just stay with me.”

Gunter grabbed his officer’s hand; Zamarri-pa squeezed back.

A nother Foxtrot, trainer Saldana, wasacross the intersection when the shoot-ing started. He shouted at his rookie:

“Get cover!” He raced toward the fallen offi-cers, hiding behind a patrol car. Sparks flew asbullets struck the pavement. Saldana got onhis stomach and peered beneath the car. Fromthis vantage point, he could see Ahrens, lyingon his belly, struggling to raise himself up, as ifdoing a push-up. Then Ahrens shook his headand went back down. It looked as if he wastrying to move closer so he could help Krol.Saldana yelled at him from beneath the car:“Don’t get up! He’s still shooting!”

Farther down the street, another Foxtrot,Senior Cpl. Brian Fillingim, 36, ducked behind the wheel of his patrol car. In front of him, he saw a man throw his girlfriend into a gutter, then lie on top of her. The man shouted at Fillingim: “My mom! You’ve got to help my mom!”

As the man shouted, a motorcycle officerroared into the road and laid his bike down tohelp cover them, crouching behind it. Fill-ingim and other officers saw the mother in thestreet, ran over and dragged her between two

Before long, their sergeant, Gunter, walkedover. Supervisors now wanted the Foxtrots toleapfrog from intersection to intersection,blocking traffic as the marchers headedtoward the end of the parade route. Theofficers worked their way toward Main Street,eventually stopping at Lamar Street, nearEl Centro College. Protesters walked by, somethanking the officers, others stopping to posefor selfies. The officers still had their riot gear— including their military-grade ballistic vests— on the back seats of their cars. But the crowdwas peaceful. The department had spentconsiderable money and resources in “de-escalation” training in recent years and want-ed to avoid looking like an occupying armywhenever possible.

The sun had fallen by the time the marchers’chants began to fade. The protesters drifted offMain Street, walking toward their cars. Just before 9 p.m., Gunter was about to dismiss his unit when he heard the first crack of gunfire.

O fficer Krol screamed, then fell to theground. Ahrens collapsed beside him,his immense frame sprawled across the

pavement.Another crack, then another. Gunter looked

around, trying to figure out what was happen-ing. The sound of gunfire echoed through thestreets, getting louder, coming closer. “Getdown, get down!” Gunter shouted.

He realized his unit, standing within aspace of 15 to 20 feet, was under fire, in themiddle of the street, with nowhere to hideexcept behind patrol cars. Gunter recognizedthe sound as that of an assault rifle. The thinKevlar vests beneath their shirts would notprotect them.

Gunter turned to his right and saw Zamarri-pa fall. He pressed the button on his radio.“Shots fired, officer down! Shots fired, officerdown! We’re in a kill zone! Stay clear!” Gunterrecalls saying on the radio.

He dragged Zamarripa behind his car.A few feet away, another Foxtrot, Jorge

Barrientos, 28, felt a shift in the air as bullets whizzed past his ears. He ran toward a patrolcar, seeing bullets hit the ground next to him. Achunk of his radio, attached to his belt, flew intothe air. He’s aiming at me, Barrientos thought.

Just before he ducked behind the patrol car,he felt something slam into his chest. It stung,then faded. Barrientos coughed into his hand,looking for blood. He didn’t see any andfigured he was okay. Then he looked down andsaw a piece of his left index finger dangling.

He and his partner crouched behind the car.“Stay down!” he screamed. A piece of a tireblew off, striking his partner in the face andpitching him backward.

During a break in the gunfire, Barrientoslooked out into the street and saw Krol, lyingmotionless. He saw Ahrens struggling, tryingto apply a tourniquet to his own leg. Then hesaw his sergeant, Gunter, crouched over Za-marripa. He crawled over to help.

“Grab my med kit,” Gunter yelled. It was in

from previous page

WEEKLY COVER STORYKLMNO

COOPER NEILL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Senior Cpl. Ruben Lozano shows the unofficial Foxtrot logo of his unit with the badge numbers of three fallen colleagues.


tattooed frame stretched across the hospitalbed, still hooked to a ventilator, machinesbeeping. It seemed impossible that this pow-erful man — who had once commandeered acab to chase a bad guy — was gone.

Ahrens’s wife, Katrina, who is a Dallaspolice detective, was not in the room when herhusband’s commander arrived. She’d beenawakened that night and taken to the hospital.She’d let their two children sleep, in the care oftheir grandparents. She’d learned that herhusband survived an initial surgery beforebeing rushed back into the operating room.The damage to his liver was extensive, anddoctors had not been able to save him.

Fillingim approached, said his goodbyes.Then Gunter walked over. He looked at Ah-rens, said a prayer, and turned away.

Ahrens was the fifth officer to die that night,a final, crushing blow to the dozens of officers who had arrived at the Baylor hospital. Gunteralso went to Parkland, where his other two menhad been taken. But by the time he arrived, hismen already had been zipped into body bagsand taken to the medical examiner’s office.

G unter walked back into the Southweststation about 5 a.m. Several supervi-sors, including Lt. Juan Salas, sat at

their desks, waiting for him.Salas called Gunter into a chief ’s office.

Years earlier, while Salas had been supervisinga gang unit, one of his officers had been shotand killed. Salas had felt responsible. He’dendlessly replayed the what ifs. Salas believedthat if he had talked about his guilt — said italoud, rather than keeping it in his head — hemight have healed better.

Salas and the other supervisors sat down,telling Gunter they wanted him to talk. Nodocumentation, no recorders, no therapists.Just cops.

Gunter sat in a chair. It all came tumblingout. Seven of his men on duty with him thatnight, five of them injured, three fatally, at thehands of a sniper.

It was an ambush, an unfair fight, theofficers told him. It wasn’t his fault.

For the first time that night, Gunter brokedown and sobbed.

T he following week, three Foxtrots werelowered into the ground. Two others andthe rookie in their care had begun recov-

eries from gunshot and shrapnel wounds.After the last funeral, Gunter and four of the

men met at a tattoo parlor near downtown. They took with them a picture of their patch, thered fox head, the bolt of lightning. Around the bottom, the tattoo artist sketched in the badge numbers of the fallen: #9217, #8193, #10112.

The needles buzzed, branding the officerson the back of a calf, on a forearm, on a leftshoulder. Foxtrots forever.

Gunter stood to the side, watching. Hewasn’t ready for the tattoo yet. He wanted toquiet his thoughts, to stop the images in hismind. He wanted to remember. He wanted toforget. n

worked dozens of robberies together.Where you at?Did you go with Krol?What’s going on?No response.After the standoff, Fillingim got a call from

his sergeant, Gunter. The men met in thestreet. They looked at each other in silence fora moment. Then they turned toward Gunter’scar. Bullet holes dotted its exterior; three tireshad been shot out.

