Whats Important?

"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."
John F. Kennedy
US President (1961-1963)

As I get older and have less time and desire to play games, when I do get on I usually end up playing with a handful of people on my friends list. Over time its not the games so much that make the experience entertaining, its the people you play them with - thats how online games work. The character of the people you play with, over time, becomes more important than skill or any other factor. No matter how good someone is at a game, if they are unpleasant to be around, or they talk or act in an insulting manner, it can make it impossible to play with them.

Im going to tell you a story about John F. Kennedy, from when he was a young man. John used to play golf with a group of his old buddies from his prep school Choate. He would call them up and they would go out and play anywhere from 18 to 72 holes of golf in a day - whatever Kennedy's back could handle before giving in. The 3 guys he usually played with were named Jim, Henry, and Tom - the last names arent important.

Well one day, when the weather was particularly rough, they were considering heading in, but instead they decided to play on. Kennedy was having a pretty good round, and so were Jim and Henry who were all at or around par. Tom, who was normally the best player in the group, was slicing the ball all over the place, had taken several mulligans, and was well above par. While they were waiting for Tom to dig his ball out of some rough, two golfers appeared at the tee behind them. One ran over to John and said, "Hey, the weather looks like its about to get rough, do you mind if we play through?" John was a bit surprised to see a black man on a golf course in Massachusets (this was 1939 mind you), but told the young man to play on. "My buddy's having a rough time finding his ball, go on through. That might be his last one," Kennedy said with a smile. The young man turned around and ran back to the tee, where his partner was already teeing up. The partner hit his shot quite well, and then the young man who had talked to John hit a long, high drive that went well over the heads of the Kennedy party and layed up on the fairway not far from the green. The two men walked by just as Tom, who had finally found his ball, was coming out of the deep rough. Tom saw the two black men, stared for a moment, and then shouted "What the f*** do these n*****s think they are doing? Hey! n******s! Im talking to you! Get the f*** out of the way!"

The two men didnt even turn around, they kept walking, picked up their balls, and walked right off the course. Kennedy, flabbergasted at what he heard his friend just say, told him "Tom you can't talk like that. Those men have a right to play on this course. If we were at war, those men could save your life." Tom said, "John you're probably right, but that still doesnt give them a right to play through." He promptly dropped his ball, took a hard swing and sliced it right over the green into the woods. The group didnt say much for the rest of the round.

The next week, when the weather was much better, Jim called up Kennedy and told him where the group would be meeting for lunch before their usual round of golf.

Kennedy asked, "Is Tom going to be joining us?"

Jim said "Of course, why wouldnt he be?"

"Well," Kennedy responded, "I cant play with you then. That man is a bigot, and has no sense of sportsmanship whatsoever. Im embarrassed to be around him."

"Thats too bad," said Jim. "Hes a great golfer, usually, I think he was just having a bad day."

"Maybe he is a great golfer, but thats still no excuse for what he said."

So that weekend, Kennedy didnt play golf with his buddies for the first time in a couple years. The next week, when Jim called him again, Kennedy again asked if Tom was playing, was told yes, and excused himself again. That his prep school buddies didnt mind playing with this man struck Kennedy as odd, as he knew from private conversations that they were not racist at all. They both believed in fairness in matters of race or sport. "So why do you keep playing with this guy?" Kennedy asked the next time he spoke with his buddy. Jim responded, "He never misses a game, and we've entered into group tournament that he can help us win."

Kennedy was surprised. Both his friends, who were men of character, were putting up with a person whose behavior Kennedy had deemed unacceptable. This changed Kennedy's view of the other two men. Although they didnt engage in intolerant or unsportsmanlike behavior, their continued tolerance of such behavior by a peer reflected poorly on both them. After a few months of being asked to join the group he was once a core member of, John stopped bothering to call Jim back about golf altogether, and his spot in the group was replaced.

Whether the story is true or just part of presidential folklore isnt really important. What is important, on July 4th, 2008, as I watch on TV the Macy's fireworks show over the Hudson River, the same river which George Washington crossed during the Revolutionary War, is character. The character of my friends, my family, myself, and the people of this country, including its next president, Barack Obama. Are we everything we should be? Can we walk down the street proud, with our heads up high, or must we hang them low? Was this country we have now worth so many men dying for 200 years ago? Why did those men choose to die? How about the Civil War and the 50,000 men who died at the Battle of Gettysburg? Was that worth fighting? Why did those men choose to die? Why did Kennedy stop playing golf?

