A provocative campaign to convince men to fight violence against women kicked off in South Africa during the World Cup.

Lewis Kasindi Kilongo, 26, has always believed that women are equal to men. At home in South Kivu, a war-torn province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, that makes him a rare breed. “My friends in different villages consider women an object of pleasure,” he said. “Many guys think they can’t marry a really educated woman because it will be like having two men in the house. It’s a fear for them. They just want someone they can control.”

Kilongo is a rare male voice in the movement to halt his home country’s mass rape epidemic, and one of 85 youth delegates who traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa this month for Man Up, a one-week conference intended to get men and boys involved in women’s rights activism.

Jimmie Briggs, an American journalist, founded Man Up after writing Innocents Lost, a book about the child soldiers forced to fight and rape in the wars of Central Africa. Briggs was burnt out as a reporter, depressed by endless tales of sexual violence. “I did not see men standing up on this issue in a real way—and not just standing up on this issue, but standing alongside women on this issue,” he said. “We needed to create something to bridge that gap.”

Man Up, though, was by no means the most obvious way to combat problems like rape, female genital mutilation, and women’s political disenfranchisement. Even the group’s name itself is controversial, knowingly embracing a phrase that has often played to sexist stereotypes about men being tougher, stronger, braver, and more independent than their sisters, mothers, daughters, or female partners.

But Man Up also takes advantage of a traditional male bias toward protecting the vulnerable; in places like Congo, those same sisters, mothers, and daughters are potential victims who could be saved from trauma if men simply chose not to rape. Briggs, who brought his own mother and daughter to the conference, believes he can reclaim “man up,” borrowing a term used in the African American community to signal male responsibility and transforming it into a worldwide movement.

“The men in this effort are men who are aware of their responsibilities to their families and to themselves,” he explained, “who are comfortable using their strength in a non-traditional way—not for sexual conquest or physical overpowering, but to be leaders and advocates for nonviolence.”

It was no accident that the conference took place in Johannesburg during the last week of the first African World Cup. As a way of reaching young men with a message of nonviolence, Man Up has emphasized the connection between athletics and activism.

“Sport is the beginning of the conversation,” said Jon McCullough, a member of the U.S. Soccer Federation who spoke on his experience in post-conflict zones. “In some cases [within] the sports culture it’s not considered masculine enough. But I’ve seen it allows you to open up and be more comfortable with the issues of violence, particularly against women.”

The delegates were male and female; from Liberia, the United States, Uganda and more than 20 other countries; and young, ranging in age from 18 to 30. But they had plenty of experience to draw from. Many had been touched by the violence they now aim to fight, whether it was abuse at the hands of relatives or the loss of family members to torture and war. “All of us believe that violence against women and girls is the human rights issue of our time,” said Karen Robinson-Cloete, a longtime human rights activist and Man Up’s executive director.

One in three women worldwide will be the victim of some kind of violence in her lifetime. Laws against domestic violence and rape are not uniform, and often rarely enforced. There are 27 million slaves in the world today—mostly women trafficked into forced sex work, which is more than twice as many as during 350 years of trans-Atlantic slavery. What’s more, says Robinson-Cloete, “We haven’t seen the statistics change in years.”

Though U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made the status of women in the developing world a key plank of her foreign-policy agenda, and the United Nations recently launched a new agency for women’s issues, there is a sense in the global advocacy community that women’s rights have long come last in development efforts.

Given the growing body of data and argument—from Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn to Eve Ensler and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—suggesting that the empowerment and education of women is the key to raising standards of living, this is particularly galling.

The weeklong summit offered the delegates unique access to academics, activists and experts in the field of conflict resolution and human rights. They sang songs and composed proverbs, laughed and cried together at a screening of Pray the Devil Back to Hell, the prize-winning documentary about Liberian women working to end their country’s civil war and fight rape. A member of the Brazilian delegation scrawled the summit’s unofficial motto on a wall: “Young people are the key for social development and change.”

The World Cup offered the perfect backdrop for Man Up’s message. “Football is the international sport and hip hop is the global soundtrack,” Briggs said. “We’re training people to use these tools to engage their peers to build their organizations and initiatives. Being able to draw attention from the Cup to our cause is essential.”

Each of the national teams devised strategies—working inside schools, engaging parents, using new media and video—to get the word out that women deserve peace.

Toni Blackman, a Brooklyn-based hip hop emcee who uses music to empower and honor “Invisible Women”—young girls whose social status is too often defined by silence—also believes “there is nothing more important than meeting someone where they are.” Daniel Lima, a Brazilian participant, led a conversation on how prejudice obstructs change. “Young men from poor communities, mostly black, come with so many preconceptions—they’re reckless, they’re violent, they don’t want to engage,” he said. “But people can tell when you’re looking down on them, that approach just won’t work.”

Sex discrimination is so deep-seated and resistant to change that Briggs insisted each of the delegates leave the Man Up summit with a concrete action plan. “We talk about violence against women, but it also means addressing economic disempowerment, political disengagement, addressing cultural and religious discrimination, all these different facets,” he told the summit.

Kilongo, for one, was thrilled to be a part of something larger than himself: “I’m much more confident that when I go back I am ready to face anything,” he said. “We are not alone.”

South Africa’s successful World Cup came not on the field, but in our minds.

JOHANNESBURG — The first African World Cup didn’t belong to Africa, at least not on the soccer field. Of the six African nations that made it to the quadrennial tournament, five fell early — to indiscipline, tough competitors and heartbreaking missed opportunities. The plucky and focused Black Stars from Ghana were a bright spot for the continent, but when Sunday’s final is over, the new FIFA champion will not be African.

Still, winning games isn’t everything. For one month of one South African winter, the tournament brought an international celebration to a continent more widely known for malnourished bodies, grandstanding leaders and the ravages of AIDS. Rather than indigence, the world saw balls sailing into the net, crisp tackles, sweat. Ten gleaming stadiums and the collective warmth of 50 million South Africans offered thousands of football pilgrims the time of their lives.

In a year that marks five decades of independence for 17 African countries, from Somalia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the cup doubled as an anniversary party. “Just the fact that African teams can compete, defeat and be defeated on the world’s stage is wonderful,” Carmen Arendse, a South African psychologist, said while watching Ghana’s quarterfinal match against Uruguay.

There’s an earlier sentiment that still rings true, as well. In a 1960 speech, Patrice Lumumba, the first Congolese prime minister, made a remark that fits the occasion: “We are going to show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom.”

Even before I had my passport stamped in Lagos late last month, airport ads for telecommunications giant MTN reminded me what the cup means for the continent. With images of star footballers Michael Essien of Ghana, Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon and John Obi Mikel of Nigeria ran the tournament’s slogans: “Let’s go Africa.” “United we score.” “Today is a good day to be African.”

And it was a good month. While the petty crime that is common in Johannesburg didn’t disappear, there were no major incidents of violence at the fan parks or outdoor screening areas. Dignitaries such as former president Bill Clinton and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, not to mention Mick Jagger, came to see the beautiful game at the bottom of the world. In every African city I visited, a raucous, family atmosphere prevailed. At game time in Lagos, traffic cleared, strangers crowded around television sets indoors and out, and alongside the news of the world, chatty conversations on the state of play looped constantly on the radio.

In Johannesburg, the “Jabulani” ball, designed specially for the tournament, graced pickup games outside bars and on dirt patches by the highway. In the poor and sprawling township of Khayelitsha, black South Africans live far from the shadow of Cape Town’s shiny new stadium — but during Ghana’s fatal match against Uruguay, several men and even a few women celebrated by sporting jerseys from Brazil, South Africa, Liverpool and beyond.

The World Cup didn’t just feel universal — it was. According to market research company InsideView, some 80 percent of the world’s population has watched “at least some part” of the competition — and 600 million are expected to tune in to Sunday’s battle between Spain and the Netherlands.

The global spotlight also created some unexpected common ground. The Black Stars may have done more for continental solidarity than staunch pan-Africanists such as Kwame Nkrumah, the father of contemporary Ghana. The team was adopted wholesale by South Africans, whose squad had been eliminated, and by millions more Africans on the continent and in the diaspora who hoped for a showing to rival the great footballers of Europe and South America. In Observatory, a student neighborhood in Cape Town, fans like me who normally identify as Nigerian, Kenyan, Congolese or South African chanted, “Up Ghana!”

When the team’s best chance at making history clanged off the crossbar in the closing seconds of its quarterfinal, the upbeat drone of vuvuzelas gave way to groans. “We had the chance,” said one Zimbabwean observer who backed the Ghanaian squad. “We just didn’t execute.”