Without speaking, they walked over to Fill-ingim’s car. It was still running, just as he left ithours earlier. They climbed in, and Fillingimflipped off the chatter of the police radio. He putthe car in drive. The night was silent, except forthe low sound of Gunter’s voice.

“I was supposed to look after them.”“This wasn’t even our fight. Our guys, they

had nothing to do with this.”The men drove through the quiet streets

downtown to Baylor University Medical Center.They stepped around the yellow crime scenetape surrounding the ambulance bay. Dozens ofofficers fell silent as they saw the pair.

The men walked through the hospital toAhrens’s room and stepped inside. His giant,

Supervisors instructed officers to hold theirpositions. No one was allowed onto the secondfloor except the SWAT team.

Gunter crouched in the stairwell with threeother officers, just below the gunman. Gunterremained on one step, his arm raised as hepointed his 9mm pistol toward the door, incase the gunman appeared. An officer fromEl Centro stood on a nearby step, pointing arifle at the same door above them.

While in the stairwell, Gunter got the callfrom Villarreal, letting him know Zamarripaand Krol were dead. Gunter bowed his headand fought tears. Another sergeant ap-proached: “Do you want to take a minute? Doyou need to leave?”

Gunter shook his head. How could he walkinto the hospital and face his men, with thegunman still alive, still shooting at officers?He would hold his position until it was done.

For the next four hours, Gunter remained inthe stairwell as police negotiated with thegunman. Gunter called his cousin, told him tocall Gunter’s mom and let her know that hewas okay. As news spread about the shooting,texts poured in from friends.

“Ivan, are you alright?” one sergeant texted.“No,” Gunter texted back. “My people are

dead, I’m held up in a stairwell, 1 susp still inthe building above me, and the car is shot up. . . I’m pretty far from ok . . . i’m pissed the helloff.”

Another sergeant — it was a group text —added: “Keep your head on the d--- swivel andget off yo phone. Update us when you are safe.”

Gunter knew the SWAT team had thegunman cornered above. All he could do wasawait directions. He never saw the gunman,but he could hear him as he talked on acellphone to a police negotiator.

At times the gunman shouted. “F--- it,” heyelled at one point, according to Gunter.

The officers’ hands became cramped andsore from aiming their guns for so long. Theyrotated positions and took short breaks, pass-ing bottles of water around.

At times, Gunter thought about his men andfelt a rush of emotion, then suppressed it.

Near 1:30 a.m., Gunter heard an explosionand felt the building rumble. Then quiet.

The standoff was over. Gunter waited foranother hour while officers searched forbombs. Finally, a supervisor’s voice came overthe radio: “All clear.” Micah Johnson, the Armyveteran who had ambushed police, was dead.

Gunter stepped outside into the glow of thestreetlights. By now he knew three of hisofficers were dead.

He had thought the gunman’s death wouldfeel like a victory. It didn’t. Gunter walkedalone, toward his car.

A nother Foxtrot, Fillingim, also had re-mained downtown. He had raced insidea high-rise parking garage during the

shooting, thinking the gunman was inside.After he had cleared the garage, supervisorshad ordered him to stay put. For hours, he hadbeen texting Ahrens. The men were close, had

COVER STORY WEEKLYKLMNO

Bank of America

Parking Garage

Parade route (approx. 800 protesters)

Parade route (approx. 800 protesters) MAIN ST.MAIN ST.

ELM ST.ELM ST.

LAM

AR

ST.

LAM

AR

ST.

MAR

KE

T ST.

MAR

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Bank of America

Plaza72 stories

Sources: Sta� reports, Dallas Morning News and Apple Maps THE WASHINGTON POST

1

1

2

3

4

5

July 7: Dallas police shooting

Just before 9 p.m., Micah Johnson parks his Chevrolet Tahoe on Lamar Street, dons an armored vest and heads to the corner of Main Street.

8:58 p.m.: Johnson directs his shots at o�cers patrolling the intersection. He fatally hits three Foxtrot o�cers, and injures three other o�cers and one witness.

2

3

4

5

Johnson then heads back on Lamar Street and tries to shoot his way into an entrance of El Centro College. He injures two o�cers inside and then fatally shoots an o�cer on the street.

Approximately 9:15 p.m.: He turns onto Elm Street, shoots his way into an entrance of the college and proceeds to the second floor.

From the second floor, he shoots south across Elm Street at o�cers stationed in front of a 7-Eleven. One o�cer is fatally shot.

Johnson is cornered by o�cers in a narrow corridor. A�er a four-hour stando�, a remote-controlled robot is sent in with an explosive charge that kills Johnson at 1:30 a.m.

Movements of Micah Johnson Foxtrot o�cer killed O�cer killed

SOURCES: STAFF REPORTS, DALLAS MORNING NEWS AND APPLE MAPS THE WASHINGTON POST

“I was supposed to look after them.”Sgt. Ivan Gunter, leader of the Foxtrots, a specially trained team of nine Dallas police officers


which is you unveil them when you’ve finished.But we stepped back and re-evaluated that andsaid, “You know, if we wait until you do that,we’re not helping anyone else get there, too.”

You’ve said you don’t want to be a traditionalCEO. What do you mean by that?

I think of a traditional CEO as being divorcedfrom customers. A lot of consumer companyCEOs — they’re not really interacting withconsumers.

I also think that the traditional CEO believeshis or her job is the profit and loss, is therevenue statement, the income and expense,the balance sheet. Those are important, but Idon’t think they’re all that’s important. There’san incredible responsibility to the employees ofthe company, to the communities and thecountries that the company operates in, topeople who assemble its products, to develop-ers, to the whole ecosystem of the company.And so I have a maybe nontraditional viewthere. I get criticized for it some, I recognize.But I’ve never wanted to be the stereotypicalCEO. I don’t think I’d be very good at it,honestly. And I don’t think for Apple that wouldin the long run be good for the company. If youcare about long-term shareholder return, all ofthese other things are really critical.

You’ve got the billionth iPhone on the tablehere. One thing that has changed is that in2011 about 44 percent of the company’s salescame from iPhone. Now it’s close to two-thirds. How can Apple move forward when somuch of its business is tied up in the iPhoneand an industry that’s cooling off ?

This is actually a privilege, not a problem.Think about this: What other products do youknow where the ratio of people to the product,for a consumer electronics product, will beone-to-one over the long haul? I don’t thinkthere is another one.

