WHAT IF THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS FAILURE?

For the headmaster of an intensely competitive school, Randolph, who is 49, is surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education. He did away with Advanced Placement classes in the high school soon after he arrived at Riverdale; he encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign; and he says that the standardized tests that Riverdale and other private schools require for admission to kindergarten and to middle school are “a patently unfair system” because they evaluate students almost entirely by I.Q. “This push on tests,” he told me, “is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.”

The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”

Yes, I can think of at least one famous example of that phenomenon off the top of my head.

POPULAR MECHANICS: 9 Things to Fix Around the House Before They Get Worse. I’m a big fan of aircraft-style, replace-before-failure maintenance for things that matter.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: “I’d like to thank Media Matters for illustrating my point. You might even say that Media Matters has shown that Lochner remains a liberal bogeyman, at least among the less constitutionally and historically sophisticated.”

IT’S A DIRTY JOB, BUT SOMEONE’S GOT TO DO IT: Law Professor Steps Up to Task of Making .xxx Web Sites Safe.

LINDA CHAVEZ ATTACKS WISCONSIN, Ann Althouse responds. “If Chavez intends to call citizens to a rational, serious debate about affirmative action, then she must be clear and fair and accurate about all the facts. To do that, she must scrupulously avoid demagoguery.” Which is certainly more than the other side has done. From the comments: “It’s Alinsky vs. Alinsky now. Rational debate has long been a loser’s game.” You get more of the conduct you reward, and less of the conduct you punish.

OBAMA PROPOSES “BUFFETT TAX” on individuals making more than $1 million a year. Isn’t this just a rebadged Alternative Minimum Tax? [I thought at first this was a Michelle-inspired “Buffet tax” designed to slim us all down. — ed. Don’t give her any ideas!]

My advice to the Republicans — roll out my package of Democrat-punishing revenue enhancements in response.

Meanwhile, I thought Obama was going to “pivot to jobs.” What does this have to do with creating jobs?

UPDATE: Now a real Buffett Tax would involve capping the charitable deducation at, say, $100K, and eliminating various tax-avoiding trusts. I invite any tax experts out there to propose specific changes — besides the obvious, an excise tax on fractional jet businesses — that would hit Warren Buffett personally. I mean, now that the President has said it’s okay to do that. . . .

Meanwhile, lots of more generic changes, like eliminating or capping the deductibility of state income and property taxes, or the mortgage interest deduction, would hit residents of high-cost/high tax blue states a lot harder, too. I’m just sayin’ . . . .

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Is Pakistan At War With The United States? “Possibly, or at least part of its government may be. . . . As long as Pakistan thinks we have no option, it will continue to play gruesome games. In fact, we have a number of pretty good options, and it is high time we explored them in depth.” When Richard Armitage threatened to nuke them shortly after the 9/11 attacks, they became very cooperative for a while. That has worn off.

IF THE I.R.S. HAD DISCOVERED the Quadratic Formula.

MARK STEYN: Obama’s Magical Thinking on “Green Jobs.” “This $447 billion does not exist, and even foreigners don’t want to lend it to us. A majority of it will be ‘electronically created’ by the Federal Reserve buying U.S. Treasury debt. Don’t worry, it’s not like ‘printing money’: we leave that to primitive basket-cases like Zimbabwe. This is more like one of those Nigerian email schemes, in which a prominent public official promises you a large sum of money in return for your bank account details. In the case of Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, one prominent public official is promising to wire a large sum of money into the account of another prominent public official, which is a wrinkle even the Nigerians might have difficulty selling.”

Plus this: “So, based on previous form, Obama’s prediction of 1.9 million new jobs will result in the creation of 92,000 new jobs, mostly in the Federal Department of Green Jobs Grant Applications.”

TODAY ONLY: A Nautilus Elliptical Trainer for $499.

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama acts as shop steward in chief.

POLIWOOD: Latest Hollywood Insanity: Mel Gibson Loves the Jews & Sean Stone (Oliver’s son) Loves Ahmadinejad.

THE HILL: Watchdogs to pressure Obama after Solyndra, LightSquared.

AMY ALKON ISN’T SYMPATHIZING WITH STRIKING GROCERY WORKERS IN L.A.: Boohoo. They’ll Have To Pay A Whole $9 A Week For Health Insurance!

ED DRISCOLL: Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! “One does not invoke the name of History’s Greatest Monster without expecting the direst of consequences.”

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Masters Of Hispanic Destiny: The Weekend Interview With Juan Rangel. “Do we want to be the next victimized minority group, or do we want to be the next successful immigrant group?”