That is the simplest explanation for the disappointments among the African teams competing this year. And they perhaps mirror the disappointments that have stalled the continent’s political and economic progress. Similar to the lack of strong primary and secondary education systems on the world’s youngest continent, not enough attention has been paid to youth development in soccer. The sub-Saharan teams’ reliance on foreign coaches with little skin in the game echoes the broad mistrust in local leadership and institutions. And the perennial “brain drain” among the smartest African graduates correlates with the flight of top talent to European soccer clubs.

Perhaps fittingly, Ghana’s breakout performance came after its investment in a championship under-20 team and two years of training under its (foreign) coach — and despite being without its star player, Michael Essien of British club Chelsea.

Though athletic victories have eluded African fans, progress has not. In South Africa, many of the 44,000 police officers deployed to watch over the throng of foreign visitors — Argentine and German, British and Brazilian — will stay in their positions, armed with better skills, equipment and federal coordination. The upgrades to the transit and telecommunications infrastructures will last as well. And though the “white elephant” stadiums in less-trafficked towns such as Nelspruitt and Polokwane will be a sorry reminder of FIFA’s misplaced zeal, regional tourism is slated to rise — and South African President Jacob Zuma has declared that “after this, employment will go up.”

While it may be decades before less-wealthy African countries are prepared to host the tournament, the World Cup has been an essential engine for African self-confidence. This is particularly salient in South Africa, whose racial traumas still live in plain sight. As fellow competitors Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Cameroon celebrate their half-century of independence (Ghana broke with Britain in 1957, and Algeria with France in 1962), South Africa is catching up in terms of full freedoms. De facto segregation by race and income persists — especially on the scrubbed beaches of Cape Town.

Of course, spending money on elaborate new stadiums doesn’t address the economic disparities that can inflame tension, but the very sight of white Afrikaners rooting for black strikers is a salve of sorts. “Apartheid consciousness for white society is rugby or cricket,” says Gareth Colenbrander, a Western Cape resident who supported the Ghanaian team. “2010 consciousness is football.”

Before Ghana’s Black Stars departed South Africa, they greeted thousands of fans in Soweto and had lunch with former president Nelson Mandela. Though they weren’t leaving as champions, they were leaving as heroes.

For many others I encountered, the official outcome was beside the point. Africa wasn’t just the world’s poorest continent — it could compete. Perhaps the best assessment came from a wistful Ghanaian fan, who passed on a Zulu phrase to carry home: Hamba phambili. Move forward.

Dayo Olopade

Why Steve Jobs should let Africans buy his new toy.

When I touched down in Lagos, Nigeria, this week, the first thing I did was buy a cell phone. The city’s Saka Tinubu district hosts dozens of mobile vendors arrayed in small shops, piled high with all the major brands: Nokia, Motorola, Samsung. Among them is Belle-Vista Phone Warehouse, which styles itself as a “Blackberry Outlet.” Young professionals stopped by after working hours to scoop up the Storm, the Curve, and other popular smartphones nestled in the display cases. Apple’s iPhone — ubiquitous in American cities, and about to become more so with the release of the product’s much-anticipated version 4 today — was nowhere to be seen.

The best-kept secret about Africa in the last decade is the continent’s rapid and creative adoption of modern technology. African countries have for the most part leapfrogged the technologies of the late 20th century to adopt those of the early 21st en masse. There are now 10 times as many cell phones as land lines in sub-Saharan Africa, and since 2004, the region’s year-over-year growth has been the highest in the world. When Nokia’s billionth handset was sold in 2000, it was in Nigeria.

Africa is a multimillion-dollar mobile market, and plenty of the major technology companies, Western and otherwise, are there already. Multinational telecoms like MTN, Safaricom, and Zain are competing to cover a continent of 500 million mobile consumers, improving connectivity and dropping prices. Low-tech Chinese imports and no-contract, prepaid plans have made the technology easily accessible; Belle-Vista alone sells 500 phones a month. Nokia, which established its first African research center in Nairobi in 2008, has just unveiled a telephone that will allow consumers used to toggling between two or three devices to use multiple SIM cards in the same phone. BlackBerry has likewise responded to explosive demand by opening an office in Nigeria this year. Google, whose Android operating system is the strongest competitor to the iPhone, has had a presence on the continent since 2007 and now operates in 45 African countries, hiring and training African developers to convert its well-known suite of Web applications (Maps, News, Finance) for local use — often over mobile devices.

These companies and their technologies are opening a line into the flattening world we’ve heard so much about, creating markets, enabling information access, and building relationships in ways that have changed poor countries from the bottom up. But it’s hardly philanthropic work — market leader Nokia’s regional revenues were 1 billion euros in 2009, and Research In Motion, named Fortune‘s fastest-growing global firm in 2010, sold 1 million BlackBerries last year in South Africa alone.

So where is Apple?

The earlier-generation iPhones are, ostensibly, available on the continent — Vodacom, a subsidiary of British Vodafone, signed a 10-country distribution deal with Apple in 2008 that included South Africa and Egypt, and the phones do work on local networks. Vodacom has also announced that it will distribute and service the iPhone4 in Africa in the near future. But for the vast majority of Africans, Apple effectively doesn’t exist. The iTunes store’s music offerings have never been available on the continent; African IP addresses are blocked. The iPhone goes for $1,000 at local retailers — 10 times the current U.S. price for the same model, a big-enough markup that most iPhones on the continent are purchased  abroad instead — and because of limited bandwidth and apps availability, owning one is “like having a Maserati in traffic,” according to Tayo Oviosu, CEO of Pagatech, a mobile banking firm in Nigeria.

This is a shame, considering what even inexpensive, basic cell phones have done for Africa. In poor countries, cell-phone penetration has been linked to positive economic and developmental outcomes. A 2006 study of emerging markets suggests that a 10 percent increase in mobile penetration correlates with a 0.6 percentage point increase in economic growth rates. In Africa, the trend is lifting all boats: A fisherwoman without refrigeration in the Democratic Republic of the Congo can keep her catch on the line in the water, waiting for customers to call; selling access to a mobile phone in poor or rural areas of Uganda has become a viable business model. Professionals stuck in Johannesburg traffic make deals on their BlackBerries; demand for skilled labor in the information and communication technology sector has created 400,000 jobs in Nigeria since 2000.

The advent of mobile money — the transfer of funds by cell phones, rather than banks or ATMs — in poor countries has further expanded the reach and value of cell phones. Fifteen-thousand new mobile-banking customers sign up daily in Tanzania, 12,000 in Kenya, and 18,000 in Uganda. Paperless payment creates meaningful efficiencies: Bill-paying has ceased to be a day lost in line at the bank. Rather than sending an envelope full of cash with a bus driver to another town, an individual can text remittances to a distant relative or friend.

Africa has also led the way in putting mobile phones to NGO-like use. Using SMS platforms, organizations can send patients reminders to take medication, offer technical assistance to farmers, and provide mothers simple prenatal checklists. Ushahidi, a Kenya-based start-up, deployed its SMS-based crisis-mapping software in Haiti after January’s earthquake, for which it was later honored by the Clinton Global Initiative. These mobile-centric models don’t just do good — they add real value to the sizable investment made by lower-income individuals in poor countries.

What could the iPhone contribute to this ongoing renaissance? The iPhone4 may serve these developmental functions better than anything else on the market, if its features are as described. The new FaceTime feature, for instance, which allows videoconferencing directly from a mobile device, could do much to support the distance education projects being pioneered at the University of South Africa and Makerere University in Uganda. In addition to GPS and access to the mobile Web, geotargeted applications could help traders find market prices, businesses find customers, and make news delivery and political organizing easier. All-in-one video shooting and editing software makes the iPhone4 a powerful media tool that competing smartphones like the BlackBerry or Nokia Nseries just can’t duplicate. Even the longer battery life will add value in places where electricity is unreliable.

Most importantly, the iPhone’s application development ecosystem would engage the talented, tech-savvy demographic on the planet’s youngest continent. According to a paper from the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester, software production is an industry “essential for the growth of the economies of developing countries”; the $1.43 billion iPhone application market, with its low barriers to entry and friendliness to entrepreneurs, is ideal for Africa’s burgeoning class of small-scale software programmers. In Kenya — a country where software tinkering is popular enough to warrant a prime-time cable TV show — some eager programmers created applications for the first iPhone well before it was even available in the country. “We’re going to see people developing applications that solve specific challenges in the African context,” says Oviosu. “If the iPhone comes here and catches on, of course we’ll build [one].”