Meaning?The global sales of PCs each year are about

275 million right now. That number’s beendeclining. The global market for smartphonesis 1.4 billion. Over time, I’m convinced everyperson in the world will have a smartphone.That may take a while, and they won’t all haveiPhones. But it is the greatest market on Earthfrom a consumer electronics point of view.

Look at the core technologies that make upthe smartphone today and look at the ones thatwill be dominant in smartphones of the future— like AI. AI will make this product even moreessential to you. It will become even a betterassistant than it is today. So where you probablyaren’t leaving home without it today — you’rereally going to be connected to it in the future.

That level of performance is going to sky-rocket. And there is nothing that’s going toreplace it in the short term or in the intermedi-ate term, either.

I realize that the people who are focused onthis 90-day clock say, “Oh, my God, the smart-phone industry only grew by 1 percent ordecreased by 6 percent.” You know, the global

ployees. The company is four times larger [byrevenue since 2010]. We’ve broadened the iPhone lineup. That was a really key decisionand I think a very good one. We’ve gone into theApple Watch business, which has gotten us intowellness and in health. We keep pulling thatstring to see where that takes us. Lots of coretechnology work has been done.

Are there ways the culture has evolved?We have stepped up our social responsibility.

We have talked about things and been moretransparent about what we’re doing — not onproducts: We try to be as secretive as we’vealways been on products, although it’s increas-ingly difficult to do that.

The real test is: Are you creating a ripple thathelps other people as well? An example of thatis the environmental work. We’ve had environ-mental work going on at Apple for decades, butwe didn’t talk about it, and we didn’t setaspirational kind of objectives. We used thesame philosophy we do with our products,

BY JENA MCGREGOR

On a sleek white coffee table in AppleCEO Tim Cook’s fourth-floor office inlate July, a rose gold iPhone 6s sits in itsoriginal box. Earlier that morning,

Cook had stood in front of employees at Apple headquarters and held up the phone, which a staffer had hand-delivered from a store in Bei-jing to commemorate a notable occasion: Applehad sold its billionth iPhone.

That celebratory milestone aptly coincideswith another big moment for the technologygiant’s chief executive. A few weeks later, Cookwould mark the fifth anniversary of what hasbeen the most closely watched transition ofpower in corporate history: On Aug. 24, 2011,just six weeks before his death, Apple’s iconicfounder, Steve Jobs, permanently handed hischief operating officer the reins. “It’s been ablur in a lot of ways,” says Cook, who had filledin for Jobs during medical leaves. “It feels like itwas yesterday in some respects.”

It is fitting that these two milestones arriveso close together. That’s because the iPhone,launched by Jobs, has been the biggest driver ofApple’s massive growth during Cook’s tenure. Itled the company to soaring valuations andaccounted for nearly two-thirds of Apple’s rev-enue in the past year. Just the tally on iPhonesales, almost $141 billion over the past fourquarters, is more than the annual sales figuresof Cisco, Disney and Nike — combined. And justthis past week, Apple announced the iPhone 7.

Cook, 55, sat down with The WashingtonPost to discuss his first five years in one ofcorporate America’s most glaring spotlightsand the company’s future. It has been edited forlength and clarity.

Q. Your first day in this job, you sent a memoto employees that said, “I want you to beconfident that Apple is not going to change.”Five years later, it has to have changed. Whatqualities of Apple are immutable, in yourview?

A. The DNA of the company is really what Iwas talking about there. The North Star hasalways been the same, which for us, is aboutmaking insanely great products that reallychange the world in some way — enrich peo-ple’s lives. And so our reason for being hasn’tchanged.

Other things do change. But that’s the threadthat ties everyone together.

And what has changed?The obvious things are we have more em-

tim cook looks back — and ahead

WEEKLY Q&AKLMNO

ANDREW BURTON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

In an exclusive interview, Apple’s CEO talks iPhones, artificial intelligence, privacy, civil rights, missteps and Steve Jobs


became more of a matter of how do we explainthis. Because this is not easy. You can imagine.You just hear: locked phone. Terrorist. Peopledead. Why aren’t you unlocking this?

When you look back, are there mistakes you’ve made that you’ve learned somethingfrom?

Maps was a mistake. Today we have a prod-uct we’re proud of. But we had the self-honestyto admit this wasn’t our finest hour and thecourage to choose another way of doing it.That’s important. It’s the only way an organiza-tion learns. The classic big-company mistake isto not admit their mistake. They double downon them. Their pride or ego is so large that theycan’t say we did something wrong. And I thinkthe faster you do that, the better — change gearsto something else. If you’re honest, people willgive you the benefit of the doubt. But if you haveyour head stuck in the sand and you just keepdoing it, I think you lose your employees andyour customers as well.

Let’s jump to Apple’s future. You made some statements in the earnings call about artificialintelligence that got a lot of attention. Can Apple catch up with the AI efforts from compa-nies like Facebook, Google and Amazon?

Let me take exception to your question. Yourquestion seems to imply that we’re behind.

Let’s take a look at that. We’ve been shippingSiri since 2011, and Siri is with you all of thetime. Which I think most people would want anassistant with them all the time, whether they’re at work or at home or in between or on the soccer field. You don’t think of your to-dolist, so to speak, only when you’re in yourkitchen. And the breadth of Siri is unbelievable.Increasingly, Siri understands things obviouslywithout having to memorize certain ways to saythings. The prediction of Siri is going way up.What we’ve done with AI is focus on things thatwill help the customer. And we announced inJune that we’re opening Siri to third parties, sothird-party developers can now use Siri. So asimple example with that, whatever kind ofride-sharing app you might use, Uber or Lyft inthe United States, you could just — using yourvoice — order the car. So third-party developersare writing tons of those that will be available tothe public in the fall. And that’s how we’rebroadening Siri in a huge way.

But there are other things in there, like ifyou’re typing in mail, the prediction capabilityof the next word or next phrase that you will use— Siri has gotten a lot smarter about that.

Any final reflections on your tenure? Mo-ments that stuck out at you?

I’ve got the best job in the world. I thinkabout my day and weeks and months and years— I put them in three buckets: people, strategyand execution. I sort of move between those ona daily basis as to where I put my time. I alwaysthink the most important one of those is peo-ple. If you don’t get that one right, it doesn’tmatter what kind of energy you have in theother two — it’s not enough. n

Web. And they were kids who were distraught.Some had been pushed out by their families.They thought they couldn’t achieve anything.They couldn’t do anything. They were seeingthe national discourse around it and feelingisolated and depressed. And I just thought —I’ve got to do something.