Ideas. Ideas are worth fighting for. Ideas are worth dying for. Its an incredible concept - to die for an idea - but perhaps it is the most noble of all things you could die protecting - because its intangible, except for in the minds of other men. The principle idea behind the Declaration of Independance and the Revolutionary War was freedom - freedom from taxation without representation, and the freedom of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. But it was a flawed idea, because it did not include freedom for all men and women in America. It took another 100 years for that war to happen, and even when it was over, another 100 years before our country was fully desegregated. But since then the the Idea of Freedom hasnt been fully protected in America - it has been desheathed, debunked, and dethroned. It is continually assaulted. It is up to each and every individual American to protect Freedom - and Im most certainly not talking about the specter of terrorists which the Republicans would have us believe lurk under every bed like the boogeyman.

There is Freedom of Speech in America, but with that freedom comes responsibility. The Founding Fathers of this country had a vision - it was a flawed vision - but eventually we got it right, and freedom was achieved for all men and women, regardless of race, religion or politcal belief. As an American, you have the right to call someone a Nigger or a Jew or a Cunt or a Fag over Xbox Live. But in doing so you abdicate all the responsibility that comes with that freedom, and in turn you spit on the graves of the people who died to make this country what it is, who died to give you that freedom.

Personally, I cannot associate myself with people who do not understand the history of this country and how lucky they are to be born here, to be given these incredible freedoms as birthrights. Those that choose to abdicate the responsibility of these freedoms - and those who willingly tolerate such abdication- are part of the Other America, the part of our country that wants to move backwards and resist change, resist progress. In November 2008 the Other America is in for a huge shock when Barack Obama will be elected as the first minority President in the history of America. What will their reaction be?

We dont know where Kennedy's prep school buddy Tom is today or if he ever existed, but if he were alive to see the election results in November I sure would like to see him. Perhaps the years have given him wisdom and he is able to see the errors of his foolish youth. Perhaps the sudden departure and subsequent success of his friend and golf partner made him reconsider how he used his freedom. Perhaps his intolerance intensified. People can change - but it requires individuals of great character around them, who believe very strongly in their ideas, to take strong action to back the ideas up and reinforce them. How strongly you accept the responsibility to take actions which back up ideas defines your character - and how we each accept that responsibility defines us as a nation.

Great Civilizations have failed before - The Romans, The Mayans, The Mongols. Are we next? Have our ideas failed us? Do we have the character necessary to make it another 200 years? It is up to each and everyone of us to decide which part of America we want to be a part of - the Ideal America, which took us 200 years to achieve and is still a work very much in progress - or the Other America, who sits idly by and waits for obsolescence and extinction. The choice is yours.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives so that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Abraham Lincoln
US President (1861-1865)

So I Got That Going For Me

Oh Happy Day for Big Oil

New York Times Op-Ed by Bob Herbert

It’s getting harder and harder to remain deluded. With each day comes new facts to drag our heads out of the sand.

Two weeks ago, The Times reported that four Western oil giants were on the verge of signing no-bid contracts that would return them to Iraq, the third-most bountiful petroleum playground on the planet. The deals, expected to be finalized in the next 30 days, were the kind of news that big oil lives for.

Giddy executives singing “Oh Happy Day” could be heard in the corporate offices of Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP, which had been shut out of Iraq for three and a half decades.

We also learned this week that a group of American advisers, led by a team from the State Department, played a key role in drawing up the contracts between the companies and the Iraqi government. Chevron and several smaller oil companies are also on the verge of signing contracts.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney, both former oil-company executives, have long tried to tell us this war was about terrorism, about weapons of mass destruction, about bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, about anything but oil.

Said Mr. Bush: “We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

He didn’t wait. It didn’t matter that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the U.S. Or that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The troops were sent into battle in early 2003 and there is still, after more than five years and more than 4,000 American deaths, no end to the war in sight.

One of the starkest examples of U.S. priorities came during the eruption of looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. With violence and chaos all about, American troops were ordered to protect one particularly treasured target — the Iraqi Oil Ministry. As David Rieff wrote in The Times Magazine in November 2003:

“This decision to protect only the Oil Ministry — not the National Museum, not the National Library, not the Health Ministry — probably did more than anything else to convince Iraqis uneasy with the occupation that the United States was in Iraq only for the oil.”