RHONDA ROBINSON: Overindulgent Parenting: How We Raise An Entitlement Generation.

WELL, NONE OF THE RULES OF JOURNALISTIC “ETHICS” APPLY WHERE SARAH PALIN’S CONCERNED ANYWAY: “So according to Erik Wemple of the Washington Post, it’s totally fair for journalists to cover stories about premarital sexual encounters that politicians had 25 years ago if they have supported abstinence education. . . . I think the argument is thoughtless and thuggish, but it’s also worth noting that Wemple has his facts wrong: Palin said that same year that she believes schoolkids should be taught about contraception. (Making this mistake seems to be a habit at the Washington Post.)”

Regardless of the actual Sarah Palin’s opinions, the Sarah Palin in their minds is staunchly anti-sex, making anything that the real Sarah Palin does fodder for hypocrisy accusations for not matching up with what the imaginary Sarah Palin thinks. Yes, this is really how modern “journalism” works.

FROM “THE ONE” TO “THE WUN?” Whip Unemployment Now! “The Obama presidency has entered the pathetic phase. This occurs when a president acts in a demeaning fashion while trying to rebuild his popularity and political strength. It’s a product of desperation. There are numerous examples from earlier presidencies. Gerald Ford had his WIN buttons (Whip Inflation Now). George H. W. Bush told New Hampshire voters, ‘Don’t cry for me, Argentina.’ Jimmy Carter boasted endlessly he hadn’t “panicked in the crisis” and insisted he wasn’t contrasting his conduct with rival Teddy Kennedy’s at Chappaquiddick.”

JOHN KASS: Obama’s Solyndra scandal stinks of The Chicago Way. “In fact, it’s not just a Washington saga — it has all the elements of a Chicago City Hall story, except with more zeros.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: Administration Ignored Warnings on Long-Term Care Plan. “Speaking of ill-considered financial decisions made by politicians intent on their policy priorities, new emails revealed by the AP show that the administration was warned that parts of ObamaCare were a financial disaster–but plowed ahead anyway.”

I think we’re seeing a pattern here. And, indeed, Megan comments:

The administration has taken something of a beating this week. Not because they’re somehow uniquely evil–but because they presented themselves as something different, a technocratic elite above the grubby political posturing and ideological mistakes of earlier administrations. First Solyndra, now this, seem to show that they’re very much like everyone else when they’re caught up in the throes of ideological excitement–too much in a hurry to dig into promises that are, as journalists like to say, “Too Good to Check”.

I think calling this an “ideological” problem is too kind, unless Chicago’s culture of corruption counts as an ideology. In which case, yeah.

DAVID WARREN: The Man Who Could Trigger A World War.

The greatest threat to the world’s peace, at this moment, comes from a man named Recip Tayyip Erdogan. He is the prime minister of Turkey, at the head of the Justice and Development Party (“AK,” from the Turkish). A former mayor of Istanbul, he was arrested and jailed when he publicly recited Islamist verses (“the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets are our bayonets,” etc.), in defiance of the old secularist, Ataturk constitution, which made it an offence to incite religious and racial fanaticism.

Erdogan’s credentials as an anti-Semite, but also as an anti-Communist, were established from his school days. He came from an observant Muslim family, and while nothing he says can be taken without salt, he claims an illustrious ancestry, of fighters for Turkish and Ottoman causes.

He is an “interesting case” in other respects. His post-secondary education was in economics; he is a very capable technocrat, and under his direction the Turkish economy was rescued. He is a dragonslayer of inflation, and public deficits; he took dramatic and effective measures to clean up squalor in the Turkish bureaucracy, and as the saying goes, “he made the trains run on time.”

What could go wrong with a guy like that?

S.F. POLICE MISS SUSPECT, HIT TWO BYSTANDERS INSTEAD:

According to police, at 2:06 a.m., officers located a wanted person in the 400 block of Broadway. The suspect ran away from police and produced a weapon, they said.

Officers then fired at the suspect, who was not hit. However, two bystanders were hit by the gunfire. They were taken to a hospital to be treated for their injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening, according to police.

Just a note that if a CCW permit holder had shot at an assailant, missed, and hit bystanders we’d hear people claim that civilians can’t be trusted with guns. Oh, and they’d publish his/her name, while the officers’ names are left out of this account. Not saying the officers were wrong here, just noting the double standard.

BILL QUICK: “Is that it? Is that all you got left? Another freaking tax on rich people? Do you have any idea just how pathetic you’ve become? This sort of crap won’t even motivate your base any more.”