And you speaking out would do what?I thought it would minimally say you can do

pretty good in this world and be gay. That it’snot a limiter. It’s okay to be. That it’s okay to be honest about it. I figured if I could help oneperson, it would be worth it.

There are few jobs in corporate America thathave the same scope, breadth and size asyours. Geopolitics. National security. Con-sumer retail. Global supply chains. The en-tertainment industry. It’s mind-boggling.Where do you turn to for advice?

Whoever I think can help me. When I wasgoing through [the question of] what shouldwe do on returning cash to shareholders, Ithought who could really give us great advicehere? Who wouldn’t have a bias? So I called upWarren Buffett. I thought he’s the natural per-son, and so I try to go through that process oneveryone. That doesn’t mean I always do whatthey say. But I think it’s incumbent on a CEO tonot just listen to points of view but to actuallysolicit them. Because I think, if not, you quicklybecome insular. And you’re sort of living in theecho chamber.

With the fight with the FBI, did you have anyidea what you were getting into?

We knew it was going to be very, very difficult.And that the cards were stacked against us. But we spent a lot of time on “what is right here?” People who were really key on this decision are folks like [senior vice president of software engineering] Craig Federighi. This at its heart is a deep, deep technical question. You first have tounderstand that to do anything else.

The lightbulb went off, and it became clearwhat was right when we did the first piece ofwork: Could we create a tool to unlock thephone? After a few days, we had determinedyes, we could. Then the question was, ethically,should we? We thought, you know, that de-pends on whether we could contain it or not.Other people were involved in this, too — deepsecurity experts and so forth, and it was appar-ent from those discussions that we couldn’t beassured.

The risk of what happens if it got out, we felt,could be incredibly terrible for public safety.

We knew the positioning on the outsidewould not be public safety. It would be securityvs. privacy — security should win. But we wentthrough the deep, deep, deep discussions onthat. It became clear that the trade-off, so tospeak, was essentially putting hundreds ofmillions of people at risk for a phone that mayor may not have anything on it, and that likelydidn’t, because of other things that we knewabout. We thought this actually is a clear deci-sion. A hard one, but a clear one. Then it

economy’s not that great right now. But if you’rein it for the long haul, this is the best market onEarth.

You succeeded one of the icons of Americanbusiness. What does it feel like to step intothose shoes?

To me, Steve’s not replaceable. By anyone.[Voice softens] He was an original of a species. I never viewed that as my role. I think it would have been a treacherous thing if I would have tried to do it. When I first took the job as CEO, I actually thought that Steve would be here for a long time. Because he was going to be chairman,work a bit less after he came back up the health curve. So I went into it with one thought, and then weeks later — six weeks later, whatever —

Quickly.It was very quickly. [The day he died] was

sort of the worst day ever. I just — I had reallyconvinced myself. I know this sounds probablybizarre at this point, but I had convinced myselfthat he would bounce, because he always did.

What did you think you knew about leadingApple that turned out to be wrong?

There’s nothing like sitting in the chair, so tospeak. I was reminded that customers have areally deep love for the company. I started justgetting an avalanche of customer mail. I don’tmean complaints. Email. Positive. Negative.Points of view. Not the ‘hey, this broke, I’m mad.’Largely not that kind of stuff. Things muchdeeper than that. Moved by how they weretreated in a store. Lots of people have writtenme about FaceTime and how they could be neartheir mother’s or father’s bedside before theydied only because of it.

You’ve been more outspoken on social is-sues than any other CEO of a company yoursize. Do you think companies have a responsi-bility to publicly take on such issues as civilrights and climate change?

I think everybody has to make their owndecision about it. Maybe there are compellingreasons why some people want to be silent. Ithink for us, though — for a company that’s allabout empowering people through our prod-ucts, and being a collection of people whosegoal in life is to change the world for the better— it doesn’t sit right with me that you have thatkind of focus, but you’re not making sure yourcarbon footprint isn’t poisoning the place. Orthat you’re not evangelizing moving humanrights forward. I think every generation has theresponsibility to enlarge the meaning of hu-man rights.

I do view that a CEO today of Apple shouldparticipate in the national discussion on thesetype of issues.

Who were you thinking about when youdecided to write the op-ed where you publiclycame out as gay?

I was thinking about kids. I was getting notesfrom kids who knew I was gay, or assumed Iwas, because of something they had read on the

Q&A WEEKLYKLMNO

“I think it’s incumbent on a CEO to not just listen to points of view but to actually solicit them. Because I think, if not, you quickly become insular.”


WEEKLYKLMNO

BOOKS

B efore iPhones and thumbdrives, before Googledocs and gigabytes ofRAM, memory was more

art than artifact. It wasn’t a tool ora byproduct of being human. Itwas essential to our character andtherefore a powerful theme inboth myth and literature.

At the end of Book 2 of the“Divine Comedy,” with Paradisenearly in reach, Dante is dippedinto the River Lethe, where thesins of the self are washed away inthe waters of forgetfulness. To betruly cleansed of his memories,however, Dante must also drinkfrom the river of oblivion. Onlythen will he be truly purified andthe memories of his good deedsrestored to him. Before we cantruly remember, according toDante, we must forget.

In “Patient H.M.: A Story ofMemory, Madness, and Family Se-crets,” author Luke Dittrich seemsto be saying that before we canforgive, we must remember. Theterrible irony is that H.M., thereal-life character around whomDittrich’s book revolves, had nomemory at all.

In prose both elegant and inti-mate, and often thrilling, “PatientH.M.” is an important book aboutthe wages not of sin but of science.It is deeply reported and surpris-ingly emotional, at times poi-gnant, at others shocking.

H.M., arguably the single mostimportant research subject in thehistory of neuroscience, was onceHenry Molaison, an ordinary NewEngland boy. When Henry was 9years old, he was hit by a bicyclistas he walked across the street inhis home town, Hartford, Conn. Itwas the mid-1930s, and the acci-dent probably triggered years ofepileptic seizures, which grewmore frequent and more severe asHenry grew up. In 1953, at the ageof 27 and facing a lifetime ofdisability, Henry underwent arisky brain operation. Though itwas unclear exactly where Hen-ry’s seizures originated in thebrain, his surgeon, William

ture, never more so than when heleaves Henry on Page 47 anddoesn’t return to him until Page201. The discursiveness is whatlends the book its power andkeeps the reader turning its pag-es. In fact, Scoville, Dittrich’sgrandfather, often steals theshow.

Threaded throughout the sto-ries of H.M. and Scoville are im-portant side trips into the historyof neuroscience, mental illnessand the treatment of humans asresearch subjects.