How convenient that the peculiar perspective of the oil-obsessed Bush administration can now be put to use advising the Iraqi government on its contracts with big oil.

The contracts themselves are not huge. They are like the keys on a coveted ring that will begin opening the doors to Iraq’s vast oil reserves. As The Times reported Monday, “At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world’s largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry.”

A prize, yes. But at what cost?

In addition to the terrible toll of Americans and Iraqis killed and wounded, the war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources from critical problems here in the U.S., where the housing market has been crippled, the stock market has tanked, gasoline has soared past $4 per gallon, unemployment is increasing and an extraordinary number of debt-ridden working families are staring into a financial abyss.

Even as oil companies are enjoying staggering profits, many Americans — in July! — are already worried sick about the potentially ruinous cost of heating their homes next winter.

And then there’s the so-called war on terror.

The latest news is that Al Qaeda, the terror network that actually did attack the U.S., has successfully regrouped in the tribal areas of Pakistan and has reconstituted its ability to institute terror attacks from the region.

For an administration joined at the hip to the oil industry, the lure of Iraq’s enormous reserves was stronger even than the impulse to conquer an enemy that murdered more than 2,700 civilians on Sept. 11, a toll greater than the number of Americans killed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

Referring to Al Qaeda members who regrouped in Pakistan, The Times reported on Monday:

“Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.”

Who knows how long it will be before the U.S. disengages in any significant way from Iraq. What you can take to the bank is that this country will not make any major advances in energy policy, in health coverage, in rebuilding its infrastructure, in improving its public schools or in curtailing runaway public and private debt until our open-ended commitment to this catastrophic multitrillion-dollar war comes to an end.

How long will it take before that finally sinks in?

Gears of War 2 Multiplayer Trailer

Gametrailers.com pulled the video at the request of Epic because it is an exclusive reveal contained on the the Unreal 3 Tournament disc. But youtube saved the day and I found a decent copy of it. The game looks awesome, I cant wait to play Capture The Max.

GTA IV Criticisms

GTA IV is a great game - let me just say that first and foremost. The game world, which is a digital recreation of NYC, is stunningly realized - at first glance. Look a little deeper though, and you may realize that both the game world and the gameplay itself are not quite as fully fleshed out as they could have been. Granted, making a game like GTA IV requires an astronomical amount of work and not everything can make it into the game - not even stuff the developers want to put in. Im sure Rockstar could have put more into the game - why they didnt is a matter of speculation. On one hand, we might theorize that they were under pressure to get the game out on budget and on time, as it had already been delayed numerous times. On the other, pehaps, as any good poker player might, Rockstar chose not to show their complete hand early in the game. That is, they realize GTA IV is the first of several new GTA games, and if they put everything in the first one, there wouldnt be much point in making a sequel. Perhaps its a combination of both factors.

Lets start with the game world itself - an uncanny digital recreation of NYC. Let me say I think the graphics are fantastic in GTA IV - it is visually one of the most stunning games I have ever played. If the colors look flat and the lighting isnt what you wanted - come visit NYC. It wont be what you wanted either. NYC is a grey area - literally. I once stuck my Xbox 360 camera out my window during a match of Uno and umopapisdnpuaq asked me to turn the black and white filter off so he could see the city better. There was no filter on the camera - the city, with all the soot and grime and sleaze stuck to it, just looks very grey. So, they got the look right - but they didnt quite get the feel right.

For starters, there are no tourists in Times Square - or the rest of the city. City residents are portrayed with remarkable accuracy - but the non-residents are perhaps the most notable thing when you go to an area like Midtown. During the summer, its swarming with people in brightly colored clothes, with backpacks, sandals and maps, just staring up at the buildings. There are unkempt people walking around, but nobody sleeping on the streets or crackheads begging for change. Yet we have a plethora of prostitutes - among many women in the game who are portayed as objects to be aquired like ammunition. So we strike on an early theme: the boring, pathetic and visiting people were left out of the city, and the cool, absurd, or sexy people were left in. They edited the roster of NYC street life to suit their Rockstar tastes. Their tastes are in a few words, adolescent and misogynistic. You have people walking down the street shouting out "cheesy vaginas!" Its hard to take the game world seriously when puerile humor is constantly being jammed down your throat. The TV and radio ads, as hilarious and ridiculous as some of them are, detract from the otherwise incredible realism of the game world. Rockstar - and its writers like Dan Houser who wrote GTA IV - still havent grown up. The game still feels jouvenile, even though the look has clearly grown up with new technology - GTA IV is still a joy for the eyes and ears, despite these flaws.