It isn’t just Africans who are losing out from Apple’s disinterest in the continent. As mobile data usage comes to replace traditional computing in Africa, the new unit of engagement for business, government relations, and humanitarian work may be the smartphone — and it stands to reason that the company with the best local presence will reap the benefits of rising incomes and demand on a continent of nearly 1 billion. If it is Apple, it will reinforce the company’s slogan: This changes everything. Again.

Dayo Olopade

The soccer tournament pits colonizers versus the colonized.

In July 1978, an obscure Nigerian literary magazine called Third World First published a posthumous essay from South African anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko. In it, Biko rejects the “lie” of black inferiority reinforced by 19th and 20th century colonialism. “To make the lie live even longer, blacks have to be denied any chance of accidentally proving their equality with white men,” he notes.

For 70 years, the FIFA World Cup has helped dismantle the lie Biko spent his life fighting to disprove. The arrival of the 2010 tournament in his home country will be no different. As football is sport, parity is not guaranteed. But the quadrennial competition creates rare opportunities for once-colonized nations to challenge the great powers of the last century. No matter how bloody or complex the history, the World Cup gives the empire the chance to strike back.

Saturday’s matchup between the United States and England, for instance, generated white-hot interest in both the old and new world. Americans on the ground in Rustenburg waved flags with the original Tea Party slogan, “Don’t Tread on Me.” Martin Longren of the British embassy in Washington sent the U.S. a biting email establishing the terms of a bilateral wager. “You should know that the Ambassador takes his steak like American soccer victories—somewhat rare,” he cabled. One stateside commentator referred to the match as “1776 2.0.”

Despite the agreeably Atlanticist final tally, citizens of both countries relished the 96-minute match all the more for its historic symmetries. And while the World Cup always produces oddball pairings (North Korea, meet Brazil!), the unique legacy of post-colonialism—reparations, whitewashing, the flow of migrants, outright war—creates the highest drama in all of sport.

This year’s postcolonial matchups include the U.S. versus the UK, Portugal versus Brazil, and Spain versus almost everybody else. These showdowns are not as common as you might imagine, though in recent years Senegal has defeated France, Portugal has drubbed Angola, and England has drawn Nigeria in the tournament’s group stage. (France and Algeria seem destined never to meet.)

Of course, the on-pitch retread of geopolitics is not limited to colonial ties—East and West Germany were strategically kept from sparring during the Cold War, and longstanding tensions in the Middle East compel Israel to play with European teams. But the most contentious rivalries have evolved from the European scramble for blood and treasure abroad. When Honduras meets Spain on Monday, it will be in the hope of recreating its joyous 1982 World Cup debut, when striker Hector Zelaya schooled the Spanish team on its home turf. It will also be a reckoning for the exploitative silver mining that gilded the Spanish crown. Likewise, former Spanish colonies Chile and Argentina are in it for the trophy, but fans will enjoy a rematch of the 19th century wars of independence that cost thousands of lives.

The beauty of the World Cup is that it promises not reparations, but a literally level playing field. Rather predictably, Angola fell to slave-trading Portugal in its first World Cup appearance. But a battle of sweat, grit and gentle jersey-tugging is preferable to a bloody civil war. And at times, the turnabout is delicious: The 2002 World Cup began with Senegal’s dashing triumph over the defending champions and former rulers from France—a revival of the pride the insurgent Cameroon brought to the continent in 1990. But on Friday, Portugal will face likely defeat against the dominant Brazilian squad whose forbears spent nearly 400 years under Lisbon’s thumb.

Replaying ugly histories wasn’t always possible; the Cup began in 1930, when most of sub-Saharan Africa was beholden to European grand strategy, and much of South America and Asia was independent but desperately poor. Luckily, the British, Dutch, French, Spanish and Portugese exported Christianity, western dress and the humiliations of colonial hierarchy—as well as the beautiful game. Argentina’s tradition of footballing excellence began among British expatriates to the Spanish colony. By the turn of the century, football clubs served as social supports for urban migrant workers in colonial Africa. Despite mid-century injustice–the nations of Africa were allotted only half a berth in the 1966 Cup—today, free nations from South Korea to the Democratic Republic of the Congo have national teams eager and able to gain the victor’s view of history.

The football madness gripping much of the world outside the U.S. suggests the rate of these meetings will only increase over time. And there is a kind of irrational, wonderful collectivism to watching the tournament through this lens. The potential for retroactive justice enhances the already potent doses of history and nationalism swirling around pubs and living rooms around the globe. Teams from nations without a chance at the Cup can root for the next best thing: Namibians may boost Ghana over once-imperial Germany, Turks may cheer Argentina against regional rival Greece, and Indians in Kolkata will celebrate all month in a makeshift “little Brazil.” It’s why I’m rooting for an African team to go the distance; it’s why no one is excited when the Swiss take the field.

Of course, sport often imitates life: the wealthier European teams, with advanced athletic infrastructure and training regimes—as well as smoother paths to qualification—have better chances of winning. But it’s clear that the soccer world is becoming flatter. The white-bread qualifiers of the late 20th century—Ireland, Poland, Norway—have been replaced by non-Anglo competitors from Ivory Coast and Serbia. What’s more, European teams are absorbing first and second generation immigrants and naturalized citizens fighting under once-antagonistic flags. Franklin Foer’s 2004 book on soccer and geopolitics describes the logic of Nigerian footballers freezing on the pitch for Ukranian club teams: “They had ingenuity that could make a bland Eastern Bloc team look downright continental.”

This blurring of ethnic and national identities in a modern Cup complicates Biko’s simple calculus of black on white, third world versus first, us versus them. Today’s French team is populated with players of Arab and African origin; star forward Franck Ribery is a Muslim convert reborn as Bilal Yusuf Mohammed. The German squad features Turkish starters, the Dutch squad finally has a black striker. Argentine Lionel Messi has lived in Spain for most of his life; Brazil’s Kaka and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo play together—for Spain’s Real Madrid. Nine of the U.S. players live and play in Britain—and seven more are first-generation Americans. Italy—perhaps by virtue of its lousy colonial record—is the least diverse of these squads. But even stiff-lipped England has embraced the new norm: An English commercial for football company Umbro features the polyethnic masses in contemporary Britain—an elderly man in dreadlocks, a young South Asian woman—clad in St. George’s red, singing, lustily, “God Save the Queen.”

Even Biko might have thrilled to that.

Dayo Olopade

Is the famous environmental activist putting the Gulf crisis to waste?

In the spring of 1989, weeks after the catastrophic sinking of an Exxon Valdez oil tanker in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, then-Senator Albert Gore, Jr. was leading the outcry against the company responsible for the second-worst oil spill in United States history. From his position on the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Gore demanded to know if Exxon was “stonewalling” the cleanup efforts. A flustered Coast Guard commandant, Paul Yost, told Congress that Exxon was doing “the most that can be done.”

In the years after the disaster, Gore has become synonymous with environmental action. In an advertisement for his 2000 campaign for president, Gore explicitly called for a ban on offshore drilling: “For me, this issue is not only an economic issue and a health issue, it is also a moral issue,” he said. “I think we have an obligation to do right by the environment.”

The spring of 2010 has brought an oil spill already several times larger than Exxon-Valdez, featuring the same cycle of catastrophe, recriminations, and pledges to do better. But 56 days after oil began flooding the Gulf of Mexico, Gore—whose Academy Award and Nobel Prize have made him the most influential environmental activist in the country—has been largely silent during the worst environmental catastrophe in memory.

His nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection has emailed supporters that “the only way to end catastrophic oil spills like Deepwater is to end our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.” But the climate crusader has not engaged with either the White House, the Department of the Interior, or the EPA. His most notable public statement has come in a short article for The New Republic’s website comparing the oil gusher to CO₂ emissions. When President Barack Obama, who has pledged to move climate legislation forward this summer, convened a group of business leaders and energy experts in the Roosevelt Room of the White House last week, Gore was nowhere to be seen.

Friends and foes alike are noticing his absence.

“Al Gore has been keeping his head down now for some time, partly because of the scandals over climate science, partly because people revealed his financial incentive in passing climate legislation,” says Kenneth Green, an environmental policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “He seems to have decided to take his money and hit the door.”

Says Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who worked on Gore’s energy team in Clinton’s administration: “I don’t know why he hasn’t been more visible on this. Vice President Gore has a lot on his plate… He’s been trying to move the focus from threats to solutions.”

