As the summer of 2007 begins, the presidential campaign is emulating the season, with fast-moving storms and searing heat. Voters are restless. Seven out of 10 Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Seven out of 10 think the president and Congress are doing a poor job, and George W. Bush is on the verge of becoming a lame duck much earlier than the historical norm. Most oppose the Iraq war, and 67 percent are dissatisfied with the two-party system.
As the summer of 2007 begins, the presidential campaign is emulating the season, with fast-moving storms and searing heat. Voters are restless. Seven out of 10 Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Seven out of 10 think the president and Congress are doing a poor job, and George W. Bush is on the verge of becoming a lame duck much earlier than the historical norm. Most oppose the Iraq war, and 67 percent are dissatisfied with the two-party system. Something fundamental seems to be changing as the nation prepares for the election of 2008. "It's such a wide-open race," says historian Robert Dallek, "and the public is so unsettled and discontented." The campaign has started months earlier than usual because, for the first time since 1952, no incumbent president or vice president is running. "Looking back over the last 50 or 60 years," says Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker, "the range of politically available people was very narrow. But today, to a very great extent, the old mold of political availability has been broken." America itself is undergoing profound change. More of us are single; fewer are married with children. The growth of the Sun Belt continues. A surge of new immigrants is altering communities and stirring angst nationwide. Frustration with the Iraq war permeates our politics. Fear of another terrorist attack is palpable. Many are doing well economically, but millions are concerned about their jobs. H With all this uncertainty, it is no wonder that the presidential campaign has become such an unconventional race, full of fascinating characters, unending surprises, and wild cards of every sort. H It could be on par with the most important elections in history, such as 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt won and greatly expanded the scope of the federal government; 1960, when John F. Kennedy grasped the torch of leadership passed to a new generation; and 1980, when Ronald Reagan led America on a more conservative path. "Time marches on," says Frank Donatelli, former White House political director for Reagan. "You might argue that the era of Ronald Reagan is finally ending, that the conservative era is ending. ... Different factions in both parties are trying to break through." So there are new kinds of candidates and new kinds of issues. A compressed primary schedule and a changing political calculus in many regions of the country. It's certainly not your father's presidential campaign, or your mother's, or your grandparents'. In fact, it may be one of a kind.
"History is repeating itself," says Michael Potter, an entomologist from the University of Kentucky and a leading bedbug expert. Before the widespread use of DDT, he notes, many American homes were crawling with the bugs. U.S. News wondered exactly what a bedbug-infested America would look like, so we leafed through archives of old news reports. The battle against these bugs, it turns out, has been lengthy. What follows is a sampling of the nearly countless references in major American dailies to what a Washington Post reporter called "that horrid and caddish little cimex[sic] lectularius."
AP - One of dozens of fires across the West raced out of a canyon in South Dakota's Black Hills "with a vengeance" on Sunday, killing a homeowner and destroying 27 homes, authorities said.
AP - Prominent Shiite and Sunni politicians called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves after a weekend of violence that claimed more than 220 lives, including 60 who died Sunday in a surge of bombings and shootings around Baghdad.
AP - Gov. Ed Rendell late Sunday ordered a range of state government services shut down and placed about a third of the state work force on indefinite unpaid furlough after frantic last-minute negotiations failed to break a budget stalemate.
Nigerian kidnappers released a 3-year-old British girl on Sunday after holding her for four days, and no ransom was paid, according to Nigerian police sources close to the investigation.
Firefighters struggled to gain control of a massive wildfire in Utah on Sunday -- just one of about a dozen fires blazing throughout the western United States.
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