But more troubling is the somewhat empty game world. Sure, there is tons of traffic and pedestrians everywhere. But after playing a game like The Godfather, which was originally a PS2 title mind you, where there are seemingly hundreds of different buildings and busineses the player can enter and interact with, Liberty City feels a bit empty. You can only enter a few dozen structures in the entire game world, and there are only a handful of places to eat in the entire city. At first, I thought I had to discover them first before they appeared on the map. But no, there are just a few eateries in all of NYC, and none in New Jersey (Alderney). Whats worse is that there are many restaurants built into the game world - you just cant interact with them. I can't tell you the number of times I needed health and had to take a taxi to the Time Square chicken place and then another taxi back to Alderney to finish a mission. Later I realized I could call an ambulance for health, but really, its no replacement for more food spots or an item system where I could store a health pack.

Secondly, you cant buy property or extort businesses - which you could do in GTA San Andreas and The Godfather, respectively. As you gained money, you could buy bigger and better properties, and it served to propel the gameplay particularly in GTA:SA after the storyline was done. GTA IV has no such features, and the replay value is hurt substantially by it.

Comparing the single player experience of GTA IV to GTA San Andreas isnt kind to GTA IV. While there were several improvements to the gameplay, most notably a cover system and better aiming, a huge chunk of content that was present in San Andreas doesnt exist in GTA IV. For starters, you cant buy property like you could in San Andreas - or anything besides food, guns or clothes. Sop bascially, the money you earn in GTA IV is pointless. You have so much of it by the end of the game, and so little to spend it on. This was a huge oversight by Rockstar.

There are fewer cars and weapons types in GTA IV than there were in San Andreas. But worse than that, they completely screwed up both the handling and the physics of the vehicles. You should not need to play a game for 20 hours just to learn how to drive. The driving controls are so heavy and counterintuitive, and the cars flip so easily, its amazing that the game is even playable. Imagine how great the game would be if the vehicle controls were actually good. I eventually got used to fighting them and was able to earn the "Genetically Superior" achievement for winning all the single player races - but the learning curve should not be so steep. I know a few people that simply quit playing the game early on because they could just not get a handle on the driving controls, and thats a shame.

In San Andreas, there was a driving school. Although you didnt really need to complete it to be able to drive the cars proficiently, it was really fun to complete anyway. GTA IV desperately needs a driving school, right at the beginning of the game. The "A" button, which is the e-brake, and supposedly helps you make sharp turns, is entirely useless for doing anything other than 180 spins. The only way to take sharp turns in a controlled fashion is to rapidly tap the L trigger (brake) as you approach it. There is no real drifting in the game, just slow down and take the turn like a grandma. Because if you take the turn too sharply, your car will go up onto two wheels and flip over - even in a supercar like the Inferno. Do you know how hard it is to actually flip a Ferarri in reality? Do you know how fast you would have to be going to generate enough force to lift one up on two wheels? Its almost physically impossible. Yet in GTA IV flipping your car is constant. Amazingly, this was Rockstar's attempt to make the driving more realitic. They completely and utterly failed, and in the process made the game much more difficult and much less enjoyable than it could have been.