But, Hendricks adds, the crisis is an ideal opportunity to enact solutions to the problems that have become Gore’s life’s work. “The real security comes from guaranteeing that this will never happen again, by absolutely committing to a low-carbon path forward,” he says. “If the oil spill continues and a robust case is not made for climate legislation, it will be a missed opportunity.”

Granted, Gore is no longer an elected official, and has been going through a rough time of it personally: He’s splitting from Tipper, his wife of 40 years, and his daughter Karenna is likewise ending her marriage. And that was before the Star Magazine-fueled rumors that Gore had had an affair with environmentalist Laurie David—a rumor David vigorously denies. “He is anti-media right now,” says Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist from the Gulf Coast who managed Gore’s 2000 campaign. “I doubt he will become a spokesperson for our cause.”

Kalee Kreider, a spokesperson for Gore’s office in Nashville, said in a statement: “Former Vice President Gore has addressed the crisis in the Gulf in a major speech, an essay in The New Republic and through numerous postings on his Twitter and personal online journal on algore.com. He also works closely on the climate crisis, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, and the oil spill through the philanthropy that he chairs, the Alliance for Climate Protection, based in Washington, DC.”

Contrast this with last summer, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brought her climate bill to the floor of Congress. Gore phoned wavering members and twisted arms alongside the president to pass the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act. As the Senate debates a version of that legislation that could reduce emissions and consumption of domestic oil reserves, Gore is far behind the scenes.

Gore’s disappearance means that environmentalists are lacking that strong voice at precisely the wrong moment. New polling suggests 76 percent of Americans support some government limitations on greenhouse-gas emissions. (Pollution-soaked pelicans are a powerful emotional argument for getting off the oil drum.) The Senate recently rejected a backward-looking resolution to discredit the EPA from Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski. “It shows that senators are now scared of being tied to fossil-fuel interests,” says Michael Levi, a climate expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That suggests to me that there is a political opening.”

James Carville, a Clinton campaign veteran who has criticized the administration’s response to the spill, would go further. “We don’t need legislation, we need to utterly reject the philosophy that companies and markets are able to regulate themselves,” he says. “Until you have that you’re going to have banking crises and environmental catastrophes.”

The problem is connecting the dots for the American people. Obama has stuck to the line that domestic oil production will remain “part of the energy mix” for the foreseeable future. “He talks about [energy independence] a lot,” says Levi, “but he hasn’t made a big push on it—he’s been busy with other things.” Obama delivers his first address from the Oval Office Tuesday night, focusing on the oil spill and energy and climate issues. But a name like Gore’s could help shoulder the burden of advocacy, and mobilize pressure for a climate bill that lives up to the promises made during the Obama campaign and in international climate negotiations.

Still, there may be some advantages to Gore’s laying low on climate action. “If you consider the difficulty of trying to pass cap and trade during a recession,” one Obama adviser told the Atlantic, “keeping a lower profile makes sense. Why stir up the opposition?” And Gore is certainly a lightning rod for conservative climate-change deniers. “Gore has gravitas with people who already agree with him,” says Levi. “It’s not clear to me what that does for the country at large.” What’s more, says Carville, “He’s not the president. The White House may not want that kind of intervention.”

Dayo Olopade

Al Gore’s Weird Silence

by Dayo Olopade Info

Dayo Olopade is a political reporter for The Daily Beast and a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation.

X Close

• <!– text –> - +
• Single Page
• print

• Twitter
• Emails

  Enter your email address:

  Enter the recipients’ email addresses, separated by commas:

  Message:

  Your email has been sent.

  Thanks for recommending The Daily Beast!

  X Close

• Share

Enter your email address:

Enter the recipients’ email addresses, separated by commas:

Message:

Your email has been sent.

Thanks for recommending The Daily Beast!

X Close

Yes, he’s out of office, and splitting with his wife. But Dayo Olopade investigates why America’s leading environmentalist is conspicuously absent from the debate over the worst environmental disaster of our time.

In the spring of 1989, weeks after the catastrophic sinking of an Exxon Valdez oil tanker in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, then-Senator Albert Gore, Jr. was leading the outcry against the company responsible for the second-worst oil spill in United States history. From his position on the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Gore demanded to know if Exxon was “stonewalling” the cleanup efforts. A flustered Coast Guard commandant, Paul Yost, told Congress that Exxon was doing “the most that can be done.”

“He is anti-media right now,” says Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist from the Gulf Coast who managed Gore’s 2000 campaign. “I doubt he will become a spokesperson for our cause.”

Al Gore addresses BP at Panetta Lecture

In the years after the disaster, Gore has become synonymous with environmental action. In an advertisement for his 2000 campaign for president, Gore explicitly called for a ban on offshore drilling: “For me, this issue is not only an economic issue and a health issue, it is also a moral issue,” he said. “I think we have an obligation to do right by the environment.”

The spring of 2010 has brought an oil spill already several times larger than Exxon-Valdez, featuring the same cycle of catastrophe, recriminations, and pledges to do better. But 56 days after oil began flooding the Gulf of Mexico, Gore—whose Academy Award and Nobel Prize have made him the most influential environmental activist in the country—has been largely silent during the worst environmental catastrophe in memory.

His nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection has emailed supporters that “the only way to end catastrophic oil spills like Deepwater is to end our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.” But the climate crusader has not engaged with either the White House, the Department of the Interior, or the EPA. His most notable public statement has come in a short article for The New Republic’s website comparing the oil gusher to CO₂ emissions. When President Barack Obama, who has pledged to move climate legislation forward this summer, convened a group of business leaders and energy experts in the Roosevelt Room of the White House last week, Gore was nowhere to be seen.

Friends and foes alike are noticing his absence.

“Al Gore has been keeping his head down now for some time, partly because of the scandals over climate science, partly because people revealed his financial incentive in passing climate legislation,” says Kenneth Green, an environmental policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “He seems to have decided to take his money and hit the door.”

Says Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who worked on Gore’s energy team in Clinton’s administration: “I don’t know why he hasn’t been more visible on this. Vice President Gore has a lot on his plate… He’s been trying to move the focus from threats to solutions.”

San Francisco DA Kamala Harris tries to break California’s last glass ceiling.

This year’s “Super Tuesday” of primary elections across the country featured plenty of women to watch: Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln fought off a tough challenge from fellow Democrat Bill Halter; Nikki Haley, the Indian-American conservative battling allegations of “inappropriate sexual contact” will face a runoff for governor in South Carolina; and in California, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and Hewlett Packard executive Carly Fiorina emerged victorious after expensive, blistering primary campaigns.

But maybe the most interesting woman to watch is Kamala Devi Harris, the district attorney for San Francisco, whose Democratic primary win puts her on course to become the first African-American and Asian-American woman elected attorney general in California. Born to one of the first black economics professors at Stanford University and an Indian physician at a time when interracial marriage was still illegal in parts of America, she has already made history. Now, Harris’ challenge is to break through one of the last glass ceilings in California.

The state has always been hospitable to women candidates—as both senators and the speaker of the House can attest. But there has never been a female attorney general—no less one with as exotic a background as Harris’. Sound familiar? Gwen Ifill, author of The Breakthrough, spotlighting a new class of African-American politicians, summed it up for David Letterman: “They call her the female Barack Obama.”

The 46-year-old Harris, who shares Obama’s greyhound physique and progressive politics, has long been one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party. Jonathan Parker, political director of Emily’s List, calls her “a superstar for the future.” And like Obama, she represents a new generation of public servants who easily cross lines of race and culture. Her varied endorsements—from Tyra Banks to the League of Conservation Voters—tell the tale. And she’s run a thoroughly modern campaign: When her chief opponent, former Facebook security officer Chris Kelly, attacked her record on crime on YouTube, she fired back using widespread complaints about Facebook’s privacy policies.

Sheathed in a black wool suit and several strands of pearls, Harris weighed the notion of making history in the lobby of the Willard Hotel in Washington earlier this spring. “As with anything there are advantages and disadvantages,” she said. “But I’ll tell you the advantages certainly stand out to me.” When Harris marched in a parade for Martin Luther King Day, an African-American man broke through the crowd with his three children, crying, “Look, that’s our DA.” Likewise, her campaign kickoff was packed with young women proud that one of them was making change. “I was raised to be an independent woman,” she continued, “not the victim of anything.”