But it’s his portrait of SuzanneCorkin, the M.I.T. scientist whooversaw decades of research onH.M., acting sometimes as aguardian and others as a scientificgatekeeper, that has drawnDittrich into controversy.

On Aug. 7, the New York TimesMagazine published an excerptfrom “Patient H.M.” that dealtlargely with Corkin’s claim to havedestroyed all ancillary data aboutH.M., as well as her contentiousrelationship with Jacopo Annese,the scientist who was awarded thepostmortem task of processing,preserving and analyzing H.M.’sbrain. At the heart of the conflictis a dispute over one of Annese’searly findings, which could un-dermine the integrity of researchbased on H.M. The next day, Cork-in’s colleagues at M.I.T. as well assome 200 other scientists sentletters to the Times criticizing thepublication of what they deemederrors in Dittrich’s description ofCorkin’s actions and attitudes.

It’s too bad the scientists didn’twait to read the book when it wasreleased the next day. If they had,they would have discovered thatthose errors were largely differ-ences of interpretation and em-phasis, and that Corkin takes uponly a fraction of the book. Thereal shame of it is that they wouldhave also realized that “PatientH.M.” is a scintillating book, in-fused with humanity. n

Nutt is a science writer at The Washington Post. Her beat is the brain.

PATIENT H.M.A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family SecretsBy Luke DittrichRandom House. 440 pp. $28

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Loss of memory was science’s gain

Beecher Scoville, targeted a sus-pected spot deep in the medialtemporal lobes and removed allbut a vestigial amount of a sea-horse-shaped structure called thehippocampus. The good news:Henry’s seizures were greatly re-duced. The bad news: It quicklybecame clear that the young manhad paid a life- altering price forthe diminution of those seizures.For all intents and purposes, hewas now memory-less.

In the middle of the 20th cen-tury, the human brain was stilllargely a mystery. Memory, it wasbelieved, was distributedthroughout a person’s gray mat-ter. But when Henry awoke fromhis operation and was found to beincapable of forming new memo-ries, science learned a valuablelesson about the crucial role thehippocampus played in a person’slife. Though he would live 55 moreyears, Henry would be foreveramnesic for those years, unable torecall the names of people he metand the places he visited, anythought he had, any action he

took. And yet his losses were neu-roscience’s gain.

If this was the sole subject of“Patient H.M.” the book wouldstill be a fascinating read, sinceDittrich, a magazine writer bytrade, spent six years writing it,poring over medical records andtranscripts and interviewing keyfigures to flesh out a story that’snever been told this fully.

But “Patient H.M.” has deli-cious surprises in store for thereader. It turns out that Scoville,the surgeon who forever alteredHenry’s life and the history ofneuroscience, was the author’sgrandfather.

“My grandfather didn’t makeany mistakes that day,” Dittrichwrites. “He took exactly what hewanted to from Henry.”

What was taken from Henryafter his surgery, and how he wastreated as a research subject formore than half a century, are justtwo of the provocative questionsDittrich takes up in his book.Because it is about so much more,Dittrich takes risks with the struc-

NONFICTION l REVIEWED BY AMY ELLIS NUTT


BOOKS WEEKLYKLMNO

The plot of Louise Penny’s12th Chief InspectorGamache novel, “A GreatReckoning,” involves the

discovery of an intricate old map that’s been stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, the villagein Quebec where Gamache and his beloved wife, Reine-Marie, keep a house. The map, unearthed during a renovation, depicts the route to the village of Three Pines, but it’s offin strange ways — there’s a snow-man in the upper right corner, holding up “a hockey stick in tri-umph” and pointing to a curious pyramid in another section.

Gamache has solved many mys-teries throughout his 30-odd yearsas an investigator, but there’s amystery about the Gamache nov-els themselves that has long re-mained unsolved: that is, what tocall them? Just try describing theGamache series to an uninitiatedreader and you’ll be flummoxed.These are not “just” suspense sto-ries, police procedurals or crimenovels. They’re certainly not co-zies, despite their intermittentchange of scene from the streets ofQuebec to the quaint village ofThree Pines.

The Gamache series is deep andgrand and altogether extraordi-nary. Although individual novelshave featured plots about massmurderers and serial killers,they’re always infused with witand compassion; they’re as muchspiritual investigations into thenature of evil and divine mercy asthey are “entertainments.”

When “A Great Reckoning”opens, Gamache has just stepped into his new post as chief superin-tendent of the police academy. Gamache accepted the job to find the source of corruption within the academy: Idealistic cadets are be-ing warped into brutish police offi-cers, quick to intimidate and even terrorize the population. In an at-tempt to reach out to four first-yearcadets who seem particularly vul-nerable, Gamache gives them each a copy of the riddling map and challenges them to crack its secrets.

Soon, an even more crucial ques-tion about the map arises when a copy is found in the bedroom of a professor who’s been murdered at the academy. That professor, Serge Leduc, had been demoted byGamache when he assumed com-mand. Given their antagonistic re-lationship and the curious discov-ery of the map, Gamache becomes something of a “person of interest” in Leduc’s murder.

This is but the skimpiest sliverof the plot of “A Great Reckoning.”As always in the Gamache series,the main narrative branches intomore complicated patterns untilall questions are resolved in a spectacular climax that cross cutsbetween story lines. The chiefmoral question that permeates themany subplots of “A Great Reckon-ing” is the vexing one of whatelders owe to the young undertheir care. The curious map, whichturns out to have connections toWorld War I, calls to mind thecarnage of that war and the youngmen that so many villages likeThree Pines lost. Then there arethe cadets at the academy who’vebeen led into danger — both moraland physical — by some of theirsuperiors. One cadet, in particular,draws out Gamache’s protectiveinstincts. A sullen goth namedAmelia, she’s tricked out with tat-toos and body armor. Here’s howone of Gamache’s concerned col-leagues regards the cadet: “Therings and studs, like bullets. A girlpierced and pieced together. Likethe Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.Looking for a heart.”

That tossed-off description ofAmelia is a stand-alone poem. Inaddition to all her other manygifts, Penny is a beautiful writer. “AGreat Reckoning” is one of herbest, but I think that pretty muchevery time I finish a Gamachemystery . . . or metaphysical explo-ration, or whatever the heck thesemiraculous books are.n

Corrigan, who teaches literature at Georgetown University, is the book critic for the NPR program “Fresh Air.”