Cars arent the only things Rockstar messed up in GTA IV. The bikes and helicopters, while handling better than the cars and trucks, arent as much fun to drive in GTA IV. The physics on the bikes was so radically changed that the entire genre of game videos knows as "GTA Stunting" is in jeopardy. There are a few rare people who can still create cool stunts in GTA IV, but GTA San Andreas was GTA Stunting democraticized. Anyone with a bike and a jump truck could create amazing stunts anywhere - flying off buildings, doing multiple flips - and landing it, all for an insane stunt bonus. Thats right, for those who dont remember, you earned cash for landing the unique stunt jumps in San Andreas. Not only were there more jumps built into the map, they were bigger, more badass, and more totally insane. The stunt jumps in GTA IV are weak. There are only a handful of good ones, and stunningly, there are no jumptrucks at all in GTA IV.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the vehicles besides their poor handling is the inability to realistically interact with them. Rockstar made a huge deal about how GTA IV incorporated the Havoc physic engine, and it would allow the game to offer more realistic interaction with vehicles and objects. Not only are the vehicle physics in the game no longer fun, they do not allow for such simple tasks as standing on a moving boat. You cannot stand on moving cars or trucks either - although both of these actions were possible in GTA San Andreas. Whether this was a conscious decision by Rockstar or a byproduct of a useless and overhyped physics engine doesnt matter - its an absolutely unforgivable design decision. I also really, really wanted to be able to grab and hang onto a low hovering helicopter with one hand on have friends take me on a heli-tour, or, if its Blank Void piloting it would be more of a Hell Tour with me getting slammed into bridge and building tops and whatnot. Imagine the possibilities of rocket toting heli-hangers jousting over the skies of Midtown, and you can see why Im so disappointed. Dont even get me started on the lack of BMX bikes, skateboards, or rollerskates. Just imagine the possibilities!

The single player game features the gruff yet charismatic Niko Bellic, though sadly you cant customize him beyond his outfit. GTA:SA allowed players to customize its main character, Carl, with tatoos, different hairstyles, sunglasses, he could work out and become super-buff, or he could eat 500 burgers in a row and become super-fat, etc. Niko has none of these more advanced, RPG style customization elements. Couple these limitations with only a handful of choices throughout the story, and you have a very limited, controlled, linear experience, thats more like a playable action movie than the Adventure-Action-RPG that was GTA San Andreas. Rival gangs roamed the streets of GTA SA and The Godfather, and you could often witness inter-gang fights and gang battles with the police - no such NPC chaos exists in GTA IV. San Andreas was also huge, physically, compared to the size of Liberty City. I remember reading a Rockstar rep saying that Liberty City would be as physically big as SA, but more dense. Lies - Liberty City is smaller and more limited, in every way.

The gameplay in the single player GTA IV experience is suprisingly limited compared to what the player was presented with in GTA SA. Where San Andreas consistenly presented the player with new gameplay elements, GTA IV is content to ram the same four or five mission types down the players throat over and over - almost all involve driving somewhere and shooting something. This isnt a review of GTA San Andreas, as its its such an amazingly deep game that trying to list all of it features would take several more pages. Ill try to be brief then - for starters, the only side missions you get in GTA IV are the police missions, Brucie's races, and Lil' Jacob's weed delivery missions. Those are all really fun side missions and completing them really extended the game experience past the story. Now imagine there were 30 times as many total side missions, spread out over more than 10 different gameplay elements - cause thats what you got in GTA SA: robbery missions, pimping missions, truck and train driving missions requiring players to make deliveries on time, insane driving/flying/boating/biking schools, taxi driver missions, firefighter missions, ambulance missions, police missions, remote-control vehicle missions, boxing missions, gambling, skydiving, basketball, pool, an entire lowrider minigame, and the ability to customize any vehicle with a nitrous boost, rims, and hydrolics. And then there were the planes and the skydiving! GTA SA had all of that, and then some more - thats why it was a 100+ hour game, and GTA IV is a 40+ hour game. There is less than half the single player content in GTA IV than in San Andreas, and there are fewer total story missions. Sadly, you cant play any of the minigames in GTA IV online, another shocking omission.

Another thing I was completely shocked by was how much weaker the cops are in GTA IV, and how much more mayhem you have to cause to get 6 stars, and then how utterly disappointing it is when you finally get them. Getting 6 stars in GTA IV is so hard, and takes so long most people will never get them just playing the story normally, which is a shame. I completed the story without ever getting more than 5 stars - there are no missions, not even the insane 3 Leaf Clover, where you are awarded 6 stars at any time. Its is never necessary to escape from a 6 star wanted level to complete the game. Its hard for me to describe how disappointed I was to find out that the way most people achieve 6 stars is right at the beginning of the game, when they explore one of the other islands before they are "unlocked" - a ridiculous idea if Ive ever heard one. Here Rockstar gives us this massive open world, but, no-no-no, dont go explore it yet. You have to "unlock" it before you are allowed to explore it normally. If you try to explore before the other islands are unlocked, you will get 6 stars. Other than that, its almost impossible to earn them without a substantial effort: it took me a specially planned rampage through Times Square culminating in landing a helicopter on a building, and lobbing grenades and rockets onto SWAT vehicles for half an hour before the 6th star clicked in.