Like the technocrat-in-chief, Harris believes in “smart government.” When she saw the statistics connecting violent crime, high school dropouts and elementary school truancy in San Francisco, she decided to begin prosecuting the parents of kids skipping class—an approach that reduced truancy rates by 23 percent. Harris’ “back on track” pilot program, which has cut recidivism among drug offenders by supporting them in job training and education, has been embraced by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a model for California. The career prosecutor likens campaigning to the courtroom. “Running for office is similar to being a trial lawyer in a very long trial,” she says. “It requires adrenaline and stamina; it requires being in shape mentally and emotionally. It’s a marathon.”

Indeed, Tuesday’s primary vote could be just the first lap for Harris. The AG seat has long been a springboard to higher office; governors Christine Gregoire, Jennifer Granholm and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano have also made the jump from top cop to their state’s governor’s mansions. In California, the springboard is a state tradition: “Very few extremely ambitious state level politicians would want state attorney general to be their last job in California government,” says Frank Zimring, a professor at University of California Berkeley School of Law. “But lots of people would like it to be their first.”

Harris is similarly ambitious; according to one California political observer, she has “a healthy ego—but tell me a politician who doesn’t.” Still, she has her work cut out for her—not least being elected in November. Harris will face tough competition from the Republican nominee, Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley.

The battle of prosecutors will also be a referendum on reform within the largest and arguably most troubled criminal justice system in the country. California’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has mandated that the state reduce its jailed population by 40 percent, and Harris has taken up the cause of prison reform in a state whose overloaded prisons and harsh sentencing guidelines—including the controversial “three strikes law”—have become a pressing political and budgetary issue. “We’re turning California’s prisons into very expensive retirement communities for former burglars,” says Mark Kleiman, UCLA professor and author of the prizewinning book When Brute Force Fails. “Three strikes is a big part of that problem.” (California spends more than three times the national average on over-50 prisoners annually.)

There are other tough legal and political fights ahead, on issues from reforming immigration laws to defending national health-care legislation and civil rights for gays. On “three strikes,” Harris will be shielding her left flank—Cooley has sponsored legislation reforming the politically popular but practically untenable law. Harris has long opposed the death penalty, though she said she would enforce it as AG. Cooley feels otherwise. Harris disagrees with the controversial Arizona statute that encourages police to demand proof of citizenship for suspects—and supports a path to citizenship for immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally. “We can’t be ostriches on this issue,” she said at a recent candidate’s forum.

The rising star may still fall victim to California’s “unpredictable” politics, says Gautam Dutta, executive director of the Asian American Action Fund, which endorsed Harris and primary candidate Tom Lieu. Harris has already faced criticism for inflated conviction rates in San Francisco, as well as her role in mismanaging the city’s crime lab—from which a technician allegedly stole cocaine. There have also been high-profile problems with the “Back on Track” initiative, such as when an illegal immigrant enrolled in the program was subsequently arrested for assault. Irked Bay Area police officers gunning for Harris set up a Facebook page slamming her as “more of a career politician than the crime-fighting attorney her campaign is making her out to be.”

Heading into November, Harris must balance the tough-on-crime image essential to winning statewide with the liberal tendencies she shares with her sister, who served as executive director of California’s ACLU, and brother-in-law, whom Obama appointed to the embattled civil rights division of the Justice Department. “It’s not a crime to be a liberal in California,” says Dutta. However, “she’s running for what is considered one of the more nontraditional jobs as a woman,” says Debbie Walsh of the Center for American Women in Politics “So she has to be even better.”

Primarily, she needs to build a winning brand. “She’s well thought of where she’s thought of, but she doesn’t have a strong statewide identity,” says Zimring. And for that, the comparisons to the president might come in handy. Like Obama, Harris must balance administration and advocacy within a broken system. In his 2010 state of the union address, the president spoke about a “trust deficit” between ordinary citizens and their government. That’s certainly the case in California, where state officials have dismal approval ratings and the budget deficit now tops $30 billion. Managing the broken bureaucracy is almost as tough as steering the United States through two wars, an oil spill and an anemic economic recovery.

Rather than taking a page from recently deposed Alabama gubernatorial candidate Artur Davis, who ran away from the White House, Harris might try to capitalize on the president’s still-strong numbers in California. “She distinguishes herself by being an African American, by being a Democrat, and by being young,” says Zimring. “The more you cast it as a statewide political office instead of a niche in the Justice Department, the better she looks against Cooley.”

Harris, who announced her ambitions just days after Obama’s sweeping victory in November 2008, isn’t so sure. “So many people trip in front of them because they’re looking over there or up ahead,” she says. “I’m knocking wood all the time.”

Dayo Olopade

Obama’s twentysomethings leave the nest.

Joe Boswell quit his job at Camp David. But first, he played a tennis match with Michelle Obama. Her second chief of staff, Susan Sher, is an avid tennis fan, and Boswell, her assistant, was game for a doubles match. After a straight-sets victory, he leveled with the first lady of the United States. “I was tired of going through the motions,” he remembers. “She told me to go out and save the world and come back.”

Today, Boswell isn’t so sure he’s coming back. The 25-year-old Dartmouth graduate served as one of a “dirty dozen” of young campaign fixers who roamed the country for President Barack Obama’s campaign. Yet, less than a year into the Obama administration, “I was bored,” he says. “I like to execute things; I like to get people empowered,” he adds. Despite helping to plant the first lady’s famous White House kitchen garden and holding playdates with the Obama daughters, “I knew it was time to go when I was falling asleep at meetings,” he said.

Boswell is not the only one looking for a change of scenery. Former Michigan field director Elizabeth Wilkins left her position at the Domestic Policy Council last week to attend Yale Law School. Longtime press assistant Priya Singh departed the beehive of the communications shop a month earlier to work with Ambassador Susan Rice at the United Nations. Her move came on the heels of the departure of Rice’s previous assistant—a young Harvard graduate more interested in journalism. Elizabeth Bafford, a key aide to budget director Peter Orszag, will attend Duke’s Fuqua School of Business this fall. Jake Levine, special assistant to climate adviser Carol Browner, is revisiting his decision to defer law school for the campaign life. His housemate, Eric Lesser, right-hand man to senior Obama adviser David Axelrod, is reportedly more interested in national-security issues. Yohannes Abraham left a job working under legislative affairs chief Phil Schiliro in order to become the national political director for Organizing for America.

The 18-month itch hits every administration—and some of these folks are heading for new jobs with their belief in Obama intact. But others are clearly suffering from “change” fatigue. And this presidency was supposed to be different. The young people working in the White House are supposed to be the truest of true believers. Countless postmortems attribute the Democratic Party’s 2008 success to a unique surge in “Barack the Vote” enthusiasm among 18- to 34-year olds. Many of these folks followed their political hero from the fields of Iowa into the White House—hoping to translate their dreams into policy, and build satisfying careers in the process.

A recent New York Times Magazine article focused on White House “twentysomethings” like Lesser, Levine, Jon Favreau, Reggie Love, and Samantha Tubman—and what they’re learning on the job. But as the campaign juggernaut settles into the grind of governing, many junior staff across the administration are heading for the exits, burned out and tired of life in the Obama bubble.

“Everyone, for better or worse, gets that it’s a special place to be,” says a former campaign staffer who worked in two federal agencies in Washington before leaving the government in March. “But the challenge is: What does it mean to ‘make it’”? One young graduate who left a plum job at the White House for more policy-related work at a federal agency explained the choice: “I can’t have the same job on my résumé for two and a half years. If I was going to stay, I needed to grow, and so I had to move.”

Of course, commuting to the most exclusive office building in America has its perks—and these privileged few are wary of whining at a time when so many of their peers are struggling just to find a job. Toasting health care’s passage on the Truman Balcony of the White House, high-fiving members of the U.S. men’s soccer team, or sitting in on international climate negotiations are unforgettable memories. “You get to learn from the people that are making the decisions that affect the course of our country,” says Ross Weingarten, who recently left the Justice Department for a summer of service in Uganda. “For a young person, few experiences could be more educational, more exciting, or more fulfilling.”

Yet virtually all of the young White House and administration staffers I spoke to (most were unwilling to be named because of the sensitivity of their positions) have grown somewhat disillusioned—and say the glamour factor noted in the Times article is overblown. “It’s cool to my family, or the girl that I meet at the bar, but in terms of day-to-day work—am I really doing the change we can believe in?” asked one Iowa veteran. “Probably not. And it is very much of a shock.”