A GREAT RECKONINGBy Louise PennyMinotaur. 389 pp. $28.99

Another knockoutin mystery seriesFICTION l REVIEWED BY MAUREEN CORRIGAN

W ith its use of modernwarfare from trench-es to submarines,World War I claimed

millions of lives and drasticallychanged the geopolitical struc-ture. But the war also rockedWestern culture, from alteringthe status of women to sparkingnew artistic movements such asDada and surrealism. America,which suffered relatively fewercasualties than Europe, was re-garded as somewhat imperviousto these seismic shifts in theartistic realm. The beginning of adistinctive American art is usual-ly dated to around World War II,roughly with the rise of Abstrac-tion.

David M. Lubin, a professor ofart history at Wake Forest Univer-sity and a curator of a forthcom-ing exhibition on World War I andAmerican art at the PennsylvaniaAcademy of the Fine Arts, seeks toupend this narrative. “Grand Illu-sions” comes in the wake of areappraisal of the Great War’seffect on American culture.

Lubin’s book is an ambitious,albeit unequal, undertaking thatinvestigates the variety of Ameri-can art — pacifist and bellicosealike — from the sinking of theLusitania in 1915 to the rise of theThird Reich in 1933. An eloquentwriter who came of age duringthe Vietnam conflict, Lubin jug-gles a formidable array of visualmedia in this knowledgeablestudy. He rescues photographs,posters, paintings, sculptures andfilms from oblivion to reenergizethe debate and offer a new, ifrevisionist, perspective perhapsmore fashionable in culturalstudies departments than amongmuseum curators. Delving deeplyinto popular and highbrow cul-ture, he often draws inspiredconnections, situating artworksin a crucible of fresh references,and his readings, which may beirritating to the political con-servative or the more classic-minded, are intellectually provoc-ative.

Pleasantly surprising, for in-stance, is his rethinking of George Bellows, who patriotically adhered to the Bryce Committee report on German atrocities and allowed his old-fashioned realism to yield to phantasmagoric war scenes. Or Lu-bin’s reassessment of John Singer Sargent’s late, remarkably modern work, such as “Gassed” (1919), a large painting depicting a dozen or so soldiers who have been blinded by poison gas.

Also aptly reconsidered is Hor-ace Pippin, a forgotten self-taughtpainter and a soldier in the 369thBattalion, consisting of AfricanAmericans. His naive style pro-vides an arresting contrast to thegrimness of war. Lubin’s reclaim-ing of Claggett Wilson, one of theeight illustrators of the AmericanExpeditionary Forces charged with documenting the war forposterity, is equally felicitous.

Despite hinting that Wilson’swork was erased from the annalsdue to a mishap and Pippin’s onaccount of his ethnicity, Lubinfails, nonetheless, to considerbroader issues that a work of thisscope should have warranted:Why are some works retained byhistory and others blotted out?What are the ideological assump-tions behind aesthetic canons,especially ones dismissing Ameri-can art of the time? Brief refer-ences notwithstanding, his studyis also missing a sociological mapof the artistic milieu.

Instead, his focus is oftentimessquandered on overwrought exege-sis, and his interpretive frenzy fre-quently substitutes rigor for mere stylistic cleverness, even fallacy.

Looking at artworks solely aspro-war or antiwar “images,” Lubindelivers a disparate collection of essays while failing to conclude whether, indeed, a cohesive nation-al style emerged in the aftermath ofthe war.n

Azagury’s writings about art and literature have appeared in Lilith, the Jerusalem Post and the New York Times Book Review.

GRAND ILLUSIONSAmerican Art and the First World WarBy David M. LubinOxford. 366 pp. $39.95

A revisionist view of early art in U.S. NONFICTION l REVIEWED BY YAËLLE AZAGURY


WEEKLYKLMNO

OPINIONS

Has the two-party division that the founders railed against become today’s political status quo?

It doesn’t have to be. With theRepublicans and the Democrats having nominated their most polarizing presidential candidates in more than a generation, now is the moment for a third way.

My running mate, Bill Weld, and I were each two-term Republican governors in heavily Democratic states. Both of us won reelection overwhelmingly. We did this by governing as fiscal conservatives and social liberals. That’s where most Americans want their government to be.

Political parties aren’t necessarily evil — unless they lead to the level of dysfunction that we have today. Elected officials in Washington cannot even agree upon a real budget —

and haven’t for years. That’s their most straightforward responsibility.

These partisans place loyaltyto their team over loyalty to the nation’s needs. It’s eerie to see Republicans under Donald Trump denounce free trade and limited government. It’s unsettling to see how comfortable Democrats have gotten with Hillary Clinton’s approach to Middle East regime change as secretary of state.

Fortunately, most Americansaren’t buying it. More people consider themselves “independents” than are aligned with either of the two largest political parties. They want an alternative: a common-sense approach that combines fiscal discipline with social inclusion.

As presidential and vice-presidential candidates, that’s our message. A nonpartisan

approach in the Oval Office would do wonders to diffuse the harsh partisanship that we’ve seen develop in recent years. Think of it as a new form of checks and balances, with different parties controlling the executive and legislative branches.

In the Federalist Papers, JamesMadison warned about the dangers of factionalism. His proposed solution was to divide power within the government. That can be frustrating to some because it makes the federal government inefficient by design. It keeps one person, or one party, from accumulating absolute power.

Yet the two larger political parties have worked hard to try to create their own tyrannical majorities. The majorities alternate, but the basic premise doesn’t change.

So consider a system where apresident from a bona fide third party enters the mix.

With a chief executive free ofany obligation to either party, the focus will be on the business of the nation, not on propping up a crumbling party apparatus.

The first priority of the Johnson-Weld administration will be submitting to Congress a balanced budget. As governors, we held true to promising that taxes would go down, not up. We’ll end up cutting spending by roughly 20 percent in order to match it to current tax receipts.

My default is to question

federal spending and to require every year that each agency justify its budget anew. As governor, I vetoed more than 750 bills, often special-interest payoffs, and I won’t hesitate to veto such bills from Congress.

That said, Bill and I are reasonable and realistic executives. We will accomplish the free-market, fiscally conservative agenda of limiting government and increasing trade, while pursuing long-overdue immigration and criminal-justice reform.

We’ll do this through having both Republicans and Democrats in the Cabinet and working simultaneously with the leaders of those parties. Seeing that, by working together, the best ideas of each party will receive a fair hearing, both will see real movement toward addressing challenges they care about, not just winner-take-all partisan gridlock. A great deal could be accomplished by having third-party leadership dedicated to finding the common ground that has so often eluded the parties in recent years: on balancing the budget, curbing taxes, protecting our privacy and reforming our criminal-justice system.

The fact that the founders anticipated our two-party morass and warned against it ought to be enough incentive to look beyond it. The two major parties have failed to meet the needs of the nation. It’s time to try something different.n

GARY JOHNSONis the Libertarian Party’s nominee for president.