Getting 6 stars in San Andreas wasnt just easy - it happened all the time, and often when you didnt want it! It made the game so much more crazy and fun. When you got 6 stars in GTA SA, the army would come for you. There is no army in GTA IV. There was the army in GTA III, which GTA IV is supposedly the successor to. When I finally got 6 stars and no army came, just a few FBI cars, I knew GTA IV was a flawed game. It is a great game as I said before, but it is flawed - mostly due to lacking content that other prior GTA games had. Most of these flaws are allieviated by the ridiculously fun online modes, because when you are in a car with 3 of your friends, it doesnt quite matter as much that its an FBI car chasing you rather than a Tank. GTA IV is a great game, even a classic, but I cant help but wonder how much more amazing it could have been.

Downtown Northbound

America’s Next Chapter

New York Times Op-Ed by Gary Hart, former US Senator

THE novelties of race and gender have largely distracted the nation from the more profound aspect of the 2008 presidential election: This campaign presents the potential for a new cycle of American history.

The idea that American politics moves in cycles is usually associated with the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., but it has an even longer currency. Ralph Waldo Emerson noted the political oscillations between the party of memory and the party of hope, the party of conservatism and the party of innovation. Henry Adams believed that “a period of about 12 years measured the beat of the pendulum” during the era of the founders. Schlesinger, borrowing from his historian father, estimated that the swings between eras of public action and those of private interest were nearer to 30 years.

What matters more than the length of the cycles is that these swings, between what Schlesinger called periods of reform and periods of consolidation, clearly occur. If we somewhat arbitrarily fix the age of Franklin D. Roosevelt as 1932 to 1968 and the era of Ronald Reagan as 1968 to 2008, a new cycle of American political history — a cycle of reform — is due.

The Republican coalition — composed of the religious right on social issues, the radical tax cutters or “supply-siders” on economic issues, and the neoconservatives on foreign policy — has produced only superficial religiosity, a failed war and record deficits. Traditional conservatives, who are dedicated to resistance to government intrusion into private lives, fiscal discipline and caution on military interventions, have yet to re-emerge, and may not. The character of the next Republican Party will result from an intraparty debate that has yet to begin and might occupy a decade or more.

Democrats, meanwhile, have yet to produce a coherent ideological framework to replace the New Deal, despite an eight-year experiment in “triangulation” and an undefined “centrism.” Once elected, Barack Obama would have a rare opportunity to define a new Democratic Party. He could preside over the beginning of a new political cycle that, if relevant to the times, would dominate American politics for three or four decades to come.

Senator Obama has two choices. He can focus on winning the election to the exclusion of all else and, like Robert Redford in “The Candidate,” ask, “What do we do now?” after it is over. Or he can use his campaign as a platform for designing a new political cycle and achieve a mandate for starting it.

Noting the power of “custom and fear,” and “of orthodoxy and of complacency,” Schlesinger believed that “the subversion of old ideas by the changing environment” would give a new leader the best chance to create a new cycle of reform and innovation.

No individual can entirely determine the architecture of a historical cycle. But much of the next one will be defined by how we grapple with a host of new realities, ones that reach beyond jihadist terrorism. They include globalized markets; the expansion of the information revolution into places like China; the emergence of new world powers including India and China; climate deterioration; failing states; the changing nature of war; mass migrations; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; viral pandemics; and many more.

Senator Obama’s attempt to introduce the next American cycle should include, at minimum, three elements. National security requires a new, expanded, post-cold-war definition. America must transition from a consumer economy to a producing one. And the moral obligations of our stewardship of the planet must become paramount.

These themes and the policies that flow from them, if made the centerpiece of the 2008 election (perhaps along with alternatives that others might suggest), could produce the mandate required to begin a new historical cycle. This post-New Deal, post-Morning in America era would be more in tune with the current century and its realities than the continued political circling that confuses most Americans, who repeatedly and overwhelmingly report that they know America is adrift.

They are right. And they are right because they instinctively realize that old politics, old parties and old policies are increasingly irrelevant to our lives, to our revolutionary times and to our country’s future. The next cycle of American history is as yet unframed, awaiting a national leader who can define a new role for government at home and a new role for America in the world of the 21st century.