The central challenge for the twentysomethings is converting campaign skills into the realm of government. On the trail, “we got accustomed to marching orders: ‘You’re going to Iowa, you’re going to South Carolina, you’re going to New Hampshire,’” says the former agency staffer. “And in the real career world, you’re supposed to navigate this on your own.” For some of the wunderkind campaigners, who coordinated overseas trips, managed hundreds of volunteers, or oversaw multimillion-dollar budgets at Chicago headquarters, setting up the East Room for a bill signing, conducting West Wing tours or getting coffee for bull sessions in the Executive Office Building was a frustrating letdown. “We wanted change and we got it,” says Orrin Evans, who began working for Obama at the age of 21. “But we’re now hit with a new set of challenges.”

Of course, this White House is hardly the first to draft young and idealistic staffers, only to burn them out. “You become an adrenaline junkie and you don’t even know it,” says Heather Hurlburt, a White House and State Department speechwriter in her 20s during Bill Clinton’s administration. “People talk about first year Clinton as being a soccer team of preschoolers, where people just run for the ball—and there was a lot of fatigue and burnout and exhaustion as a result.”

Still, there is something poignant about the exodus among the “Yes, We Can” crowd. Key senior staffers such as Daniel Meltzer, Neera Tanden, Linda Douglass, and Sarah Feinberg have all left the White House in recent weeks, expressing a desire for a new direction—or relief from the punishing pace of the Executive Branch. The full-throttle Obama campaign—and the administration’s ambitious agenda since taking office—have clearly taken a toll. “We worked a 22-month campaign where you had to be perfect every single day… and now the stakes are even higher,” says the former agency staffer. “We all celebrated the inauguration, but the next day a lot of us went into work.”

Leaving Obamaland yields minor perks—Google’s popular email service is blocked at the White House—but also significant opportunities for advancement. The 24-year-old Abraham, for example, is suddenly helping to run the biggest grassroots mobilization effort in American politics to date.

Then there is the liberating impact of fleeing the bureaucracy. Just after the 2008 election, 26-year-old Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes explained his choice not to join the administration: “There was never any particular position or set of responsibilities that really excited me,” he said. “There’s a challenge in prioritization, there’s a challenge in working within constraints of the law, any political constraints that are there, to actually get good work done.”

“You can’t flip a switch and change the country,” adds Evans, now at the USDA. “We’re like a big, slow tanker—and I think a lot of folks are frustrated with that.”

There is also an achievement gap between more experienced staffers and those with only a BA to their name. Thirty-year-old Alejandra Campoverdi, also profiled in the Times, has a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School and now serves as an aide to deputy chief of staff Mona Sutphen. Joshua Dubois, the 27-year-old director of the White House faith office, graduated from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Foreign Affairs. Jason Green, a 29-year-old associate in the Office of Legal Counsel, balanced previous campaign experience with a degree from Yale Law. But there is a ceiling for the younger staff.

“There is only one Dan Pfeiffer in all of Washington,” said one junior press aide contemplating law school, referring to the 35-year-old White House communications director. Some feel that to break into the power class, it’s important for them to catch up.

“A lot of folks have identified that [they] should actually know what [they're] talking about,” says Evans, “not just advocate what’s in my heart, but what works.”

So this summer, you’re just as likely to see Obama aides cruising GMAT or LSAT preparation classes as to find them playing on the STOTUS (Softball Team of the United States), shooting hoops at the Department of the Interior, or celebrating on the roof of Tabaq—a popular destination for birthday parties.

The restlessness may be the natural way of Washington, but stings more because of the campaign trail togetherness so many young staffers remember. The experience “was like the best preview in the world, the movie you want to see so badly,” says Boswell. “And then you see the movie and it’s mediocre.”

Heading into November midterms, the White House turns to political fixer Patrick Gaspard.

The anti-incumbent wave in American politics has made looking for votes this fall like looking for water in the Arizona desert. The word from voters in Utah—where Republican Senator Bob Bennett lost his bid for renomination, and West Virginia, where on Tuesday Democratic House member Alan Mollohan was bounced after 30 years of service—has bathed the capital in a mood of grim resignation about the electoral fights ahead. In Manhattan Thursday, President Barack Obama will hold a glitzy pep rally of sorts for Democrats trying to weather the storm. Those anxious about their chances this fall should keep their eyes backstage, where the publicity-shy Patrick Gaspard, the veteran New York organizer and political director for the White House, will be pondering which races are worth the fight.

In West Virginia, Mollohan got virtually no assistance from the executive branch or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for his bid (“The races will be won and lost campaign by campaign,” says the White House). Senator Arlen Specter, the Democratic convert in deep trouble in his Pennsylvania primary next week, merited a brief solidarity television ad with Obama, and no more.

But Gaspard, a “smooth operator,” according to one DNC political organizer, is not shy about wading into a fight. In 2009, he famously leaned on New York Governor David Paterson to abandon plans to run for election this fall, imparting word in no uncertain terms that the White House had lost confidence in his ability to win. Paterson rebuffed him, only to be forced to drop his campaign amid a hail of negative publicity in February. (There are no hard feelings, a close friend of the governor told The Daily Beast.)

Just before Election Day 2009, Republican Dede Scozzafava, trailing in the polls in a three-way special election campaign in New York’s 23rd District, dropped out—frustrated over the national GOP support that flowed to Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. Democrat Bill Owens was adrift in the polls. Gaspard phoned Scozzafava—and within 24 hours, she endorsed the Democrat. Gaspard “was terrific,” says Dan Cantor, executive director of New York’s progressive Working Families Party, who has known Gaspard for many years. “And we won.”

Heading into November, Gaspard will oversee where and how the administration throws its weight around. Naturally, the Obama White House is not lacking in political opinions. David Axelrod, the lugubrious keeper of the Obama message, David Plouffe, the baby-faced campaign manager turned voice of Organizing for America, and Rahm Emanuel, who perfected his belligerence as 2006 chairman of the DCCC, all have outsize political footprints. The president himself told Gaspard during campaign season: “I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Nevertheless, Gaspard, who holds the job occupied most recently by Karl Rove, is one of the most powerful men in American politics. His team, along with deputy chief of staff Jim Messina and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, handles most of the incoming pleas from the numerous candidates and constituencies in search of political TLC. “He builds relationships; he puts out fires; he identifies fires when they’re about to start; he’s a sounding board for the president whenever something is happening,” says the DNC organizer, who has worked with Gaspard on events and messaging. “And he’s just never rattled.”

For 10 years as executive vice president of the influential Service Employees International Union’s 1199 chapter, Gaspard taught a master class in influence within New York City. “There is no political office in New York that did not feel his impact, and many of them owe their careers to him,” says one organizer affiliated with a progressive labor party. His circle of allies range from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to key SEIU health-care broker Dennis Rivera, to Joe Bruno—the Republican former head of the New York State Senate recently convicted of fraud.

Since his early days working for candidates like Jesse Jackson and David Dinkins, and organizing protests in the wake of the 1999 Amadou Diallo shooting, Gaspard has been deemed a “liberal creep” by conservative Michelle Malkin for his ties to the now-defunct ACORN operation. He’s also built a reputation as a “lethal,” “bulldoggish” organizer. “His forte was getting feet on the ground and working at the grassroots—for or against you,” says Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York. “You wanted Patrick on your side.”

So, too, did candidate Obama. After months of trying, he recruited Gaspard in August 2008, both as a link to the labor movement and to what had been Hillary Clinton’s home turf. Obama appreciated Gaspard’s loyalty to SEIU (he recently turned down a plum job there to remain in government), his commitment to organizing, and his comparatively exotic family history—Gaspard was born in then-Zaire to Haitian expatriates. And like Obama, he builds easy bridges to different demographics. “People can relate to him, old and young,” says Meeks. The 41-year-old organizer “understands civil rights and he understands hip-hop.”

The transition to Washington has had its hiccups—notably the special Senate election loss in Massachusetts that almost derailed the president’s plan for health-care reform. Two days before the vote, it was clear candidate Martha Coakley was doomed. Everyone around Gaspard, from the DNC aides dispatched in a last-ditch canvassing effort, to the Organizing for America volunteers flooding the state with phone calls, knew it. At the time, Gaspard was “totally overwhelmed,” says a former aide, by a professional and personal crisis: A 7.3-magnitude earthquake had leveled his parents’ place of birth. Still managing the dual disasters, Gaspard boarded Air Force One to Boston, and stood dutifully behind the scenes as his boss went through the motions of trying to recreate the booming, hopeful rallies they’d staged during the 2008 campaign.

