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NEWSWEEK: Media Lead Sheet/October 6, 2008 Issue (on newsstands Monday, September 29, 2008)

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161323

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080928/NYSU002 )

JONATHAN ALTER: "Time To Channel Cousin Frank" (p. 37). Senior Editor and Columnist Jonathan Alter writes that John McCain's answer to the charge that he's impulsive is that critics said the same thing about Teddy Roosevelt, and look how he turned out. "But Teddy was just the tonic America thirsted for at the time. Unfortunately for McCain, a financial crisis requires something that goes down more smoothly. That would be Cousin Frank. It may be that McCain has been using the wrong Roosevelt as his role model. FDR was dramatic and improvisational, but the effect was calming."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161215

A LETTER TO MY GENERATION: "Ask Not What You Can Do for Barack Obama, Ask What Barack Obama Can Do For You" (p. 38). Senior Writer and Political Correspondent Jonathan Darman writes an open letter to "Young Americans" of his generation, telling them that yes, they'd turned Barack Obama's rallies into cultural events, his candidacy into a movement. But "really, if we're honest, that's all you've done this year-show up." Darman writes that for all "your earnestness and self-congratulation, you haven't done enough ... You, his young supporters, have done little to ensure he'll be the kind of transformative leader you long for. Your biggest failure: you've hardly asked Obama for a thing."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161210

POLITICS: "What If Obama Loses?" (p. 40). National Correspondent Allison Samuels reports on the guarded optimism in the African-American community about Barack Obama winning the presidency. In the beginning, there was disbelief that a black man could become president. Now that he's the nominee, he's soared in the polls and the race is tight, there is optimism but it's tempered by two words: what if. What if Obama loses? How should people respond? What should they feel? It's a common election-season concern, but it's all the more acute in the African-American community, where more people are paying attention -- and planning to vote -- than ever.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161214

INTERVIEW: Afghan President Hamid Karzai. (p. 44). Special Diplomatic Correspondent Lally Weymouth talks to Hamid Karzai, who says that the Taliban are not strengthening, but "we are not doing things that we should be doing. Such as, we did not pay attention in time to the sanctuaries of the Taliban." He says the international community should have done all that was needed to be done -- "political and diplomatic, the right concentration of both ... They should have used and kept open all options in order to bring security to Afghanistan."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161205

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili tellsWeymouth that he does not think he miscalculated last summer when he fired on Russian troops in South Ossetia. "I think since last November the attack was in the making by the Russians. That's when they started the real military buildup. We warned Europe and the West that a Russian attack was foreseeable sometime in early fall."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161206

ECONOMY: "The Monster That Ate Wall Street" (p. 46). Assistant Editor Matthew Philips explains the role that "credit default swaps" have had in the economic crisis. Some JPMorgan bankers developed a sort of insurance policy that banks could take out against loans they had given: a third-party would assume the risk of that debt going bad, and in exchange would receive regular payments from the banks, similar to insurance premiums. But what those bankers didn't realize in the mid-'90s is the monster they created. The world's biggest insurance company AIG, had to be bailed out by American taxpayers after it defaulted on $14 billion worth of credit default swaps it had made to investment banks, insurance companies and scores of other entities.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161199

PROJECT GREEN: "Saving the World for a Latte" (p. 48). Midwest Bureau Chief Keith Naughton and National Correspondent Daniel McGinn report on the growth of recycling companies that reward people for recycling, sort of like a frequent flyer program for recyclers. RecycleBank, a four-year-old green-tech startup out ofNew York, does just that. And the result has been soaring recycling rates in the East Coast markets where the company has rolled out.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161230

ARCHITECTURE: "Love the New Skin You're In" (p. 60). Contributing Editor Cathleen McGuigan reports on the new Museum of Arts and Design building that opened in a newly refurbished building inNew York last week, a Cinderella ending to a big-fisted civic brawl. A battalion of preservations had fought- and filed lawsuits, later dismissed-the idea of changing the original 1964 structure by Edward Durell Stone, who also designed the Kennedy Center in Washington and the U.S. embassies inLondon andNew Delhi. Built as an art museum for the A&P heir Huntington Hartford, the building curved around Columbus Circle on a cramped site; it had no windows except for little portholes cut into the corners of its 10-story white marble facade; it sat on slender columns, each topped with a disc of dark marble, which earned it the name the "lollipop" building.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161200

Read the issue and Web exclusives at www.Newsweek.com

SOURCE Newsweek