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Shortly after drafting the Massachusetts Constitution, John Adams expressed his greatest fear for the nation: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader. . . . This . . . is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil.”

He wasn’t alone. James Madison warned against the dangers of factionalism. And in his farewell address, George Washington called “party dissension” a kind of “frightful despotism,” warning that a party leader would be prone to pursue his own agenda “to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

Almost in spite of themselves, the founders allied themselves into political parties: First the Federalists against the DemocraticRepublicans, then the Whigs against the Democrats. That second party alignment collapsed under the weight of slavery — when a third party, the Republican Party, rose up with a fresh message unencumbered by the past.

Founders foresaw failure of our two-party system


OPINIONS WEEKLYKLMNO

TOM TOLES

New students are entering colleges and universities at a time of fierce debate about whether institutions of higher education are becoming places that stifle speech in the interest of protecting students from ideas and perspectives they don’t want to hear. In the clash over freedom of expression and the supposed coddling of American college students, safe spaces and trigger warnings are held up as the poster children of overprotective universities.

In the setting of private institutions, this is not a First Amendment issue. Private colleges and universities could restrict the expression of ideas and beliefs within their campuses, if they chose to do so. But most private colleges and universities wisely do not make this choice. Instead, colleges and universities protect the rights of members of their communities to express a full range of ideas, however controversial.

That is because freedom of expression is an essential component of academic freedom, which protects the ability of universities to fulfill their core mission of advancing knowledge. Suppressing ideas at a university is akin to turning off the power at afactory. As scholars and students, our responsibility is to subject old truths to scrutiny and put forward new ideas to improve them.

At universities, we also advanceunderstanding about issues of justice and fairness, and these discussions can be equally, if not more, difficult. From the earliest days of this country, college campuses have been the sites of fierce debates about slavery, war, women’s rights and racial justice. These discussions create rocky moments, and they should.

If we don’t have these debates— if we limit the flow of ideas — then in 50 years we will be no better than we are today.

I don’t share the view that American college students want to be protected from ideas that make them uncomfortable. Just the opposite. Over the past few years, our students have addressed topics that make many people veryuncomfortable indeed.

As for “safe spaces” — the termis used in so many different ways that it is impossible to discuss it

without being precise about its meaning. The term emerged nearly 50 years ago to refer to forums where women’s rights issues were discussed. Then it was extended to denote spaces where violence and harassment against the LGBTQ community would not be tolerated, and then extended again to mean places where students from marginalized groups can come together to feel comfortable discussing their experiences and being themselves.

If this is what a safe space means, then, yes, Brown has them. Proudly. And even the campuses that decry these spaces have them.

We see safe spaces in the choices our students make every day. Students find many opportunities through clubs and organizations to meet those who share similar backgrounds and interests — religious, political and otherwise.

In her memoir “My Beloved World,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor talks about Acción Puertorriqueña, a Princeton group for students of Puerto Rican heritage. Although she made it a point to develop relationships with people from different backgrounds, that group gave her a much-needed anchor in an unfamiliar environment. Maybe this isn’t what the critics

mean when they deride “safe spaces,” but these spaces deserve to exist at colleges across the country.

I would say the same for trigger warnings, which are meant to alert students who have been subjected to trauma, such as sexual assault and combat, that some material in class may be disturbing. Faculty should be free to use them at their discretion.

My final point — often missedin the media debates — is this: Universities are doing something difficult and important. We are grappling with how to create peaceful, just and prosperous societies, even as we live in a society that often feels more divided and rancorous than ever, fractured along lines of race, ethnicity, income and ideology.

With the right of academic freedom comes the moral responsibility to think carefully about how that right is exercised in the service of society to confront these divides.

At Brown, as at many institutions of higher education, we are not coddling our students — or limiting freedom of expression. Instead, we are teaching them, encouraging them and giving them the space to have the discussions that will make them better scholars and prepare them to best serve society. n

A safe space for free expressionCHRISTINA PAXSONis the president of Brown University.


OPINIONS WEEKLYKLMNO

The smell of fresh paint greeted lawmakers reacquainting themselves with their workplace after their seven-week break.

The scaffolding was coming down, revealing a gleaming dome and, underneath it, restored friezes, oil paintings and statues. The Capitol has been returned to its former glory.

If only they could do the same to Congress.

After their seven-week recess,which included both party conventions and was the longest break since at least 1960, the people’s representatives in the House are back for just four weeks before recessing again until the election — and there has been talk of cutting those four weeks of work to three or even two.

They might as well go home, because the House to-do list could end up looking something like this: Impeach the IRS commissioner. Punish the Democrats. Sue the Saudis.

This is how Donald Trump happened.

Americans are worried and angry about the big issues: stagnant wages, immigration, trade deals, health care, entitlement programs, the tax code, the Zika virus, tainted drinking water. Yet the best Congress can do for the moment

is to keep the government running on autopilot for a few more months, and even this isn’t guaranteed.

With three weeks to go in the fiscal year, Congress has enacted not one of the 12 annual appropriations bills (the House has passed six). While leaders struggle to pass a temporary “continuing resolution,” Republicans fight among themselves about how long it should last and hard-liners threaten to derail it by adding language banning Syrian refugees.

As Republicans sat down for their caucus meeting Wednesday morning, the conversation wandered — this member’s new grandchild, that member’s engagement, various anecdotes and talking points. GOP leaders held a news conference after the meeting, at which they voiced enthusiastic support for . . . a new

soapbox that had appeared over the recess to help shorter members of the caucus be seen behind the lectern.

“Gee whiz!” said Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.), trying it out.

With so little happening, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to create the illusion of activity, asserting that in this Congress “a total of 219 bills have been enacted into law. That’s an increase over the 25-year average.”

Actually, the average number ofbills enacted into law in previous Congresses going back to 1991 is 435 — double the current output. McCarthy’s spokesman said the claim was based on when Congress went on its long summer holiday. But as of now, McCarthy’s 219 bills are well below the 25-year average of 257 enacted at this point by previous Congresses. And, as House Democrats point out, 195 of those 219 bills have been minor “suspension” bills, such as post-office namings.

“People want a positive visionand a clear direction for solving the country’s big problems,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan declared at his news conference.

They do. But instead, they’re getting: l An attempt to impeach the

IRS commissioner. Some hard-

liners, still angry about the IRS’s treatment of conservative groups, are using a “privileged resolution” to force leaders to hold a vote to impeach the current commissioner, John Koskinen, who took over after the alleged wrongdoing occurred. l A bid to punish two dozen

House Democrats, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, who staged a sit-in on the House floor in June to protest Republicans’ refusal to bring up gun-control legislation.l Legislation allowing the

families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in federal courts. The bill has no chance of surviving an expected veto.