The high-profile flameout was precisely the type of political failure that Obama brought Gaspard to Washington to prevent. All parties, from the White House to the Coakley campaign, have insisted that the lesson has been learned. Lynda Tran, who arrived at the DNC in the wake of the Massachusetts debacle, says that major loss “has informed the 2010 plan, and certainly we’re more aware that things move quickly and that we have to respond much earlier.”

But is Gaspard prepared for a dozen disasters at once? It’s only primary season, and the landscape heading into November is chaotic, to say the least: Democratic candidates on the ropes are leery of Obama’s embrace; and the White House has struggled to tamp down expensive infighting that could damage the party’s chances in November. In Hawaii, for example, two Democrats refused to back down from a special election primary. Some $314,000 later, the DCCC pulled out of the race in a huff—likely handing the congressional seat to a Republican. A similar dynamic exists between Specter and liberal congressman Joe Sestak, Senator Blanche Lincoln and Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, and Ohio Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner—leaving campaign committees, the DNC, and the White House in a bind as to who merits support.

Gaspard is responsible for gathering intelligence, making peace and doling out tough love. But he is also responsible for winning—which could be difficult if summer 2010 unfolds like the last one. Then, a hurricane of town halls protesting health-care reform shocked members of Congress, and turned the tables on the White House supposedly driven by community organizing. This summer, Organizing for America is trying to replicate the basic organizing structures that worked for the Obama campaign with a June 5 day of door-knocking action. Gaspard will remain heavily involved in the support of White House-sanctioned candidates in primaries and in the general election.

Gaspard may have inherited Rove’s brief (Jarrett has his office)—but he’s Rove’s stylistic opposite. “He’s not someone that’s going to put his name behind any given decision or choice of candidate or forcing out of candidate,” according to a White House staffer who worked extensively on health-care messaging in 2009. Then again, he has a few things in common with the man President Bush called “The Architect.” While campaigning for Ruth Messinger, the former Manhattan Borough president who challenged Rudy Giuliani in 1997, Gaspard impressed her as having “a smart sense of not just looking at a poll,” says Messinger, “but thinking about a deeper and more thoughtful level about how might you change minds.”

Dayo Olopade

Mexican President Felipe Calderon pays a visit to the White House.

These are jittery times in Washington. President Felipe Calderon of Mexico arrives for a visit with President Barack Obama on the heels of a catastrophic oil spill, primary upsets for Democratic candidates, and just as rhetoric surrounding illegal immigration into the American Southwest has reached the screaming point. Given the White House’s new focus on immigration reform, its second official state dinner will be more concerned with security than the last—not just at the White House gates, but at the border that joins Mexico and the United States.

Tensions will be running high, but at least the two leaders will be toasting one another as friends. Obama held a private meeting with Calderon even before his 2009 inauguration, visited Mexico last April and August, and has bumped elbows with Calderon nearly once a month, at events from the Summit of the Americas to the G20 meetings in Pittsburgh. First lady Michelle Obama likewise hit it off with Calderon’s wife Margarita Zavala during her April trip to Mexico City—her first solo voyage since moving to Washington. “She is smart. She is tough. She is passionate. And she is my friend,” Obama said last month. “And I told her to prepare to have fun.”

The one person who won’t be having fun is Julianna Smoot, the new White House social secretary. The 200-person dinner in the East Room, catered by Chicago celebrity chef Rick Bayless, promises to be just as lavish as the first dinner in November. But after the embarrassing security breach that stole headlines from Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and led to the departure of Smoot’s predecessor, Desiree Rogers, most people at the White House have decided this time around will be more business than pleasure.

Rather than showing off the White House china being used for the dinner, the East Wing has scheduled an event with Michelle Obama and Zavala at a local high school. The latest iteration of the first lady’s “Let’s Move!” anti-obesity initiative is perhaps more appropriate for the high-powered lawyers (Zavala, who uses her maiden name, served in Mexico’s Congress from 2003-2006) with young children and strong opinions on public policy.

Calderon will appear with Obama in advance of the dinner Wednesday and then address a joint session of Congress on Thursday. He is expected to reinforce a message of mutual cooperation with the Obama administration, “from Honduras to Haiti to Iran,” according to a senior administration official, and stress development in Mexico as a solution to the problem of illegal immigration to the U.S. “One in 10 Mexicans live abroad because they haven’t found opportunity at home,” says Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Acknowledging this fact “would be a major step to shift the debate.”

Calderon is also expected to offer a strong critique of the Arizona law permitting police to question the immigration status of residents, which Mexicans believe is discriminatory and American progressives have taken to calling “Juan Crow.” “The Arizona law is what happens when Congress and the president don’t do their job on comprehensive reform,” says Martine Apodaca of the National Immigration Forum. “We’ve seen half-hearted measures and rudderless leadership.”

Suddenly, 11 other states are considering such laws—and Calderon, whose rocky term as president will soon end, has something to prove; his standing at home is a bit shaky. “Right now he’s the president who taught everyone to sneeze into their sleeve,” says Juan Pardinas, a columnist for Mexican conservative newspaper Reforma—referring to Mexico’s swine flu epidemic in 2009. “He has a huge problem with legacy.” He may therefore use the speech to stand up for Hispanics in America—and pressure the U.S. government to act on the framework for reform proposed by Senators Bob Menendez, Lindsey Graham and Charles Schumer in April. “[Former Mexican President] Vicente Fox told [George W.] Bush he had forgotten about Latin America,” says Apodaca. “President Calderon might say the same.”

Obama has his own political landmines to navigate. “Clearly Obama will have to say something about immigration policy,” says Selee. “And whenever U.S. presidents do something with Mexican counterparts, they are inevitably thinking about domestic Latino politics.” Obama, who is hoping to consolidate Democratic gains among Hispanic voters, has already called the Arizona law “misguided”—but may go further in advance of Wednesday’s news conference. “You might see the Justice Department file an injunction against the law—this would be a strategic moment to do it,” adds Selee. (The White House indicates that is unlikely.) Some activists want tough talk on documented human and civil rights violations associated with Calderon’s aggressive war on drug cartels—though as The Daily Beast has written, the Mexican military doesn’t take kindly to outsider advice.

The White House event, like the October 2009 “Fiesta Latina” event (at which the president danced with Mexican pop star Thalia) or this year’s splashy Cinco de Mayo celebration on the South Lawn, seeks to honor what Obama called an “unbreakable” bond between Mexico and the U.S. A sneak peek at the guest list also suggests a change in the in-crowd. Whereas the roster for Bush’s 2001 state dinner with Fox featured former attorney general Alberto Gonzalez and Texas governor Rick Perry, the Obama invitees are younger and more progressive—and include Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, pioneering urban farmer Will Allen, and Julian Castro, the young mayor of San Antonio written up in The New York Times as a future presidential contender.

“They’ve tried to be much more plural in whom they invite to White House functions, reaching beyond the beltway,” says Selee. Other expected guests include Mexican-American actors Eva Longoria Parker and George Lopez.

Despite the glam factor, there is work to be done. In 2009, Obama and Calderon unveiled a revised U.S.-Mexico border security policy that focused $700 million on improving police and judicial capacity in Mexico, and reducing violence in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, two border towns wracked by drug-related violence. And last week, the United States released a new policy outlining specific proposals to reduce drug demand in America. Also on the dinner table: an unresolved trade dispute over Mexican trucks flowing into the United States.

The Obama administration, and particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has emphasized mutual responsibility as the new norm for Mexican-American relations. “We’ve seen a switch, an expansion of the agenda with Mexico beyond the military side of it, to an approach that incorporates the socioeconomic factors that cause violence,” says Shannon O’Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations. A working lunch at the State Department Wednesday will offer Clinton and other key policy stakeholders in and outside of government to press Calderon about his plans for the drug war, border security, and diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Mexico—including the topic of energy security and climate change.

“We’ll hear about a cleaner North America, led by the United States and Mexico,” says O’Neil. Mexico is hosting the United Nations conference on climate change in November.

Dayo Olopade

Goodluck Jonathan takes on entrenched powers in a bid to break his nation’s addiction to oil.

Goodluck Ebele Jonathan–the acting president of Nigeria–needs an introduction. After a political drama that makes President Barack Obama’s scuffles with centrist senators seem boring by comparison, Jonathan has emerged on top. Nigeria’s elected president, Umar Yar’Adua, fell ill. Then he disappeared to Saudi Arabia for two months. Soon, his wife, Tarai Yar’Adua, began stage managing on her husband’s behalf, refusing to relinquish power. Eventually, the Nigerian courts had enough–voting to give Jonathan one year (elections will be held in early 2011) of control over an unruly democracy of 150 million that is currently the third largest source of U.S. crude oil and petroleum.

“We must hit the ground running,” Jonathan said when handed over the reins on Feb. 9. He defied early expectations of weakness by dissolving his predecessor’s cabinet and appointing new ministers from the ruling People’s Democratic Party at key agencies. But his legacy in Nigeria will hinge on his response to the new world order on energy.

Jonathan made his first trip to Washington this week as head of state for Obama’s international nuclear security summit, where 47 countries made pledges to decrease the likelihood of loose nuclear material getting into the hands of terrorists. It’s part of Obama’s executive commitment to nuclear disarmament and a continuation of a treaty with Russia he signed in Prague last week.

A Key Strategic Partner in Africa

The nuclear summit is also one indication of Nigeria’s strategic importance to the United States, which continues to grow in the 21st century. Of course, other than providing America with $26 billion worth of petroleum every year, Nigeria has the largest military in the African Union, is an active member of the United Nations, and has led peacekeeping missions on the continent and around the world. It chairs the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the West African regional economic bloc, and it is Africa’s largest recipient of American private investment. And the December arrest of a Nigerian national with alleged connections to a terror networks in Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula made the nation’s long-standing ethnic and religious conflicts, as well as security protocols, of keen interest to the United States.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton underscored this heightened attention when she and Nigerian foreign minister Yayale Ahmed signed a framework establishing a binational commission to fight corruption and promote development in Nigeria. “We hope it will support the aspirations of the Nigerian people for a peaceful, prosperous, stable, democratic future,” Clinton said when signing the accord. Jonathan’s meeting with Obama at the White House was equally polite, both countries acknowledging the “importance” of the other. But one subject was conspicuously absent: oil.

In the End, It’s About Oil

Nigeria has proven a more acceptable oil partner for the United States than countries like Iran, Angola, Venezuela, and others that, in Obama’s words, “don’t like us very much.” But it is still a fragile democracy plagued by endemic poverty, whose oil reserves are keeping America from, again in Obama’s words, the “clean energy economy” that can create jobs and slow climate change. It’s also hindering Nigerian development. Oil makes up 95 percent of the country’s export earnings and some 85 percent of government revenues–which means Nigeria lags behind even other developing countries in building human capital and other industries.

With health care reform signed into law, the U.S. government is now turning to the hot-button issue of legislation to address fossil-fuel emissions that cause catastrophic climate change. America’s inefficient, car-centric culture will have great difficulty going green. But Obama’s recent announcement that drilling will begin off America shores should give Nigeria pause. Under this new policy, and the terms of the bill already passed by the House of Representatives, and those being proposed by Sens. John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, Nigeria’s 50-year free lunch could soon be in jeopardy.

At the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Jonathan admitted that oil is a problem: “One of the greatest challenges we have is the power sector,” he said. “The law of nature is oil or nothing.” Even though Nigeria produces 2.2 million barrels of oil daily, electricity is spotty throughout the country, and poor production controls often lead to spills or the burning of natural gas in periodic “flares” that are environmentally devastating for the Niger Delta region where most of Nigeria’s oil reserves are concentrated. (They are also wasteful–the 24 billion cubic meters of gas burned off annually is enough to power most of the continent for a year.)

The solution to both nations’ oil addiction may lie with the accidental president. In a nation where military men and shrewd businesspeople run the bureaucracy, Jonathan–who earned his Ph.D. in biology and has performed environmental protection work in the Delta–wields an appreciation for science that puts him ahead of the pack. “It is my responsibility to work with all Nigerians to improve the pace of development and to do so facing the right direction,” he told his audience in Washington, channeling the Obama “yes we can” message. “This is our time. Either we continue with more of the same, or we change the game.”

Jonathan appears uncertain about just how to wean Nigeria off oil, but seems willing to take up the challenge. In addition to announcing plans to improve public safety and fight the “culture of impunity” that incites corruption, Jonathan announced that he will keep the electricity problem as part of his personal portfolio as acting president. “We are really reexamining it,” he said. “We want to change the focus.” He mentioned nuclear energy and the tapping of coal reserves as a long-term aspiration–though neither source of energy appeals to environmentalists. In a move that impressed skeptics, Jonathan has also decided not to appoint a minister for energy, who traditionally consolidated power without making reforms. “He is trying to leapfrog the bureaucracy,” says David Goldwyn, who chairs the state department commission with Nigeria on energy and investment. “It’s not a permanent solution, but it’s an important one.”

The State Department working group will also be essential to setting national prices on oil and a reliable baseline for electricity use in Nigeria–both of which are still constantly in flux. Models for this kind of U.S. partnership include Thailand, the Philippines and Pakistan–all of which have benefited from America’s comparative expertise in energy use. Still, Jonathan’s federal commitment is “essential,” says Goldwyn. “They control allocation of gas to producers, transmission lines and the tariffs … all the primary policy tools which are necessary to reduce flaring and use oil efficiently.”

Time to Walk the Talk

Princeton Lymon, a former ambassador to Nigeria who has cautioned that the country might become “irrelevant” if it continues to rely on oil for political power, saw a gap between rhetoric and reality. “The shift away from a heavily dependent oil economy takes a lot of steps. It means investing back in the infrastructure and the agriculture sector, it means providing reliable power so other industries can develop. It involves watching the expenditures from the oil revenue,” he said. “I don’t think [Jonathan] has the time to do it, but if he even begins to solve the power problem, that would be a step forward.”

// The solution to both nations’ oil addiction may lie with the accidental president. In a nation where military men and shrewd businesspeople run the bureaucracy, Jonathan–who earned his Ph.D. in biology and has performed environmental protection work in the Delta–wields an appreciation for science that puts him ahead of the pack. “It is my responsibility to work with all Nigerians to improve the pace of development and to do so facing the right direction,” he told his audience in Washington, channeling the Obama “yes we can” message. “This is our time. Either we continue with more of the same, or we change the game.”

Jonathan appears uncertain about just how to wean Nigeria off oil, but seems willing to take up the challenge. In addition to announcing plans to improve public safety and fight the “culture of impunity” that incites corruption, Jonathan announced that he will keep the electricity problem as part of his personal portfolio as acting president. “We are really reexamining it,” he said. “We want to change the focus.” He mentioned nuclear energy and the tapping of coal reserves as a long-term aspiration–though neither source of energy appeals to environmentalists. In a move that impressed skeptics, Jonathan has also decided not to appoint a minister for energy, who traditionally consolidated power without making reforms. “He is trying to leapfrog the bureaucracy,” says David Goldwyn, who chairs the state department commission with Nigeria on energy and investment. “It’s not a permanent solution, but it’s an important one.”

The State Department working group will also be essential to setting national prices on oil and a reliable baseline for electricity use in Nigeria–both of which are still constantly in flux. Models for this kind of U.S. partnership include Thailand, the Philippines and Pakistan–all of which have benefited from America’s comparative expertise in energy use. Still, Jonathan’s federal commitment is “essential,” says Goldwyn. “They control allocation of gas to producers, transmission lines and the tariffs … all the primary policy tools which are necessary to reduce flaring and use oil efficiently.”

Time to Walk the Talk

Princeton Lymon, a former ambassador to Nigeria who has cautioned that the country might become “irrelevant” if it continues to rely on oil for political power, saw a gap between rhetoric and reality. “The shift away from a heavily dependent oil economy takes a lot of steps. It means investing back in the infrastructure and the agriculture sector, it means providing reliable power so other industries can develop. It involves watching the expenditures from the oil revenue,” he said. “I don’t think [Jonathan] has the time to do it, but if he even begins to solve the power problem, that would be a step forward.”

// //

The December 2009 United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen was notable for the strong voices of the developing economies who don’t wish to see droughts, floods and other environmental disasters in their time. Nigeria, as recent head of the African Union, participated vocally. But 50 years of entrenched oil interests–including many U.S. companies–will not easily give up their profits. What’s more, senior Nigerian officials traveling with Jonathan, who were not authorized to speak on the record about the matter, appeared confident that American legislation that would slash U.S. consumption of oil won’t pass Congress before Jonathan is replaced.

In Obama’s declaration of the 40th annual Earth Day on April 22, he made no mention of the climate legislation working its way through Congress. Nevertheless, the quiet biologist from Nigeria has resolved to make change. “You will see a clear road map,” Jonathan said. “If we are moving, you will know. If we are not moving, well–you will know.”

Dayo Olopade

//