Instead, House Republicans could spend their fleeting time at work resolving an impasse blocking funds to fight the Zika infection. The Senate reached a bipartisan deal in May to provide $1.1 billion for the effort, but the agreement fell apart when House Republicans added a provision restricting funds from going to Planned Parenthood.

Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) said his constituents “are demanding action and they are seeing inaction, and in that inaction they are angry.”

Yes, but have they seen that new soapbox for members of Congress? Gee whiz!n

Shiny Capitol, tarnished CongressDANA MILBANKis an opinion writer for The Washington Post.

BY CLAY BENNETT FOR THE CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS BY LUCKOVICH FOR THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION


MYTH NO. 1Unions are for the working class only.

Despite their old-fashioned image, labor unions also include new industries and white-collar workers. The professional class has not been immune to workplace issues of mistreatment, outsourcing and stagnant or declining wages, and as a result its members have increasingly joined unions. For decades, the percentage of professional workers in unions has grown, and now professionals are the majority of union members in the United States. Conversely, the share of union members in traditional blue-collar jobs such as manufacturing and mining has diminished along with those industries.

MYTH NO. 2Workers can be forced to join unions.

The reality is that closed shops,which restrict hiring to union members, have been illegal in the United States since 1947. In every jurisdiction in America, if the majority of workers choose to be represented by a union, any worker can object and choose not to join without risking his or her

job. In non-right-to-work states, these objecting workers still pay a fair-share fee that covers the costs of representing them at work. These fees vary union by union and year by year based on expenditures, but typically they constitute 70 to 85 percent of regular union dues. Objecting workers do not pay for any political or other activities of the union. In right-to-work states, a worker can choose to pay nothing,even though the union must represent all workers equally, regardless of their membership or payment of dues. Nobody, anywhere, is ever forced to become a union member.

MYTH NO. 3Right-to-work laws would bankrupt unions.

Right-to-work does not necessarily translate into high levels of covered, “free-riding” workers who don’t pay. For instance, all federal employees, including postal workers, are under right-to-work. In the federal workforce (excluding postal employees), 79 percent of the workers who are covered under a union contract have chosen to join; among postal employees, more than 92 percent

covered under a contract have chosen to join. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has pointed out that union membership among union-represented workers has remained around 80 percent despite right-to-work policies passed in recent years.

Yet right-to-work laws threatento expose real weaknesses inside unions: a lack of solidarity and participation among members.

MYTH NO. 4Unions help only union workers.

It is true that unions often limittheir activities to matters concerning their membership. But it is wrong to conclude that this work does not help workers more generally or that unions don’t organize for the common good. A new paper from the Economic Policy Institute shows that higher union density has historically led to higher pay among nonunion workers. In fact, if union levels were in 2013 what they were in 1979, nonunion men would be earning an additional $109 billion per year. Groups like the Service Employees International Union have spent millions in a fight to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even though they are unlikely to get an increase in membership in the short term.

Beyond wages and benefits, teachers unions, for example, have found creative ways to better the lives of students through collective bargaining, with the Chicago Teachers Union going on

strike in part for increased libraries and other resources, and the St. Paul teachers union fighting to limit foreclosures during the school year for households with school-age children.

MYTH NO. 5Unions are a bulwark against globalization.

From NAFTA to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, labor unions have positioned themselves as the primary critics of, and protectors of workers against, globalization and free trade. The reason for their opposition is clear: Increased globalization often leads to more competition with countries where workers are paid far less, exploiting those workers while making it difficult to keep American wages high.

But despite the best efforts oflabor, including large protests in the 1990s, globalization has largely continued apace, and U.S. workers have paid the price. According to the Economic Policy Institute, while NAFTA promised to create 200,000 new jobs for American workers, since its 1994 inception 682,900 jobs have been lost. Another EPI report found that international trade depressed wages for non-college-educated workers by 5.5 percent, meaning an annual loss of $1,800 for the average worker.n

Marvit is a labor and employment lawyer and a fellow at the Century Foundation. He is the co-author of “Why Labor Organizing Should be a Civil Right.”

Labor unions

BY MOSHE MARVIT

This past week marked Labor Day, first celebrated 134 years earlier in New York City. At that time, labor unions were often viewed as criminal conspiracies, and a few years later with the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act, they were treated as anticompetitive trusts. It took years for labor to debunk these myths. Here are a few others that currently surround labor.

WEEKLYKLMNO

FIVE MYTHS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The seventh annual convention of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen & Helpers in Peoria, Ill., on Aug. 5, 1910.


Q&AASK THE CANDIDATES

CANDIDATES:

PAT HALEYprefers Republican Party

Independent engineering consultant and contractor

DAN SUTTONprefers Republican Party

Owner of Cottage Inn Restaurant in Wenatchee

ANSWER: The primary responsibilities of a county commissioner are the professional management of county services. This includes budgeting and appropriation of county expenditures, constructing and maintaining roads & public buildings, designing safe and efficient transportation systems, enforcing federal and state ordinances, assuring reliable public safety, providing long range land-use planning, prosecuting and defending all legal actions for and against the county, and supervising and hiring of non-elected management staff for county agencies. The better a commissioner focuses on excellence in governance—good roads, low taxes, disciplined budgets, wise planning, and quality service — the better he/she can be a supportive team player with other public & private agencies in solving these types of challenging issues in Douglas County.

ANSWER: Encourage economic and private sector development including tourism, educa-tion, transportation, infrastructure and affordable housing. We must create a climate which encourages growth and development throughout the county by establishing economic development areas, be it through temporary tax deferral or reduction and presenting a climate conducive to growth rather than burdensome and dis-couraging through unrealistic site improvements and regulations causing many businesses to look elsewhere. I support private sector growth, due to the very nature of diversity. It is more beneficial to the health of the county to have 10 businesses employing 25 people than to have one business employing 250 people, however I would be happy with both. When business de-velopment and entrepreneurship are stifled by inappropriate regulation, excessive taxes and unstable policy application, lack of growth and increased poverty occur. By collaborating with groups like the Port of Douglas County and the WVC Chamber of Commerce we will succeed.

If you have a question you’d like to ask the candidates in any race in North Central Washington please your suggestion to [email protected].

2016ELECTI N

GUIDEWENATCHEEWORLD.COM

THE RACE:Douglas County Commission | District 1

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:Douglas County has a historically high poverty rate. What is the most innovative thing a commissioner can do to address that?

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